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How to Handle the “Status Quo” Objection

By Mike Brooks, www.MrInsideSales.com

As you know, I often get emails from readers of my ezine, “Secrets of the Top 20%”, asking me how I would handle various selling situations and objections. 

Someone sent in a request asking me how to deal with the, “We are used to the status quo and don’t want to make waves” objection.  This reader also wrote that he had been told by another training company that he needed to, “Make them painfully aware of something they don’t see coming at them (like a freight train) and develop a more compelling message.” 

As you might imagine, he wasn’t able to come up with anything that was working.

By the way, I must comment here that I frequently hear this about other “sales training” companies: they are quick to offer what sounds like good advice, but they don’t provide the specific solutions to back it up. 

As you know from reading my ezines, watching my YouTube videos or reading or listening to my books and CD’s, I not only tell you what to you, but also how to do it. 

In this case, I think the reader was having trouble with this technique because, to begin with, it’s not a good approach. 

Trying to convince someone that what they’re doing is a bad idea and it’s going to lead to big trouble (so you can say, “I told you so” later), isn’t going to endear you to anyone.  What I recommend instead is to find a way to bypass this obvious initial resistance and find a way present your product or service in a non-threatening way. 

Your goal on the prospecting call isn’t to overcome objections (which this isn’t, by the way), but rather, to qualify and set a date up to demo your product or service. 

Here are some sample scripts to help you do just that: 

Objection: “We are used to the status quo and don’t want to make waves…”

Approach One: 

“I’m completely with you and believe me, I don’t want to rock the boat.  But because things change all the time, there might come an instance when you need to consider your options.  So let’s do this: I’ll set a time to give you a brief demo of what we do and how it might help you.  

After we do, you can then decide if you want to do anything with it now, or keep it in your back pocket in case you ever need to consider a different source – sound good?”

Approach Two:

“I understand and I’ll try not to make too many waves here.  Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you did compare services and pricing – you know, just to keep current on what’s available to you?”

Approach Three:

“I’m with you and believe me – I’m not here to cause trouble.  But let me ask you this: isn’t it wise to at least know about your options just in case you need to make a change at some time in the future?”

Approach Four: 

“I’m with you.  So tell you what: instead of me trying to sell you something, let me just educate you on what’s currently available in the marketplace – you know, so in case you need something further down the line, you’ll know who to call – make sense?”

Approach Five: 

“No problem, I fully understand.  Let me ask you this though: If something were to happen to your current provider, wouldn’t you at least want a dependable backup plan so you didn’t miss a beat?”

The point of these rebuttals is to bypass this resistance so you can get in front of a qualified lead and pitch your product or service.  Obviously, once they agree to do a demo with you, you’ll want to ask other qualifying questions. 

As always, I encourage you to practice, drill and rehearse your responses so you can internalize them and deliver them in a natural way.

If you found this article helpful, then you'll love Mike's Completely Updated and Revised eBook, “The Complete Book of Phone Scripts.” Now over 130 pages of powerful and effective scripts to help you easily get past the gatekeeper, set appointments, overcome objections and close more money!

Visit: http://mrinsidesales.com/completescripts.htm and find out why Jeffrey Gitomer, Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins and many others recommend Mike’s ebook of Phone Scripts!

Do you have an underperforming inside sales team?  Talk to Mike to see how he can help you and your team reach your revenue goals.  To learn more about Mike, visit his website: http://www.MrInsideSales.com

One of the most interesting aspects of Apple stock is that it trades at a much lower price-earnings ratio (PE) than nearly any of its main competitors.

If you're not familiar with it, the PE ratio is simply the market price of the stock divided by a the last four quarters of income. The higher the PE ratio, the more expensive the stock.

While Apple currently manages a PE ratio of 11, Google parent Alphabet enjoys a PE ratio of 32, and even Microsoft clocks in at 38.

It's a trend that prompted venture capitalist Marc Andreessen to comment that Apple stock "trades like a steel mill on its way out of business."

But Wall Street might be changing its mind, according to a new note from analysts at UBS. Steven Milunovich writes that he believes that Apple is priced like a "mature hardware incumbent," whereas investors are really underestimating the "monetization potential of the platform."

Platform companies are much more valuable than traditional sales companies, he argues. The premium given to platform companies partially explains why Alphabet and other tech firms trade at a higher PE ratio than Apple despite having significantly lower revenue and profit.

Although Apple has traditionally used its platform services like the App Store as a feature to sell hardware, this might be changing, Milunovich writes: 

We view iOS as a two-sided platform in which Apple monetizes consumers through hardware and subsidizes the ecosystem with software and services (which is why we question services becoming an earnings driver). Despite being vertically integrated and proprietary in hardware, Apple has learned to open APIs and build a community in a horizontal platform.

The note lines up with something Apple CEO Tim Cook has been shouting for a while: Yes, Apple does services too. During the company's last earnings call, it distributed a document summarizing the total size of Apple's services business, remarking that by its services revenue itself  – nearly $20 billion in 2015 – was larger than many of its competitors.

Apple is arguing that it can continue to squeeze more revenue out of its installed base of hundreds of millions of iPhones, beyond the sales price of the iPhone itself, and at least one analyst is listening. 

Milunovich advises that Apple should trade at a PE ratio of 14.

"Our price target of $120 is based on 14x F16 estimated EPS or 12x our F17E as the stock’s discount to the market narrows," he writes.

SEE ALSO: Investors can't stop talking about a one-month-old app called Anchor

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: We tried the 'Uber-killer' that offers flat fares and no surge pricing

GENEVA (AP) — While acknowledging for the first time that votes were bought in past World Cup hosting contests, FIFA is seeking to claim "tens of millions of dollars" in bribe money seized by U.S. federal prosecutors.

FIFA submitted a 22-page claim to the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York on Tuesday that seeks a big share in restitution from more than $190 million already forfeited by soccer and marketing officials who pleaded guilty in the sprawling corruption case.

Tens of millions of dollars more is likely to be collected by U.S. authorities when sentences are handed down, and from dozens of officials currently indicted but who have denied bribery charges or are fighting extradition.

FIFA claims it is the victim of corrupt individuals, despite widespread criticism that bribe-taking was embedded in its culture in the presidencies of Joao Havelange and Sepp Blatter, who was forced from office after 17 years by the current scandal.

"The convicted defendants abused the positions of trust they held at FIFA and other international football organizations and caused serious and lasting damage to FIFA," FIFA President Gianni Infantino said Wednesday in a statement. "The monies they pocketed belonged to global football and were meant for the development and promotion of the game. FIFA as the world governing body of football wants that money back and we are determined to get it no matter how long it takes."

In documents seen by The Associated Press, FIFA asks for:

— $28.2 million for years of payments, including bonuses, flights and daily expenses, to officials it now says are corrupt

— $10 million for the "theft" of money that FIFA officials transferred as bribes to then-executive committee members to vote for South Africa as 2010 World Cup host

— "substantial" cost of legal bills since separate U.S. and Swiss federal probes of corruption in international soccer were revealed last May

— damages for harm to its reputation, plus other bribes and kickbacks for media rights to non-FIFA competitions but "which were made possible because of the value of the FIFA brand"

"FIFA has become notable for the defendants' bribery and corruption, not its many good works," lawyers for soccer's world body state in the claim. "FIFA is entitled to restitution for this harm to its business relationships, reputation and intangible property."

FIFA's grab for a share of the money sets up a battle with two of its regional confederations — CONMEBOL, the South American confederation, and CONCACAF, the body running soccer in North America. It was officials and competitions from those regions that were most involved in the corruption crisis.

It also signals a change in strategy for FIFA, after months of senior officials distancing Zurich from the scandal, instead blaming confederations which are beyond its control.

Most of the already seized money — $151.7 million — will come from Brazilian marketing executive Jose Hawilla, whose group of agencies were heavily involved with matches CONCACAF and CONMEBOL controlled but not FIFA directly.

In an initial claim for $28.2 million, FIFA specifies an amount for each of 20 men from the Americas over many years that it says it should be repaid from money held by U.S. authorities.

FIFA wants more than $5.3 million it spent on Chuck Blazer, the disgraced American official who has pleaded guilty, allocates $4.4 million of its claim for former FIFA vice president Jack Warner, and $3.5 million for Ricardo Teixeira, Havelange's former son-in-law form Brazil.

Warner, a long-time powerbroker from Trinidad and Tobago until resigning in a 2011 election bribery scandal, is identified by FIFA in its 22-page claim for receiving a $1 million bribe from 1998 World Cup bid candidate Morocco, and ensuring the $10 million bribe from South Africa was paid via a FIFA account in 2008.

FIFA claims a further $2 million for payments to Jeffrey Webb, the Cayman Islands banker who was arrested at a luxury Zurich hotel last May, and now lives at his home near Atlanta, Georgia, awaiting sentence in June.

"These dollars were meant to build football fields, not mansions and pools; to buy football kits, not jewelry and cars; and to fund youth player and coach development, not to underwrite lavish lifestyles for football and sports marketing executives," Infantino said.

It is unclear how much influence Infantino, a former lawyer, had had in the restitution claim since he was elected only three weeks ago, with strong support from voters in the Americas.

Infantino's signature pitch to voters on election day was about finances, saying bluntly "It's your money." That resonated with members of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF, who have had a combined $20 million central funding frozen by FIFA.

CONCACAF, based in Miami, has had its past three presidents implicated in the U.S. case. But it has passed wide-ranging reforms to clean up its operations, and has targeted restitution money to rebuild.

"CONCACAF views itself as a victim of a number of the offenses described in the indictments and intends to seek restitution at the appropriate time," the regional body said in a statement.

Join the conversation about this story »

When President Obama visits Cuba on March 21, it will have been a little more than 57 years since the end of the Cuban revolution and slightly less than 55 years since the initial implementation of the U.S. embargo.

Amid this historic trip and the flood of regulatory and diplomatic changes (including a new decision to ease some additional travel rules) that have occurred since President Obama’s first meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro last fall, it is important for American business leaders considering investing in Cuba to understand the current status of its economy, as well as the key factors that will influence its future.

For the vast majority of American companies, doing business with Cuba remains illegal. The economic embargo still stands (though companies such as Caterpillar and Colgate-Palmolive have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for an opening of Cuba). That said, the Obama administration has made a few changes. In addition to lifting some travel restrictions, American financial institutions can establish accounts with their Cuban counterparts and telecommunication firms can export to and install equipment on the island.

While these recent policy changes are important, they are unlikely to significantly alter the face of the Cuban economy. Cuba has been mired in stagnation for nearly two decades, with the regime unable to generate higher productivity. This has been driven by three factors:

• Lack of capital investment. Fixed capital investment in Cuba represents just 10% of GDP, which is half the regional average. This likely won’t change until the embargo is lifted, as that would facilitate the arrival of significant new foreign capital. Cuba currently requires billions of dollars in investment in communication infrastructure, an update to its dilapidated transportation network, and significant capital inflows into key productive sectors.
• Stalled state economy. Cuba’s large and inefficient public sector severely constrains the country’s ability to expand output. Lacking a true price mechanism to drive resource allocation, many state-run enterprises are unprofitable and kept afloat with implicit subsidies. While the Cuban government has made an effort to gradually shift workers out of the public sector (it has closed 24 state-owned enterprises for failing to meet output targets), only 25% of the Cuban workforce is currently employed in the private sector.
• Currency confusion. Cuba desperately needs to do away with its dual currency system. It uses two currencies, the convertible Peso (CUP) valued on par with the dollar and fully tradeable, and the Cuban Peso (CUC) valued at a rate of 24:1 with the dollar, which creates severe constraints for the development of Cuba’s export sector. While calculations would suggest the convertible peso is over valued, Cuban firms will need to see considerable devaluation to gain greater competitiveness.

To deflect attention from these challenges, the Cuban government has introduced various distortions into the country’s official economic statistics, which are used largely unaltered by entities such as the World Bank and CEPAL. To guard against possible revenue losses, American business leaders must also be attentive to how currently available data on this economy tends to overstate the sales opportunity.

Let’s look at the two largest of those distortions. The first is in regards to wages in the public sector, which as reported by the Cuban government stand at an average rate of over $7,000 USD per year. In fact, when paying local workers, the government uses the country’s non-convertible currency, or the CUP, in contrast to the convertible currency, the CUC, but reports these wages as if they were paid in CUC.  This effectively means that these wages are overvalued by as much as 2400%.

A further overrepresentation of the actual market size is determined by methodological inconsistencies. Between 2003 and 2007, the Cuban government enacted a series of methodological changes that produced a jump in GDP of approximately 15%. For instance, the government decided to assign an arbitrary value to the free social and medical services provided to its citizens. This is why U.S. healthcare companies, among the first to do business in Cuba, have told us that official statistics regarding the healthcare sector just don’t match the demand they see in reality.

Forecasting Cuba’s Future

My company, Frontier Strategy Group, is now forecasting expansion for Cuba to be 3.1% in 2016. While this figure might look especially attractive when compared to the average Latin America regional growth rate of -0.4%, there are still various challenges making Cuba’s untapped sales potential largely inaccessible.

That said, Cuba’s potential to present new sales opportunity is high, and could be realized very rapidly under the right conditions. The two main signposts that we will be watching for are the eventual lifting of the economic embargo and the unification of the country’s two currencies. While we expect the first to occur by 2018, the Cuban government has already begun to slowly move toward unifying its two currencies. The government itself has suggested that it may make further announcements towards this end later this year.

These two events would serve to drive greater capital inflows to Cuba (we estimate that foreign direct investment could climb from $700 million USD to above $3 billion USD annually), and thus allow the government to continue the process of shifting workers from the public to the private sector, where productivity and innovation is significantly higher.

Under such a scenario, multinationals would see expanded opportunity across diverse sectors. While more American tourists would boost the hospitality businesses, higher productivity would permit higher wages for Cuban and thus increased private consumption. Likewise, new infrastructure projects and new local businesses (helped by increased capital inflows) would generate demand for various products and services. Furthermore, continued liberalization could drive higher productivity in Cuba’s agriculture sector, where participation by the public sector continues to be significant, stimulating higher demand for farm equipment and other agricultural inputs.

These scenarios are not a given. Many risks remain. Likewise, for most foreign companies, doing business in Cuba will require working hand in hand with the Cuban government. Forming a joint venture can involve giving up final control over the import, distribution, and final sale of your product. While the government is making a concerted effort to be a more reliable partner, so far very few infrastructure projects been approved, and payment has often been delayed because of the government’s limited access to foreign currency.

American companies should familiarize themselves with these multiple challenges, while identifying potential business partners, sizing the market potential for the company’s product, and understanding the challenges of operating alongside the Cuban government. The key to winning in Cuba will be to prepare with rigorous scenario planning in order to avoid being left on the sidelines once the market begins to bloom.

I have a love-hate relationship with giving away free consulting and free work. On one hand, doing free work can be a very smart chess move in business. You get to showcase your chops and “wow” a major influencer or business owner. It can potentially land you a much bigger opportunity that is paid work.

On the other hand, many businesses try and use those same reasons to not pay professionals. It doesn’t matter if you are a writer, graphic designer, chef, lawyer, or doctor.

Here are 4 telltale signs you are about to do free work and how to avoid it.

You will hear phrases like…

• “Show us what you can do on this project and we give you first priority in upcoming projects,” or “This is a great way to build your portfolio.”
• “We just want to see what you can do and if it is applicable to our business…”
• “I just need to see if we’re a right fit”
• “Just give me this one thing at a discount, and I will send you all my other projects.”
• “If you do this project at this price point (whatever they decide) I will send you referrals”
• “Yes, I understand your work is versatile but I don’t know if you will be able to represent our brand without seeing you work on a project for us first.”
• “You will gain exposure doing this work”

BS alert! These phrases should set your own BS detector off like wildfire. These phrases are the telltale lines that businesses use to get free work.

Let me be clear, if you need to build your portfolio doing free work is a great strategy. I fully support putting your butt on the line to show your chops.

That being said if you are in need of building that portfolio I recommend finding major influencers in your space and reaching out to them. The free work will (if you are good) create a measurable result in your business.

However, there are tons of people that are not beginning their businesses. They have portfolios, they have clients and they are great at what they do. This is not the time to give out your services for free. In fact, doing this would devalue your work.

When you hear these phrases, run! These opportunities are usually a way to do a ton of work and get very little in return. What you get back is usually a lesson to be more alert next time, and more choosey about your opportunities.

If you happen to forgo my warning and do this type of work, then make sure you have a clearly defined project scope and contract.

I can’t tell you how many times those two items have saved me. If a client is too cheap to pay you, chances are they don’t have the influence or reach to help progress your business.

They promise work in the future in exchange for work now.

This is a carrot being hung at the end of a stick. Like the donkey with the carrot, that paid work is never attainable. If you ever do attain the coveted “paid” work, it will be pennies compared to what you would usually charge.

Strategically you have a weak hand in negotiation. You have already invested time, money, and resources. You have shown your hand. The client can offer you paid work at an undervalued rate.

They know you put the work in and will offer you that lowball rate, you put all that hard work upfront and you want some money in exchange. Therefore, you will take that low price and be forever stuck in the underpaid and overworked category.

Don’t be fooled—the clients are usually more than aware that they’re doing this. Not all business is good business. However, there are loads of lessons to learn from that situation!

They are a “non-profit”

Non-profits can be a bit tricky. Because some non-profits really can’t afford to pay professionals. A good rule of thumb is to ask this question: “Are you getting paid to do your job?”

If they say yes, chances are they have a budget. If they don’t have a budget they aren’t serious. If they say no, then do the work, it’s good karma. Just make sure they are a 501-c3, so you can legally write off your services. Check with your accountant first though.

Doing some free work for a local 501-c3 can lead to more work. They are usually extremely well connected to the community.

We are a “startup” or ”bootstrapping.”

A startup can be a legitimate business just getting off the ground or it can be code for a “business that doesn’t make money.” My first suggestion is figuring out what category they’re in.

If they are legitimate, then make sure you get compensated in some way. This might be in the form of equity, results based compensation, or something else. Either way, get compensated. There are way too many times when startups get free work by hanging a carrot ahead of a “potential employee.”

If you are offered equity, make sure you understand the terms of the equity. This can get tricky.

The key is to know your worth and your value. I have always said your self-worth reflects your net worth and this true more than ever in the startup world. Start-ups are a great place to build your self-worth. A small team of highly skilled people can create massive disruption in the marketplace.

It is an ultra-competitive landscape and founders know the value of paying top talent.

The other end of the spectrum, is that some newer businesses just don’t want to pay talent. They want it for free, and they usually say they’re “bootstrapping”—that’s why they can’t pay you to make the website… even though they’ve been in business on record for at least 7 years… smell fishy? Yep, I’d say so.

I can’t even tell you how many conversations we had like this when we just started our marketing agency. Now, let me be clear, I’m ALL FOR BOOTSTRAPPING. I’m just saying that it’s not an excuse to not pay for talent.

You can’t get something for nothing. It’s just not how the world works—there’s always an equal exchange. The moral? if you find that someone is looking for something for nothing—politely turn down the work and move on to something more profitable.

You CAN HAVE IT ALL.

How to stop doing free work:

9 times out of 10, if you keep getting asked to do free work chances are it’s due to one of the following:

• You are selling to the wrong client
• You are not expressing your value
• Your message isn’t resonating with your audience.

How to sell to the right client.

The right client is the one that just loves what you have to offer and is excited to pay you your worth. To find those clients sometimes, we have to crawl through the muck that is a “bad client.”

But after we have done our fair share of dirt eating, we can hone in on our ideal client. This is also called a buyer persona. A buyer persona helps us, as entrepreneurs target the right client, with the right message. It’s where we showcase our unique value.

How to express your value.

Expressing value first starts with selling to the right person. No sense trying to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos.

Once you’ve locked in exactly who you are serving, the next part is to actually serve them. Creating value is easy. Your one and only goal is to help a small niche create a clearly defined end result they desire.

For instance, digital nomads who wish to build an online brand sign up for a Brand Strategy Training series. Instagramers looking to grow their following, sign up for the free Instagram training.

The point anyway, is that there shouldn’t really be too much “selling” or any convincing whatsoever. If you’re around the right people, and they believe what you believe—then the sale itself is very easy to make. It usually happens organically.

How to create messaging that resonates.

To make your message resonate you need to do three things in perfect harmony.

You have to sell to the right client + you have to know your value + you have to tell a story that moves people.

Telling that story isn’t always simple process—it’s a journey of self-discovery.

Your brand is a representation of your story. Your story or message will resonate with your customers when you have found your truth.

It’s when your voice becomes a beacon of hope for all those you serve. It’s when you stop living in fear, step out of the shadow and take on Goliath… whatever might come.

For some people, it takes years to make their message resonate. For others, they are lucky enough to dive in deep and figure it out quickly, whether it’s with a mentor, training, or self-discovery.

If you’re in the process of making your message sing—of finding that light inside of you, pick up a copy of The Branding Blueprint. It is a self-discovery course designed to help you create a brand that resonates with your clients.

Pick it up, unless you are afraid of digging deep and being a big player. It takes courage to play big, and you’ll need it.

Those are the 4 telltale signs you are about to do free work, and how to avoid doing it.

Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.

Marketing ideology seems to change every ten years or so—unless you’re David Ogilvy, and your philosophy has lasted the better part of a century.

Despite having passed on over a decade and a half ago, Ogilvy’s ideas on marketing are as true now as they were when he founded Ogilvy & Mather back in 1948. The Mad Men-esque figure was once called “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.” Despite that, companies today still scorn his advice (often to their financial dismay).

Here are 10 marketing tips, updated with modern examples, from one of the greatest business minds this world has seen. All were taken from his book Confessions of an Advertising Man.

1. “The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

Sexism aside, Ogilvy was preaching an often overlooked notion in marketing way back in 1963: the customer is smarter than you think and is always getting smarter. (highlight to tweet)

Nowadays, 73% of customers research a product on the internet before buying it. Inferior products won’t cut it with the savvy buyer. You can’t fool your way into a profit (and if you can, you won’t be able to for long).

2. “The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be.”

Blogs are all about free information. So are e-books. That’s why they’re so wildly popular with businesses these days.

If you give out useful, practical, and actionable information for free, customers will trust you and want to work with you. The stats don’t lie—businesses that blog regularly and offer fresh, informative content receive 13x the ROI of businesses that don’t.

3. “The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.”

Headlines sell, plain and simple. While everyone knows this fact when it comes to newspapers and blogs, people often forget how important headlines are when it comes to email marketing. Your subject line is the most important element of your email marketing strategy. The pros spend half of their time just writing the subject line.

4. “I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.”

While many would disagree, countless case studies have proven Ogilvy’s opinion to be true.

Dollar Shave Club is a perfect example of this. They based their entire business model off the idea that you can get a great shave for a few bucks a month. Sure, the commercials were hilarious, but more importantly, they challenged the overpriced, brand name razors that were dominating the market. In a few years, Dollar Shave Club was worth $120 million.

To quote Ogilvy again, “What you say is more important than how you say it.”

5. “If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think.”

High-falutin’ language, jargon, and formalities have worn out their welcome with readers. Instead, everyday language dominates the marketing world. We’ve seen it with the California Milk Processor Board’s “Got Milk?” campaign, we’ve seen it in Nike’s legendary “Just Do It” motto, and most recently, we’ve seen it with the staggering success of Taco Bell’s “Fourth Meal”.

Give people what they know. Don’t talk up or down to them—just talk to them.

6. “Hire people who are better than you are, then leave them to get on with it. Look for people who will aim for the remarkable, who will not settle for the routine.”

Only seek to hire and work with the best. The biggest mistake you can make is to see new talent as a threat, instead of seeing them for what they really are: partners in a grand adventure. Marketing is a collaborative effort. It’s okay if you’re not always the smartest person in the room.

7. “Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place.”

The big boys know this to be true. Coca-Cola could have been just a soda, but it instead achieved one of the most powerful names in business thanks to their branding and advertising strategies. They spend $2.9 billion annually on branding—more than the combined marketing budgets of Apple and Microsoft. Clever branding gave a carbonated beverage manufacturer a higher value than the GDP of many small nations.

8. “Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.”

Research is essential to identifying what the customer wants from you and what they think of your brand. If you’re not taking the time to be analytical with your business, you’re going to fall by the wayside. In Ogilvy’s words, “Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.”

9. “I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.”

Research helps, but you need to be able to take decisive action, innovate, and make radical decisions to determine the fate of your business. Failure to use good judgement when marketing your product will result in repeated losses of money. Look at Gap, which repeatedly failed to evolve its brand to fit the lifestyle and needs of the modern shopper, and relied instead on what had “worked in the past.”

10. “It takes a big idea to attract the attention of consumers and get them to buy your product. Unless your advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night.”

This is especially true when marketing to Millennials. They see too many ads, and as a result, they stopped responding to them. Only once in a long while does one get through. Ogilvy knew this long ago, “Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn’t sell much of anything.”

That’s why good marketing is hard to come by. But if you take a few tips from this marketing sage, you can start out on the right track.

Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.

Morgan Stanley analysts are reversing their bullish case for LinkedIn, calling it a "platform at the crossroads of uncertainty."

"With its current product offering, LNKD isn't as likely to be as big of a platform as we previously thought," wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Bryan Nowak and his team.

LinkedIn has faced a rough few months after its stock took a drubbing and lost more than 40% of its value in one day. While it had been trading around $192, it fell to $108 in the immediate aftermath and closed Tuesday at $115.58.

Now, Morgan Stanley is saying it overestimated LinkedIn's ability to grow its platform and underestimated the investment it would need to grow. 

As a result, it's re-categorizing LinkedIn from a SaaS business to an internet company — and it's resetting its base target for the stock to $125 from $190, barely above where it was now and far below where it had been trading. 

On the revenue side, Nowak is worried that LinkedIn is "bumping into large penetration ceilings with its current product offerings." He points out that LinkedIn's Talent Solutions products, which help recruiters find candidates, may have reached their peak as growth decelerates among enterprise business subscriptions and online, leading Nowak to predict less revenue.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner has highlighted how the company wants to invest more and strategically pivot across all four of its main products.

Calling it a "platform at the crossroads," Nowak writes that the rising investment and slowing enterprise growth "reduce long-term earnings power and increase near-term execution risk."

There's also the problem of retaining talent going forward. Its stock-based compensation is already second highest behind Twitter in the internet category, and it might need to award more to keep employees.

"If anything, we see a risk that there is a further step-up in SBC [stock based compensation] as LNKD may have to issue more equity to its employees to prevent losing talent as we have seen with YELP and (reportedly) TWTR," Nowak warns.

There is also the bull case that the slowing enterprise growth is just cyclical and not a core, structural problem of the business and the revenue increases again. In that case, LinkedIn could find itself compared again to its SaaS peers and lifted out of the internet group, which includes such heavyweights as Google and Facebook. 

SEE ALSO: Here's what LinkedIn's CEO said to motivate employees after his company's stock was slashed by 40%

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 5 insider tips for getting noticed on LinkedIn

Brand-building in the business-to-business (B2B) sphere is a little different from the consumer world. Isn’t it all about rational decision making, not emotions? Not necessarily. Let’s take a look at how B2B firms can build their brands in this competitive space.

Dive into LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a fertile ground for B2B brand-building and lead generation. On an individual level, marketing and PR pros, sales reps, and executives should contribute thought-leadership posts that showcase their industry expertise, and contribute to relevant LinkedIn’s groups.

Companies can start their own groups and forge valuable connections. Please, don’t make it “our company group” though; focus the group on an intriguing topic within your industry, like inbound marketing or enterprise request management.

Take a look at this post for more on harnessing social media to your advantage.

Tell stories

In B2C branding, making emotional connections with customers is one of the central tenets of marketing. For some reason, this power of narrative isn’t always transferred over to the B2B world. Granted, your customers will be more interested in how your product will save them money, or help them do a job quicker, than whether they’ll enjoy it or take pleasure in it. Buyers have to be a bit more rational. But you can still employ storytelling techniques in your communications to forge strong relationships.

Case studies, for example, are a great way to showcase your products and tell a story at the same time. The structure of the case study is in itself a narrative one:

• A problem.
• A solution to the problem.
• Why it was a success.

Understand the B2B process

Remember that the B2B decision-making process is more layered than the consumer one. If someone wants to buy a chocolate bar, that’s usually just one person who wants to buy a chocolate bar. And their main motivation for doing it is a pleasurable one: it tastes good.

Decision-making for B2B products typically involves a team of buyers, from the functional groups affected to finance, IT, procurement, and senior management. The decision-making process tends to be longer too – no firm is going to buy a new fleet of company cars on impulse, for example. They need to weigh up options and work out what’s best for them. Understanding your customers’ decision-making processes more clearly will help you market to them more effectively.

Think about what you’re saying

B2B products can often be more complex than consumer ones. A bar of chocolate is different to, say, a rotor. A cushion isn’t like a mig gun. B2B products are often highly technical and complex – but still need to be explained as simply as possible, using the words your buyers use.

Granted, some level of technical language may be necessary. But all too often in the B2B world, products get shrouded in obscure, internal language and acronyms. Focus on writing in clear, concise language that explains your products in everyday terms. And tells a story too.

We frequently talk about the impact of email marketing on our lives. Email saves us time, helps us grow our businesses, and empowers us to form relationships with people we value. But what about the industries we work in? How is email evolving the way we work?

Digital marketing has the power to disrupt traditional industries. Content creators, entrepreneurs and small businesses can now find and communicate directly with their audiences through engaging new channels.

In this latest episode of the Ask Me About Email Marketing podcast, we take a look into how pro-marketer, successful entrepreneur, and film distributor Jason Brubaker adapts and optimizes his campaigns in an ever-changing industry.

With his website, filmmakingstuff.com, Jason provides a valuable resource for professional and independent filmmakers. He uses email marketing to provide content on topics ranging from screenwriting and producing, to marketing and distribution.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How to determine and test the best incentive to attract quality subscribers
• How to avoid making your “Thank You” page a dead-end page
• How to segment your most qualified subscribers into potential buyers
• How to increase engagement with your first followup and promote whitelisting
• Ways to maintain and clean your list
• What stats Jason analyzes to optimize his email campaigns

Get the pencil and pad out, there’s a lot of interesting tactics to consider testing here.

Listen below:

Here are a few links referenced in the episode:

• Jason Brubaker
• Jason on Twitter
• Filmmakingstuff.com
• Leadpages
• Jason’s latest resource – Info Marketing 101

Have a question about email marketing? Leave us a message at aweber.com/podcast.

There’s a ton of sales automation software out there. It’s supposed to help you crush quota, send better email, and make your job easier. These companies promise that once you implement sales automation, you’ll sell more, better, and faster.

It sounds nice, but there’s something none of these vendors are telling you -- and something you probably don’t want to hear.

Sales automation alone will not and cannot make you a better rep.

That’s because much of the sales software out there is merely designed to help you do more of the same things that aren’t working.

It’s understandable why sales leaders purchase tools that automate the sales process. It’s becoming increasingly hard for reps to connect with buyers, and buyers need salespeople less than they did several decades ago. Sales automation seems to be the silver bullet that’ll speed up the process and make it easier for you to do your job.

But it’s not -- and there’s no such thing as a silver bullet. Tools that let you send massive mail merges, autodial a long list you bought off a website, and scrape websites for contact information don’t make you better at sales.

And if you’re just automating the tactics you’ve always used, you’re just using more of the old-fashioned sales strategies that are probably responsible for your sales troubles in the first place.

If you actually want to get better at sales, you need to make changes to your sales process that place your buyer front and center.

Simply using more of the same outbound tactics you’ve always relied on -- following sales voicemail scripts, cold-calling contacts whose information you bought, and sending unpersonalized emails that don’t add value -- might result in a few more connects at first, but it’s an unsustainable strategy.

You’re better off doing less of the right things. Transform your approach to sales -- spend time doing more research on your prospects, understanding what your buyers want, and providing value to your prospects before you ask for a sale. Your prospects will be more willing to buy.

That’s because buyers need salespeople less than ever before. Unless you’re selling an incredibly complicated or highly-differentiated product, your buyers are unlikely to need you to explain your basic value propositions or product features -- they can find that information on their own.

What buyers actually need are details on how to implement your product in a way that fits their specific situation. And you can’t provide that detail through mass emails or cold dials to passive buyers. Through the law of large numbers, you’re guaranteed to get a few takers, but don’t let that make you think you’re doing something right.

Spend the time and energy you’d put into creating mass email sends into answering prospect questions on forums and social channels, tracking your target accounts’ activity, and publishing your own content.

You should only implement sales automation software that helps you do more of the right things faster. Revamp your sales process so it’s focused on your buyer, then find software that makes it easier for you to research, connect wth, and sell to the right buyers -- not random prospects who have no need of your product.

For example, adopting a CRM that keeps your entire prospect history in one place will help you determine when to reach out and provide a full context of what you’ve already talked about, so you don’t accidentally send them the same email or forget to follow up on promised resources.

Prospects are looking for help, not a pitch. If you focus on the buyer -- understand their needs, the problems that drive them to purchase your product, and who they are -- you won’t need to automate thousands of meaningless touchpoints to get good sales results.

Like you, my email inbox is filled with email marketing newsletters, requests for information, spammy emails that managed to make it through my filter and the urgent things I actually need to respond to. Each day as I watch the number of unread emails grow, it takes more and more convincing for me to open the emails that do not come from people I know.

In my role as the Director of Agency marketing for TopRank Marketing, I receive a steady influx of emails each day from sales reps at various companies trying to meet with me about how their solution will make me more effective at my job. Nine times out of ten, I have had no previous contact with these reps, nor have I signed up to receive emails from them.

As marketers we know that a good email marketing campaign will provide value to our audience and build credibility. So, why should sales emails be any different? If the average buyer gets over 100+ emails per day, opens 23% of them and clicks on just 2%, what can you do to make sure your emails don’t fall into the 77% of emails that end up in the inbox graveyard?

Examples of Bad Sales Emails I Have Actually Received

I’ve selected a few of the more mild yet still ineffective sales emails that I have received recently. The names and companies have been removed to provide anonymity. 

Email #1

Subject: quick question

Dear Ashley,

We have invented a technology that targets the WiFi in a household, on a 1:1 basis with 95% accuracy. This is possible because we have mapped the IP addresses of over 160 million households, most of the major colleges throughout the USA, hotels, airports, and more.

We are the only company in the world that has this technology. Would you have 15 minutes to chat?

Looking forward to hearing back!

Regards,
Name
Company
Phone

—————————–

Email #2

Subject: Quick Question 

Hey Ashley,

Have you considered building your team?

I’d like to share a quick idea with you that has helped our client with customer retention and acquisition.

Ashley, let’s schedule a quick 15 minute call so I can share the ideas with you. When works best for you?

All the best,
Name
Title
Phone Number
Physical Address

Email #2 Part 2

Subject: RE: Quick Question

Hey Ashley – I sent an email to you three days ago. I was wondering if you put any thoughts into growing your team?

Ashley, let’s schedule a quick 15 minute call. What day works for you?

All the best,
Name
Title
Phone Number
Physical Address

——————

Email #3

Subject: a few ways

Ashley – I have a few ways you can improve your growth strategy and operations over the next few months, while gaining better insight into your business.

Interested in a quick 5 minute chat later this week?

P.S.: I promise it’ll be more effective than your current strategy.

Name
Title
Company
Physical Address

———————-

The list could go on and on and on. While these aren’t the worst type of emails you could send or receive, they aren’t impactful and don’t garner a response. What is fundamentally wrong with these emails?

7 Ways Sales Emails Fail

#1 – They Are All Cold Emails
No effort was made to connect with via social networks or other means before sending out a cold email trying to convince the reciptient to give them money.

#2 – There Is No Personalization
These emails could have been sent to anyone. A little research about your prospects can go a long way.

#3 – There Is No Empathy For Pain Points
If someone is on an email list, they should have had access to the company website as well as the title of the person they are reaching out to. With this information, it should be fairly easy and quick to uncover what some of the challenges someone in that role experiences, or what it is that they actually do.

#4 – Some Are Borderline Insulting
Promising to deliver a better strategy than what is currently being executed current insults what it is that a prospect does as a professional. Plus that’s a very bold statement when you have no insight into the performance of the current solution.

#5 – There Is No Way to Find out More About the Company
In order to test the legitimacy of some of these emails, it would have been nice if they would have included a hyperlinked URL to their company website in their signature or somewhere else in the email. None of them did.

#6 – There is No Value Being Offered
Not one of these emails offered up a case study or any validation that they could truly help in some way, or an example of how they had helped other companies in a similar situation.

#7 – Harassing Prospects Doesn’t Work
Telling your prospect that you’ve sent them numerous emails before is not a good way to elicit a response. The prospect doesn’t owe you anything.

7 Ways to Win

#1 – Network & Connect With Prospects FIRST
Before reaching out cold, make an effort to network to prospects by seeing if you know someone in common on LinkedIn or have similar interests. You can also begin following them on social networks like Twitter. This can create an opportunity for recognition when you do reach out via email and provide you with insight into what types of content they share and care about.

#2 – Personalize Your Approach
By putting in a few minutes of research before reaching out, you can quickly identify ways to personalize your email communication. It could be a matter of reading articles they’ve published, finding out where their company is located and making mention of it in your email, the opportunities for slight personalization to have an impact are vast.

#3- Show That You Understand Their Pain Points
You may not have met your prospect personally but with a little legwork you can determine that person xyz that works at this size of company and has this job title will likely experience these pain points. Use a portion of your email communication to show how your company/solution/services can help make life easier for them.

Keep in mind that if you’re emailing the marketing manager, director of marketing or CMO at a company, there will be different pain points or approaches that you need to take in order to sync with their specific needs.

#4 – Compliment & Flatter Your Prospects
We all like someone to take notice of the work that we’ve done. If a person trying to connect with a prospect makes mention of something created by the person they are reaching out to, it is likely that they will be much more open to what is being said.

#5 – Ask for Permission, Don’t Assume
When you use language that indicates you’re confident that the prospect will respond or participate in your ask, it can be a major turn-off. Instead, ask if they are interested in learning more or connecting. It is less invasive and allows the prospect to feel like they are in control instead of being manipulated.

#6 – Offer Proof of Concept
If you’re going to make bold statements in your outreach email, you had better be able to back it up with data. Linking to examples of your work or case studies within the email are an incredibly effective way of showing proof of success and how you have helped other people like them solve similar problems.

#7 – Make it Easy for Prospects to Research You
The simple inclusion of a link to the company website, blog or social links can make it easy for prospects to determine the legitimacy of a company sending them a communication. Since we know today’s buyers are self-directed, it will also give them an opportunity to dive in and learn more about your offering  on their own.

Start Creating More Meaningful Communications Today!

There is a clear opportunity for sales and marketing teams to collaborate and follow email marketing best practices as it relates to sales emails. The convergence of these two teams can help companies create a better and more cohesive experience for all prospects, no matter where interactions are happening. 

Are you guilty of sending sales emails that fail? What do you think you can do to create more effective emails that provide a better experience for your sales prospects?

Header image via Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2016. | 7 Ways Sales Emails Fail & 7 Ways to Win | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post 7 Ways Sales Emails Fail & 7 Ways to Win appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Who are the superstar salespeople you admire?

Is it David Ogilvy, who literally wrote the manual on selling, or Dale Carnegie, who convinced you it was possible to win friends and influence people?

Whoever your sales icons are, they weren’t born overnight. It took years of fine-tuning their skills to become the amazing salespeople they are.

While there’s no shortcut for hard work, we do want to help you streamline the process to achieving sales success. That’s why we gathered the most secret secrets from the best salespeople to share with you as you start on your path to becoming a master salesperson.

But, as any good seller knows, what you should do is as important as what you shouldn’t do, which is why we’ve also compiled some of the most common, yet easiest mistakes to avoid.

If you’re ready to start to become like your sales heroes (or even surpass them), nailing down these skills is the first step. Ready, set, go!

7 Expert Sales Strategies the Best Reps Use

1) Sell benefits, not features.

Research by Impact Communications found 70% of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems, while only 30% make decisions to gain something.

Although your product may have a lot of features that will add to a business, they are more likely to buy something that solves an existing problem. That’s why you want to present them with benefits that reduce the problems the company faces.

2) Set and stick to your ideal buyer personas.

Efforts spread too thin are inefficient and ineffective. Use ideal buyer personas to help you understand the “why” of your ideal customer.

Your buyer personas, which are detailed descriptions of different types of ideal customers for your product, should outline more than basic demographic information, and get to the heart of why a customer needs your product.

By setting clear ideal buyer personas and sticking to them, you’ll stop wasting time with supremely unqualified prospects that suck your energy away from people who could really benefit from your product.

3) Spend time wisely.

Time is money in the sales world, and beyond knowing your ideal buyer personas, you need to have a plan of action each day to maximize your productivity. In fact, the 2014 Sales Execution Trends by Qvidian found that 59% of a salesperson’s time is not spent selling, but is wasted with hunting for sales resources.

Start each day by understanding your goals, and have a clear plan for how you’ll accomplish them. Find a sales or project management platform that can help you keep a strict schedule to maximize productivity.

Another way to increase productivity is to limit multitasking. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it takes you twice as long to get a single task done when your brain is pulled in a million different directions. Give yourself a time limit to finish one task at a time; you’ll be more efficient and have a better understanding of what actions are time sucks and when you can get the most accomplished.

4) Personalize your message.

The best salespeople know that developing a personal connection with your clients is the key to success. Start relationships off on the right foot by sending personalized messages to prospects and avoiding “one size fits all” scripts.

Identify the prospect’s unique pain points and tailor your message to address how you can solve those needs. When a prospect feels like you care, you’ve already made the greatest first impression possible, without even stepping inside the room.

5) Make your process measurable.

In order to learn and grow, your process should be measurable, which means you should have a process for collecting quantitative (useable numerical data) and qualitative (details that help you gain an understanding of underlying motivations) information about your process.

To gather both types of information, practice being obsessive about your process. Keep track of each move you make from initial contact to closing the deal and use that information to pinpoint weak spots. You should also keep track of how many cold calls, follow ups, and meetings you do each day. The goal is to document everything so you can optimize your process.

When you do find weaknesses, make improvement actionable, instead of just telling yourself to “do better.” This will give you specific direction on how to improve, and also help you monitor your success.

6) Take notes.

As smart as you are, you don’t have perfect memory (and if you do, we want to hire you). It’s important that you record the promises you make to clients so you can deliver. You also want to take down feedback and important information about their business; clients should never have to repeat themselves, so pay attention.

Additionally, taking notes does more than give you a hard copy of the conversation—it shows clients you care. Take notes using a pen and paper. This gives clients the impression that you’re more attentive and involved in them than if you simply used a laptop or your phone.

7) Tap into the buyer’s emotions.

Use emotion-centric language to address a buyer’s concerns, since our brains rank feelings above logic when making a decision.

Answer objections with the words “feel,” “felt,” and “found,” and work phrases like “I know how you feel…” and “When this customer used the product they felt…” into your presentation.

9 Rookie Sales Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make

Feel like you’ve got a lot to practice tomorrow? Well we aren’t done yet! Instantly jump from sounding like a beginner to a seasoned pro by avoiding these mistakes most new salespeople make.

1) Don’t forget to define a goal for meetings.

Every interaction with a prospect or client should have an end goal. Make sure you outline the purpose of every meeting and have a metric to measure your success at the end.

2) Don’t be your only advocate.

There’s a limit to how many bold claims you can make about you and your company to a client. Collect endorsements from objective advocates to back you up.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to ask for referrals from other clients. According to the Dale Carnegie Group, 91% of customers say they’d give referrals, but only 11% of salespeople ask.

3) Don’t make too many follow-up calls to unqualified buyers.

If a buyer is unqualified or clearly not engaging with you, drop it. Don’t waste time on impossible sells.

Master salespeople take the guesswork out of this step. Use Fileboard to help you track when emails are opened, which attachments are viewed, and how long the prospect spent going through your files. You can use this information to follow up with the prospect with a targeted pitch, now that you know what about your product is interesting to them.

4) Don’t forget to listen.

If you listen to the prospect’s needs instead of overselling them you can directly answer how your product can soothe their pain points. Master salespeople believe you need to see, hear, and process that information before speaking.

5) Don’t leave a meeting open-ended.

Remember to set clear next steps that outline expectations and prompt action from both parties. If you leave a meeting unsure of what the next step should be, send a simple and straight-forward follow up email asking for clarification.

6) Don’t distract clients with irritating crutch words.

Practice pitches beforehand so you can cut out “umms,” “hmms,” “ers,” and “ahs.” These distracting non-words weaken your argument and lose the client’s attention.

7) Don’t bail on commitments.

Don’t develop a reputation as a salesperson who lacks follow-through. Build trust by keeping your word, or stop making promises you can’t keep.

8) Don’t ignore the budget question.

You can easily waste time pitching a service that’s way beyond your prospect’s budget. Ask questions about their budget upfront so you can determine how high they prioritize your service and you can better tailor your offer to fit their needs.

9) Don’t use statements instead of questions.

You want your close to be firm, but not ambiguous. After a prospect agrees to work with you, clarify the sale with a pointed question. Don’t assume you know the final deal without confirmation from the decision maker.

In truth, the secret to becoming the ultimate seller is practice, practice, practice. Understand your own process as much as possible and educate yourself constantly.

Editor's note: This post was originally published on the Fileboard blog and is republished here with permission.

If you have a generic “we serve everyone” sort of website, there’s great value in adding some landing pages, especially if you are trying to speak with very specific audiences who have unique needs and interests.

Landing pages are ideal if you:

• Want to target specific audiences with different messaging
• Offer different products, information or pricing to different customer types
• You want to test different offers
• Your sales cycle or actual product/solution is very complex
• You have a long sales cycle

If you’re going to use landing pages, there are some best practice rules of thumb you’ll want to follow.

Keep it simple: A landing page isn’t meant to be a reading project. It’s about getting the person who is clicking on the link or entering the URL to take one small action step.

Be very clear about the benefits of what you’re offering and make the call to action obvious and easy to follow. This isn’t the time for a subtle text link. Use a button or some other design element to draw their eye right where it needs to be.

Speed matters: Part of keeping it simple is making sure it’s both easy and fast. In this case, speed is about both load times and ease of use. Believe it or not, our attention span when it comes to our willingness to wait for a page to load is half of what it was a few years ago. So don’t load that page up with big graphics or other complexities.

Consistency is key: If you refer to the offer as a white paper in your print ad or direct mail piece, don’t have the landing page call it a case study. Use the exact same language on the landing page as you did on whatever marketing tool you used to drive your audience there.

Whatever you promised them to get them to visit the landing page – give it to them, clearly and quickly.

Consistency isn’t just about the language you use. The look and feel of the landing page should match the other marketing materials. You want it to be clear that this landing page is a continuation of the existing conversation, not something new or different.

Look legit: You want your web visitors to know that they can trust you so you want your entire web presence, including your landing pages to be very credible. Be transparent and obvious when it comes to who owns the page. Use your logo to identify who is making the offer. Include an About Us page if you think someone might not recognize your company name or logo.

Your landing pages should also look professional.   If you’re a member of an organization like the Better Business Bureau, a local Chamber or trade association – use their logos to lend even more credibility.

Other voices: A smart way to reassure your web visitors of not only your legitimacy but also your value is to let others do the talking. Testimonials from other customers, endorsements from publications or organizations, reviews and even social proof like Facebook likes can all go a long way to help a visitor begin to trust you.

You can also highlight number of downloads, sign-ups, subscribers or other key indicators to show that they’re not the first person to stumble upon your page.

Landing pages offer you the ability to customize your message and shorten your sales cycle by being able to focus on exactly what a specific group of potential buyers is interested in. They’re inexpensive to create and give you a chance to test out different headlines, copy points and offers.

Why not try this technique and make it easier for your potential customers to buy?

The post Creating the perfect landing appeared first on Drew's Marketing Minute.

jennifer maravillas FOR HBR

Alfred P. Sloan, GM’s CEO from the 1920s to the 1940s, and the architect of the U.S. auto distribution system, summed up the car buyer’s challenge well: “The automobile…is a highly complex mechanical product. It represents a large investment for the average purchaser. He expects to operate it, perhaps daily, yet the chances are he possesses little or no mechanical knowledge. He depends on his dealer.”

Sloan’s statement remains relevant today, even in the era of internet shopping. Although consumers do a lot of online research — the average U.S. car shopper now spends 11 hours online and only 3.5 hours offline, including trips to dealers — the vast majority still end up purchasing their cars in person. According to a 2015 DrivingSales study of more than 1,300 active car shoppers (where most of the statistics from this article derive from), the changing behavior of buyers has placed even more emphasis on selling at the dealer. And yet because buyers can access prices, reviews, and other information via online searches, their attitudes toward negotiations, pricing, online engagement, and sales reps are changing.

Sales tasks are continually evolving in all industries, and companies must keep their sales forces up to speed to meet the demands of their customers. Auto dealers again provide an illustrative example. The required changes may surprise you and raise questions about effective selling in your market.

Not everyone likes negotiating price, but a lot of people do. The common sentiment about price negotiations is, “I just wish they would set one price and stay there.” But the reality is this: Only 13% of car shoppers say, “I don’t like to negotiate and I would like to buy a vehicle that is market priced and everyone pays the same,” while 45% said, “I like to negotiate until I get the vehicle to a price I feel is fair to pay,” and almost one in five people said, “I like to negotiate and will grind hard until I’m confident I’m getting the lowest price possible.” As in most industries, buyers’ preferences vary. Neither a “one price” model nor a negotiation model appeals to all shoppers. And it’s the seller’s responsibility to adapt to the buyer’s preference, not the other way around.

Shoppers should be able to get the asking price without having to talk to anyone. Compared to their tolerance for negotiations, buyers are inflexible about knowing the asking price up front. More than 50% of car shoppers will leave the dealership if a test drive is required to get the asking price of the vehicle. Nearly 40% will not patronize a dealer whose website doesn’t list vehicle prices; a slighter higher percentage will leave a dealer if prices aren’t posted on the vehicles.

In the auto industry and others, third-party sources have changed customers’ shopping behavior and expectations about list price. Among other things, many consumers want to browse without engaging with the sales staff. In the car study, nearly 75% of buyers had not contacted the dealership before visiting, and 25% left without talking to anyone. This points to a disconnect between sellers and buyers: Even when done with good intentions (“I’m here to help you”), some traditional sales practices now unwittingly increase dissatisfaction.

Most of your online advertising and social media spending is probably being wasted. For car shoppers, online tools are a complement to, not a substitute for, in-person dealer visits. They use independent websites for model comparisons and reviews, and OEM sites for detailed model information and videos. When they do visit dealer sites, they’re typically looking for specific vehicle photos and information about local inventory.

According to the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA), dealers now spend about $600/unit sold on advertising, and the internet takes up the single biggest chunk of that spending. But few shoppers buy or even contact dealers online: Only 5% engage in online chats, and fewer than 10% will fill out an online contact form or communicate via email. Yet nearly 90% rank the dealer visit as the most important source of information during the buying process.

Any strategy is about priorities and trade-offs. Car sellers should certainly be investing more in improving their point-of-sale processes and less in their social media budgets.

At the same time, sellers must manage their existing digital media budgets a lot better. According to Sprout Social Index, dealers respond to only 16% of the online messages they receive. And this is actually better than a 15-industry average of 12.3%! “Having a presence” on social media or a web site is not a sales strategy. Sellers must figure out when online does and does not make a difference in their customers’ buying processes.

To close sales with more-informed customers, you need to retain more-knowledgable sales staff. Pricing information, including dealership wholesale costs, is now widely available on independent websites, along with information about vehicle options, trade-in policies, and performance. But this flood of often conflicting information has created a new challenge in the minds of consumers: Which sources should they trust? As a result, consumers prefer dealing with one responsive, knowledgeable, and trusted representative to help them evaluate what they found in their own research, manage the test-drive experience, and efficiently complete the sale.

Many dealers fall short. The traditional sales process, with hand-offs (“Let me check with my manager and get back to you”), delays, and high variance among sales reps’ product knowledge, is a big source of residual dissatisfaction. Turnover compounds the issue. According to NADA’s 2015 Workplace Study, the average annual turnover among dealer sales reps is 72%, with 50% of new hires leaving after three months. Female sales turnover is 90% annually.

To improve retention rates, dealers must create welcoming sales cultures, institute flexible hours, and invest in the development of their sales reps. It’s good for business. Dealers with the highest rates of retention report gross margins 3%–4% higher than the lowest performers — an enormous difference in an industry with an average net profit margin of 2%.

A knowledgeable sales staff is especially important as technology continues to advance. High-end cars have over 100 million lines of software code, and mass-market cars aren’t far behind. HIS automotive group estimates there are now about 27 million web-enabled vehicles on the road, a number that could rise to over 82 million by 2022. And since cars and smartphones are seamlessly connected, there are a lot of software-as-subscription possibilities that will increase exponentially in the coming years.

Yet how many auto dealers have equipped their salespeople with the knowledge and skills to sell subscription services for the “app store” that the car is fast becoming?

The good news is over 60% of buyers leave a dealership satisfied and view dealers as trustworthy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the research indicates that this is more true with younger auto shoppers than with older ones. But dealers still have work to do.

The message to the auto industry: You can worry all you want about disruption, but you need to nurture and adapt a sales effort aligned with buying behavior to do something about it.

The message to other industries: Profitable growth is determined by how the buyer buys today and tomorrow, not yesterday, so don’t chase abstract generalizations about the internet while ignoring the point of sale.

This won’t be an easy process, of course. As Alfred Sloan said, “Changing the viewpoint of [an] organization with respect to any particular way of doing any particular thing” is the “hardest problem” in management. “We all know how great is the inertia of the human mind.”

On the surface, the hype that tends to surround virtual reality (VR) seems centered around video games. In 2012, a Kickstarter fund for the Oculus Rift met its $250,000 goal in less than 24 hours – largely due to video gamers excited for the advanced headset to reach store shelves as soon as possible.

However, this blanket observation tends to skate over some of the other industries beginning to take advantage of the software. One of the industries utilizing the revolutionary power of virtual reality technology is marketing.

The incorporation of VR into the marketing strategies of some companies is changing the game. Here’s how.

Market Research

Virtual reality as a tool in market research has thus far been a huge success both for customers and companies. Customers are given a VR device and walk through a virtual store choosing products like a normal shopping trip. While this is happening, analysts are able to study everything the customer is doing and looking at, which can help identify ideal product placement more quickly and with greater precision.

Not only can virtual reality give more accurate assessments of customer shopping habits, but it can save companies a great deal of money. In 2013, US for-profit research companies spent $10.7 billion on marketing research services, or between eight and ten percent of most budgets. Although the initial start up expenses are high, virtual reality has the potential to greatly reduce these marketing costs while still increasing sales.

One example of this in action is in UK supermarket Tesco. The company recently utilized Oculus Rift technology to create a virtual store. Initially, the store has been used for research and development projects to find faster means of reshelving products, re-designing store layouts, and improving advertising. Tesco has hinted that they may be designing stores that enable customers to shop using VR without ever leaving their homes.

Key VR Uses:

• After initial setup, saves companies millions on market research expenses
• Improves accuracy of customer behavior analysis

Customer Experience

A number of companies are also incorporating virtual reality into their sales platforms on the customer end of things. This is largely because of VR’s ability to increase user experience and offer potential customers the ability to ‘try’ products before purchasing them. Often times, the experience alone entices customers into purchasing the product.

For example, the outdoor equipment company Merrell created a VR experience called Trailscape to promote the launch of a new hiking boot. The simulation takes users on a dangerous mountain hike with steep cliffs, rope walkways, and difficult terrain in order to give them a full hiking experience to try the boots in. Trailscape was showcased at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was the first walkaround commercial virtual reality simulation. However, it is just one of a variety of ways VR is improving customer experience.

Another company that is utilizing virtual reality to improve customer satisfaction is Marriott hotels. The hotel chain created a virtual experience called the Teleporter that enables users to visit one of their luxury hotels across the globe. Not only do users visit the hotels, but they are able to see a number of the local attractions nearby. VR can help potential hotel guests ‘experience’ what they want to do on their next vacation before purchasing flights.

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Key VR Uses:

• Offer unique customer experiences that edge out competition
• Improve customer satisfaction with a ‘try before you buy’ opportunity

Extending the Market

Finally, VR is doing a lot to expand the marketing area of businesses that have previously been limited to a more local influence. For instance, in the realm of real estate, virtual reality is allowing agents to showcase more homes in a given day. Rather than driving across town to see homes, agents have potential buyers use VR devices to view the properties that interest them.

The technology can also make showing homes easier as the agent can see exactly where the attention of the buyers is focused and cater to that focus. Furthermore, agents can show homes outside of their typical jurisdiction. For example, buyers may be interested in luxury homes in Europe, but can meet with agents in New York and use virtual reality to view homes across the globe.

Additionally, VR offers a way to interest new customers that would previously never consider your product. For instance Alberto Perlman, CEO of Zumba, released a three and a half minute 360 degree virtual reality zumba video that allows users to experience what a class would be like. Because the video is free to anyone with a VR headset that is interested, it can be a great way in which to try out the class without fully committing to going. It’s been a great way to attract customers that normally wouldn’t see themselves attending a class.

Key VR Uses:

• Expand market area outside of local influence
• Build interest in products for customers outside of ‘the typical sales loop’

***

Although the rollout has been slow, virtual reality is beginning to make its way into the hands of marketing professionals. As they have begun incorporating the technology into their workflows they have often been met with both more in-depth understanding of the marketing research arena and more excited customers. We can only look forward to where the next VR advancements will take us!

GUEST:

For seasoned venture capitalists, the last few years have been hard to watch. Much as we love boom markets and the positive impact they have on our portfolios, we’ve had to bear witness to the erosion of some core principles that are at the essence of the value creation process.

Sadly, during periods of excessive exuberance, what develops is a blatant disregard for building businesses with capital efficiency. Instead, we see an emphasis on sales growth at all costs. Furthermore, as the supply of capital, size of financings, and valuations rev higher and higher, unnatural financing structures emerge that disrupt the alignment of interests among all stakeholders. While many rejoice at the valuation markups, this becomes a perfect storm that actually inhibits exit events, since so many companies are valued beyond the reach of buyers and are built without the discipline that would make them suitable for initial public offerings.

So how does this happen? When the financial markets experience a multi-year upswing and tech IPOs begin to abound, the VC space gets incredibly hot, attracting everyone from newly minted tech investors to “tourist” VCs from Wall Street. As a result, the investing environment becomes inflated and drives valuations so high, with so much cheap capital, that even the most seasoned entrepreneurs tend to spend money as if it were in endless supply.

Conversely, when the markets begin their decline and the daily news is quite sobering, the conversation turns to cutting burn rates and plans for survival, because financial markets don’t just correct in this atmosphere, they overcorrect. This is when risk capital investors become more fearful, poorly constructed companies are likely to fail, and untested VCs realize that venture capital is not as easy as it looks.

During these leaner times, more experienced venture investors typically have mixed emotions. On the one hand, the adjustment to a new reality is invariably painful, but on the other hand, there is a welcomed return to rational thinking and core principles. As new deals emerge, there is now time for venture capitalists to be thoughtful, to do real due diligence, and to form true relationships with entrepreneurs. It is no longer a race to the highest valuation possible. Rather, it is a time for investors and founders to create a culture of building value one step at a time — without loading the balance sheet with too much capital — allowing all shareholders a better chance to win. And it’s during these times that many of the greatest technology companies, with the most enduring value, are created. I first saw this back in the early ’80s when I was involved with the seed investment in Sun Microsystems, and I have witnessed this return to core principles in every market downturn since then.

To illustrate this cycle, last year, due to the frothiness of the environment, our firm, Icon Ventures, looked at 155 deals and only pulled the trigger on three, with lofty valuations being the primary concern. In contrast, toward the end of 2008, just after Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and while the financial markets were melting down, we made five investments in early-stage companies in the fourth quarter alone.  All five businesses turned out to be successful companies with strong exits. One of those was Palo Alto Networks, a remarkable security company initially backed by Greylock and Sequoia Capital. Palo Alto Networks raised a total of only $65 million in four financings before going public in 2012 at a valuation of $1.5 billion. Their CEO, Mark McLaughlin, a very capable operating executive, looked at an IPO, not as an exit, but as a financing event that was just another step in the journey of building a market-leading business. Today the company is worth more than $13 billion.

History has shown that great companies, such as Palo Alto Networks, are often financed during times when risk capital is scarce, forcing a discipline that values spending with genuine care. These companies learn to move quickly but with measured speed. They balance the vision of extraordinary entrepreneurs with input from seasoned venture capital investors. They value all their shareholders. They take the time to hire well. They take the time to build great products that address real market needs, and they put in place the building blocks needed to achieve market prominence. No one enjoys times of adversity, but with capital efficiency, they present an opportunity to return to the roots of the value creation process at its best.

Joe Horowitz is the managing general partner of Icon Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. He is veteran of the venture capital industry and in 2003 was instrumental in launching Icon with its current team. Joe’s prior venture capital experience includes a 10-year tenure at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) from 1982 to 1992 where the first deal that he worked on was the seed financing of Sun Microsystems. Icon Ventures investments include such iconic, market-leading companies such as Aster Data, FireEye, 41st Parameter, Infinera, MoPub, Palo Alto Networks, Proofpoint and TelaDoc.

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Sales leaders are more in the spotlight than ever. As belts tighten across companies, every department is expected to find efficiencies, and sales is no exception. Investors and board members will be expecting their Sales VPs to bring in more revenue with less in the coming months, combining growth with improving unit economics.

As entrepreneur and partner at Kapor Capital Mitch Kapor puts it, it’s time for the Watney Rule, after Mark Watney from The Martian, to go into effect: “Survival depends on achieving self-sufficiency.” In other words, survive with what you have.

Survival depends on achieving self-sufficiency. – Mitch Kapor, Kapor Capital.

Increased cash flows and an emphasis on strong unit economics are coming to the fore where growth has ruled for the last few years.

For sales leaders this means optimization—making their team more efficient, getting more revenue out of each process, each rep, and each deal. To do this, their focus has to go beyond the headline numbers like total revenue and total bookings, and drill down into their team’s specific KPIs. This way they can:

1. Set the right goals for their team to increase efficiency.
2. Report to their investors and board about what exactly is happening at the granular level.

By setting goals linked to key sales metrics, sales leaders give their teams specific targets to hit and actionable advice on where to optimize. By giving investors and board members more than just headline numbers, they can show them exactly where the profitability is going to come from in the company, and how sales is turning their investments into 3x,4x, or 5x returns.

Here is how you can use specific sales KPIs to analyze how different areas of sales—the process, the people, the deals—are progressing and where you can optimize each to make them more efficient.

3 Ways To Get More With Less In Your Sales Process

1. Optimize Sales Cycle Length

By finding ways to reduce your sales cycle length you have the chance to make more revenue in less time, which is the epitome of efficiency.

However, you can’t optimize your cycle until you have a deep understanding of its constituent parts. Therefore, the starting point for any analysis of your sales cycle has to be breaking it down by stage and identifying bottlenecks. From this type of study, you can easily see where you’re being held up.

For instance, it could be that you’re spending most of your time in the evaluation stage with prospects, where they are considering their options and you’re trying to show them that your product is the fit.

If so, then identifying ways you can move them through this stage quicker can drastically shorten your sales cycle. This might be something as simple as organizing demos quicker or improving your talk track around competitors.

If it’s more difficult to identify where these bottlenecks are occurring, you can also split your sales cycle down further by rep and look for where individuals are spending most of their time. Different reps are likely to have unique issues at each stage, and knowing what they are means you can coach each one on their problem areas. One might have trouble moving qualified leads to evaluation, whereas another might struggle when dealing with buyers in the procurement phase.

Each rep is different, and the more you drill down into what’s holding them up, the easier it is to find the marginal gains that really help increase efficiency within an organization.

Setting a goal of shortening the sales cycle just a few days can have big effects. If we look at the longest sales cycles in the chart below, we see what a difference a few days can make. In July 2015 the sales cycle was 52 days long, whereas in May 2015 it was just 22 days long. Therefore, you were moving ~2.5 more prospects through the cycle in May as 2 months later. But the difference isn’t always so stark. Even cutting a week off the longest cycle in July would be a 14% efficiency gain.

Sales Cycle

Over the course of a year this would mean you could fit one extra cycle in per sales rep. For 10 reps and an average deal size of $100,000, this would be an extra $1 million just for cutting a few days from your sales cycle

2. Optimize Sales Rep Win Rates

As the atomic unit of your department, finding ways to increase efficiency per sales rep is paramount to increasing efficiency across the board. The first avenue you should look at for this is rep’s individual win rates. This is how many deals they closed-won over how many they closed in total (closed-won plus closed-lost).

Win Rate by Rep

This chart allows you to easily see how efficient your sales reps are at closing their deals, and increasing this rate will ultimately get you more revenue per employee. It has 2 additional efficiency benefits:

• Lower customer acquisition costs (CAC): By closing more deals for the same CAC spend, you’re effectively reducing this investment and getting more for your money.
• Reduced overhead: Depending on your compensation package and how you handle accelerators, increasing the win rate of individual sales rep might significantly reduce the cost of each extra sale by that rep.

When you tell them to increase their win rate, most sales reps will look to try and increase the number of deals they are closing at the bottom of the funnel. Though this is ultimately where they will increase their win rate, they actually should focus on finding whatever the leakiest part of their funnel is in order to optimize their win rates.

Conversion Rates by Stage

In this example, the overall win rate is 22%, but the reps are already remarkably efficient in the later stages of the funnel. They convert 79% of all prospects from “Buying Procurement” to “Fulfill”, and 88% from “Fulfill” to “Deal.” Because this part of the funnel is already optimized, and because the numbers included are low, a 10 percentage point increase in this last conversion only leads to a 2.5% increase in overall win rate.

It is in those earlier stages that they are floundering. If we set a goal to increase the conversion from “Qualified” to “Evaluating” by the same 10 percentage points, we see a 4% increase in win rate. Additionally, increasing conversions earlier in the funnel is likely more economical than moving them that final step.

3. Optimize Bookings Per Sales Rep

Increasing deal efficiency means bringing in more revenue for every deal a sales rep closes. Optimizing this number means increasing the individual productivity of your reps.

In this case, optimizing for this could mean reducing your efficiency elsewhere. For instance, larger deals could take longer to close, which would increase your sales cycle, and be more difficult to close, which would decrease your win rate. But closing fewer, larger deals can overcome these issues and increase both bookings per rep and overall efficiency.

Win Rate by Rep

Here, Joe Smith is far more efficient than Andrea Matlin. Though Joe’s total value of closed deals is lower than Andrea’s, he has achieved this in far fewer deals. Joe’s bookings per deal is ~25k, whereas Andrea’s bookings per deal is ~5k, a 5x efficiency increase for Joe.

Choosing to go upmarket and attract larger deals requires a more overall change in strategy and goals in the entire company. Individual sales reps need to be looking for better qualified leads further down in the funnel and investing time in identifying the prospects who could turn into larger deals.

For a sales leader, this means being willing to give your reps the time to cultivate these deals, and setting their goals accordingly, looking for the maximum revenue over time for your reps.

Even if not driven by your board, these are the type of efficiency goals any good sales leader should be setting. They get more from your process and individuals for exactly the same investment, leading to a more productive team that is going to go on and make more and more money.

Efficiency is what SaaS is going to be about in 2016 and beyond, and sales should lead the way. By diving into your analytics, you can find these and more optimizations in your sales process and sales team, making you more revenue for less investment of both money and time.

Content marketing creation is fun, but no one should do it just to have a good time. Make no mistake: Content marketing is intended to drive hard business goals.

Yet it can be easy to lose sight of this fact on a daily basis. After all, the best part of the job is envisioning the most creative ways to create content.

This is why your content marketing strategy should have a clear focus on lead generation from the very beginning.

Why It Matters

How on Earth could any content marketer forget the almighty sale? Well, it’s surprisingly simple when you consider the various stages of the content marketing buyer journey.

For those who aren’t familiar, the sales funnel begins with the awareness stage, converts visitors into leads in the nurture stage and closes the sale during the commitment stage. (You can see the full infographic here.)

At the top of the funnel, content marketing focuses on gaining new visitors. We’d argue that this is where most “casual” content marketing lay. Blogs, videos and infographics are often meant to generate new traffic.

But this can be a siloed way of thinking. After all, it’s the middle and bottom stages of the funnel which generate cold hard cash for your business.

This is why content marketing should focus on converting audiences from the awareness stage to the nurture stage. In other words, you need to turn first-time readers into warm leads.

Let’s talk about how content marketing can do just that.

Webinars

Lead generation efforts should be conducted on a smaller scale than most content marketing campaigns. This is because successful leads are personal relationships which aim to develop trust. Only then can you try to convert your leads into actual sales (we’ll cover that in our next post in the series).

Webinars strike a perfect balance between personal touch and scale. You can host webinars ranging anywhere from 10 to hundreds of participants, all while having personal conversations.

We recommend keeping your own webinars on the double-digit side, however. This will allow for more manageable interactions, which can be key to warm leads.

For example, the Q&A portion of your webinar can surface your most interested participants. Offering them a personal, thorough answer to their pressing question may mean the difference between “casual webinar viewer” and “interested lead.”

Your topic should also target the leads you want to gather. Brainstorm ideas within your area of expertise that will most interest those who may purchase from your business.

For example, if your brand offers e-learning tools, host a webinar on how e-learning can improve new policy adoption among employees. This will attract corporate executives who may also be the ones pulling the trigger on budget.

Gated Content

This may seem like an obvious choice, since gated content is a lead gen tool at its core. Yet far too often, content marketers publish white papers and eBooks with nothing more than an eye on collecting email addresses.

This is why gated content should be planned with lead collection in mind. First, just like with webinars, you must choose a topic that targets the right leads. Focus on higher-up individuals who will gain the most benefit from your product or service.

Next, target the right individuals in your distribution plans. You may find it useful to have a lead persona in this case. Once you have the perfect target in mind, utilize the endless supply of targeting tools available through paid social campaigns. You might be shocked at how closely you can target users.

Just remember: As tempting as it may be to cast a wide net and grab as many leads as possible, they won’t be nearly as warm as targeted ones. You need to keep an eye on ROI in this case. Your Cost Per Lead will be much more successful if you eliminate those who aren’t really worth your time.

Promotions

Everyone loves a good deal. In fact, studies have repeatedly proven something called the “Rule of Reciprocity.” This persuasive principle has shown that people appreciate a special offer. In fact, they may have trouble saying “no” to it.

For example, have you ever gone to a party just because the host attended one of yours? No matter how tired you may feel that night, guilt will drive you across town to make an appearance. Dean Rieck uses a similar example to demonstrate the power of reciprocity.

This principle is perfect for generating leads using promotions or coupons. When you make an offer, those who bite have just identified themselves as your warmest leads.

In order to run a successful promotion or coupon campaign, make sure you’re offering something that will pique your lead persona’s interest. For example, you could send a “20% off” coupon or offer a free consultation.

Just be careful that you don’t enter into a downward price spiral. It’s entirely possible to tarnish your brand image if you lower your prices too far or offer promotions that run on forever. Think about that one furniture store which has been offering a “going out of business sale” for the last five years. Doesn’t seem very special, does it?

Quizzes

Quizzes are like webinars in that they offer a personal touch at a large scale. They create a feeling of self-appreciation for the reader, especially if the results inform them about who they are in a positive way. They also will trust your brand more, since it feels like you personally took the time to get to know them.

Once you give your quiz taker the warm and fuzzies, it’s the perfect time to request an email address and convert them into a lead. Offer a Call to Action that keeps the good vibes going, such as a promise to continue sending great content or a promotion.

Newsletters

Far too often, newsletters are meant to gain new subscribers. Even more frequently, newsletters become a thoughtless funnel for your recent publications without a thought about how the content can convert readers into leads.

But lead generation must be a forethought in your newsletters. This means a few things: First, create original content specifically for your newsletter. Make sure it’s prominently described as such. This will create a “members only” vibe that may prove beneficial to your lead gen strategy. Whoever clicks on your link should be marked as a warm lead and sent down the funnel ASAP.

Also, create Calls to Action outside of “Read more” or social media links. Encourage newsletter readers to chat with a member of your team or read your FAQs. You can also pair with above-mentioned strategies, such as coupon offers and webinar invites.

Finally, closely examine what content gets clicked on more regularly. More than that, keep an eye on who’s clicking on what content. This will help you target warm leads, as well as gauge their interest in specific topics. This can prove to be incredibly beneficial to your sales team when making calls.

A final note: We recommend a solid marketing automation tool for converting newsletter readers into leads. Once your subscriber base hits a certain number, it’s well nigh impossible to surface the right leads at the right time.

Obviously, lead gen requires a certain amount of individualized attention, which can be daunting. This is one of the main reasons top-of-the-funnel content gets pushed to the top of the priority list.

Yet lead gen is one of the best ways to generate ROI (not to mention, the easiest way to become your sales team’s favorite human being). After all, a dollar spent on many is not nearly as valuable as a dollar spent on a single one that converts.

Uncover facts, reach an audience and and tell an engaging story – sound familiar? We’re not talking about content marketing. These are classic journalism principles, and they are at the core of content marketing. In fact, we’d argue that journalism is the founding father of content marketing as we know it.

Modern times haven’t been kind to traditional journalists. Over the last 15 years, the news workforce has declined by a whopping 30 percent. Though news outlets finally seem to have caught their stride with digital journalism, there simply isn’t a place for most beat reporters anymore.

Does this mean journalism is dead? Certainly not. With more forms of media than ever before, new content opportunities abound for journalists. After all, the news workforce has declined by 30 percent, but 72 percent of marketers now have a content marketing strategy.

In many ways, content marketing is the perfect match for modern journalists. This includes the tenets of Journalism 101 known as the 5 W’s: Who, What, When, Where and Why.

The 5 W’s are a tried-and-true framework for a reason. They make sure you get to the heart of the story quickly, and in a way that grabs the reader. Content marketers need the same philosophy to create content that connects and engages with audiences.

Let’s take a look at how the 5 W’s can help your own content marketing strategy.

Who

No surprises here: Your audience is the most critical consideration in your content marketing strategy. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, you’ll certainly never reach them. In other words, if your audience is made up of millennial moms, you certainly shouldn’t build a content strategy around men’s grooming techniques.

But determining your audience is easier said than done. This is why we’ve covered the topic time and again. Regardless of your brand, the basic principles of audience segmentation remain the same:

• Know who they are. Marketers typically feel like they know their target audience. Yet your target audience could shift over time, or a new group could become interested in your brand. Keep a close eye on referral source and social feedback to ensure your finger is always on the pulse of your target audience(s).

• Care about them. This can seem difficult for marketers with huge audiences. We’re not saying you need to create a personal relationship with hundreds of brand loyalists, but don’t get stuck in your ivory tower, either. The best way to do this is regular marketing research. Surveys and virtual focus groups are two affordable ways to do this.

• Create a persona or two. This strategy won’t work for every brand, but we love personas as a way to bring your target consumer to life. Essentially, a persona is a vivid illustration of your target reader’s habits, preferences and even personal values. Read more about building personas here.

What

Simply put, this W asks, “What the heck are you talking about?” In journalism, it requires that you explicitly tell readers what your “Who” is doing. After all, no one will be drawn to a headline that simply reads “President Obama.”

For content marketers, the “What” means creating well-honed content topics that focus on your brand message. In other words, create content that your reader wants and needs.

Surprisingly, this can be difficult to do. It requires an open mind and a willingness to pivot your strategy if your results aren’t resonating.

It also means parsing through a vast expanse of possible content topics and formats. The truth is, not all topics will hit home with your audience. The topic may be highly saturated by competitors, or you may not have the bandwidth to create a large number of pieces in a specific area.

In order to focus your content strategy, we recommend a gap analysis to determine the best topics for you.

When

Journalists recognize that the “when” adds necessary context. If President Obama is dressed in costume, any good journalist knows she should note that it’s Halloween.

But how does that apply to content marketing? Let’s explain with a shot in the dark: You probably get to work around 9 am on Monday. More likely than not, you have lunch in the early afternoon, and put in a 5-day work week.

There are certainly a lot of exceptions to these rules, but that tends to be the typical marketer’s schedule. So, if we were going to send a newsletter to marketers, it’d be a bit crazy to send it at 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, right?

The “typical schedule” of your reader is just as important. Noon on weekdays may work for an audience of marketers, but not for college students.

In other words, reach your audience when they’re reading. We love this advice from CoSchedule on common rules of thumb.

Where

Was President Obama at the White House, or was he at a school in New Hampshire? Obviously the “where” changes the entire story.

It’s no different for content marketers. If your audience avoids Snapchat like the plague, then there’s no reason to pour your content dollars into it.

So, how do you determine the best place to reach your readers? Like any good journalist, you should do your research. Here’s a high-level look at where your audience might be consuming content:

• Facebook: Chances are, you should probably have a Facebook strategy. This is because pretty much everyone is on Facebook. More importantly, Facebook users tend to be incredibly active. Whether or not it’s a paid strategy depends on your goals.
• Twitter: If you pay any attention to social media news, then you know Twitter has serious growth and engagement problems. The audiences on Twitter are becoming more fragmented by the day. However, this can be a good thing for content marketers wondering whether Twitter is worth their time. Unless your audience is into sports, business, comedy or fashion, go with a “wait and see” strategy on Twitter.
• Instagram: In many ways, Instagram is the “pretty one” in the social media clique. It requires extremely high-quality, personalized content in order to connect with audiences. Instagram also appeals to a very specific audience: young women in urban areas.
• Pinterest: Women overindex on Pinterest, as well. The age demographic tends to be a bit wider, however. You can appeal to any group from Gen Z to Gen X, and every life moment from prom outfits to retirement parties.
• LinkedIn: This is one of the most segmented social networks, since it’s professional by nature. In other words, don’t post your infographic about new restaurants in Miami, no matter how brilliant it is. Unless your content strategy contains some aspect of professional and/or career advice, skip this network entirely.

Why

This W is the polite way of asking journalists, “Who cares?” For example, why should I care that President Obama is dressed in costume on Halloween at a school in New Hampshire? This ensures that the reader knows the President is attending a huge fundraiser, rather than just dressing in costume for fun.

For content marketers, this means knowing “why” each piece of content is important. Typically, this entails creating KPIs which ensure your content is directly tied to your marketing goals.

The list of potential metrics is endless, but the top business goals and their corresponding metrics are:

• Engagement: time on site, social sharing, bounce rate
• Loyalty: new vs returning visitors, social/blog follows
• Sales leads: subscribers, success rate of Calls to Action

Putting It All Together

Now that you have the 5 W’s, it’s time to put it all together. Let’s take an example: Gen X dads. What is their life like? They most likely have teenage children at this point, or may have reached empty nest status. When it comes to income, they probably have expendable cash that they’re willing to spend on higher-quality goods and experiences (your Who).

As for content consumption habits, they’re most likely interested in topics related to their job, hobbies, tech or vehicles (the What).

They want straightforward, no-nonsense content from their favorite brand which they can consume easily. Extra points if the content was recommended on Facebook by a much-beloved celebrity (Where).

More often than not, they’ll be consuming content in bed during the morning, at lunch or in the store while they’re shopping (When).

Finally, in order to make sure your content is connecting with them, you need solid KPIs that directly connect to your business. In this case, time on site, new vs. returning and bounce rate are excellent places to start (Why).

While this framework works in principle, you won’t see results until you start to use it every single day. You must also be precise and consistent with measuring and translating results.

After that, move over, Christiane Amanpour: There’s a killer content marketing strategy officially headed for the big time.

By Brooke Sellas, {grow} Contributing Columnist

How do you get to know your prospects?

Or maybe a better question is, are you getting to know your prospects?

As potential customers get to know you by investigating your website, reading your blog, downloading your content or subscribing to your newsletter, you should be doing the same.

That is, getting to know them. Understanding what it is they’re looking for, and then giving them that.

Today I’ll go through three ways you can get to know your prospects in 2016.

What Is A Prospect?

First, the marketing jargon.

Some companies get all fancy and use terms like MQL (marketing qualified lead) and SQL (sales qualified lead).

Perhaps those acronyms are easier because the difference between a prospect and a lead is debatable.

We’ll go with my way (and then I welcome your way arguments, as long as they’re constructive).

Prospect(s): Have shown some sort of interest in your company/product. Maybe they’ve:

• Subscribed to your newsletter
• Downloaded a piece of your content
• Followed you on social media

Prospects have given you the right to market to them; they’ve opted in.

You could even take it further and say that prospects could be a current client who may be interested in other services or products that you offer (think upsell).

Lead(s): Have shown interest AND opened up two-way conversation. Maybe they’ve:

• Requested a consultation
• Requested pricing
• Requested a proposal

So in the interest of this post, we are trying to get to know our prospects more.

How can we get to know these potential customers and turn them into leads?

3 Ways To Get To Know Your Prospects With Segmenting

The most important thing here is that your prospects have opted in. This is key because this tells me they’re sitting on one of your lists.

I don’t care which tool you use, or how you got them there, the fact is you have their email and can send content to that email until they unsubscribe.

1) Segment your (already existing) list

One of the best and easiest ways to get to know your prospects is to segment your list.

Let’s say you have a list of 100 people. Do you send all 100 your newsletter with your big announcements, your upcoming events, and your new product releases?

You could. But wouldn’t it be smarter to:

• Send your newsletter to those who want weekly (or monthly) touches?
• Send events to people who’ve attended past events or noted that they’re interested in future events?
• Send product releases or updates by specific product?

And if you got a little more granular with your sends, wouldn’t you receive higher open and click-through rates?

Yes, your conversions would probably be higher. And who doesn’t want that?

If you haven’t segmented your big, fat list just yet, that’s okay. It’s not too late.

Here are two easy steps to help you get to know your prospects with segmenting:

1. Send out a survey asking for clicks on interests (example: “Which are you most interested in hearing from us about: A) Content Marketing B) Advertising or C) Social Media Marketing”). If your email provider allows tagging automation by clicks (and if you ask me, it should!) you can immediately tag readers who click on a specific interest with that interest group as a segment or tag. If you don’t have these abilities with your software, you can always use a free software tool like SurveyMonkey to send out and gather responses.
2. Group segments by interests and then send content accordingly. Using psychographics to segment is my favorite thing to do! Psychographics are interests, opinions, activities, etc. If we know that Group A has a high-interest level in Content Marketing, then the next time we have an event, newsletter or product geared towards this subject we should definitely hit up this “hot list” first.

2) Segment your new subscribers or opt-ins

Now you’re at a place where your big list is better segmented but you need to think of ways to segment new opt-ins, OR, you don’t have a list and you need to segment from the beginning.

There are three places you can easily segment subscribers before they hit your list:

1. Segment directly on your opt-in form. Here’s an example: Say you’re hosting a webinar. On the sign-up form have a checkbox* that says, “Please notify me of future events!” Once clicked, this person gets added to your system with the tag or segment “events.” Now any time you host a webinar, Blab, or in-person event you can send directly to those users who have a high interest in joining your events.
2. Segment directly on your landing page. Similar to the opt-in form, you can create an area on your landing page to ask subscribers what their interests are or what information they’re seeking.
3. Segment in you’re welcome email. If getting new software or coding gives you the willies, you can always use a simple email to segment. I’d do it with my welcome email and say something like, “To better serve your inbox, let us know what you absolutely want to hear about! [options]” Again, most providers offer this, and if you don’t yet have an affordable tool that can do this, check out ConvertKit.

*You don’t have to segment with checkboxes. Drop-down forms and radio buttons are other easy options for opt-in form segmenting.

3) Segment by behavior

Going to back to your list — whether it already has tags and segments or not — you can also consider segmenting by behavior.

Here are four tactics to possibly introduce to your list:

1. If readers click a link to read your blog, tag them as “blog reader”
2. If readers click to share your content via social, tag them as a “social sharer”
3. If certain list members buy during a flash sale or when you’re offering a discount, tag them as “deal chaser” (If you have customers tagged, you can later start to develop patterns around who buys at full price and who only buys when there’s a discount)
4. If readers click over to event pages, tag them as “event interest”

There are so many different ways you can use segmenting or tagging to help send better and more targeted email/marketing messages … and get to know your prospects!

One Big List May Hurt Your Conversion Rates

Segmenting helps with “send fatigue” and allows you to fine tune open, click-through, and conversion rates.

Just take a look at the results of a MailChimp global test between segmented and non-segmented campaigns:

Your conversion rates can ultimately help you better get to know your prospects and what types of content and information they’re most interested in.

So, do you already intimately know your audience? Or will you be using some of the ideas here to get to know them better? Let me know in the comments section below!

Brooke B. Sellas is an in-the-trenches digital marketer & owner at B Squared Media, blossoming blogger, and  a purveyor of psychographics. Her mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter.

The post 3 Ways to know your prospects as well as they know you! appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

        

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One of the biggest reasons list building is so important is that you’re creating an ever-growing pool of views, comments, shares, and sales that can be tapped into at any time.

If you write an epic post today that goes semi-viral and receives 50,000 views, that’s amazing, but what happens next week when you write your next post? If you have a solid email capture system in place, you now have 5-10% of those views returning to read, share, comment, purchase, etc.

Plus, you have a valuable asset – a lead list you can pitch products and services too. If you know what you’re doing with email marketing, you can make a killing from an email list. And if you don’t, you can still do pretty well. Email subscribers convert like crazy.

But if you didn’t capture any of that traffic, you’re back to square one.

Don’t be that business. You work hard to get people to your site. Harness that traffic. It’s time to grow your list, and I’ve put together 21 powerful ways to do just that.

1. Write 2-Part Blog Series Instead of Single Posts

The way most lead capture works these days is a little box at the end of post saying something along the lines of “For regular tips and insights on _____ topic, signup to my newsletter” or “To get my best work sent straight to your inbox…” or “Enter your email to get instant access to ______ download.”

These sort of lead capture attempts can work fine, particularly if you are offering a compelling lead magnet (as we’ll discuss later), but they are rarely apples to apples with the article your visitor just read.

If you are creating amazing content, you can expect that a decent percentage of your visitors will read to the end (use SumoMe’s Content Analytics tool to track this stat), but once they get there you only guaranteed fact about them: they were interested enough to read to the end of the article.

Yeah, no kidding bro. But what does this tell us? It means if this article was longer, they probably would have kept reading to the end. Or another way to think about it is, if there was a Part 2, they would probably be interested in reading it.

After having this idea, I tried it out on a brand new blog that had around 300 subscribers. At the end of the first article, I announced that Part 2 would be up next week and invited readers to enter their email address if they’d like me to email them when it went live. The blog acquired 400 new email subscribers in that first week alone.

The best part about this strategy is it requires zero additional work. It’s similar to Content Upgrades (which we’ll discuss later) in some ways, but involves FAR less work. There’s no reason not to give it a shot and see if it works for your business.

2. Write Content Influencers Will Want To Share & Send It To Them

One of the things most people don’t realize is that while influencers have built their followings through providing targeted expertise, not all of that expertise is self-generated. A big part of building a following is partnering with other experts and sharing a variety of valuable resources from a variety of sources.

Influencers want to share really great content with their audiences. That’s a guarantee.

The first step to getting them to share your work is to create something that will be intriguing to them and valuable to their audience. In other words, you need to either produce content that is uniquely valuable or you need to redo existing content in a way that puts the original to shame.

Brian Dean used this strategy to build Backlinko to 100k visitors per month writing only one blog post per month. As he talks about here, the key was creating content that appealed more to influencers in his niche than even the audience he was targeting.

That’s the time consuming step, but the next step is the trickiest. You have to find away to get that content in front of those influencers. This is a nuanced process, but Brian again has us covered with these basic steps:

1. Respond to their comments and questions on social channels.
2. Leave insightful comments on their blog.
3. Email them letting them know how much you love their writing.
4. Point out broken links or other bugs when possible.
5. Reach out with your content after you’ve made a connection

Influencer shares can be the difference between having an amazing blog no one ever sees and becoming the web’s next hot publisher. If you can connect with the tastemakers, you can become one yourself.

3. Ask Your Social Followers To Subscribe… Regularly

Email marketing converts at a significantly higher rate than social media, which is why email subscribers are significantly more valuable than social followers.

That said, if you have an existing social following, why not take advantage by asking your followers to subscribe? It’s easy, it costs you nothing, and it’s a great way to get a quick boost in your subscriber count. I was able to help one client land 5,000 new subscribers in one week using this technique alone.

The key here is to ask regularly rather than just once or twice. Most of your followers only see a fraction of your posts, and you should be getting new followers every day, so it makes sense to request subscriptions at regular intervals. If you can offer some sort of incentive or even just promise exclusive content within your emails, that helps too.

4. Create A Site-Wide Lead Magnet If You Haven’t Already

Having a lead magnet is old, OLD news and yet, so many sites today still simply ask for emails without offering anything in return.

WHY?

Creating a lead magnet is not hard. It can be as simple as taking your most popular post, adding a bit of content, and formatting it into a nice looking PDF. Or even better, follow Neil Patel’s Quick Spout model and break it into an 8-part email series, using each piece to build trust and establish expertise with your new subscribers.

The most important element of a high-converting lead magnet is that it solves an actual problem your target audience is thinking about. If you can provide a solution to the problems on their mind, you can quickly build a target list of email subscribers.

Lead magnets can take on any number of formats, including:

• Educational ebook, cheatsheet or blueprint
• Data-based report or market analysis
• Toolkit, swipe file or resource list
• Email or video training series
• Assessment, diagnostic or other interactive test

Creating a single lead magnet allows you to offer something to visitors anywhere on your site. It’s not the ideal lead capture scenario, but it’s far better than no lead magnet at all. For those looking to step up their lead magnet game, you’ll want to get a bit more segmented.

5. Create Lead Magnets For Each Topical Category

If you cover a number of different topics on your blog, having a single lead magnet isn’t ideal. A customer visiting to read about web design won’t necessarily have any interest in your “Advanced Guide To Inbound Marketing”.

Without creating a ton more work for yourself, you can create a far better lead capture system by offering a separate lead magnet for each topical category. For example, if you publish content on web design, inbound marketing and freelancing, you would create 3 different lead magnets:

1. Web Designer’s Must-Have Resource Kit – offered on every web design blog post
2. Advanced Guide To Inbound Marketing – offered on every marketing blog post
3. The 10-Step Blueprint To 6-Figure Freelancing – offered on every freelance blog post

HubSpot does a great job of this, although with 7 separate blogs and countless covered topics, they go significantly overboard. Accordingly, they’ve created hundreds of resources that can be used as lead magnets:

HubSpot will then match a relevant resource to most of the 30+ blog posts they post every day, giving nearly every post a targeted lead magnet. While the numbers here probably aren’t relevant to your business, think of it this way. HubSpot is publishing nearly 12,000 articles per month with around 200 available lead magnets. That’s just 1 lead magnet per 60 posts. You could easily make 1 lead magnet per 60 posts. That’s the same as posting once per week for a year and then repurposing the best of that content into an ebook.

The point here is that if you are willing to do a little extra work, you can offer every visitor landing on your blog a relevant, targeted lead magnet instead of a generic site-wide offer.

6. Use Content Upgrades For 10x Performance On Your Blog Posts

So we started with a site-wide lead magnet. Then we upgraded to per-category lead magnets. Now, if you want to take the final step towards optimizing your per-post list building, we have content upgrades.

A Content Upgrade is a lead magnets created specifically for a single post. It typically involves a good deal more work than the category option we just discussed, but if your content strategy involves higher quality content published less frequently, it’s an amazing way to get the absolutely most out of your posts.

Bryan Harris from Video Fruit used this strategy to increase his subscription rate to 30% per upgrade offer. His best offers have generated an insane 62% subscription rate.

Brian Dean of Backlinko catapulted his subscriptions by 785% with this strategy. Authority Hacker used a single content upgrade to collect over 11,000 emails.

This strategy gets unrivaled results, but it can also be one of the most time consuming strategies. To cut down on time, check out this guide for content upgrades you can create in just 30 minutes.

7. Create Free Tools For Your Target Audience

Unlike some will tell you these days, content-based lead magnets are never going to stop working. Sure, uninteresting, repetitive ebooks may not cut it anymore, but the problem is in the execution rather than the medium. People will always want access to the insights and strategies of those with more experience and greater success.

That said, in an age where tens of thousands of websites are offering content-based lead magnets, you will almost never generate any buzz with a content-based lead magnet. Ebooks are just old news. Checklists, blueprints, and market reports are nothing to write home about. People interested in the topic will absolutely download it, but they probably aren’t going to get excited and tell everyone they know about it.

And this is why creating a free tool as your lead magnet can be so effective. Sites like Pingdom and Buzzsumo have become go-to stops for businesses looking to get a quick overview of site speed or social buzz respectively. Every time visitors use the free tool, they are reminded of how much more data will be available when they upgrade to premium.

SumoMe has built its entire business model on this concept, offering an entire suite of free tools and grabbing over 300,000 users as a result. Free users are presented with the option to upgrade to premium every few times they login and are presented with success stories via email.

Creating some an online tool gives people something tangible to get excited about and share with their friends, coworkers and acquaintances. And while it’s not going to be the right investment for every business, it could be a big win for yours.

8. Use Incentivized Referrals To Turn Customers Into Evangelists

Like tool creation, referrals can score MASSIVE wins for the right business models. If you can motivate your customers to spread your brand, you are in for exponential growth in a very short period of time.

People love to share cool stuff. They love to let their friends in on great opportunities, particularly when there is an upside for them personally.

After seeing weak results using Google Adword, Dropbox implemented a referral system that drove 4 million signups in 15 months. How? By offering meaningful incentives to both the referrer and the friend being referred.

Two-way incentives are a great way to put your referrals system into overdrive and generate quick growth. Here’s a how-to guide by Sacha Greif on setting up a simple DIY email referral system.

9. Host A Giveaway To Quickly Scale Your Audience

Giveaways are a fantastic way to engage people with your brand and build your email list.

When the marketing team at WWRD ran a sweepstake in 2011, it increased email subscribers by an impressive 11%. Perhaps even more importantly, customers obtained via the giveaway had a 21.7% higher order value than the site-wide average.

Bryan Harris used a giveaway to land 2,239 emails in 10 days. Josh Earl acquired over 60,000 emails with a giveaway in the same amount of time.

Giveaways are a sure-fire strategy when run correctly. In order to be successful, you need to make sure to include the following components:

1. A compelling prize your audience actually wants
2. Bonus entries given for referred entrants (can use KingSumo Giveaways plugin)
3. Guaranteed bonus incentives for all non-winners (something you can give at no cost)
4. Major promotion to relevant audiences

The biggest problem with most giveaways is that they pick up a ton of non-relevant subscribers who won’t ever be interested in your product. The solution to this is to offer a prize that will ONLY interest your target audience.

For example, in the Bryan Harris giveaway I mentioned earlier, the prize was a 10 year subscription to Leadpages, an industry-leading landing-page service. For someone in Bryan’s target audience – online marketers – that’s a $3,000 value and an amazing prize. For anyone else (anyone not interested in marketing), it’s essentially worthless.

If you run them correctly, giveaways are a surefire way to quickly boost your email list. In addition to the direct benefit of more subscribers, giveaways also increase goodwill with existing subscribers, as you are giving them something free whether they win or not.

10. Run A Contest To Attract Engaged Customers

While a giveaway is a fantastic way to grab a ton of emails in your target market, it doesn’t necessarily engage people with your brand. You have to do that via the email marketing that comes next, and that’s completely fine for most businesses.

For certain markets, however, running a contest can provide you with an exceptional opportunity to directly engage with our audience and add the type of users to your list who can become brand evangelists. You might not get as many email subscribers as a giveaway, but you will get powerful mixture of highly-engaged subscribers and general brand awareness.

Successful contests are all about audience interaction. How can you get your users to participate with your brand? For Eggo, that looked like asking users to submit their favorite waffle recipes (with photos) for a cash prize of $5,000 to the winning entrant.

As part of this contest, Eggo collected the emails of numerous entrants willing to take the time to send them a recipe. While they acquired less emails than they might have with a giveaway, the emails they received involved users who were willing to engage directly with brand – an incredibly valuable segment!

The second part of the contest involved listing the recipes for public voting. At $5,000, the prize was compelling enough to motivate entrants to share with their friends and family, driving traffic to Eggo’s site and raising brand awareness. To collect even more emails, Eggo could have included an exclusive discount offer for incoming voters.

Contests are better than perhaps any other strategy on this list for generating direct engagement with your brand while building an audience of highly engaged fans. And at the end of a contest, you are left with tons of user-generated content that can be repurposed however you desire.

11. Include In-Email Sharing Options

One of the things I’m always looking for as a marketer is simple, one-off tweaks I can make to boost ROI. These types of adjustments may not make or break a campaign, but since they have no opportunity cost, they are always a big win.

In-email sharing is one of these tweaks. It takes two seconds to set up on email services like GetResponse and it can have a major impact on your click-throughs. According to this GetResponse study, emails with social sharing options have a 158% higher click-through rate (CTR) on average than emails that do not.

Like any marketing technique, this strategy performs better for certain industries than others. GetResponse’s data indicates that topics suitable for LinkedIn recieve the most in-email shares, suggesting that audiences interested in career, marketing, self-improvement, leadership, freelancing, market trends, etc. might respond best to this technique.

Regardless of your topic, however, the data suggests that including sharing options within your newsletter can only help your CTR. Give it a try and let us know what happens!

12. Utilize Popups & Slide-Ins To Capture Visitors

Popups and their slide-in counterparts work. That’s about all I can tell you. If you don’t believe me, believe everyone else who has published a case study on this phenomenon.
Social Media Examiner attributes 70% of its 190,000 subscriptions to the site’s pop-up form. Chris Penn’s subscriptions “fell off a cliff” after removing his site’s pop-up form.

Darren Rowse increased subscribers from 40 a day to 350 ater putting a pop-up subscription box on ProBlogger.net.

Popups are incredibly easy to implement and there are a host of free and low-cost premium options these days. Whether you want something simple or something immaculate, you can be up and running in a few minutes.

It doesn’t matter what niche or market you call home, popups work. Crafting blogger Nikki McGonigal increased her subscription rate from 0.4% to 5.5% with her lightbox pop-up, an increase of 1,375%!

I personally use SumoMe List Builder for pop-ups on a variety of blogs spanning across multiple niches. I used it on my men’s blog with astonishing results. Look at the chart below and guess when I installed popups.

For another blog in the progressive Christian niche, I tried a combination of SumoMe’s premium popups tool, a 2-part blog series, and content upgrades using forms from ConvertKit, and I was able to increase email subscribers by over 600 with just 2 blog posts.

If you aren’t using popups, you need to start.

13. Install Full-Page Dropdowns For Higher Conversions

Similar in function to a full-page popup, dropdowns are a more recent innovation, popularized by SumoMe’s Welcome Mat.

The idea behind the fullpage dropdown is to quickly add an above-the-fold email optin to any web page. As a general “best practice”, CTAs that are shown above the fold convert best, so being able to quickly add, test, and adjust a temporary “hero shot” (initial screenshot visitors see) is something worth trying.

Inbound.org had a question posted recently about the performance of these pages, and several marketers, including myself, had found success using these dropdowns on select pages. More specifically, we found that including them on natural “next step” pages increased conversion rates significantly.

In other words, asking people for something as soon as they land on your page is annoying and a bit assuming. The goal of lead capture is to invite people who like what you’re doing to come back. This is why I set my popups to show up between 20-40 seconds after a visitor has arrived. If a visitor has been reading your content for more than 20 seconds, he or she is interested in what you’re saying and probably intrigued to know who you are.

If they are so intrigued as to select another page to visit on your site, they are ready to be invited to your list. Accordingly, the marketers at Inbound.org, as well as myself, found that adding a dropdown to the homepage and blog feed page increased signups by around 200% as compare to normal popup performance.

14. Add Social Proof To Everything

When it comes to any form of conversion optimization, social proof is one of the more powerful ways to boost conversions. People like to join in things that are already popular and they are TERRIFIED of “missing out”. Social proof is so powerful, it’s kickstarted an entirely new brand of ecommerce called social commerce, where stores and social networks partner together to create an almost communal shopping experience.

According to Search Engine Journal, 63% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase from a site that has product ratings or reviews. In a series of peer-reviewed studies conducted in 2008, researchers determined that social proof had more of an effect on behavior modification than concepts like protecting the environment, personal responsibility or even saving money.

Guys like Michael Hyatt use social proof to demonstrate expertise and thought leadership. It’s a core piece of the “Build Your Platform” WordPress template he sells.

Look at that number in the top right corner of this image. Total Subscribers = 512,944. Wow.

That’s impressive. I don’t even know what it means, but it’s impressive. Does Michael Hyatt have 500k email subscribers? Not a chance. This number is probably a sum of his email subscribers, Twitter followers (241k), Facebook fans (57k), etc.
But when you land on that page as a new visitor, you don’t know what the number means. You just know that it’s impressive and you immediately start taking this guy seriously. That’s the power of social proof, and it’s as simple as adding the most impressive numbers you can spin next to your email optin or including a few reviews and testimonials on your sales and checkout pages.

15. Use Guest Blogging For The Correct Reasons

Outside of social shares, guest blogging is one of several accessible ways to get your content in front of other audiences. Guest blogging offers a number of powerful upsides, but it’s also somewhat misunderstood in the blogging world.

A lot of people think that guest blogs will result in direct traffic to your site, and while yes, you will get some direct traffic, I can tell you after writing over 100 guest posts that the time investment is not worth the amount of traffic you can expect to receive from even high traffic blogs.

Here’s why guest blogging is valuable:

• Get your name and most compelling thoughts in front of a much larger audience
• Get highly relevant backlinks to your website
• Make valuable connections with editors, webmasters, and publications in your industry
• Get direct traffic to your best landing pages

A lot of people think that you can simply throw up guest blogs on popular sites and the traffic will come rushing in through their author bio links. This couldn’t’ be further from the truth. Guest blogs can build your email list, but you’ll need the ability to publish them in a specific way.

If you want your guest blog to drive email subscribers, you’ll need to essentially pitch a lead magnet within the post itself. Mention your lead magnet at the beginning of the post and then directly pitch it and link to it at the end.

Bryan Harris used this strategy to grab 600 emails subscribers from this guest post on Jon Acuff’s blog. Compare those results to a blog post like this one, posted to Jon Morrow’s more popular website Boost Blog Traffic. This post received over 200 comments and 500 shares in the first few weeks but only drove 40 subscribers for the author, Kevin Duncan.

Why? Because you can’t get meaningful direct traffic from an author byline. Kevin even included an audience-specific link and offer in his byline, and it still wasn’t enough.

If you want to get a worthwhile number of subscribers from you guest posts, you have to post on a website that will let you include a direct CTA within the article itself.

16. Cross-Promotion Is A Guaranteed Win

Cross promotion is similar to guest posting in that you are leveraging another site’s audience. Unlike guest blogging, however, the goal here is to partner up with another website around your same size or a bit larger, giving you a guaranteed win.

For example, if your site has around 5,000 email subscribers, you might look to run a cross-promotion campaign with another site that has between 4,500 – 7,000 subscribers. When pitching a cross-promotion campaign, try to target audiences that are a bit larger than yours by highlighting your most impressive follower metrics.

Cross-promotion can look like anything. It can be as creative as you are. Here are a few ideas to get you started.

• Exchange guest posts using the format described in section #15
• Feature each other’s sites in social media posts or subscriber emails
• Partner with each other on product launches or giveaways
• Share each other’s content across social feeds
• Offer each other’s audiences discounts on products

There’s really no limit to what you can do. The key is to make sure that the cross-promotion method you select actually builds your audience and grows your list

17. Publish Insightful, Educational Case Studies

Case studies are a fantastic way to promote your business while attracting shares and backlinks. People love to read real stories and see real results. Anyone can post theories, but if you can show some repeatable results, you can establish yourself as a legitimate player in your sphere.

Many of the businesses I see publishing case studies are doing it all wrong. Success metrics are vague, informative content is limited, and 3/4ths of the post looks like a sales pitch. This is NOT the way to run a case study.

A case study designed to build your list will do 3 things:

1. Fully explain the problem, hypothesis, process, and solution
2. Summarize key observations and takeaways
3. Act as as educational rather than promotional content.

You don’t need to promote your service in a case study. The study does it for you. If you can include your case study in a strategy guide for getting similar results, that can be even more effective. Brian Dean built Backlinko posting case study packed guides once per month for just over a year.

Not only will people be happy to share and link to an insightful case study when it goes live, but you’ll also continue grabbing backlinks long into the future. Think about. What types of links have I included in this post? What types of links to all marketing writers look for when proving their point in published articles?

Case studies. We link to case studies. If you have a bunch of insightful, SEO-optimized case studies on your blog, you’ll begin seeing pingbacks all over the place. It’s a no-brainer!

18. Host Webinars For Higher ROI

Webinars are essentially the same as other types of informative content, with three key exceptions:

1. Viewers give you their email address BEFORE seeing the content.
2. Webinars are really, really popular right now.
3. Some people are much better at recording themselves speaking than they are at writing

Webinars allow you to grab a list of email addresses based on your headline value proposition alone. This means that, while you still have to deliver some good content, the pressure to WOW people into subscribing is not there.

Furthermore, many brilliant marketers are not that great at writing but can easily talk about key concepts for hours on end. Whereas it might take them 20 hours to write a world-class guide to email marketing, they could deliver an exceptional webinar on the same topic in just 30 minutes.

Lastly, webinars are everywhere right now, and if there’s one thing we know about marketing, it’s that if EVERYONE is doing it, it probably is generating a nice ROI. KISSmetrics reports grabbing an average of $13,000 in qualified new leads with each webinar.

With results like that, it’s no wonder webinars are all the rage these days. And while few businesses will cite their webinar numbers, the fact that virtually every other sidebar these days is promoting an upcoming webinar tells the tale.

19. Paid Advertising Is The Ultimate Way To Scale

Your first thought when it comes to listbuilding might not be to pay for new subscribers, but the reality is that any strategy you enact has a cost.

It costs money to get well-written articles. It costs money and time to host webinars. It costs money to run a giveaway or create a lead magnet. Everything has a cost, and that cost can be broken down to the number of subscribers you gain from it.

So at the end of the day, if you can use paid advertising to acquire subscribers at a lower cost-per-subscriber than any other method, it’s the best list building strategy for your business.

With the right content, I’ve been able to pay around $1 per subscriber using Facebook ads. Bryan Harris was able to get around $1.99 per subscriber for his highly profitable email marketing list.

The key to making paid advertising work is to scale slowly. Try multiple ads, eliminate the losers and scale the winners. And if you find something that is working, repeat mercilessly until it stops working.

20. Offer Subscriber Discounts In Exchange For Emails

Offering discounts or free items as a type of lead magnet is the ideal list building technique for ecommerce stores. Visitors will typically land on your store with intent to buy, so encouraging them with a discount is usually very effective.

Yandy.com is a perfect example of this. As soon as you land on a store page, you are greeted with a popup offering a free item in exchange for your email.

WOD Superstore users this method as well, offering a 3% discount in exchange for the visitor’s email address. While this isn’t a big discount, it’s better than nothing and there’s typically no reason for a visitor to say know if he or she is thinking about making a purchase.

While many businesses will offer discounts, few think about the opportunity to use those discounts as a list-building tool. It’s definitely something worth trying on your website.

21. Collect Emails At Offline Events

As shocking as this may sound, there are times when your online profit can come from offline activities! Events like conferences, trade shows, and seminars are a great place to connect with people in your market and are often a part of your calendar anyway.

These events are perfect opportunities for list building. You are interacting with not only people in your niche, but motivated people – people who were willing to pause their lives and maybe even travel an extended distance just to be there. Depending on the nature of the event, these individuals might be primed leads for your business.

Just as with collecting emails online, the key is to either find a way to collect emails en-masse or offer something valuable in exchange for direct interpersonal email subscriptions. If you are going to be speaking or communicating in any way, that’s a great opportunity to make your offer.

Conferences tend to be about learning, so think educational, particular in the vein of trend reports or market analysis. People want to learn, so you just have to make yourself a source of learning.

Conclusion

Building an email list doesn’t have to be hard. Use these methods to quickly scale your list and grow your audience.

Remember that getting subscribers is the easiest part of email marketing. It’s what you do with those subscribers afterward that really counts. Try to ensure continuous quality and relevance from the moment they open your lead magnet, through the sale, and beyond.

Your list will be a permanent, ever-growing asset for your business if you use it correctly.

At Close.io, we know how to sell SaaS.

We began as Elastic, Inc, an outsourced sales solution for Silicon Valley startups. After we developed Close.io for internal use, we pivoted and began to sell our inside sales software to SaaS sales teams.

We’ve worked with thousands of startups and seen countless successes and failures. We know what works, and we know what doesn’t. In our experience, these are the nine cornerstones of SaaS sales success.

1. Keep your trials short

A long trial might seem like a good way to hook your customer, but you’re really just hurting your startup. For 99% of startups, trials shouldn’t be any longer than 14 days. Here’s why.

Most people don’t use free trials for the full duration. Take a look at your data and you’ll see that the vast majority of your trial users duck out after about three days.

Users take a short trial more seriously. Your prospects will procrastinate, and when they procrastinate, they forget. With a shorter trial period, they’re more likely to try your product immediately.

Lower customer acquisition costs. When you shorten your trial, you also shorten your sales cycle. If you’re able to shorten your sales cycle from six weeks to three, you will significantly reduce your customer acquisition costs.

If you still have a low conversion rate after shortening your trial, try these three strategies to nurse lost trial leads into activation.

2. Optimize your email campaign

Unless you have a killer email campaign, most of your prospects are going to forget you exist within hours of enrolling in your trial. Here are three strategies to get the most out of your drip email campaign.

Use “human” email addresses. Don’t ever send an email from a department. Instead of “Sales@YourBusiness.com”, use “YourName@YourBusiness.com”.

Send a lot of emails. Christoph Janz's, one of the most successful SaaS investors of all time, advice to SaaS founders is, “If no one is calling your emails 'spam', maybe you're not sending enough emails.”

Send activity-based emails. Your drip campaign should automatically email your leads for a number of "If no one is calling your emails 'spam', maybe you're not sending enough emails"situations, including when they sign up, if they visit the account or cancellation page, and if their trial is about to end.

Close.io can integrate with a number of powerful automation tools that make your drip campaigns much easier to manage. Check it out yourself with our 14-day free trial.

3. Call your trial signups immediately

Most fledging SaaS businesses don’t call their trial users, and those that do often wait until the last day. They don’t know how to sell SaaS. In the early stages of your startup, you should call every single trial user within five minutes of signup. If you do that, you’ll:

Drastically improve your reach rate. There’s a good chance the prospect is still at their computer with your product fresh on their mind. The longer you wait, the less likely your prospect is to answer.

Quickly qualify or disqualify prospects. You need to make sure that your solution is a good fit for your prospect’s needs before you offer to close the deal. If it isn’t, you can use the call to help them explore other options.

Handle objections effectively. A controlled phone call is the best environment to successfully manage objections. If they don’t have any, you can use this time to preemptively resolve common objections.

The business that understands the customer, owns the customer. Pick up the phone and get to know your trial users or they’ll never become your customers.

4. Give short, value-focused demos

The most common mistake I see startups make when giving demos is treating the demo like a training session. Your lead doesn’t need (or even want) to see every little thing that your product does. They want to know how it will help them be more successful. Here are three strategies to give product demos that sell.

Qualify first. Don’t use demos as a qualification tool. Always qualify your leads before you give them a demo.

Keep it short. 30–60 minutes is way too long. If you can’t explain how your product helps your prospect within 15 minutes, you don’t know your product or your prospect.

Focus on benefits, not features. Your prospects don’t care about every little button on your interface. Don’t tell them what your product does, tell them what it does for them.

A successful product demo is a demonstration of value, not a training seminar. Treat it that way and you’ll be much more effective.

5. Follow up relentlessly

You will rarely close a deal on the first call. Startup sales success is dependent on your ability to follow up repeatedly. How often?

If your prospect has ever expressed interest in your product, follow up forever. Don’t settle for silence or “maybe”; maybes kill your startup. Keep calling and emailing until you get a clear “yes” or “no”.

If the lead is completely cold, follow this 14-day plan:

Day 1: Initial contact.

Day 3: First follow-up. Reach out at a different time of day with a condensed version of your initial message.

Day 7: Second follow-up. Reach out at a different time of day and restate your call to action.

Day 14: Third follow-up. If you haven’t received any response from your lead, send the break-up email. This is where response rates skyrocket.

If you don’t receive a response to your break-up email, move on to more promising leads.

6. Set your prices (really) high

SaaS companies who rely on pricing to be competitive aren’t confident in their products. They think that the only way they can become viable is by devaluing their solution.

Pricing shouldn't make your product competitive—value should.

Learn from Cloudsponge and experiment with pricing. You’ll know you’ve got it right when:

• 30% of your prospects say, “You’re crazy, I would never pay that!”
• 30% of your prospects say, “Your product is really cheap.”
• 40% of your prospects say, “Your product is expensive, but worth the price.”

It’s okay to be too expensive for some prospects. In fact, if you never lose deals over pricing, then your SaaS product is too cheap.

7. Sell prepaid annual plans

Startups love SaaS products because of the reliable monthly revenue. While those plans may offer consistent revenue, it’s a slow trickle.

When growing your SaaS startup you need a waterfall of revenue, not a trickle. Consider offering your prospects discounted rates if they buy a prepaid annual plan.

Although this may bring down overall revenue in the moment, it gives you immediate access to substantial cash flow. You can use this influx of revenue to hire a sales team, expand into new markets, or improve your product.

8. Don’t give discounts

Discounts might seem like a great way to get reluctant prospects on board, but they end up doing more harm than good. It’s not how you sell SaaS. Here’s why:

Discounts make salespeople lazy. It’s hard to sell prospects on value and easy to lower the price. When discounts are an option, count on your salespeople abusing it.

Discounts make predictable revenue impossible. When every new customer pays a different price, there’s no way to know what your revenue will look like next week, let alone next year.

Discounts are bad for branding. Customers talk, and when they start to realize that their competitors are getting the same product for cheaper, they aren’t going to be happy.

You need a strict discount policy, and you need to stick to it. Outside of prepaid annual plans, we recommend not offering discounts at all.

9. Never close a bad deal

Never sell to unqualified customers. Sometimes that will mean saying “no” to a customer who wants to give you money. Closing an easy deal might be tempting, but the cost of churn will always outweigh short-term revenue.

Here’s why selling to the wrong customers will kill your SaaS startup.

When you sell to an unqualified prospect, they aren’t going to be successful. They’ll have a lot of complaints and require a ton of support. These customers demoralize your team with negative feedback and start spreading bad reviews online. Eventually they’ll churn, and they’ll blame your product for their failure.

And they’ll be right. It’s your responsibility to prevent bad customers from buying your product. Make sure you properly qualify every lead with these four steps:

1. Create an ideal customer profile
2. Identify your prospect’s needs
3. Figure out their decision-making process
4. Determine your competition

Complete those steps and you’ll know whether or not the prospect is a good fit for your product. If they aren’t, that’s fine. Help them find a solution that is, then move on to other leads. This is how to sell SaaS the right way.

Get out there and crush it

SaaS sales is hard, but it isn’t impossible. If you incorporate these tools and strategies into your sales cycle, you’ll drastically increase your chances of success.

So share this article with your network, make sure everyone on your team knows how to sell SaaS, then pick up the phone and start selling.

Recommended resources:

Are your salespeople closing bad deals? Here’s how to fix it!
Your SaaS sales team will never succeed if they’re closing bad deals. Follow these three tips to get your team selling smart.

Five myths about SaaS sales you probably believe
If I build it, they’ll come, right? Wrong. These five myths and misconceptions can be the death of your startup. Make sure you aren’t falling for them.

How do you sell your SaaS product to enterprise customers?
Are you sure you’re ready for this step? The game changes when you pursue enterprise accounts, so make sure you know how to play.

There’s a lot of talk around account-based marketing (ABM) in the B2B marketing realm and for good reason. ABM is an effective account-centric approach that targets high-yield accounts, and while it’s not a new concept (it’s a practice followed since the 1990s), it’s receiving renewed interest among B2B marketers due to technology trends that are digitizing the execution of ABM strategy.

Before, ABM was an extremely high-cost endeavor that represented a significant drain on budget and human resources. Creating segmented marketing tracks, surfacing personalized content, and reacting to individual prospect’s behaviors was all done manually and could only be supported for a small subsection of highly strategic, tier 1 accounts.

But the the ability to access and make sense of new data sources and automate key marketing activities has made ABM a strategy that is implementable across the full spectrum of a company’s target market. Below, we’ll explore how three major technology trends have made ABM execution more efficient and scalable:

1. Visibility of Digital Footprints

Over the past decade, an increasing amount of content about B2B products has become available online. Increasing inbound marketing efforts have accelerated a buyer’s access to product specifications, deployment plans, and user reviews. At the same time, a significant amount of research by B2B buyers is being done through publisher sites, buying guide portals, technical comparison sites, social sites, and a vendor’s own website. This data explosion has created a treasure trove of digital footprints left behind by potential customers engaging with content and has allowed companies to gain visibility into the buying behaviors of target accounts. ABM strategies are built on a company’s very ability to build target account lists based on the business needs and challenges they are uniquely positioned to address, so this new access to buyer activity and data allows marketers to identify more accounts with greater precision.

2. Processing Power of Big Data: Technology to Distinguish Signal from Noise

According to ITSMA, 85% of marketers feel that understanding their buyers is their primary responsibility. Big data analytics can help marketers achieve this goal. For every piece of digital information that is predictive of buying intent, there are hundreds of data points that are just noise. Advancements in technology now allow for the efficient analysis of a great volume, variety, and velocity of information generated from online and offline interactions. This development has made it possible to glean valuable and actionable insights for B2B marketing and sales teams from mountains of data that indicate whether an account has a need and is in the market to buy your product.

For the B2B account scenario, this is especially important given that every product has a different buying cycle, in terms of both research and purchase. The buying cycle involves thorough research from a buying committee as opposed to a single buyer within an account, and it requires time-sensitive analysis from marketers to react to these behaviors and take action at the right moment. This is where predictive intelligence solutions that focus on time and need identification at the account level are crucial to inform account-based marketing campaigns. A well executed ABM strategy represents an orchestrated omni-channel marketing effort that leverages different channels–such as media campaigns, display advertising, email nurturing, outbound sales prospecting, and offline events–and insights driven by predictive intelligence to inform and improve the customer experience and conversion rates of every downstream marketing and sales process.

3. Automated Workflows and Campaign Execution

With MarTech companies tracked by Scott Brinker’s Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic nearing 2,000 companies as of the last count, there is an ocean of technology-enabled automation that marketers can use to act on account insights and predictions gleaned from predictive intelligence at every stage of the funnel. From real-time web personalization and programmatic ad buying, to automated dialers and auto-qualified leads–there isn’t a single workflow within online or offline account-based marketing strategies that will not be influenced by data insights and marketing automation. While data insights improve decision-making for targeting and messaging on everything from display advertising to email, marketing automation enables these actions to happen seamlessly as customer data enters and flows through your system.

Given the dynamic nature of B2B sales, having static target account lists constrains the impact of any ABM strategy. With the technology trends above, the concept of a dynamic target account list is now a reality. Predictive intelligence and marketing automation technology work in parallel to enable account-based marketing and sales efforts to become both time-based and need-based. Data-driven insights allow marketing teams to continuously monitor and hone what activities represent true buying intent and which accounts are exhibiting them most strongly, and marketing automation allows these insights to influence which accounts receive what messaging and when. This combined approach facilitates the right sales conversations for B2B buyers and vendors, while minimizing effort and money spent on target accounts that are not in-market to buy.

Interested in learning more about how predictive intelligence and marketing automation is helping customers execute ABM? Register now to join us on March 17^th at 10am PT for our webinar Predictive & Marketing Automation: Making Account-Based Marketing Work.

Wilting and softening are to veggies what wrinkles are to us—a normal sign of aging that isn’t necessarily harmful.

Understanding what’s happening can help you evaluate whether or not the food is still usable and safe to eat.

Join the conversation about this story »

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The Economist has caught the eye of late, with notable successes in creative programmatic and experimentation with social platforms.

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How to Build a Steady Stream of Leads for Less Than $100/mo written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Facebook advertising is perhaps the most powerful lead generation tool available to small business marketers right now. (I, of course, have to add the disclaimer that this could change and probably will within the next 18 months.)

In 2016, however, it is one of the best, simplest, most affordable ways to create awareness, leads and ultimately clients for local and national businesses alike.

I decided to write this post because every time something gets hot you see a rush of internet marketers ready to arm the prospectors with shovels and picks.

Today’s variety is the $2,000 course that promises to bring fame and riches using some secret formula to tap unknown Facebook back doors and loopholes.

Here’s the deal – the only Facebook secret is that advertising on Facebook is about as simple as setting up an email service or creating a blog post on WordPress.

Sure, there are countless ways to make it complex and, even more, ways to wring every last drop out of it, but for today, I want to share a simple, doable, and valuable set of steps that will have you driving some serious ROI out of Facebook in very short order.

See, the key with any new channel is to get using it so you can then decide how to use it better. If you listen to many of the Facebook gurus, you’ll hear that you need to create 357 ad variations, each with a different trip wire, all leading to a complex matrix of upsells and down sells.

While that may be a valuable approach for the person selling a Facebook course, I’m guessing you would rather generate some high-quality leads today or tomorrow rather than six months from now.

1) Basic Facebook set-up

If you have not done so yet, create a Facebook Ad Account. You’ll, of course, need to use a personal Facebook account as the account owner and then associate your account with a business page. (How to create a Facebook business page)

When setting up your Facebook ad account, you will need to add a form of payment such as a credit card or Paypal account and information such a spending limit. If you want someone else to create ads for you or manage your account, you can add account roles in your ad manager settings.

At some point, you may also want to create a Business Manager account, particularly if you ever want to start managing several accounts or if you have clients that want you to manage their accounts. (Here’s how to create your Business Manager account)

2) Install the Facebook Pixel

If you’ve never created or used the Facebook Pixel here’s how to get started:

Getting set up with the Facebook pixel is a 2-step process.

a) Create your pixel

• Go to your Facebook Pixel tab in Ads Manager.
• Click Create a Pixel
• Enter a name for your pixel. There’s only one pixel per ad account, so choose a name that represents your business.
• Make sure you’ve checked the box to accept the terms
• Click Create Pixel.
• Keep in mind you can only create one Facebook pixel per ad account. If you already have one, you won’t see the Create Pixel button.

b) Add the pixel to your website’s pages

• Go to your Facebook Pixel tab in Ads Manager.
• Click Actions > View Pixel Code.
• Click the code to highlight it.
• Right-click and select Copy or use Ctrl+C/Cmd+C.
• Click Done.
• Go to your website’s HTML and paste the code. If you use WordPress you can paste this code in the same place you likely pasted tracking code such as that for Google Analytics. This varies from theme to theme.

Here’s some great information from Facebook on the many things you can do with the Facebook Pixel.

3) Build your custom audience

With the Facebook Pixel installed you can begin to tap what I think is the real magic of Facebook – something called a custom audience. Think of it as a way to tag everyone that visits your website or takes an action so that you can then adjust what you do specifically for them.

For example, if someone visits your website two or more times in a two-week period there’s a good chance they are a prospect. With custom audiences, you can build an audience of these folks and set up ads just for them.

Now, don’t get overwhelmed here because you can do all manner of ninja things here but let’s start simple. Further down in this post I’m going to suggest that you systematically create some blog posts that you are going to use for this approach. We are going to advertise these blog posts and build custom audiences of people who visit these pages. The beauty of this is that the visitors don’t have to sign-up for anything or download anything for us to know they visited the content.

To create a website Custom Audience with advanced features:

• Go to your Audiences tab in Ads Manager
• Click Create Audience > Custom Audience
• Click Website Traffic
• Click the Website Traffic drop-down and select Custom Combination
• Check that Advanced Mode is set to ON
• Set your rules, including which device people visit your website on
• Give your audience a name, then click Create Audience

4) Expand through lookalike audience

Now we are going to make all this custom audience work pay. Once enough people meet your custom audience criteria you can tell Facebook to build what’s called a lookalike audience of even more people who seem to have similar demographics and interests. So, let’s say 200 people have visited your awesome content that addresses a problem other people want to solve. You can now show your ads to millions of people that have that same problem. If you only want to show your ad to people in your city, that’s doable too. (Here’s some more info on creating lookalike audiences)

Lookalike audiences can even be built from your current list of email subscribers or customers. Imagine that – you’re a remodeling contractor with 1662 email addresses of past customers. Upload this list to Facebook and let them find other people in the exact zip codes where you work to show your blog post about the five tips to consider when remodeling a kitchen?

Optional – Sign up for an Adespresso account

Adespresso is a fairly low-cost Facebook advertising management tool that is worth every penny in terms of making your life easier. The tool is so much more intuitive than the Facebook Ads Manager or the ridiculously unintuitive Facebook Power Editor. Also, the Adespresso Guides are as good as many paid courses.

5) Prime the pump

Okay, you’ve got the Facebook side pretty much set up so let’s go to work driving traffic and leads.

To execute this plan, you should commit to writing one very useful, very practical, information rich blog post per month for the next 12 months. Here’s an example of a post on Writing Better Blog Posts that we’ve used for this very approach.

For each post, you will need to create a simple one-page checklist or case study to offer as a lead capture device. Most of the traffic you drive to these posts using Facebook ads won’t know much about you or your services so trying to offer an eBook, long video or free evaluation session usually won’t convert well because there is little trust vs. the investment they would have to put in to decide to read an entire eBook to see if it’s any good. Checklists are easy to consume and convert very well.

Make the checklist available via a content upgrade using an inline form through a tool like Thrive Leads. This post on building a Lead Generation System makes use of this technique.

6) Once you have your first post and upgrade completed and set up – Start running ads!

Simply create a status update pointing to your handy post, boost the post for $30 and see what happens – then start to analyze and tweak. Don’t get paralyzed by the array of things you could do, the advice of Facebook gurus, or ads claiming to show you the secret sauce – just start driving traffic. You can start very slowly and learn by doing rather than getting frustrated by the “perfect” approach.

Target 10% conversion on the form to get your checklist and then improve through testing form tweaks and by creating new ads. (Thrive Leads lets you test A/B versions of a forms and tracks conversion for you right in WordPress, so you don’t have to try to figure it out in Google Analytics.)

I’ve seen this approach generate leads for as little as 30 cents and generally less than a dollar. And I’m not talking click or page views; I ‘m talking about sign-ups to get your awesome download. Since you’ve targeted this audience do well in the first place these are likely going to be high-quality leads. So, could you work with 100 high-quality leads a month for less than $100?

7) Moving the journey

Of course, the whole point of generating leads is to build enough trust with this group that they want to become customers.

The first thing you want to do is ask your new list members what they want, what they can’t find, what they are trying to achieve, or why they opted for your content via a poll or simply ask them to tell you from a list what the most useful next piece of content should be.

Now you can create or use an existing series of more significant information shares such as a video series, expanded case study, screencast tutorial or ebook based on the listed topics above and use an email automation tool to offer up the content requested.

8) Setting up for conversion

From this point, you can start to have conversations via email that slowly reveal your ability to guide your subscribers on the journey to get what they want because they’ve told you what it is and you’ve clearly revealed you have the knowledge, experience and empathy to help them get to their destination.

That’s the essence of lead conversion, and it’s a pretty simple game once you’ve built this kind of trust.

And now a final word of tough love – if you can’t commit to writing one awesome blog post a month with an accompanying checklist and throw $100/mo at it, you might want to reconsider what you’re doing owning a business. (And if you’ve got more cash than time, take this post to a marketing or content expert that gets it and pay them to run your system.)

When you initially set out on your journey to market your brand, product, or service, you may be tempted to jump right in, going after everyone who is willing to listen or could even be remotely interested in what your business has to offer.

While getting your brand out there is essential to driving business, going too broad can water down your message.

Software review site, Capterra, does a hilarious job of driving this point home, spoofing “Multi-Office All-in-One Business Software – Gold Edition.” Afterall, why be laser-focused on 1 thing when you can be regular-focused on 216?

Narrow Your Target Market to Dominate Your Niche

It can feel a bit counter-intuitive, but, by breaking your market down into manageable groups rather than trying to be everything to everyone, you will find greater success in reaching your audience. So how do you prevent your business from becoming the generic and mediocre all-in-one solution for everyone? Here are three ways to narrow your target market while owning your own slice of the market:

1. Commit to Your Ideal Buyer

When it comes to marketing and dominating your niche, there’s no time to play games. Pick an audience and put a ring on it to get the maximum ROI out of your marketing spend.

Even if your product or service can be tailored to fit many segments, it pays to put your stake in the ground and commit to one ideal buyer.

For instance, say you own a marketing agency. Your audience could be quite large and broad, and you could potentially serve anyone in any industry – from driving applicants to a university to helping wealth management firms find new clients. If you tried to market to every industry, your message would be quite generic: “Results-driven marketing for any entity.”

Instead, your agency decides to get specific. You decide to commit your focus to higher education, narrowing your target marketing and focusing on one ideal buyer – John, the CMO of a university. You get even more specific and focus on what your agency does best – digital marketing. Now your message becomes: “Driving enrollment and increasing student ROI by helping universities get found online.” It hits home for your target audience – John the CMO – positioning your agency as the go-to when it comes to optimizing .edu websites for search.

Save money and time by narrowing down the focus of your target audience enough to make your message resonate with a smaller group. Although your market is smaller, you have a better chance of attracting the right buyer.

2. Refine Your Business Plan

Now that you’ve chosen your path, it’s time to follow it to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You’ve committed to your ideal buyer, now you need to reinforce that commitment to your business and the market place. Put your ideal buyer at the center of everything you do:

1. Refine your marketing message to speak to your ideal buyer. Think about how your content strategy can tap into the pain-points of your ideal buyer and help them to solve a problem.
2. Address the needs of your audience in your product/service. Build for your ideal buyer – and no one else – to create raving fans and loyal customers of your business.
3. Create a customer experience that best fits your ideal buyer. For instance, if your ideal buyer is in the older demographic, they may prefer phone support to live chat or social media.

Back to our marketing agency example, once you’ve committed to serving John the CMO, you leverage his pain-point. John the CMO has a tough time managing his university’s social media presence because so many participants (students, faculty, departments) are involved. So you create a free social media brand guide for higher education. The guide helps generate leads right in your target market.

On the product and service side, you decide to create a custom social listening tool that your clients can leverage to stay connected to everything faculty, staff, students and alumni are saying about their university brand.

And, when it comes to client service, you know that your ideal buyer has to consistently prove ROI of marketing programs to university stakeholders. So as part of your ongoing support, you email your clients a report on their top benchmarks every week.

Putting John the CMO at the center of everything you do narrows your target market, but also allows your agency to be infinitely more successful at driving leads, winning new clients and making sure they stick with your agency for a long time.

Once you’ve committed to your ideal buyer, follow through by integrating them into your business from product development to marketing to customer success. You’ll be rewarded with better leads, more customers, and increased customer lifetime value.

3. Encourage Your Evangelizers

Now that you’ve committed to your ideal buyer and have aligned your business to them, you’re going to find yourself with some raving fans. Leverage your most enthusiastic customers to attract even more customers who are just like them.

1. Run a referral campaign to ask your supporters to send new business your way. Reward them with incentives like discounts, perks and even cash money.
2. Ask for reviews. If your business is on Yelp, if you have a Google listing, or if your industry has specific review sites, it can really pay off to have your customer’s voices heard there, sharing their positive experience.
3. Give thanks where thanks is due. When you go above and beyond for your biggest fans, they are sure go the extra mile for you – whether it’s providing a testimonial, participating in a case study or being a reference.

Market segmentation can feel like a big undertaking, and can seem like a big risk since you limit your audience. However, narrowing your target market can actually give you a better chance to reach more people with a targeted message. Put your stake in the ground and commit to an ideal buyer, align your business to their needs, and mobilize your evangelizers to penetrate and conquer your niche.

Mobile has gained legitimacy as a commerce channel. Millions of retail locations in the US now accept mobile in-store payments and are also developing e-commerce businesses that support mobile payment options in apps and on mobile websites.

However, quick-service restaurants (QSRs) — also known as fast-casual restaurants — have been turning to mobile order-ahead apps to extract higher sales, intensify customer loyalty, and heighten foot traffic.

Mobile order-ahead refers to a consumer-facing mobile payment platform that allows customers to order food remotely, pay for the items on their phone, and pick up their order at a specific restaurant location.

Leading QSRs in the US are beginning to adopt these platforms at an accelerated pace and are benefiting from them. Taco Bell sees 30% higher average order values on mobile compared to in-store, and Starbucks' Mobile Order & Pay already represents 10% of total transactions at high-volume stores, directly contributing to increased company sales.

Mobile order-ahead is still in its early days, but will be a $38 billion industry by 2020, accounting for 10.7% of total QSR industry sales. This will be driven by full adoption among the top QSRs in the US, the growth of mobile commerce, QSR adoption through aggregators like Grubhub, loyalty programs, higher average order values, and new buy buttons.

In BI Intelligence's 2016 Mobile Order-Ahead Report, we profile the companies that have proved the mobile order-ahead concept and analyze the trends contributing to this new industry's growth.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• Mobile order-ahead apps — platforms that enable consumers to remotely purchase menu items for in-store restaurant pickup — are on the rise among quick-service restaurants (QSRs). We expect sales on these platforms to reach $38 billion by 2020, representing a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 57%.
• Mobile order-ahead will ultimately have an additive effect on the QSR industry. Mobile ordering platforms have been proven to intensify customer loyalty, increase purchase frequency, and lift average ticket sizes through order customization and easier checkout options. This means that mobile ordering is not a simple substitution for in-store purchasing, but a channel that can enhance the lifetime value of QSR customers. This makes mobile order-ahead a critical channel contributing to the growth of the QSR industry.
• Alternative commerce solutions will help propel mobile ordering. Aggregators like Grubhub will onboard smaller fast-casual restaurants into the mobile ecosystem by offering them an existing app to integrate into, lowering the upfront costs of creating a mobile channel of their own. And in-store self-service kiosks will help popularize remote ordering and accustom users to less traditional forms of payment that don't require a cash register.

In full, the report: 

• Forecasts the growth of the mobile order-ahead industry in the US from 2015 to 2020, including its share of total QSR sales.
• Profiles brands that are leading the migration to mobile ordering. 
• Examines the alternative commerce solutions that could help popularize mobile order-ahead.
• Explains the risks and drawbacks to launching a mobile commerce platform.
• Assesses the ways both large and small brands can create a mobile order-ahead platform.
• Determines which types of fast-casual chains are in the best position to benefit from mobile order-ahead.

Companies mentioned in the report include: Taco Bell, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Panera Bread, Heartland Payment Systems, Domino's, Chipotle, McDonald's, California Pizza Kitchen, Panda Express, Papa John's, Subway, PayPal, Klarna, Apple

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It's no secret that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump receives a ton of attention from the press.

But just how much is stunning, especially when compared to his campaign budget.

The New York Times' The Upshot compared the total amount of "bought" and "earned" media since the start of the campaign season for all of the major Democratic and Republican candidates.

Bought media encompassed political advertising while earned media encompassed "news and commentary about his campaign on television, in newspapers and magazines, and on social media," The Upshot wrote. The site used a media-tracking firm to estimate the value of Trump's "earned" coverage.

And the difference for Trump was staggering:

Earned media typically dwarfs bought media for presidential candidates — but nowhere near the level of Trump. With almost $2 billion of value estimated in earned media, Trump's total is more than double that of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner who had the second highest on The Upshot's list. Trump has received more than six times the estimated earned media value of the No. 2 Republican candidate on the list, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

And Trump has spent a fraction of the money his fellow combatants have paid for advertisements. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush spent more than eight times as much money on advertising as Trump — and he's been out of the race for nearly a month. Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich have all spent more money than Trump on ads. Even New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race in early February and has since endorsed Trump, has spent nearly twice what the GOP frontrunner has to date on bought media.

While much of the attention Trump has received has been far from positive, but, as Trump wrote in "The Art of the Deal," he's a strong believer that "good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells."

SEE ALSO: Anderson Cooper grills Donald Trump about the 'Trump Steaks' piled up at Trump's press conference

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NOW WATCH: The dudes feeding each other chips behind Trump at a rally explain why they did it

In the heyday of cold calling, prospecting was relatively simple. Pick up the phone, dial a random person, ramble off a list of product features and benefits, and score a new opportunity. Repeat as many times as necessary to fill your pipeline. 

But today, it's a little different. Thanks to caller ID technology, buyers can screen their calls, and make sure they never pick up a call from a salesperson. The internet provides all the information a buyer could possibly want during their initial research phase -- no salesperson required. And in light of these changes, filling the top of the funnel is a far more difficult task than in decades past.

Are you struggling to tailor your prospecting game to shifting buyer preferences? If so, you're not alone. Richardson's 2016 Selling Challenges Study, which surveyed more than 400 sales professionals, revealed the top three prospecting problems salespeople are grappling with today:

1. Identifying triggers/sales signals that indicate issues you can resolve
2. Identifying target accounts
3. Qualifying prospects

If you read last year's report, the top slot might seem familiar. "Identifying triggers" was also the leading prospecting challenge in 2015.

"Buyers are more informed about potential solutions and company services that can alleviate their business issues or spur growth," the report notes on this point. "They have much clearer ideas about what they want to purchase, making it difficult for sales professionals to identify sales signals that indicate issues that they can resolve."

As for how the top three challenges are linked to each other, the report's authors hypothesized a cause-and-effect relationship between these issues and evolving prospect communication preferences.

"Hundreds of emails, InMails, re-marketing messages, etc. are having a reverse effect than intended," the report states. "Buyers are shutting down inbound communications and relying more on their trusted networks for information. To get through, sales professionals must be skilled in conducting a valuable and valued needs dialogue with buyers when the opportunity arises." 

The study also probed into salespeople's challenges with negotiation and closing. The top challenges in these areas were gaining higher prices and competing against a low cost provider, respectively. To read the full results, download the study here.

What's your biggest challenge with prospecting today? How are you changing your prospecting practices to respond to the modern buyer? Share your thoughts in the comments.