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Content Upgrades are the New Gold Standard for Lead Capture written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The notion of getting someone to your website, landing page or content of some sort and enticing them to exchange their email address and other contact information to get something they are looking for is pretty much standard marketing fare these days.

The idea of bait for lead capture has certainly evolved, though. There was a time when all you needed was a lead capture form and message that asked people to sign up to capture an email, but then people got very tired of all the email this generated.

Smart marketers realized that they needed to offer something valuable in exchange – an ebook, webinar or free trial of some sort.

Even so visitors started getting harder to convert as more and more sites featured pop-up, slide in and scrolling calls to sign up and download.

Today, and who knows how long really, marketers have tapped the seemingly insatiable hunger for useful, actionable, educational content and are employing highly targeted “content upgrades” to effectively convert visiting traffic to lead funnels like never before.

The basic idea behind a content upgrade is this – Write a really great, useful blog post and then when people show up to read it offer them an “upgrade” to the content in the form of a checklist, video, or case study relevant to the topic in exchange for  content details.

Less content, more value

Brian Dean of Backlinko told me that when he discovered the power of the content upgrade he started producing content less frequently while focusing on creating posts so full of great content they couldn’t be ignored. He then married these posts with a content upgrade that ensured a large percentage of the traffic these posts received (sometimes from the thousands of shares and links from other sites) also turned into leads for his various SEO offerings. (Listen to Brian on a recent Duct Tape Marketing Podcast.)

In this post on Dean’s site Google’s 200 Ranking Factors: The Complete List you’ll find a link to download a handy checklist of the top factors. Dean claims that the addition of this checklist increased conversion on this post by 785%. Not too shabby.

I do think there’s a move towards less content, but better content and the content upgrade philosophy plays right into this. The days of writing wispy daily posts may be coming to an end – at least for highly competitive industries.

Precisely segmented visitors

Another important factor to the multi-variant content upgrade is that it helps you segment visitor interest.

Very few people are that interested in the generic ebook or report you wrote several years ago, but they are terribly interested in how to do that one specific thing they searched for – all the better that you now have the ability to know what they are looking for and tailor your response to that specific need.

Think about the implications for this when it comes to email marketing follow-up. You now have a much more focused idea about what your subscribers care most about and tailor your follow-up with this knowledge and even use it to create more complete products and courses based on this interest.

Better automation and follow-up

One of the drivers of this form of lead capture is better automation technology. The days of one size fits all pop-up boxes are over. My current favorite toolset Thrive Leads offers WordPress users what amounts to a Swiss Army Knife of various form creation options.

The Thrive Leads plugin allows you to create up to a dozen variations of inline forms, light boxes, welcome mats, and slide in two-step sign up forms. Every form can be executed on a single page or post, and every type of capture campaign can be tested against variations.

This type of powerful form creation coupled with lead nurturing campaigns using a tool like Infusionsoft makes the content upgrade an almost unfair competitive advantage.

Developing content upgrades

I wrote a post some time ago on something called Facebook Dark Posts. Google smiled on this post and shows it whenever someone goes out there searching for this trending topic.

If I happened to have a course or ebook on Facebook I could easily capture highly targeted leads by adding a content upgrade to that page.

One of the quickest ways to identify great candidates for immediate content upgrade opportunities is to look through your analytics and find your most popular content today and consider ways to personalize a content upgrade for these posts.

You can find your most popular pages in Google Analytics by going to Behavior –> Site Content –> Landing Pages

Another great ploy is to use a tool like BuzzSumo to identify some of the most shared content online based on the keyword phrases that relate to your business or ideal client.

My guess is you can easily identify a post that is getting tons of shares that you might be able to both up the game on and create a content upgrade for.

My guess is that in the example above for Backlinko Brian found a post for the top 100 factors and created the top 200 post that kicked that already great post in the rear – add a content upgrade and watch your list explode!

Landing page pioneer Lead Pages has long been a promoter of the simple content upgrade for conversion. Here’s a great post with 21 examples of content upgrades to get your mind humming. (Pay close attention to the content upgrade offer you’ll get on this page too.)

What’s a good upgrade?

You don’t have to overthink the package for a content upgrade. In many cases what you’re looking to do is simplify information not make it more complex. People want relevant snacks more than the full manual.

• One of the easiest content upgrades is a checklist based on a how to post. People like checklists and they are easy to create.
• Take a 100 factors kind of post and reveal the top 10 in detail in an upgrade. (Similar to Backlinko post above)
• Create a list of tools related to a particular type of advice – I could easily add the top 10 tools to use in creating content upgrades to this post on content upgrades
• Compile a list of links from around the web telling people how to do something based on the tool they use – set up lead nurturing in Infusionsoft, Act-On, Aweber, etc. – the best part is you don’t have to create all of the tutorials you just have to find them.
• Create or compile a swipe file – if you are telling people how to get influencers to write about their business, share exact scripts and emails they might use as an upgrade.
• Offer a screencast showing readers exactly how to do what you’ve written about in your post.
  Partner with a tool provider – write a post talking about how to do something and contact one or more provider of a tool for actually doing it and let people enter for a chance to get this tool for free.
• People love templates – if you write a post giving advice offer to share a template, completed example or form they can use to do what you’ve suggested.

I think it’s time to make content upgrades a big part of your content marketing and lead capture game plan.

Guest author Mehdi Daoudi is the CEO and cofounder of Catchpoint Systems.

Throughout 2015, tech-industry leaders have made a series of bold moves under the noble guise of preserving Web performance—the speed and reliability of Web pages—for end users. There's no doubt these companies ardently support creating the fastest, most reliable, and convenient digital experiences possible. 

But there are other motives at play, leading to fallout for several industries. So if you do any business on the Web, or via an app or mobile site, your revenues may be at risk.

Mobilegeddon Is Here

In April 2015, Google announced that a new mobile-search algorithm, dubbed “Mobilegeddon,” would begin penalizing sites not optimally designed for mobile use, resulting in lower site rankings in both mobile and desktop search results. 

In November, Google expanded this algorithm to penalize mobile sites featuring app-install interstitials that hide a significant amount of site content upon rendering. You've likely seen these come-ons that suggest you install an app rather than show you a mobile Web page.

It's not clear if we should consider these interstitials ads in the traditional sense. House ads, maybe. Ideally, better use of deep linking into apps would obviate the need for them. But whatever you call them, they can be aggravating for mobile users, and Google is justified in taking a stand against them. 

But by discouraging—or at the very least, increasing the risk factor for companies considering—interstitials, Google is actually erecting a barrier to what has been a common means of promoting apps. Lower app adoption would cause the perceived value of in-app advertising to decrease, and likely sway companies away from in-app advertising and back to the more traditional realm of online advertising—which is where Google makes most of its money.

The App Switch

Apple, on the other hand, has a vested interest in encouraging companies to switch from advertising on websites and mobile sites, to in-app advertising, a potential goldmine for Apple. In news that rocked the online advertising industry—particularly news sites, which depend heavily on advertising-driven revenues—Apple announced that iOS 9 would support ad-blocking capabilities on mobile websites in its Safari browser. 

Once again, Apple positioned this news in support of end-user experience. But it’s hard to ignore the obvious—that ad blocking is aimed at traditional websites and mobile sites, not in-app ads; that ad blocking is not possible on the just-announced Apple News (increasing the perception of the service as a “port in the storm” for performance-challenged news publishers); and that ad blocking hurts ad serving (Google’s bread and butter).

What’s really going on here? No one is saying that Google and Apple aren’t genuinely interested in creating the best possible online experiences. But the recent announcements are skirmishes in a bigger war for Internet dominance, with these behemoths and others trying to stifle each others’ business models, sway advertising trends in their own favor, and gain a bigger piece of the online advertising pie. The end-user experience argument is their Trojan Horse, and other companies, large or small, are unwilling pawns in their master plans.

This battle is mainly being played out in online news. Facebook recently entered the fray by announcing Facebook Instant News, a program that natively hosts publishers' content in the Facebook app news feed. In Facebook Instant News, articles can be downloaded in milliseconds, a vast improvement over the current industry average.

Facebook noted that publishing partners in Instant News would retain ownership over their online advertising revenue streams. But rumors are circulating that Facebook will eventually—directly or indirectly—tap into this revenue. 

For example, Facebook may have the option of charging the richest publishers for premier placement. And at a higher level, Instant News is just another sign of Facebook’s insatiable drive to be the online destination for everything. Furthermore, increasing eyeballs and time spent on Facebook would, of course, drive up the premium for Facebook ad space.

Enter Google again. In response to Facebook Instant News, Google and some partners announced AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) in October. AMP is an open-standards project designed to improve the mobile Web and enhance content distribution for publishers, while allowing these publishers to continue to host their own content and deliver compelling, effective ads. 

Not surprisingly, Twitter is a major partner in this endeavor, and it appears a viable alternative for news publishers who desperately want to improve performance, but don’t want to sell their souls to Facebook. Maybe Google is being “Mr. Nice Guy”—but maybe this was also a preemptive strike against Facebook, designed to lessen the appeal of Instant News and ultimately protect Google’s current position.

The Performance Free-For-All

Trying to make sense of all these moving parts, how they all fit together and what they all mean, is difficult. However, it’s clear is that the tech-industry titans are vying for control and trying to mold a version of the future Internet that’s most conducive to their individual businesses. 

This involves doing everything in their power to increase their share of the online advertising pie by generating more advertising-related revenues themselves, and in many cases, sucking the blood out of news sites, most of which are already dealing with declining profit margins.

Which behemoths will prove victorious in these battles? No one knows for sure, but we do know a fast end-user experience is their ultimate strategic weapon. They are using consumers’ and businesses’ increasing appetite for speed and convenience to undermine each other as much as possible. In the process, multiple industries are being forced to change, and some risk losing the game entirely. No one likes being forced into a position, but in this case, like it or not, stellar performance has advanced from being a must-have-to-win to a must-have-to-survive characteristic.

Photo by Steven Pisano

The annual CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas has long been a coming out party for emerging technologies. The VCR (1970). The camcorder and the CD (1981). The DVD (1996). Blu-Ray (2003). Not every new product showcased at CES is a winner, but taken together they present a unique window into what the future might look like in six months, or a year, or ten years.

During this year’s edition, which ran January 6–9, some of the exciting technologies on display raised the possibility of a changing landscape that could have a significant impact on the future of marketing. To help you get ready, we’re looking at notable product trends from CES and the opportunities (and potential challenges) they present to marketers. Take a look!

Customer data is becoming more body-focused, more detailed

Photo courtesy of The Verge

The products

• Levl: This device monitors how much fat you’re burning by measuring the amount of acetone in your breath, allowing you to responsively adjust your diet or exercise routine.
• Consumer Physics SCiO: This device can analyze how molecules in food interact with light, making it possible to get data on a meal’s calories, fat content, and more at a glance.
• Samsung Welt: This device looks like your run-of-the-mill leather belt, but it contains sensors that monitor your waistline, how long you sit each day, how many steps you take, and more.
• Digitsole SmartShoe: These connected shoes feature temperature controls, LED lighting, and a built-in fitness tracker that monitors calories burned, steps, and the distance you travel each day.
• Variowell Smart Bed: This bed connects with mobile devices and wearables and can responsively adjust its firmness to encourage better sleep.

The possibilities for marketers

Mobile’s ability to drive intimate, personalized customer experiences powered by seamless customer data collection has been a major boon to marketers, giving them a powerful new way to reach, engage, and retain customers. This year’s crop of wearable devices and powerful, touch-less sensors signal a move toward increasingly nuanced, granular data collection on customers’ health, activities, and more. While it remains to be seen if these products will catch on, widespread adoption could allow marketers to take advantage of the unprecedented data collection opportunities that these devices offer to power a deeper, more intimate level of message personalization.

Right now, finding out how much acetone you’re releasing in your breath or what the fat content is for that piece of cheese you’re about to eat would require lab work and significant expense. Once those barriers are gone, however, it’s possible to imagine a future where—for instance—a fitness app could automatically reach out to customers mid-workout when they’re not hitting their target fat-burning rate and provide guidance that will help them reach their goals.

The challenges for marketers

Even with today’s technology, marketers have to be thoughtful about how they collect data and customize messages in order to avoid creeping out their customers. A personalized message that’s relevant to a customer’s wants and needs and provides value is a message that your audience will respond to; if, on the other hand, you’re using intimate information in off-putting ways, you risk alienating your customer base.

Because so much of the data that these new devices are collecting is health-related, brands should tread lightly when making use of it. And while the information these devices collect isn’t current covered by HIPAA, its misuse could trigger calls for additional legislation, potentially limiting the usefulness of this data to marketers. Nothing is more intimate than someone’s body and health, and marketers will have to use this information sensitively and with an eye toward value to the customer for it to pay long-term dividends.

Emerging technologies promise new ways to reach customers

Photo courtesy of Engadget

The products

• SensorWake: This smart alarm clock releases concentrated smells—coffee, chocolate, fresh-baked croissants—that can reportedly wake up most sleepers within two minutes
• HTC Vive and Oculus Rift: These devices bring virtual reality into the home, providing consumers with an immersive, 360-degree audio/visual experience, and making it possible to travel the globe or explore imaginary worlds from the safety of your couch.
• Immersit: A piece of smart furniture built to mimic motion seen onscreen in TV shows, movies, games, and more, adding touch and movement to your media consumption.

The possibilities for marketers

Today, marketing outreach leverages humans’ ability to see, hear, and feel to communicate effectively with customers. Phones shake and buzz to let you know that you’re receiving a push notification. Rich in-app messages fill your tablet’s screen to show you a new product and explain its value. That’s not going to stop being important, but some of the products on display at CES highlight emerging communication methods that could expand the ways marketers use sight, sound, motion, and possibly even smells, to reach their customers.

Virtual reality and complementary devices like the Immersit have the potential to create a fully immersive digital world that function like something out of science fiction. If these technologies catch on, marketers will find themselves with a whole new medium with which to reach their audience—though what customer outreach will look like in a totally virtual world is an open question. In any case, finding innovative ways to take advantage of this unique blend of audio, 3D visuals, and responsive motion to engage your customers may well be the next big marketing opportunity.

While the marketing possibilities suggested by a smell-focused alarm clock may seem less significant at first glance, smell is an untapped communication medium that could potentially be very useful in an increasingly overwhelming, distraction-filled world. Imagine how powerful it could be for a brand to let customers know a bakery is nearby not with a push notification, but with the smell of fresh chocolate chip cookies.

The challenges for marketers

As with any new communications medium, figuring out how make use of it effectively to reach your audience will be a trial and error process. Customers may not warm to the new technology, driving down adoption and making it a less valuable channel. The companies pushing the technology may limit or even block marketers’ ability to use it in their outreach. And even if neither of those scenarios come to pass, it’ll probably take a few tries to figure out what an effective virtual reality or smell-based messaging campaign should look like.

Smart devices are expanding the mobile experience in new directions

Photo courtesy of Engadget

The products

• LG rollable display: This paper-thin visual display is deeply flexible and can be rolled up like a newspaper without sustaining damage.
• Loop Personal Display: This digital picture frame can connect with online photo/video services and accounts via wi-fi, allowing your personal photos and video to stream wherever you go.
• 4Moms Infant Car Seat: This self-adjusting smart device is designed to ensure a safe fit in your car and includes digital screens and speakers that talk parents through the installation process.

The possibilities for marketers

Right now, our idea of mobile is tied to smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices. You can receive messages and content wherever you are, but only if you have your phone or other device with you. But these new products point the way to a different future, one where we’re so surrounded by connected devices that the experiences we currently associate with mobile devices can be supported by whatever Internet-enabled objects happen to be nearby.

That rollable display from LG makes it possible to imagine magazines and newspapers adopting it for the physicality we enjoy today, but one married to the digital reach and power of a tablet. The 4Moms car seat and other self-installing, self-regulating smart devices suggest the potential for products that interact with the customer directly, removing the need to look up instructions on mobile devices and creating new venues for brand outreach. And wired devices like the Loop picture frame speak to the possibility of a digital presence that follows you from place to place, populating your surroundings with chosen songs, favorite pictures, and blurring the lines between the physical and digital worlds.

As more devices connect in meaningful ways, it creates new opportunities for marketers to engage customers and to communicate with those who were previously out of reach. Today, if someone forgets to charge their smartphone or leaves it at home, they may not see the urgent push notification you send them until after it’s no longer relevant. But once it’s possible for them to receive that notification on their alarm clock or toaster or on the screen built into their table at a restaurant, a whole world of marketing possibilities opens up. Similarly, when installing an air-conditioner involves a conversation with the device, instead of reading instructions or looking up how to do it on a phone, the lessons that mobile marketers have learned about effective onboarding and customer retention could be applicable to a vast number of products beyond traditional mobile devices.

The challenges for marketers

The rise of mobile has led to significant privacy concerns and worries about digital overload. The intimacy and ever-present nature of mobile devices is an essential part of their value to consumers and brands, but also makes it easy for marketers to alienate their audience by sending messages that are irrelevant, inappropriate, or too frequent. And these same concerns will be even more of an issue in a fully wired world.

Someone who is annoyed by brands that send them multiple push notifications per day is unlikely to respond more positively if those messages reach them on a bunch of different objects. And brands that currently struggle to coordinate the data they collect on customers across different mobile devices will be in for an even more complex challenge in a world where every new device could be tracking customer behavior.

The good news is that this fully-connected world is still a ways off. And while there will undoubtedly be major new challenges to surmount, many of the principles of successful marketing through these emerging technologies will likely look a lot like the ones governing mobile success: thoughtful planning, speedy iteration, and regular testing.

The gist

It’s impossible to see the future with complete accuracy. But it’s still essential to plan for it.

The products on display at this year’s CES suggest that we’re moving swiftly toward a more connected, more data-driven future for marketers. A future marked by vast new opportunities for personalization, data-collection, and audience outreach, but also by new ways of creeping out, overwhelming, or otherwise alienating customers.

Being prepared for the coming marketing landscape may well mean figuring out how to convey your brand identity via smell, but it’s also going to require a new sensitivity toward customer comfort levels. These emerging technologies will only provide value to your brand if your customers are willing to use them to engage with you.

DALLAS (AP) — The price of oil keeps falling. And falling. And falling. It has to stop somewhere, right?

Even after trending down for a year and a half, U.S. crude has fallen another 17 percent since the start of the year and is now probing depths not seen since 2003.

"All you can do is forecast direction, and the direction of price is still down," says Larry Goldstein of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, who predicted a decline in oil in 2014.

On Tuesday the price fell another 3 percent to $30.44 a barrel, its lowest level in 12 years. Oil had sold for roughly $100 a barrel for nearly four years before beginning to fall in the summer of 2014.

Many now say oil could drop into the $20 range.

The price of crude is down because global supplies are high at a time when demand for it is not growing very fast. The price decline, already more dramatic and long-lasting than most expected, deepened in recent days because economic turmoil in China is expected to cut the growth in demand for oil further.

Lower crude prices are leading to lower prices for gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and heating oil, giving drivers, shippers, and many businesses a big break on fuel costs. The national average retail price of gasoline is $1.96 a gallon.

On Tuesday the Energy Department lowered its expectations for crude oil and most fuels for this year and next. The department now expects U.S. crude to average $38.54 a barrel in 2016.

But layoffs across the oil industry are mounting, and oil company bankruptcies are expected to soar. BP announced layoffs of 4,000 workers on Tuesday. Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co, says as many as half of the independent drilling companies working in U.S. shale fields could go bankrupt before oil prices stabilize.

THERE'S LOTS OF OIL

A boom in U.S. oil production thanks to new drilling technology helped push global supplies higher in recent years. Other major oil producers and exporters in the Middle East and elsewhere have declined to reduce their own output in an attempt to push prices back up. Iran, trying to emerge from punishing economic sanctions, is looking to increase exports in the coming months, which could add further to global oil stockpiles.

The Energy Department said U.S. crude oil inventories "remain near levels not seen for this time of year in at least the last 80 years." It says global supplies exceed global demand by about 1 million barrels per day on average. Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas believe excess inventories won't begin falling until 2017.

The higher supplies and lower prices haven't stimulated a sharp rise in demand. Most of the increase in world oil demand over the past several years has come from China, but signs are pointing to much slower economic growth there, which in turn reduces demand for fuels made from crude.

Disappointing reports last week about China's manufacturing sector and a fall in the yuan's value triggered a global stock sell-off and an even more dramatic decline in the price of oil and other commodities.

The first five days of the year marked the worst start of a year for oil in history, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices, and oil has only fallen further since.

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Motorists are saving every time they fill up. The Energy Information Administration figures that the average U.S. household saved $660 on gasoline in 2015 compared the year before, and gasoline is expected to fall another 16 percent in 2016. Tuesday the EIA forecast that gasoline will average $2.03 a gallon for 2016, the lowest since 2004, from $2.43 last year.

Airlines, big users of jet fuel, have posted record profits, and shippers and other businesses are also saving from cheaper energy.

But workers in the oil patch have paid the price. About 17,000 oil and gas workers in the U.S. lost their jobs in 2015, but if you include oilfield support jobs the number is about 87,000, according to Michael Plante, an economist at the Dallas Fed who has written about the effect of oil prices on the economy.

Even so, economists say low oil prices are still a net benefit for the U.S. economy.

"Consumers have more money in their pocketbooks," says Amy Myers Jaffe, an energy consultant who teaches at the University of California, Davis. And for businesses, "I can hire more people or buy new equipment because I no longer have to spend that money on energy."

WHEN DOES IT END?

Oil traders and Wall Street analysts expect further declines in oil prices in the coming weeks. Several have predicted that prices will fall below $30 a barrel and even approach $20 a barrel.

But prices are expected to rise sooner or later. Tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran has increased in recent weeks, and Middle East turmoil often causes prices to rise because traders worry about a potential disruption in supplies in the world's most important oil region.

And just as $100 oil encouraged the new production that contributed to this plunge in prices, $30 oil is discouraging the big investment needed for exploration and production for the future. The number of rigs drilling for oil in the U.S. has fallen by more than two-thirds, to 516 last week from an October 2014 peak of 1,609, according to a closely-watched count by the drilling services company Baker Hughes.

Eventually, analysts say, the supply will fall below demand and prices will rise. Oppenheimer's Gheit thinks oil will eventually rise and settle into a range between $50 and $70 a barrel — but not anytime soon.

"The longer it remains low, the more violent the reaction to the upside is going to be," he says.

Join the conversation about this story »

Over 90% of seafood eaten in the US isn't grown here; it's imported.

And more than half of it wasn't caught in the wild, but farmed, either in ocean pens or on land.

The problem with importing farmed fish is that American consumers can't control the working practices in these fisheries, or how sustainable they are.

Fish farming, a.k.a. aquaculture, can be a disaster if it's not done right. When conducted in a portioned off part of the ocean without proper regulations, aquaculture can release pesticides, antibiotics, and escaped fish into the wild that can negatively alter the natural ecosystem, according the the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

But most of the seafood we eat in the future will likely be farmed since it has the potential to be much more sustainable than overfishing the oceans to supply a growing demand. A World Resources Institute report predicted that aquaculture production will have to double globally by 2050 in order to feed the 9 billion people on the planet by then.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hopes to make more seafood American-grown, especially since aquaculture regulations are much more stringent and sustainable here.

On Monday, the agency announced it would start granting permits for fish farming in the federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico — an area stretching 4.4 million square miles.

Up to 20 fish farms could get the 10-year permits, producing 64 million pounds of fish annually, the Associated Press reported. This could bolster the US aquaculture industry, which produced 662 million pounds of seafood in 2013, at a value of $1.4 billion.

And it will be good for the ocean, too. The US has much stricter standards for fish farming than many of the countries we now import aquaculture from, like China and Thailand, which means we will have a better grasp on what is in our fish and how responsibly it had been produced.

Michael Rubino, director of the NOAA Fisheries Office of Aquaculture, said in a Q&A that he's visited salmon farmers in Maine, and was impressed with how responsible their practices were.

"Their locations are properly sited in terms of water quality, their feeds are efficient in that they don’t sink to the bottom, they vaccinate the fish instead of using antibiotics, they’ve had few if any escapes in recent years, and they even fallow between crops like land-based farmers to allow the bottom to recuperate," he said.

The US can produce truly sustainable seafood, and responsible aquaculture will inevitably have to feed the planet. This move from NOAA is a big step toward getting most of the fish Americans eat from our own fisheries, where we can make sure it's farmed right.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Dozens of whales have mysteriously washed up on the shores of India

Despite its continuing popularity, mergers and acquisition (M&A) has a terrible track record. Reviews find that the chance of an acquisition increasing shareholder value is no better than a flip of the coin.
A solid brand architecture plan can greatly improve these odds. The better defined the brand architecture strategy, the more likely a company will be to keep brand top of mind during the deal, value an acquisition appropriately, and have an effective plan in place to leverage the new brand assets.

Early, continued, and focused consideration of brand during the deal can go a long way toward making sure that you create value rather than destroy it when acquiring other brands. The havoc that brand acquisitions wreak—and how to avoid it.

Why focus on brand architecture? Three brand-related factors create M&A problems that cannot be ignored.

1. Brands are often a big part of shareholder value. Brand contribution varies from business to business but can be over 50 percent in the case of marketing heavyweights like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Disney.
2. Brands are difficult to value. We’ve all heard the adage about not being able to manage what you can’t measure. Well, brand value is very difficult to measure, so it’s likely to get less attention than tangible assets without some structured intervention.
3. Brand value is driven by who owns the brand and what they do with it. Once a brand is acquired, its value will rise or fall depending on how the acquiring company manages it. The acquiring company could do a lot better. It could do worse. It may find opportunities to launch better products, provide better service, or enhance the customer experience. Conversely, it could decide to discontinue the brand and throw away all its equity. A brand architecture plan keeps brand front and center during the acquisition process and provides the evaluative framework that helps assess the potential value of an acquired brand. How will the acquired brand fit in your portfolio? What will its role be? How will it be positioned in relation to your other brands? And how will you add brand value?

The Brand Architecture Perspective
The challenges of building value from acquired brands depend on the brand architecture you already have in place. If you have a portfolio of product brands, a new one can be slotted into it fairly easily. But if you go to market under one company brand, acquisitions can be much more difficult to manage.

House Of Brands
At one end of the brand architecture spectrum are the “house of brands” companies. Procter & Gamble is the exemplar of this type, with many, many product brands independent of each other, targeting different customers across multiple product categories from pet food to toothpaste. There’s Ariel, Crest, Duracell, Head & Shoulders, and Pringles. And that’s just five of its billion-dollar brands; P&G has 23 in all.

From a structural perspective, the house of brands architecture is the most accommodating for acquisitions. Product brands can be slotted into position in the portfolio alongside the brands already there. P&G itself has successfully absorbed a steady diet of new brands, building up its pet food business by acquiring Iams and Natura Pet Products and its personal care business with the acquisition of Gillette.

The challenge for a house of brands company is to manage and control the overall number of brands in the portfolio. At some point, the costs of managing a complex portfolio start to outweigh the benefits that each single brand can deliver. That’s why P&G, Unilever, and other packaged-goods companies have been aggressively divesting or even shutting down brands over the past few years. They’ve realized that focusing on fewer, more powerful brands is more effective.

Operationally, the question is whether the acquiring company can provide new opportunities for a brand to flourish. In the case of P&G, acquired brands are joining the preeminent consumer packaged goods marketer, with all the value-added opportunities that entails. The acquired brands benefit not only from P&G’s marketing expertise, but also from increased distribution (both domestically and overseas), state-of-the-art R&D, and sales and marketing efficiencies (such as participation in P&G’s BrandSaver coupon program).

The ultimate test of whether P&G’s shareholder value increases following an acquisition depends on what P&G pays for it. It’s certainly possible for P&G to overpay for an acquisition but it starts from a favorable position. The chances are high that it’s going to be able to add value over and above what the previous owner was able to deliver and over and above what other bidders might be able to generate as well. Brands that fit into the P&G portfolio are likely to deliver more in that environment than almost anywhere else.

But you don’t have to be the size of P&G to find brand value through acquisition. Diamond Foods, a fast-growing company based in San Francisco, recently made a number of strategic acquisitions including Pop Secret and Kettle Foods. Diamond has taken advantage of the existing distribution and retail partnerships of these acquisitions to extend the reach of Emerald Nuts and other brands already in its portfolio.

All this is not to say that acquisitions are always smooth sailing for house of brands companies. There may be challenges related to knowledge transfer, lost expertise, or product overlap, for example. And smaller companies acquiring brands from a larger firm’s divestiture may have less infrastructure in sales, marketing, and R&D to support the acquired property, which can erode brand value.

Branded House
At the other end of the brand architecture spectrum are “branded house” companies. These use a single master brand to cover a portfolio of products and services that can be bundled in different configurations to serve different needs. Accenture and UPS typify this model.

Branded houses are inherently hostile toward acquired brands, tending to fold them under the master brand umbrella. The cost of the acquired brand may even be a total loss—not an ideal basis for generating shareholder returns. But with thoughtful and deliberate action, at least some if not all of an acquired brand’s equity can be transferred to the new owner.

Equity transfer is more than just wishful thinking. Customers value brands based on their experiences with a company over time. If the company brand changes but the salespeople, the experience, and the products and services remain the same, customers are far more likely to accept a new brand. You’d like them to believe it’s nothing more than a name change, meaning that equity has been successfully transferred.

To make this a reality, branded house companies need a transition strategy. The sales and customer service teams, your frontline troops, must be fully prepped and able to reassure customers that products and service will be maintained (or, even better, improved). The marketing team, meanwhile, handles the transition from a communications perspective so that customers aren’t confused or left in the dark about the brand change.

AECOM, which provides technical services for large-scale infrastructure projects, had until recently gone to market as 21 different operating companies worldwide, most of them acquisitions with reputation in specific disciplines. But as the market expanded and demand increased, AECOM needed a more unified approach to take advantage of global opportunities. Based on a new, compelling brand positioning, AECOM was able to consolidate all 21 brands and establish itself as a global leader in its industry.

Especially in B2B businesses with well-managed customer relationships, a brand’s transition can be accomplished quickly. But if the equity of an acquired brand is high, the acquiring company has no reputation in the business space, or some other risk is identified, a slower transition is advisable. This builds trust and gives customers confidence that the new owners will manage the business at least as well as the previous ones did.

Branded house companies do have one advantage in M&A: The cost-reducing and benefit-building opportunities of an acquisition are easier in a single-branded entity. Whereas a house of brands will need separate management for each business, a branded house will be able to consolidate. Often, it will use the acquired products and services to enhance existing business, an efficient and value-building approach. If branded house companies can mitigate their inherent structural disadvantages and recognize cost-saving and benefit-building opportunities available, they are still well positioned to increase shareholder value.

The Fuzzier Middle
Most brand architectures fall somewhere between the two ends of the spectrum. Nestlé endorses most of its products with its company brand. Marriott uses its company name as the lead brand on some of its hotels, places it in an endorsement position on others (Courtyard by Marriott), and omits it entirely on its luxury properties (Ritz-Carlton).

This naturally complicates acquisitions. Companies at either end of the brand architecture spectrum are clear about how they will treat an acquired brand. Companies in the middle of the spectrum must make a decision. Should the acquired brand be eliminated? Kept? Endorsed?

Tata, the fast-growing Indian business group, is a prime example of just how complicated things can get. Tata group has more than 90 operating companies in seven business sectors: communications and information technology, engineering, materials, services, energy, consumer products, and chemicals. For each of its businesses, it must decide how closely to associate the Tata brand with the products or services. In its Jaguar/Land Rover acquisition, there is minimal Tata endorsement. In its Tetley acquisition, the name changed to Tata Global Beverages, though the tea bags are still called Tetley to retain the equity there. In the hotel sector, where Taj is well established, Tata’s acquisitions get as much Taj as possible—Taj Boston (formerly a Ritz-Carlton), Taj Campton Place—with a few exceptions like The Pierre (a Taj Hotel) with specific existing equity.

Companies that develop a systematic approach and a well-articulated brand architecture strategy will find it easier to decide what to do with an acquired brand. Without such a strategy, they are likely to base decisions on a limited perspective or a single variable (such as the brand equity valuation). They may end up with a house of brands strategy by default because they never considered the advantages of consolidation. Or they may waste valuable time trying to determine how to treat an acquisition.

Tips For M&A success
What makes M&A so often a “win the battle, lose the war” situation is that brand, a large and volatile component of a company’s overall value, is not kept front and center during the deal process. Here are three tips to raise its profile.

1. Develop a robust, well-articulated brand architecture strategy. A brand architecture strategy is not a cure-all that will guarantee added shareholder value, but it can definitely help. A clear strategy means everyone will know how to treat an acquisition, so its value is less likely to be squandered.
2. Value brands based on their worth to you. Make sure that your acquisition offer reflects the brand’s value in light of how you will use it. What opportunities do you have to build brand value? How can you increase benefits or reduce costs?
3. Plan, plan, plan. Have a transition plan ready to implement as soon as the deal closes. The speed, efficiency, and effectiveness of brand integration are critical: You don’t want acquired brands to be in limbo, wasting time, money, and effort. To get your new brands adding value quickly requires a clear, step-by-step plan of action for everyone involved.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Architecture Workshop

Don’t Face Your Marketing Challenges Alone. Join us for The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World, May 2-4, 2016 in San Diego, California. A fun, competitive-learning experience reserved for 50 marketing oriented leaders and professionals.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

How do you measure up when it comes to measuring the impact and value of the content you are publishing?

Chances are you are using Google Analytics to analyze your content marketing performance – and that is a great start. But Google Analytics is a robust, yet complex tool that offers plenty of insights beyond the basic site-visitor metrics that most marketers are tracking.

Consider this: CMI’s latest B2B Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends report found that only 30% of B2B marketers feel their organization is effective or very effective in its use of content marketing. And 34% don’t even have clarity on what success looks like.

With 52% of marketers also reporting that they feel challenged by the need to determine the ROI of a content marketing program, any data left on the table is a missed opportunity to understand how your content is affecting your audience – and your business’ bottom line.

If you aren’t familiar with, or aren’t actively tracking, data like what Orbit Media co-founder Andy Crestodina has outlined in our new e-book: How to Apply Analytics Data to Make Better Content Marketing Decisions, you could be overlooking the critical insights you need to optimize your content for greater success.

How to turn data into decisions

In his top-rated presentation on applied analytics at Content Marketing World 2015, Andy asserts that the best way to use analytics is as a decision-support tool – a way of answering your key questions about what’s working, how well it’s working, and what actions you should take as a result. To do this, he uses this simple, five-step process:

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.@crestodina says that the best way to use #analytics is as a decision-support tool via @cmicontent
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1. Formulate an idea about your content performance.
2. Determine a question you can ask to support this idea.
3. Create the report that will provide the appropriate data to answer that question.
4. Take action based on your analysis of that data.
5. Measure the results of the actions you take against the baseline data you initially gathered.

4 reports to rule them all

When using Google Analytics as your data source for this process, there are four categories of reports you can view – each one is the key to understanding certain insights that impact the performance of the content marketing on your website:

1. Audience reports: Understand who your audience members are, what their content interests are, and how they interact with the content you publish.

2. Acquisition reports: Glean insights on the search terms visitors are using to discover your content, and the specific sources of your traffic.

3. Behavior reports: Evaluate the actions of your site visitors, uncover ways to improve their user experience, and optimize the engagement potential of your content.

4. Conversion reports: Determine if your content is helping your business achieve its marketing goals, and discover which content efforts are achieving the best results.

Take a look at just a few of the questions these four reports can answer, along with some tips that Andy offers for analyzing and applying their insights:

Performance by platform

Question: Are mobile visitors less engaged than visitors on other platforms?

Report to generate: Mobile Overview (Audience >> Mobile >> Overview)

The Mobile Overview report shows the number of sessions (visits) from a mobile device. By clicking on the Comparison View button in the options selector, you can clearly see how mobile visitor sessions compare to other platforms in terms of the engagement metric you prefer – such as bounce rates, pages per session, or average session duration.

Click to enlarge

Sample analysis: If your bounce rates are extremely high among your mobile users, it could mean you need to better optimize your site’s user experience on mobile.

Suggested actions:

• Create a schedule for regular mobile testing.
• Check the design of your website landing pages to see if they are optimized for mobile visitors.

Social media traffic

Question: Which social network drives the best traffic to our site?

Report to generate: Channel reports (Acquisition >> All Traffic >> Channels, filtered by goal)

When considering traffic from your social networks, the “best” channels are those that convert visitors at a higher rate. You need to view the data that relates to the specific conversion goals. As you can see in the sample report below, LinkedIn had the highest conversion rate of the four most popular social channels.

Click to enlarge

Sample analysis: Once you set up your conversion goal in Google Analytics – subscribing to your newsletter, downloading an e-book, completing a lead-gen form, etc. – this report provides data on how successful your content is at meeting that goal.

Suggested action:

• Adjust your content resources to place a greater focus on creating content for the social channels converting at the highest rates.

Blog post engagement

Question: Which of our blog posts are the most engaging to visitors?

Report to generate: All Pages Report (Behavior >> Site Content >> All Pages)

If your site page URLs are categorized by content type (e.g., if the word “blog” appears in the URL of every blog post), you can use the search filter on the All Pages report to view only the data related to your blog posts. Then, click on Comparison View to see relative engagement data for your blog posts.

Click to enlarge

Suggested actions:

• Use high relative engagement to discover the topics that visitors find most engaging – indicating that you should create more content on those topics.
• Link from high-traffic posts to high-converting posts.

Go forth and analyze

Remember: Tracking and analyzing your performance data is not a one-time task. You need to revisit these reports on a regular basis to ensure that the actions you take are producing positive results and are accounting for any new trends and tactics that may impact your content’s performance.

For a more detailed explanation on analyzing and applying the insights found in these reports – as well as the additional performance questions Andy addresses, in each of the four categories – download the complete e-book, How to Apply Analytics Data to Make Better Content Marketing Decisions.

Want to stay updated on the latest analysis trends and CMI e-book releases? Subscribe to CMI’s blog posts.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Please note:  All tools included in our blog posts are suggested by authors, not the CMI editorial team.  No one post can provide all relevant tools in the space. Feel free to include additional tools in the comments (from your company or ones that you have used).

The post How to Uncover Critical Content Marketing Insights Using Google Analytics appeared first on Content Marketing Institute.

In a period where brick and mortar college courses are often increasingly difficult for students to manage in tandem with busy lives and schedules, online courses are starting to make a lot more sense in terms of value for money. More and more students are choosing to opt for online courses, due to the fact that they are always available and can be scheduled at convenient times.

World Education has been a visionary in the field of online education and job training since the early 1990’s.…

This is a guest contribution from Alex Ivanovs.

Links remain as one of the most important assets for building a Google search presence. Many know that the Google Panda algorithm update was a tipping point for recognizing authoritative sites.

Having a page of your website at the top of the search result page can have a significant increase in CTR (Click-Trough Rate), and a recent study shows the difference between the first position (CTR: 31.2%) and second (CTR: 14%) is 17.2% — that’s twice as much organic traffic for first position than it is for second, and the only way to keep climbing to the top result is by being persistent with building quality links.

We live in a time where content marketing is being recognized as superior towards organic link building, but new bloggers can quickly become overwhelmed with the idea of having to spend countless hours building high-quality content; without the assurance that it is going to perform well. It can also take a long time to see results from organic traffic resulting from organic search results. In order to get a foothold in what is already a saturated market, it can be beneficial to work harder to rank higher in the early days, rather than relying solely on the “great content” method.

To tell you the truth, I haven’t spent nearly as much time building links as I have optimizing my content and making sure that it gets in front of the right people. The way I see it, all you need is a dozen good posts and the determination to work with these posts consistently to ensure that they’re the most evergreen, most up-to-date posts available at any given time.

Here are my top three tactics for utilizing existing content to build high-quality links.

#1: Repurpose Your Existing Content

Repurposing means recycling your existing content into new formats that can further enhance the the learning experience. The idea that we have to write fresh content 100% of the time is ludicrous – if that was the case then only a handful of writers and bloggers would be able to keep up with such a way of producing content. It’s not efficient, and nor is it totally necessary.

Anyone with a few posts on their blog already has all they need to repurpose their content. The following are some of the most notable ways of repurposing your existing content:

• Slides — Any blog post, presentation or research paper can be repurposed into a unique PowerPoint slideshow that you can upload to SlideShare and expose to its vast audience.
• Podcasts — Jeff Bullas has been repurposing his content into podcasts for years, at the end of each published post, he submits a recorded audio file (podcast) of the content he has written. You may also want to explore the option of starting your own podcast; listen to ProBlogger’s podcast for tips and inspiration!
• Infographics — Infographics are informative, concise, visually appealing, and often more convenient to consume than text content. With a little thought and creativity, you could convert any blog post into an infographic, and you don’t need to be a designer either, tools for creating infographics on the fly are plentiful.
• eBooks — Interviews and series posts are some of the best types of content to repurpose into an eBook, which you can then either sell, give away for free, or use to generate email subscribers.
• Images — Quotes, insightful statements, and data presentation are some of the aspects from a blog post that can be turned into an image. It’s very often that other bloggers and media sites look for specific visual content that reflects useful data.
• Videos — Webinars, podcasts, and even blog posts can be repurposed into video tutorials and guidance videos. Derek Halpern was able to build a huge following to his blog Social Triggers thanks to being dedicated to creating video content on YouTube.
• Q&A Sites — James Altucher has over 3 million views on his Quora answers in the last 30 days. That’s an astonishing number, and huge potential for building new followers to himself, and his blog. Q&A sites are an incredibly potent way to repurpose your content into concise answers and tips, and Quora is known to be very forgiving towards links and self-promotion.

Now that you look at it, that’s seven different ways that we can repurpose a single piece of content into a different format, yet keep its flavor and usefulness. And we can do this for all of or blog posts, articles, guides, research papers, all of them. The more invested we are in repurposing our content, the more likely it is to come across bloggers, journalists and people who will happily give back by sharing, promoting and ultimately; linking back.

#2: Talk About Your Content

Have any of your posts in the recent few months performed above average? Have any of your posts attracted a higher number of organic visitors than usually? What about the number of comments? This is called popular and/or trending content. You have created something that answers peoples questions, and curiosity.

Sadly most bloggers leave their most popular content as it is, the idea of it performing well is satisfactory enough that they don’t consider exposing this content to more eyes in order to attract discussion and eventually links.

Updating old content with fresh ideas and perspectives has long been known as a reliable technique for attracting new readers, but one thing people look forward the most in a piece of content is the ability to be challenged into an action that can spur meaningful results.

As we update our old content, we can use the number of repurposing techniques that we have already discussed, putting emphasis on adding insightful quotes, images, and other visual data; which makes for a more appealing reading experience, and an increased chance of having your content shared on social media.

We can talk about our content by promoting it on our own blog, whether by using ‘Sticky Post’ features, or by linking to it from our sidebar, we are in charge of what we want our readers to know about.

Once you have identified a popular post, updated it with new data and imagery, it’s time to syndicate it with some of the most popular communities on the web:

• Medium — Medium is a blogging platform that syncs with your Twitter followers. Anyone who is on Medium and is also your Twitter follower will be notified by any new posts you publish with Medium. This is a great way to talk about the ideas that you are discussing in your original content and lead new readers towards it.
• Inbound — Inbound is an online marketing community that focuses on sharing links marketing, growth, and research. The leading online marketing experts hang out at this community, so highly valuable and insightful content is bound to be recognized and rewarded.
• Growth Hackers — Growth Hackers is a community of online marketers who focus on using creativity and data to grow their ideas. Sharing a unique technique for generating growth can potentially earn you dozens of high quality links.
• Reddit — Reddit is a well-known link sharing community that’s divided into thousands of unique sub-forums. Everyone must follow etiquette, which makes sharing your own content more difficult, but it shouldn’t be a problem if you’re sharing occasionally and sharing high-quality material.
• BizSugar — BizSugar is for small business bloggers who want to expose themselves to an audience that consists of bloggers, entrepreneurs and small business owners. I have personally had great success with sharing content on BizSugar, and it’s a great way to connect with other dedicated bloggers.

As we continue to see an increase in the number of bloggers who wish to succeed, it’s more and more important to understand that in order to succeed with being recognized on these link submission sites, you have to take great care of your content and aim for providing value that will be hard to match by anyone else.

Personal stories, data driven research, unique ideas, and new approaches are all great post types that will without question generate comments and attraction to your content. If 9 out of 10 submissions didn’t get more than two comments, you’re definitely doing something wrong. It’s that easy to recognize.

#3: Relevant Email Outreach

More than a dozen resources have been mentioned in this insightful post, to think that I would not reach out to everyone mentioned, is to think that there’s no value in email outreach, and of course there is. Email outreach remains as one of the most direct ways of building relationships, attracting social shares, and if you’re lucky — snagging yourself some great links.

Email marketing is also the only marketing method that can outperform social and search. Yet email outreach has been around for decades, and it’s the oldest known outreach method for job applicants, marketers, PR, business people, and the list goes on and on.

Neil Patel had this to say about building links with email marketing:

For every 100 emails you send out, at least five of them should be linking back to you. If you can’t get five of them to link back, it means you are doing one of the following things wrong:

You are emailing non-relevant sites.
You are emailing your competitors.
There is little to no substance to your website.
Your email copy isn’t compelling enough.

The most common mistake I see with email outreach these days is bloggers following a pre-built email template that has been ‘proven’ to be effective, when in fact that very template has been overused at least a thousand times, and there is only so many same emails a person can receive before he chooses to ignore them altogether.

A Good Email Outreach Template

Hi [name],

Greetings from this side of the World! A recent guest column of mine — tactics for building links — has just been published on ProBlogger, and as you might imagine I am reaching out to you because I wanted to make sure that you’re credited for helping me to make the post possible.

Your resource on [which resource to credit for] was invaluable in making the post happen. I would appreciate if you could give the post a quick overview and maybe throw in a seal of approval?

Please let me know if there’s anything you would like to add to the story.

Kind regards,
Alex

Sincerity, honesty, and straightforwardness is essential to capturing both attention and curiosity about what you want to share, and whenever we’re talking about giving someone props for the work they’ve done, the least they can do is see what you’re talking about.

A Bad Email Outreach Template

Greetings [name],

I noticed your blog today and one of your posts was really informative! I agree that [blah blah] is important. I am also blogging about [the topic he is blogging about], and we have so many similar ideas.

I was writing a blog post today and decided that one of your articles was great enough to link as a resource in my own post. You can see my post [here]. Do you think you could also link to one of my posts, or maybe send a social share?

It would help me to grow my blog, and I would be so grateful!

I know you must be busy and probably get a millions emails per day, but I hope you can help me out.

Thanks,
Alex

The tone, the writing style, the implication — it should be clear that this email is lacking professionalism, and is aimed purely at gaining personal value, almost in a ‘begging’ like mindset. The less professional we are with ourselves, the less professional we are going to be with others.

How are you going to use these tactics to build additional links for your blog? How will you repurpose your first piece of content?

Alex Ivanovs is a passionate writer who works in the field of technology, personal growth, and blogging. You can find his other work on SkillCode, and you can follow him on Twitter: @skillcode.

The post 3 Tactics for Building Quality Links to Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger.

It’s a brand new year, which for many of us means brand new marketing initiatives.

Is interactive content one of the new tools you’re adding for 2016?

If not, it probably should be. Buyers are looking for more engaging, helpful content – and interactive content is some of the most helpful there is.

Consider incorporating one of the following 5 content types into your marketing mix this year. You’ll see improved lead conversion, faster lead qualification, and better profile data to fuel all your marketing programs.

1. Personality Quiz

A personality quiz, also called an assessment, is an interactive questionnaire structured to match people with specific personalities, patterns, or identities based on their responses.

Assessments are appealing because they give users the chance to learn more about ourselves and explain ourselves to others. There’s something powerful about a quiz that confirms something we already know about ourselves – but gives us a way to share that with others.

Quizzes also work because buyers are looking for answers. The modern B2B buyer invests in a huge amount of research during the purchase process. Acquity Group found that 94 percent of B2B buyers report that they conduct some form of online research before purchasing a business product, and 55 percent of B2B buyers conduct online research for at least half of their corporate purchases.

With an assessment, a marketer can guide that researching prospect toward the right answer for them, streamlining the research process.

2. Interactive White Paper

You’re probably planning to produce some long-form written content in 2016 – and you are probably planning for it to be a significant investment in time and resources.

Why not make the most of that investment by turning your long-form content interactive?

An interactive white paper is a dialogue, whereas static long-form content is a monologue. Adding interactivity takes your traditional content and transforms it into a two-way conversation.

Begin with your existing asset. Pare your content down to the most important nuggets of information, then layer on an assessment, survey, calculator, or knowledge test (I usually aim for 20% of the original length). With the right tools, you can go beyond a simple true/false quiz and create a powerful pillar asset that drives new leads into your sales funnel on a regular basis.

Really, it’s a win-win on both sides. The marketer gets to educate and engage their buyer while collecting valuable user data – and the user gets an entertaining, uniquely valuable experience tailored to them and their needs.

3. Trivia Quiz or Knowledge Test

People love to show off how much they know. This is especially true if you’re serving a niche audience with very specialized knowledge.

As a marketer, you should be tapping into your audience’s interests and passions – and if showing off what they know resonates with your audience, a trivia quiz or knowledge test is right up your alley.

It could be as simple as “Test Your Marketing Automation Knowledge” quiz. A quiz like this, apart from being super fun for your audience, helps you determine the level of knowledge among your users so you can segment and deliver laser-focused content pieces as part of a follow-on campaign.

Quizzes are also a great option for light-touch engagement. Let’s say you’re a data backup services provider, but you know your audience loves Top Gun. Why not create an awesome Top Gun trivia game you can share on social?

Some trivia ideas:

• Content-specific Quizzes – “The Hardest Top Gun Quiz You’ll Ever Take” or “Seinfeld Mega Trivia Quiz”
• Topic-specific Quizzes – “How Well Do You Know HTML5?” or “The Academy Award Quiz”
• Best Practice Tests – “Do You Know How To Save A Co-Worker’s Life?” or “How Is Your Search Engine Optimization Knowledge?”

4. Interactive Video

Video is a powerful medium for communicating with and engaging B2B buyers. According to Aberdeen Group research, best-in-class companies use video more frequently than their peers and generate more impressive results.

Interactive video takes the already successful video format and makes it even more engaging. Marketers can now take advantage of all the benefits of interactive content – better engagement rates, higher lead conversion, faster content production – combined with the power of video.

B2C and publishers have long been using interactive videos in a variety of formats – from videos that branch or jump around based on your inputs (“Choose Your Own Adventure”-style experiences) to videos with hotspots that, when clicked, show you where to buy the shirt or shorts you just clicked on.

B2B marketers are rallying around a form of interactive video that incorporates the question and answer functionality of an assessment, quiz, poll, calculator, or survey into the fabric of the video itself.

If you’re planning any video content in 2016, think about making it interactive!

5. Calculator

One of the most common questions a B2B buyer will ask is “How will this solution impact my bottom line?” A marketer could answer this question with a pricing grid or a case study – but these methods lack a certain amount of personalization.

When making major purchases, many buyers want to do their own problem-solving with their own data to find a solution that’s tailor-made for them.

Give the people what they need. Don’t ditch your pricing grid, but do try a calculator. Calculators are the easiest, most transparent way to show your audience the impact a solution will have on their company. They help people make better purchasing decisions and pave the way for a positive experience with your product or service.

Conclusion

Make 2016 the year you try out something new in your content program. With so many content options to choose from, you’re bound to find something that will resonate for your messaging and your audience. Start small, experiment to find the right mix, and invest in tools that make sense for your team and budget.

LONDON – The world’s biggest oil companies are slashing jobs and backing off major investments as the price of crude falls to new lows — and there may be more pain to come.

Companies like BP, which said Tuesday it is cutting 4,000 jobs, are slimming down to cope with the slump in oil, whose price has plummeted to its lowest level in 12 years and is not expected to recover significantly for months, possibly years. California-based Chevron said last fall that it would eliminate 7,000 jobs, while rival Shell announced 6,500 layoffs.

And it’s not even the big producers that will be affected most, but the numerous companies that do business with them, such as drilling contractors and equipment suppliers.

While plummeting oil prices have been great news for motorists, airlines and other businesses that rely heavily on fuel, some 95,000 jobs were lost in the energy sector by U.S.-based companies in 2015, according to the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That was up from 14,000 the year before.

Energy companies expanded as oil topped $100 a barrel in 2008 and stayed there during the early part of this decade, but prices have plunged over the past two years because of high supply and weakening demand

The start of a new year hasn’t helped matters, with Brent crude, the benchmark for internationally produced oil, slipping below $31 a barrel on Tuesday, a drop of about 20 per cent drop since Jan. 1 and the lowest since 2004.

With some analysts forecasting a drop near $10 a barrel, companies are bracing for more trouble.

“Calling the bottom in a market is always a dangerous practice, akin to catching a falling knife,” said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets. “But when the clamour for lower prices becomes a stampede, warning signs and alarm bells tend to start going off, which suggests that a more prudent approach might be advisable.”

The uncertainty is making companies think twice before sinking money into new oil projects. That’s a problem, since even the most modest project requires vast commitments of resources over a number of years. If the industry doesn’t invest in production, that could create supply problems down the line.

On the North Sea, “there is a standstill in the new project launches which may create a hole in the pipeline of projects next year,” said Florent Maisonneuve, managing director and co-head of Oil & Gas at AlixPartners in Paris.

Weakening demand in China, the world’s second-largest energy consumer, has helped drive the price down. So has a stronger U.S. dollar, which makes oil more expensive for buyers outside the United States.

Members of OPEC, meanwhile, are refusing to cut back on production for fear of losing their share of the market to non-members like the U.S. and Russia. And OPEC states Iran and Iraq, whose industries have been off line for years because of conflict and sanctions, are looking to start pumping more.

All this means prices are unlikely to bounce back soon.

“The companies are doing the best they can to survive as long as they can,” said Spencer Welch, an oil expert at analysis group IHS. “We don’t see a quick out.”

In the United States, the Energy Department said Tuesday that it expects U.S. crude to average $38.54 a barrel in 2016. Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., said as many as half of the independent drilling companies working in U.S. shale fields could go bankrupt before prices stabilize.

In countries where oil production is state-owned and the main source of economic wealth, the drop in price is particularly painful. Russia, Venezuela and Gulf states like Saudi Arabia are seeing state coffers empty at an alarming pace, forcing them to make cost cuts that affect the wider population.

Russia has based its budget this year on an average oil price of $50 per barrel, and the government has indicated it is prepared to make spending cuts across the board to deal with the slump. The economy already is sliding into recession.

Russia also warned last month that it will probably deplete a rainy day fund, now worth roughly $52 billion, by the end of 2016 to make up for losses caused by the drop in oil prices.

Among the Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman are reducing subsidies on gasoline. In Bahrain, gas prices at the pump rose by as much as 60 per cent on Tuesday.

The financial outlook is so uncertain that Saudi Arabia is considering selling a part of its state-owned oil company, the world’s largest producer, in a public offering.

Welch said that with the oil market oversupplied, it may not be until the third quarter of this year before things come into balance.

BP said Tuesday it made its job cuts in light of “toughening conditions” in the industry. The cuts will include some 600 jobs in the North Sea.

The post The world’s biggest oil companies are slashing jobs and backing off major investments as the price of crude keeps falling to new appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

In thinking about focus and strategy, I’m reminded of an experience told by my dear friend Ed of something that happened to him in his youth. He grew up in New York City, where his grandfather owned a restaurant. Ed worked there to help out his grandpa and to make a little extra money. One day Ed was rushing about clearing tables and sweeping floors. At one point he bumped a glass, knocking it off the table and onto the floor where it shattered into thousands of pieces. Ed’s grandpa called him over, put his arm around his shoulder and said, “Slow down Eddy, you’ll get there faster.”

Slow down? It seems counterintuitive for the fast-paced world of B2B marketing, however, slowing down means to be more mindful, more thoughtful and purposeful of the work. The constant pressures of marketing can easily be addressed by taking a more meaningful approach to the work. It is tempting to try and address every issue or answer every opportunity with a new or different tactic, and it if often said that gains can be made by casting a wider net and doing more stuff. However, to achieve maximum impact, a strategic focus is mandatory.

How to become more mindful in marketing? Starting with the desired outcomes in mind will keep your marketing efforts focused on the right things. Of course, for this to be effective a tremendous amount of work must have been done previously to understand buyers and their decision process, centering strategies around proven marketing key performance indicators (KPIs).

At ANNUITAS we focus measurement on six critical areas:

1. Engagement Performance
2. Content Offer Performance
3. Nurture Email Performance
4. Lead Management Performance
5. Revenue Performance
6. Marketing ROI Performance

You’re probably wondering if there is relevance in the order of this list. Well, there most certainly is. ABut to measure lead progression, you must know how leads are engaging with your communications and content.

Here is a view of how the ANNUITAS team looks at Engagement Performance:

This graphic shows how being able to deliver insights around the engagement of your prospects can inform key areas like channel budgeting and content strategies. If you don’t understand what is driving engagement, how your leads are converting into opportunities and then revenue, you need to slow down before you spend more budget on tactics that are ineffective. You can’t skip the work it takes to get there, but these methods are highly focused and measureable, and drive a strategic approach to marketing that delivers revenue and results.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple keeps defying a PC industry trend: While other major computer-makers saw shipments fall in 2015, Apple increased the number of Macs it shipped worldwide last year, according to estimates from two research firms on Tuesday.

Total PC shipments have been declining, industrywide, for the last four years, as consumers are waiting longer to buy new models and many are turning to smartphones or tablets. Even last summer's release of Windows 10 — Microsoft's new operating software — failed to boost overall sales.

All told, manufacturers shipped a total of 288.7 million PCs last year, down 8 percent from 2014, according to researchers at Gartner. Analysts at International Data Corp., using different methodology, put the total at 276 million and the decline at 10.4 percent.

Apple, however, saw an increase of roughly 6 percent, according to both firms. While other major PC-makers have seen ups and downs, Apple alone has enjoyed gains in each of the last three years.

Big manufacturers like Lenovo, HP and Dell still sell far more computers than Apple. Industry leader Lenovo shipped 57 million PCs last year, while estimates for Apple are just under 21 million.

Still, analysts say Apple benefits from its reputation as a premium brand in the United States and Europe. It's also been making inroads in Asia. Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa noted that Apple has been opening retail stores in China, which is now the second-largest PC market in the world.

Experts trace the PC industry's slump to the introduction of more powerful smartphones and tablets in recent years. Even Apple saw a slight decline in Mac shipments in 2012, when some buyers opted for iPads instead. The slump has also hurt chipmakers like Intel and other companies that make PC components, while forcing software makers to re-design their products for smaller, mobile devices.

Nearly every major PC maker now makes tablets, as well. Lenovo has also moved into smartphones, buying the Motorola phone business from Google in 2014. But tablet and smartphone sales are also slowing, as more people already own them.

Industry hopes are now turning to new "hybrid" computers, or tablets with detachable keyboards, which are touted as combining the best features of PCs and tablets. Sales of those devices are still small, but growing. IDC analyst Jay Chou said his firm expects industrywide shipments of traditional PCs will fall another 3 percent this year, but the addition of hybrids could turn that total into an overall increase of 1 percent.

Analysts also blamed last year's weak PC numbers on economic weakness in Asia and the end of a 2014 buying surge that followed Microsoft's decision to end support for Windows XP, an older version of its widely used operating software. An expected boost from the new Windows 10 was undercut by Microsoft's decision to give free software upgrades to owners of older machines.

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It’s been another year of twists and turns for sales professionals. In early 2015, Forrester predicted 1 million U.S. B2B sales jobs would be lost by 2020. Six months later, the wave of panic died down when a subsequent Forrester report stated it wasn’t that sales reps would be laid off by the masses, but rather the type of sales skills required to best service modern B2B buyers would shift. How you prepare your sales force for the future is now more important than ever. Here are our predictions on the five trends that will shape sales in 2016.

How you build your customer base (and ultimately your business) is key to your success. Do you have the used-car salesperson approach and plunge into making a sale without getting to know your customer, or do you first make an attempt to understand the customer’s needs by chatting with them before trying to land a deal?

Building a great relationship first is the most important thing you can do—It’s like money in the bank. In fact, when you establish a relationship with your customers, you have their trust, and when you have their trust, you have access to everyone on their team, all the way up to the CEO. Without a trust relationship, your business is standing in the desert waiting to die. Relationships connect your customers to the company and take the focus away from the politics of the sales process. Relationships promote a vision that you are their trusted advisor, not just another company trying to sell them something. It also promotes a vision of change and a cohesive culture that becomes adaptable to the change factor.

The biggest challenge most people have is they don’t know how to establish, build and nourish relationships. The answer lies in the three A’s. Always be approachable, articulate and authentic.

Start by being a good listener. Listen to what your customers are saying. Break the ice. Everyone is nervous when they meet new people or do new things, but you need to relax and put your customer into a comfort zone on a personal level, then at the company level. Relationships are what set the social stage for that to happen. Learning to be personable and relaxing into the role—all of that goes into being a people person and building relationships.

It’s vital to establish relationships with C-level executives because high level executives tend to remain with the company longer than other management levels. Find out what they like and what they don’t. Building rapport with CEOs doesn’t start with your sales pitch; it starts with conversation and getting to know them by finding out about their interests. Start a conversation about things that may interest them such as sports, cars, travel, languages, organizations they belong to, etc., because finding things you have in common strengthens your relationship.

You must also know the culture of the company. To accomplish this, research the company and spend time with the customer and their teams. But be careful which members of your team you bring to work with you on projects, as some people—though good at what they do—are not personable and may, in fact, destroy the relationships you created. In order to protect and support the relationships you’ve created, be certain you have the appropriate people on your team.

Here are three essentials you need for building relationships and in succeeding in business today.

1. Book Smarts: Refers to people who are highly educated, those who can build high-performing teams by using business strategies and methodologies they learned in school.
2. Street Smarts: Typically refers to things people learn in the real world outside the classroom. A person who has street smarts has a lot of common sense and is knowledgeable about the world in general. A street smart person knows how to interact with all types of people. In business, this means finding something in common with people. A street smart person has the capability to remain cool, calm and collected under pressure and is thus able to build a rapport with the customer, which leads to a trusting relationship.
3. Emotional Intelligence: A person’s ability to recognize their own, as well as other people’s, emotions; to distinguish between different feelings and label them appropriately and to use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior. Emotional intelligence is established through face-to-face meetings and phone calls with customers. These interactions give you the confidence and polish to conquer a boardroom and connect with your customers.

We tend to think of book smarts and street smarts as opposite sides of a spectrum—if you have one, you do not have the other. However, what ultimately pulls these two opposites together is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the glue. It will help you take those facts you learned in school and use them to your advantage. Relying on a mix of book smarts and street smarts will allow you to foster important relationships, build your network and tackle those sweet, sweet deals you’ve been dreaming of.

Lead nurturing is an important function of marketing and selling B2B technology in today’s competitive landscape. We know buyer behavior is largely dictated by educating and engaging prospects. And yet, lead nurturing is often overlooked, because of the time, budget and resources it takes to create enough educational content to continually drive the process.

Lead nurturing offers the following benefits to your software sale strategy:

• At the top of the sales funnel, lead nurturing builds awareness and interest from potential customers.
• At the middle of the sales funnel, lead nurturing warms marketing-ready leads into sales-ready leads.
• At the bottom of the sales funnel, lead nurturing continues to connect with stalled sales leads.

According to MarketingSherpa, companies that nurture leads tend to see a 45% lift in lead generation ROI compared to companies that do not. Likewise, as reported at Demand Gen Report, nurtured leads produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.

While nurturing leads into sales requires time and dedication, the efforts are worthwhile. Here are three reasons why:

1. Lead Nurturing Results In Warmed Up Sales Leads
   When leads are nurtured from the marketing side of your organization, selling B2B technology becomes much more focused because the leads are already warmed up. Your software sales team actually spends their time converting prospects and closing deals, rather than trying to get to know each one from scratch.

   This is how your company will see a boost in sales opportunities. Once lead nurturing is ramped up, the natural result is improved ROI month over month.

2. Content Creation Forces Your Company To Get The Story Right
   The need for lead nurturing actually drives content development, and many departments are involved in the process of honing your message and the story behind your software product and company. Content tells the story of what your product offers and why your prospects need it.

   Whether it’s your customer service team or production team speaking about your products and services, content that’s created to nurture leads helps weave together a cohesive story. Everyone in your organization needs to be speaking to this story, which ultimately creates a smoother sales process for closing deals.

3. Lead Nurturing Improves Client Retention
   ROI isn’t just about the point of sale, but about maintaining client relationships for renewals or dealing with potential competitors. Selling B2B technology is highly competitive, and you need to ensure that when another software company comes along your own customer relationships are secure.

   That’s why it is important to continually nurture existing relationships with educational content suited to them. This translates into loyal customers – these are the clients who help you create a sustainable software business. You’re investing in loyalty up front and then reaping the rewards of continued business over the long term.

In the past, your software company may have spent substantial money on paid advertisements and other old-school marketing tactics. Today, however, a multitude of online channels has made it easier and more affordable for you to reach potential buyers seeking information.

Where would you rather invest your resources in today’s online marketplace?

Sales managers often get promoted to their position from the rep ranks. When they were individual quota-carriers, it was relatively easy to assess their sales pipeline. Because they were intimately familiar with each of the deals in their forecast, they developed a sort of “sixth sense” about which would close, and when.

But assessing an entire team’s sales pipeline stages -- where the manager is not apprised of the ins and outs of each and every deal -- requires more than simple intuition. Managers must develop a more systematic process to test sales pipeline heath across the organization as a whole

The following three questions can help sales managers quickly and accurately assess their team’s sales pipeline -- no sixth sense required.

1. What shape is the sales pipeline?

The immediate image that pops into most sales reps’ and managers’ heads for the term “sales pipeline” is a funnel -- wide at the top, narrow at the bottom. This type of pyramid shape implies there’s a 3x multiple relationship between leads at the top and closed deals at the bottom. It’s with this shape in mind that some managers require their reps to have 3x the amount of deals they need to close in their pipeline at all times.

Unfortunately, this shape is inaccurate. A healthy sales pipeline doesn’t look like a funnel at all -- it looks like a wide-mouthed champagne or cocktail glass:

The most significant drop-off in the pipeline should be near the top -- when the lead reaches the first significant process milestone (for example, a demo or trial). After this milestone, the opportunity pool shouldn’t narrow much more. In other words, in a healthy sales pipeline, once a lead makes it past the first milestone, it should be highly likely that the opportunity closes and creates a new customer. A good sales manager will tolerate poor conversion rates early on (during qualification) in exchange for fantastic conversion rates later (close).

High-performing reps often maintain a 1.25x or 1.5x ratio of opportunities to deals in their pipelines, and this ratio mimics the champagne glass shape. If your team’s pipeline looks more like a funnel than a cocktail glass, it’s time to make some changes.

2. What’s the breakdown of revenue vs. units?

Since sales teams work off a revenue target, revenue is generally what sales managers focus on when assessing pipeline and forecasting. But by concentrating only on revenue, managers miss a crucial metric: units.

“Units” refers to the number of deals in the pipeline. For instance, let’s say a rep is working three deals, forecasted at $1, $100, and $1000, respectively. This pipeline contains $1101 in revenue, and three units.

Why care about units? There are two reasons. First, a pipeline containing a massive amount of revenue but a low number of units is risky. What happens if the $1 million deal falls through? The rep has nothing to fall back on to make up the lost revenue, and the entire team’s pipeline crumbles. Rather than focusing all their effort on closing the biggest deal in the pipeline, sales managers should instead think about the replacement plan if it falls through.

A metaphor I like to use when talking about revenue vs. units that helps to illustrate this point is weight vs. height. Let’s say I weigh 180 pounds. Is that good or bad? Well, you can’t make that determination unless you also know my height. Just like 180 pounds on a 5’0’’ frame is unhealthy, having a lot of revenue spread over just a few deals should be a red flag for sales managers.

In addition, tracking units can shed some light on sales reps’ bandwidth. Think about it: A deal worth 10x more in revenue probably doesn’t require 10x the amount of effort than a typical deal. Being mindful of units can help managers formulate a benchmark number of deals that one rep has the bandwidth to work at any given time.

3. When are deals purged from the pipeline?

Every rep knows to remove a deal from the pipeline when the customer buys from a competitor, or flat out says they aren’t interested. But what about the prospects that express interest and then go quiet? Reps often keep these deals in the pipeline for months and months, hoping that they can restart the buying conversation eventually.

However, while it’s fine for salespeople to check in with these prospects occasionally and try to rekindle the flame, it’s not okay for sales managers to allow these deals to stay in the pipeline indefinitely. To ensure you’re looking at a healthy pipeline, define a purge timeline (somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 days) and enforce it.

After a deal hits the 30-day mark with no activity, the manager should move it out of the pipeline and into a “deferred” bucket. Placing the deal into the “deferred” category allows the rep to continue working it but doesn’t affect the overall accuracy of the sales pipeline.

4. What’s the sales pipeline velocity? 

Sales velocity is crucial to assessing the health of your pipeline. There’s always a defining moment that reps drive toward to pivot the deal and close. This could be the proof of concept, the presentation, the trial, or an ROI calculator. 

It’s as if the prospect is doing their version of a car test drive. At that pivotal moment, the ability of the sales rep to control every element of the sale diminishes.

To prepare for the inevitable lack or loss of control with speed, it’s important reps understand they’re going to give up some grip on the steering wheel because they’re going faster. 

For example, if your prospect is taking your product on a test drive, try measuring the average number of touches and days necessary to get to that point in your pipeline — as well as the number of days it takes to close the deal after the trial. It should be faster to close the sale after the pivot. If not, take another look at the effectiveness of the trial experience.

A deal’s speed should get faster the closer you get to the close. Learn how to absorb the slowness of the deal and put fixes in place where necessary. 

5. What’s your historical discounting rate throughout the year?

It’s rare that reps use consistent discounting to close deals. Discounts are generally tethered to other things. If you’re using discounts regularly, ask yourself whether you’re discounting more at the end of the month or quarter and adjust your closing tactics accordingly. 

Are there certain months you’re discounting more than others? Maybe you didn’t prospect enough. And if there are certain line items you discount frequently — like training implementation — you might just be running afoul with your company’s efforts and losing rapport with your colleagues. 

The use of discounting identifies gaps in your pipeline. Be honest with yourself about why you’re offering discounts and improve your sales.

Pipeline management is one of sales managers’ most critical tasks. By asking these three questions, you can ensure a healthy pipeline that lays the groundwork for blowing revenue goals out of the water on a consistent basis. 

London (AFP) - Oil dived Tuesday close to $30 on abundant crude supplies, as OPEC member Nigeria called for an emergency meeting to address collapsing prices that have ravaged revenues.

In late afternoon deals, New York's benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for February delivery tanked to $30.10 a barrel, which was the lowest level since December 2, 2003.

Europe's Brent North Sea crude for February had earlier dived to $30.43, a point last seen on April 6, 2004.

"Oil prices are looking to test $30 a barrel again, despite news of some member states calling for an emergency OPEC meeting before the scheduled one in June," said GKFX analyst James Hughes.

Nigerian petroleum resources minister Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu declared that he expects an extraordinary meeting of the oil cartel in "early March" to discuss nosediving crude prices.

"We did say that if it (the price) hits the 35 (dollar per barrel), we will begin to look (at)... an extraordinary meeting," said Kachikwu.

The prices have hit levels that necessitate a meeting, he told an energy forum in Abu Dhabi, but added that he had not yet confirmed with fellow OPEC ministers if they would be willing to attend.

In later deals, Brent oil was down 97 cents at $30.58, while WTI stood at $30.26, down $1.15 from Monday's close.

Saudi-led Gulf exporters within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have so far refused to cut production to curb sliding prices, seeking to protect their market share despite a heavy blow to their revenues.

Kachikwu said member states differ on the issue of intervention.

"One group feels there is a need to intervene. The other group feels even if we did, we are only 30 to 35 percent of the producers really", as 65 percent of supply comes from non-OPEC countries, he said at the Gulf Intelligence UAE Energy Forum.

Nigeria, Africa's largest economy and foremost oil producer, has been ravaged by collapsing oil prices in recent years because crude accounts for 90 percent of the nation's export earnings and 70 percent of overall government revenue. 

"The reported breakeven price for Nigeria is around $87 a barrel and with (the) price looking so much weaker it's no surprise if they are one of the countries asking for a meeting," added Hughes.

OPEC refused to slash output at its scheduled production meetings in June and December last year, despite a collapse in prices since July 2014, when the market stood above $100 per barrel.

- OPEC's 'big gamble' -

The Saudi-backed policy, and supported really by only OPEC's Gulf members, is aimed at pushing oil prices lower to squeeze US shale producers out of the market. However, it has slammed smaller producing nations like Nigeria and Venezuela.

"OPEC has taken a big gamble that has not really worked so far," said analyst Fawad Razaqzada at Gain Capital.

"Essentially, the smaller OPEC members, who are struggling really badly, are unlikely to be able to persuade the Saudis to make a U-turn on its policy of maintaining market share."

The market's dramatic collapse has continued in 2016, as a row between cartel kingpin Saudi Arabia and fellow cartel member Iran dimmed prospects for production cutbacks.

Crude futures plummeted 10 percent last week, also on fears about the global supply glut and demand weakness in China, the world's biggest energy user.

The rise in the greenback, which makes dollar-priced oil more expensive for holders of weaker currencies, has dented prices as well.

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You’re in sales. I’m in sales (and marketing). But, we’re all also customers. It’s honestly one of the more fun things about the work we do. We get to work with people every day to help make their lives a bit easier. We do this by understanding other people’s challenges and triumphs and looking for ways our solutions intersect to reduce those challenges and expand those triumphs. We use our verbal communication skills, our writing skills, and lately we rely on a TON of technology to help us along the way. And when we (the collective sales and marketing professionals in the universe) succeed, it’s awesome. But sometimes we fail. Miserably.

Sales and marketing technology can be amazing. Before I speak with a future customer, I typically know what pages of my website she’s viewed, what webinars she’s registered for (and if she’s attended those webinars and asked any questions), what content she’s downloaded, and I might even have insight into how she prefers I communicate with her. Creepy, I know, but this is our new normal. We have access to more demographic, psychographic, historical, and behavioral information than ever before. And yet some of us are cutting corners that make us look foolish. This is a story about one of those fools.

 Automated or asleep at the wheel?

One lovely day a couple of months ago, my colleague looked up from his computer with a completely perplexed expression. He had just received a new sales contract via email. Had he placed an online order? No. Had he agreed to any services via the phone? No. Had he spoken with anyone at all at this company? No. But he HAD downloaded an ebook that this company had been promoting online. The content looked interesting, and he took the necessary steps to input his information to gain access to the ebook. His name, company name, phone number, email address, and the number of employees at our organization. If you think about it, a salesperson had pretty much everything he needed to send my colleague a contract. So, he did. Here’s the kicker: we are already a customer.

Because we’re in sales and marketing, we often have a backstage view to every sales show, and I can write the script for this story:

• Buyer persona is served valuable content via social media promotion.
• Buyer persona completes marketing automation form to access valuable content.
• Buyer persona, once a prospect, is now a lead.
• Lead information is delivered to sales.
• Sales sends contract.

First of all, above everything else, someone or something should have checked to see if my colleague was already a customer. I mean, really. But let’s say we weren’t already customers. What about the consumption of an ebook — ANY ebook — let’s even pretend the ebook was fortuitously titled, “So, You Want to Buy XYZ Solution?” What about this tells anyone that a sales contract is the very next step?

It’s not. It never will be. Content marketing provides us with a great opportunity at the top of the funnel to discover new prospects, and then later to nurture potential customers as they are gaining greater awareness of their problem and begin researching solutions. What it’s not is a silver bullet. A magic wand. A fast pass to the front of the line.

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Content marketing is not is a silver bullet, a magic wand, or a fast pass to the front of the line.
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Back to my colleague. Since we were already customers, he did not sign and return that contract. After we had a good laugh, an upsetting feeling washed over us. Clearly we meant very little to this company. They didn’t even recognize us as customers. After all, they are a large corporation, and we’re a small software company (for now). Moreover, if they couldn’t get something this simple right, what did that say about their infrastructure? Their personnel? We started second guessing exactly how comfortable we felt relying on this company for an integral element of our business. And just like that, thanks to one great piece of content, a poorly architected marketing and sales handoff, and a bit of laziness, we were shopping for a new vendor.

The post Fool’s Tale: A True Story of Sales & Marketing Automation Failure appeared first on Sales Hacker.

The 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro — but with less than seven months until the Opening Ceremony, a slew of problems still show no signs of improvement. 

Will Connors had a good, if troubling, piece in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday laying out the concerns in Rio.

Not only does the list of concerns appear to be trending in the wrong direction as the Games draw closer, it also shows no signs of improvement.

Let's break down the biggest problems:

Questions over Rio's mobility plan

Rio is racing to build a 16 kilometer subway extension from the city's center to the Olympic Park, which Connors reports will carry some 300,000 fans each day to the game's events during the Olympics. This construction reportedly needs somewhere in the ballpark of $247 million U.S. dollars in federal funds to be completed, but Brasilia, the nation's capital, is currently distracted by corruption scandals and ongoing impeachment proceedings against president Dilma Rousseff.

What's more, the subway extension is set to open on July 1. The Games begin on August 5, leaving a small window of time for the city to smooth out inevitable kinks in the new infrastructure. Worst of all, as a spokeswoman told Connors that if the extension isn't ready, there is "no plan B."

Outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases

Multiple diseases are spiraling out of control in Brazil, spreading faster than officials efforts to combat them. Writes Connors:

As of early December, a record 1.58 million cases of dengue fever were reported in Brazil in 2015. Chikungunya is mushrooming too. Most worrisome is a relatively new, fast-spreading virus called Zika. Authorities estimate it may have infected as many as 1.5 million people in recent months and has been linked by some health officials to nearly 3,200 cases of infant brain damage. While Zika has hit hardest in the Brazil’s poor northeastern region, it’s spreading quickly in Rio de Janeiro state.

The concerns here are self-explanatory. If dengue fever, Chikungunya, and Zika all continue to spread to Rio, this will only deter more fans from making the pilgrimage to Rio to watch the Games.

A ballooning budget in the wake of a national economic crisis

Connors reports that in 2015 the total infrastructure cost for the Games — funded predominately by federal and local governments — rose by more than $5.9 billion U.S. dollars, 25% higher than planned. In a country still grappling with a recent economic crisis, spending public money on a two-week event is certainly not ideal.

And, the economic crisis is forcing officials to cut corners. From Connors:

The committee said in October it would slash expenses by 30% through steps including cutbacks in high-end cuisine for VIPs and a reduction in the number of volunteers trained to assist visitors. Temporary tents will be used at certain sites in lieu of more durable structures.

The Opening and Closing Ceremonies are also expected to be less lavish than those of the London and Beijing Summer Olympics.

Sewage-infested bodies of water — and no signs of effective clean up

The most talked-about scandal leading up to the Olympics has been the two polluted bodies of water (Guanabara Bay and Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon) in which athletes will compete, and they are showing no signs of improvement.

Several athletes in Rio training on the waters in preparation for the Games have gotten sick, including a German sailor who contracted MRSA. 

Kristina Mena, an expert in waterborne viruses, told the AP in December, "The levels of viruses are so high in these Brazilian waters that if we saw those levels here in the United States on beaches, officials would likely close those beaches."

Connors explained that conditions aren't going to get much better over the coming months:

Plans for sewage treatment never materialized. Instead the government is using stopgap measures like small “eco-boats” that move around the bay and collect larger pieces of debris.

A souring public sentiment

Very few Brazilians appear to have interest in the Olympics, at least according to ticket sales. As of December 31, Connors reports, less than 50% of the 4.5 million domestic-market tickets had been sold. This is especially worrisome because the organizing committee is relying on these domestic ticket sales to meet 17% of its budget needs.

And as a result of all the aforementioned problems, many the result of the economic crisis, Brazilians are growing increasingly fed up with the Games. Small protests have already been held, Connors reports, and analysts predict larger demonstrations to be held closer to the Opening Ceremony.

The myriad problems surrounding Rio's preparations for the Olympics will likely bolster the argument that it's simply never worth hosting the Olympics. 

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NOW WATCH: A 2016 Rio Olympics water venue is full of human waste and teeming with viruses — here's a video of what it looks like

SpaceX just released footage of their SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket's monumental landing. 

Video courtesy of SpaceX

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Diversification—spreading your money across different types of investments—is a critical strategy for protecting your money and helping it grow. If you want proof, all you have to look at is this chart showing the best and worst performing asset classes for the last 20 years.

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TORONTO - The sliding loonie could make it harder for some Canadians to eat their Florida oranges or California heads of lettuce this year.

Markets are flashing the same stress alerts as they did before the Lehman crisis in 2008, warns RBS, predicting that global stocks could fall by a fifth and oil bottom at $16

TORONTO — Canada’s first hand transplant has been successfully performed by a team of doctors in Toronto.

The University Health Network — which operates four major hospitals in the city — says 18 surgeons attached a forearm and hand from a donor to a patient in a procedure that lasted about 14 hours.

The transplant recipient is a 49-year-old woman who had lost her arm below the elbow in an accident several years ago.

UHN says she is doing well and recovering from the procedure.

The surgery was led by Dr. Steven McCabe, director of the Toronto Western Hospital’s hand and upper extremity transplant program.

He was part of a surgical team in Louisville, Ky., that performed the world’s first successful hand transplant in 1999.

To date, over 110 hand transplants have taken place worldwide in more than a dozen countries.

The post Toronto doctors perform Canada’s first hand and forearm transplant appeared first on Macleans.ca.

In our new age of massive technological advancement, the influential entrepreneur holds a unique place in history. Every new technological development that you use on a daily basis has behind it someone who profoundly impacts the world. They make it look so easy, the Mark Zuckerberg’s and the Oprah Winfrey’s of the world. But the truth is, they have created themselves habitually and deliberately– as the influential entrepreneurs they are today.

In his years as an entrepreneur, investor, speaker, and writer, Murray Newlands has encountered many influential entrepreneurs and is a highly influential entrepreneur in his own right. Co-founder of Due.com, Newlands has earned his influence every single day in a labor of love — 500k Twitter followers and 341k Vine followers didn’t come overnight. “In my interviews with entrepreneurs, I have seen that they possess a focused, habitual pursuit of excellence that I think anyone can achieve,” Newlands explains. “With enough confidence, anyone can learn the habits they need to be highly influential.”

Here, with Murray Newland’s guidance, are the top nine habits that every influential entrepreneur possesses.

1 . They’re independent thinkers

Those who are the most influential do not let other’s opinions sway their own. They gather information, are critical in their analysis, and then form their opinions. They don’t follow trends or common beliefs, but are happy to listen thoughtfully to all the information they hear.

2. They add value to their relationships.

Influential entrepreneurs are the best at creating meaningful relationships. They have large networks and make it a point to get to know the connections of their connections. But beyond knowing everyone, they add value to as many of their relationships as possible. “Add value to your relationships by connecting people who you think should know each other, collaborate with others for mutual benefit, and share your wisdom and experience freely,” says Newlands.

3. They welcome healthy debate

A dissenting opinion or a disagreement does not bother the influential entrepreneur. They encourage and even welcome dispute, as it allows them to see all sides of an issue. Newlands says, “If you truly want to be influential, respond with inquisitive humility to a dissenting opinion. The first step to getting more people to listen to you is to listen deeply to others.”

4. They are grateful

Without gratitude, even the most powerful entrepreneur won’t have much influence. “People don’t want to spend their lives being belittled or dismissed, and won’t listen to or respect a person that isn’t grateful for their time,” says Newlands. “If you aren’t creating relationships based in a humble gratitude, you aren’t creating much of influence at all.”

5. They are proactive

“Influential entrepreneurs do not wait for the latest and greatest to come to them; they are the ones inventing it,” says Newlands. “They know what’s coming next because they are out there looking for it, soaking up knowledge and spreading the word.” Sitting back and seeing what happens is not in the influential entrepreneur’s vocabulary.

6. They keep the faith

“Influential entrepreneurs know that everyone around them is capable of greatness” says Newlands. “They have faith in their own ability to reach their goals and dreams, and they know beyond a doubt that others have that ability, as well.” Their belief in other’s abilities inspires the people around them to work harder to manifest their own dreams. Even in failure, influential entrepreneurs know that each failure is one step closer to success.

7. They respond thoughtfully

Influential entrepreneurs know how important relationships are to their business, so they are never hotheaded. They do not react without thinking, because to do so would destroy relationships and often, the respect of others. Entrepreneurs that influence others maintain their cool and respond with consideration, extending to others the respect that they deserve.

8. They read

By now you’ve probably heard that Mark Cuban reads a book a day. It’s true, and as Newlands says, “If you aren’t reading, you’re missing a vast realm of knowledge that you will need to be an influential entrepreneur.”

The benefits of reading books are countless. “Voracious book readers are smarter, more interesting conversationalists, have deeper concentration, and learn from the wisdom of the most brilliant people in the world,” explains Newlands. “Without books, you’re probably re-inventing the wheel instead of spending your time influencing on the leading edge.”

9. They focus on leaving the planet better than they found it

Though entrepreneurs are not always concerned with altruism, many of the entrepreneurs who have made a lasting impact on our world have used their success as a vehicle to make the world a more peaceful, humane and just place.

For example, Warren Buffet, along with Bill and Melinda Gates, started a philanthropic organization for the wealthy to donate the bulk of their fortune to charity. “Thinking only of capital and nothing else can only lead to an empty existence,” expounds Newlands. “Lasting influence that creates a legacy is founded in selflessness that expands the scope of human understanding.”

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"Adjusted" earnings are becoming an epidemic. 

According to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the percentage of companies reporting "adjusted" earnings has increased sharply over the last 18 months or so. 

About 90% of companies now report earnings on an "adjusted" basis. 

These earnings often exclude items a company deems "special," or "one-time," or "extraordinary." Investors, then, are left with a muddier picture of what companies are really making.

A company would argue these are "clean" numbers that exclude things investors need not concern themselves with. In this sense, then, companies would like you to look at less of themselves to make a decision about their real value. 

Why? 

"We are increasingly concerned with the number of companies (non-commodity) reporting earnings on an adjusted basis versus those that are stressing GAAP accounting, and find the divergence a consequence of less earnings power," BAML wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday. 

BAML adds (emphasis ours):

Consider that when US GDP growth was averaging 3% (the 5 quarters September 2013 through September 2014) on average 80% of US HY companies reported earnings on an adjusted basis. Since September 2014, however, with US GDP averaging just 1.9%, over 87% of companies have reported on an adjusted basis. Perhaps even more telling, between the end of 2010 and 2013, the percentage of companies reporting adjusted EBITDA was relatively constant and since 2013, the number has been on a steady rise.

We are increasingly concerned with this trend, as on an unadjusted basis non-commodity earnings growth has been negative 2 of the last 4 quarters, representing the worst 4 quarter average earnings growth in a non-recessionary period since late 2000.

GAAP earnings, or earnings that follow Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, are what many executives and analysts would have you believe is the "rough cut" of a company's financial condition (and hence, less representative of the company's underlying condition).

GAAP earnings, for example, include any charges a company may have incurred during a quarter — say, as part of selling a unit or something — and a bunch of other things. In an effort to "clean up" earnings, companies adjust these earnings to outline what management argues is the true picture of the company's actual operations. 

(A popular "clean" number to cite is a company's EBITDA, or Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization. Charlie Munger has said, "I think that, every time you see the word EBITDA, you should substitute the word 'bullshit' earnings." So there's that. There's also non-GAAP, which is not exactly the same thing but also a proxy for "adjusted" earnings.)

And as we've written before, this idea that there is an actual operation to measure is itself just a mirage. 

Ben Graham, the godfather of value investing, wrote at length about his concerns with regard to corporate accounting in his book "The Intelligent Investor." Using Alcoa's four different quarterly earnings figures from a quarter in 1970 as an example, Graham argues that the "true" value of a company doesn't exist the way some on Wall Street would have you believe.

The over-arching point of Graham's analysis is that you could claim anything that didn't happen exactly the same way in the prior quarter is a "one-time item" for a company. The problem is that this sort of ignores how businesses actually work. Which is to say: things happen, sometimes once, sometimes more than that. Which of these things matters is the whole challenge of being an investor (perhaps, even, an intelligent one). 

And in the current environment there is another related phenomenon also cropping up. 

In a note late last year, Bank of America highlighted what it called "worrisome gaps" (lots of gap imagery here) in earnings reports. Basically, the number of companies beating on earnings has been increasing at the same time the number of companies missing on sales is also ticking higher. 

The firm also noted that these "adjusted" earnings were beating GAAP earnings by about 30% on average, the most since the financial crisis. 

This is a conundrum. 

Common sense says growing profits while losing sales takes some kind of accounting wizardry to accomplish — outside of, say, a one-time (!) transformation that makes this possible — and the fact that roughly 60% of companies were beating on profit while 60% were missing on revenue is a concern. (It's unclear what the overlap is here on a company-specific level, but the market-wide trend is the issue here.)

And like Graham's discussion of the four alternatives for Alcoa's quarterly earnings, we could argue about whether or not certain dynamics in corporate America have changed enough to make a credible case that it is possible, on a non-shenanigans basis, for industries to grow earnings while losing sales on a consistent basis. 

But this is all sort of besides the point. 

Earnings, like records, are made to broken. Or at least, played with. This is the fun part. 

The challenge for the investor community, then, is to make decisions about which earnings are the "real" ones, which earnings have been altered too much or too little, and what is the actual value of the company's business. 

And the more companies that appear to changing things the more you might be inclined to think there's something to hide. 

SEE ALSO: Ben Graham told us the problem with earnings announcements decades ago

Join the conversation about this story »

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  For most B2B selling companies, content strategy is developed and executed at the functional or even tactic level. These strategies naturally focus on the requirements and audiences of each function. Few companies have a universal, business level content strategy. The functions we’re talking about engage some version of the company’s “customers,” with messages and content that are of a marketing and selling nature. This creates new requirements that are driven by self-educating audiences, digital content and online channels.   We believe lack of an effective, business level content strategy lowers optimization of top business objectives: New customer acquisition and organic revenue growth Sales, marketing and channel productivity, for lower selling costs Acquiring data about customers and buyers to feed predictive analytics and data-driven decision making Delivering a consistent, exceptional customer experience. Indeed, we see significant opportunity for companies that develop business level content strategy to create breakthrough results in terms of: content quality, relevance and engagement; delivery times and availability, much lower marginal content costs, as well as overall improvements to competitive advantage and customer experience. As a result of over 20 years creating content for B2B sales and marketing organizations, we developed a 6 Competency Framework for B2B Business Level Content Strategy. The linked post provides an overview explanation. The first competency organizations must develop we call Understand Audiences (Buyers). When our clients apply this framework, the results they experience help them appreciate the important factors that were missing from their content strategy. This post provides a high level overview and introduction to key […]

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There are three key elements that make up a successful sales development organization: people, process, and tools.

First, in order to run a high-powered sales development organization, you need amazing people. From aggressive recruiting and interviewing on the front end, to intentional hiring, training and onboarding — all of these things play into the culture (core values), personalities, and reporting structure visibility of your team.

The second piece of the puzzle is the process. Are you using account-based philosophy? How are you distributing leads to SDRs? What’s the dividing line between inbound and outbound? Hammer out these key elements — then define the role of email, phone, metrics within those processes.

The third element is comprised of what tools your sales development team is using for each of those roles, along with tools for coaching, organizational health, and productivity.

A few weeks ago, Kyle Porter had a conversation with Steven Broudy of MuleSoft to talk in depth about the first two elements: people and process. The MuleSoft team has tripled in size since it’s early days, so we wanted to hear their philosophy behind hiring great talent in the sales development role, and their process once those unicorns are onboarded.

Located right in the middle of one of the most challenging SaaS markets (San Francisco), Steven and his team had to be creative in order to attract the best talent possible. From a strong brand, to the kind of culture that resonates with the candidates you’re looking to attract — these are the kinds of things they focused on when building a team.

Broudy breaks down their hiring must-haves into four major traits:

1. High Sales DNA. The best sales development reps are the ones with innate sales DNA and an energy built for high velocity sales.
2. High cognitive horsepower. A highly technical sales process requires a high level of intellectual curiosity and a high cognitive horsepower.

You need to have this learner mindset. You need to be able to understand the businesses that you’re attempting to connect with and in order to do that you need to constantly be seeking to improve yourself.”

3. Winners driving winners. MuleSoft defines their culture as “a group or a team of winners who drives everyone to want to win.” Look for reps who demand excellence, with a do-what-it-takes attitude and a level of fearlessness.
4. The Lone Wolves. Those who are fearless, and have a bias towards action, tend to be on the lone wolf spectrum of the sales world. The Challenger Sale calls “lone wolves” the second most successful type of reps.

Those traits, along with exceptional character, are critical to building an organizationally healthy sales environment. At SalesLoft, we look for people with experience in the sales and persuasion game. Somebody who believes in themselves, believes in the product, and believes in the company — and can transfer that belief to someone else.

But what do you do after you’ve hired that great talent?

No longer is it acceptable to just throw new reps to the wolves and say, “Hey, go get ‘em.” Some companies do — and in the past that’s what sales development was all about. Let’s hire 20 people fresh out of school, throw them in the lab, see which ones sink or swim.

Now, we apply professionalism to our sales development organization. We asked Steven how his team gets new hires up to speed — and what expectations should be put on new reps.

It’s critical to empower and enable a new SDR whether this is their first sales role or the beginning of their real career. You need to empower them to succeed.“

Steven recommends focusing on creating a high-class industry training program for SDRs. Diving into the technology and sales fundamentals, and give them an opportunity for on the job training. Think of it as a flash-MBA in sales.

Set SDRs up for success and enable them by exposing them to best practices. Give them a framework within which they can work and within which they can succeed. Within that framework, help them to understand the thought process behind everything you, as a team, prescribe.

And as for data…

“Don’t be crunching those numbers in the dark. Crunch [data] in Excel, and make it visual — make it digestible in a format where the team can read it, see it, understand it, and feel a sense of ownership.” -Steven Broudy

This is where the tools come in. Find out what tools for sales development metrics such as activity metrics, data metrics, and productivity work best for your team. Take these tools and implement them among your team quickly and efficiently to get the best ROI.

We loved getting to talk to a sales leader of a high-velocity SDR team and pick his brain about our core sales development elements. What kinds of people, processes, and tools do you have in place for your growing sales development organization? Comment below and let us know!

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