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• Europe is home to historic sites and gorgeous natural wonders.
• The ultimate bucket list of travel destinations in Europe includes the canals in Amsterdam, scuba diving in Cyprus, and the Colosseum in Rome.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Europe is home to historic cities, world-famous museums, and phenomenal restaurants. But there are also gorgeous hidden beaches, world-class ski resorts, and stunning natural formations like canyons, waterfalls, and gorges.

We've come up with the ultimate bucket list of travel destinations in Europe.

From biking along the canals of Amsterdam to scuba diving in the clear Mediterranean waters off Cyprus, here are 50 things you need to do in Europe in your lifetime.

Eliza McKelvey and Megan Willett contributed to this story.

SEE ALSO: 16 incredible European destinations that haven't been discovered by tourists

SEE ALSO: 100 trips everyone should take in their lifetime

Lagos, Portugal

Lounge on the stunning beaches of Lagos, Portugal.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Ride alongside the canals in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world.

Innsbruck, Austria

Hit the slopes at Innsbruck, a breathtaking ski resort in the mountains of Austria.

Tresor — Berlin, Germany

Dance to house music at the underground nightclub and record label Tresor in Berlin.

Santorini, Greece

Take in the stunning views of the Mediterranean Sea from the Greek island of Santorini.

Promenade des Anglais — Nice, France

Stroll along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice — or ride on skates, scooters or bikes.

Charles Bridge — Prague, Czech Republic

Walk across the Vltava River on the 617-year-old Charles Bridge.

Cyprus

Scuba dive in the clear Mediterranean waters off Cyprus.

The Shard — London, England

Get a drink at Aqua or Gong, located inside the Shard, the tallest building in London, and enjoy incredible views of the British capital city.

Ibiza, Spain

Stay up all night partying on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

Colosseum — Rome, Italy

Explore the ruins of the stately Colosseum in Rome, Italy, and imagine the gladiator fights that once packed the arena.

Cliffs of Moher, Ireland

Test your limits and peer out from the edge of the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland.

Market Square — Krakow, Poland

Have a beer in the beautiful Market Square of Krakow, Poland.

Sistine Chapel — Vatican City

Marvel at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which took Michelangelo four years to paint, in Vatican City.

Autobahn — Germany

Test your speed on Germany's famous autobahn, known for having no speed limit.

Tivoli Gardens — Copenhagen, Denmark

Pass a day in the beautiful Tivoli Gardens and amusement park in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Edinburgh Fringe Festival — Edinburgh, Scotland

Catch a show at Scotland's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the world's largest arts festival.

Plitvice Lakes National Park — Croatia

Explore the waterfalls of Plitvice Lakes National Park, the largest national park in Croatia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

Discover Český Krumlov, a historic town in the Czech Republic that dates back to the 13th century. The town is spectacular yet not overrun with tourists.

Casino de Monaco — Monte Carlo, Monaco

Play a hand of blackjack at the Casino de Monaco in Monte Carlo, one of the most luxurious casinos in the world.

Amalfi Coast, Italy

Hug the cliffs while driving along the Amalfi Coast in Italy, and visit the charming towns of Positano, Ravello, and Salerno.

Alhambra palace — Granada, Spain

Marvel at the Moorish architecture and tranquil gardens of the Alhambra palace in Granada, Spain.

Oktoberfest — Munich, Germany

Cheers with an authentic German beer during Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany.

Jägala Fall — Estonia

Hear the roar of Jägala Fall in Estonia, called "the Niagara Falls of the Baltics."

Venice, Italy

Take a gondola ride through the winding canals of Venice, Italy.

Fjord Norway — Norway

Cruise Norway's imposing fjords, created by eroding glaciers. The Norwegian fjord landscape is a UNESCO Heritage Site.

Interlaken, Switzerland

Go skiing, hiking, or canyoning in Interlaken, Switzerland, which is known for its outdoor adventure activities.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

"Game of Thrones" helped boost Dubrovnik's popularity, having appeared as King's Landing. A walk around the Old City walls dating back to the 600s provides panoramic views of the ocean and Mount Srd.

Provence, France

Stroll through fragrant lavender fields in Provence, France.

Budapest, Hungary

Take a dip in a thermal bath in Budapest, Hungary.

Brussels, Belgium

Indulge in fresh gaufres chaudes (hot waffles) topped with strawberries, whipped cream, Nutella, and more in Belgium.

Lapland, Finland

Gaze at the aurora borealis from Lapland, in northern Finland.

Musée d'Orsay — Paris, France

See what is arguably the world's greatest collection of Impressionist art at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, France.

Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood — St. Petersburg, Russia

Marvel at the ornate interior of the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, which is covered in colorful mosaics.

Scottish Highlands — Scotland

Drive through the Scottish Highlands and admire the gorgeous hilly terrain.

Pamplona, Spain

Run with the bulls in Pamplona, a tradition that dates back to 1591.

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Explore Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A blend of east and west and heavily influenced by the Ottoman Empire, the city offers museums, mosques, and cathedrals.

Istanbul, Turkey

Straddle two continents on a boat tour along the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey.

Étretat — Normandy, France

Walk through the chalk cliffs and natural arches of Étretat along the region's famous white pebble beach.

Vienna, Austria

Linger over a strong cup of coffee and a rich, chocolatey Sachertorte at a cafe in Vienna, Austria.

Sighisoara, Romania

Recount the tale of Dracula in Sighisoara, the Romanian town where real-life inspiration Vlad the Impaler was born.

Icehotel — Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

Opened in 1989, Sweden's Icehotel is built anew every year with ice from the Torne River.

 

Uffizi Gallery — Florence, Italy

Seek out Botticelli's masterpieces "The Birth of Venus" and "Primavera" inside the Uffizi Gallery.

Carcassone, France

Stroll the ramparts of the medieval fortified town of Carcassone, complete with a castle and Gothic cathedral.

Stonehenge, England

Watch the sun set at Stonehenge, one of the most recognizable prehistoric monuments in Europe.

Rila Monastery — Rila, Bulgaria

Find solace at the Rila Monastery, an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Bulgaria's Rila Mountains.

Sagrada Família — Barcelona, Spain

Admire the incredibly detailed facade of the Sagrada Família, a church in Barcelona, Spain, which was designed by famed architect Antoni Gaudí and has been under construction since 1882.

Cinque Terre, Italy

Hike through Italy's gorgeous Cinque Terre region, which is made up of five small fishing villages, all of which boast narrow winding roads, pastel-colored buildings, and amazing views of the Italian Riviera.

Ballybunion Golf Club — Ballybunion, Ireland

Play a round at Ballybunion, one of the most iconic golf courses in Ireland.

Reynisfjara Beach — Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland

Reynisfjara Beach is known for its black sands and basalt columns. It's located next to Vík í Mýrdal, Iceland's southernmost city.

• Read more:
• The 16 best new hotels in Europe that every traveler should visit
• You can take 13 trains all the way across Europe for under $500 — here's how
• The 50 most beautiful cities in the world
• 100 trips everyone should take in their lifetime

Chances are you'll never get to go to Niger. I never thought I'd get to go there either.

It's landlocked and mostly desert. The only non-African cities that offer direct flights are Paris and Istanbul. The desert northeast used to get tourists who wanted to see the sand-dune oceans and oases of the central Sahara, but security concerns related to Libya and Niger have wiped out most voluntary travel.

I went to Niger as part of an International Reporting Project fellowship. I never would have traveled there without a professional reason for going. But the country's mix of peoples, cultures, topography, and wildlife made me wonder what else I might be missing on a planet that's too vast, and too diverse, to see in whole.

The world is full of Nigers: Places that you might not really think about, but that are entrancing and utterly fascinating all the same. Just being able to see one of them was an incredible experience.

Armin Rosen reported from Niger on a fellowship from the International Reporting Project.

SEE ALSO: Here's how people make ends meet in one of the poorest places in the world

The country gets its name from the Niger River, which flows past Niamey, the capital ...

... but the Niger only flows for a few hundred miles in Niger, along the country's southwestern edge. The rest of it is dry savannah ...

... or desert that's as sandy, flat, and desolate as the ocean floor.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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With E-Day just around the corner, Canada’s pollsters have been out in force, asking Canadians whom they’ll back at the ballot box. But is it possible to predict Monday’s winner by looking at whom people are searching for online?

On Friday, Google put up a blog post offering some insights into what Canadians have searched for during this campaign. It includes a riding-by-riding breakdown of which leaders and which issues were searched for most often. However, the post stopped short of providing a direct comparison of searches for each leader. Here’s what that would look like; the chart goes back to just before Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the election on Aug. 2 and ends on Oct. 14.

(For best results on mobile, turn to landscape.)

While search interest in Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has picked up speed over the past week, searches for Harper remain robust. Search interest in NDP Leader Tom Mulcair has fallen far behind. (The Google Trend tool does not show absolute search volume, but is a relative comparison of searches over time, with 100 reflecting the peak of intensity. There’s an explainer here.)

For comparison, here is how the three leaders have fared in public opinion polls, where people are explicitly asked whom they support. The chart below shows the poll average compiled by Éric Grenier of ThreeHundredEight.com for CBC’s Poll Tracker tool.

(Again, for best mobile results, flip to landscape.)

The two charts both show Trudeau expanding his lead (in searches and poll support) over Harper, with Mulcair losing momentum.

The question of whether Internet searches can predict election outcomes is one of great debate, for obvious reasons. Big Data, the term given to the vast quantity of information now available, thanks to our hyper-connected lives, has shown to be highly useful in discerning consumer habits and trends. The possibility exists that data generated through the social web could be far more indicative of our voting inclination than what we tell pollsters we intend to do. Given the many high-profile failures by pollsters in recent elections, this would be an important tool for election forecasting.

So far, however, the evidence is mixed. One 2014 study by Oxford Internet Institute—”Can electoral popularity be predicted using socially generated big data?“—looked at the correlation between Google searches, Wikipedia usage and actual election results in elections in three countries, the U.K., Germany and Iran. While searches for individual leaders rather than parties proved more successful (Google and Wikipedia predicted the winners of the 2013 Iranian and 2010 U.K. elections), there were no clear patterns across different elections, and selection bias was pronounced. Not everyone is on the Internet, and they are not randomly distributed across voting districts. “People do not simply search in the same proportions that they vote,” the paper’s authors wrote. The institute found similar results after analyzing social media ahead of the 2015 general election in the U.K.

Some will also argue that Google searches merely reflect what the media are talking about: The more stories there are about a leader, the more likely it is that people will search for that individual. That argument likely overstates the mainstream media’s influence. It also doesn’t account for the relatively even scale of coverage the three leaders have received over the past 90 days. According to the Infomart media database, which captures the majority of Canada’s print, digital, TV and radio outlets, Harper has received the most coverage (35,632 story mentions) with Trudeau (24,844) and Mulcair (23,466) nearly tied for second.

This argument also doesn’t explain the largest discrepancy between the two charts: Mulcair’s early dominance. The NDP’s early lead, reflected in the polls, received extensive news coverage. Yet, in search interest, the NDP leader always lagged Trudeau and Harper.

Come Monday night, we’ll have a better understanding of how accurate both the pollsters and search interest were in forecasting the election. But it will still be some time before researchers are ready to declare Google an election-predicting winner.

The post Can Google predict who will win the election? appeared first on Macleans.ca.

For most people, a vacation is supposed to be a relaxing, light-hearted escape from the stresses of everyday life.

So it's not surprising that vacationers are scaling back in a region where humanity of Europe's migrant crisis is on full display.

Carnival, the world's largest cruise line, addressed this with its quarterly earnings a few weeks ago. Here's CFO David Bernstein during the conference call after earnings were reported:

"Overall, Continental Europe is probably more challenging. When you think about all of the economic difficulties and the geopolitical issues and the growing refugee concerns, that's the area that has had the most challenges in terms of pricing for 2016, but we've had these challenges all year in 2015 to some extent and we are forecasting that we are going to get yield improvement for our EAA brands for 2015. So hopefully despite all these challenges, we'll be able to do that in 2016 as well."

The European part of the business is critical for the company because about 28% of its 2015 available cabin space is deployed to the region, the second highest after the Caribbean, according to its latest annual report.

The situation has slowed ticket buying in the region, said CEO Arnold Donald in the conference call, which has forced the company to drop prices in order to fill their cabins.

"By the time we get to December maybe those things won't be the same, but today with some of the headwinds in Europe, geopolitical, macroeconomic malaise, the intense tension over there around the refugee situation, that has affected all travel, not just cruise but all travel," said Donald. "So those things may still be present or they may wane between now and when we get to December, but we will give you full guidance then."

About half of the company's European operations are in the Mediterranean, which thousands of migrants have attempted to cross in the last few months resulting in a large number of drownings. 

For what it's worth, Carnival beat earnings per share expectations but came in lower on its revenue yields, or how much the company is making per available room, and EPS expectations for the fourth quarter.

The stock is down about 7% since the earnings report on September 21.

SEE ALSO: CREDIT SUISSE: Europe's inflow of migrants is good news for the economy in the short term and great news in the long term

Join the conversation about this story »

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There was once a time when Americans consumed 13 pounds of tobacco per person per year.

Since the 1960s, US tobacco consumption has steadily declined as health fears and government regulation have hampered the industry.

Tobacco companies, however, are now back in the good times, according to Christopher Growe, Andrew Carter, and Matthew Smith at Stifel, a brokerage and investment-banking firm.

"We continue to refer to this period of time as 'The Golden Age,' given the robust growth dynamic currently in place and we believe we could see upside to earnings during this period of volume growth even in relation to our strong current growth estimates," the analysts in a note to clients on Wednesday.

In years past, the industry had to mitigate lower-volume shipments and the lowest percentage of Americans smoking ever by raising prices. Those price increases are still happening, but the losses have slowed, and in recent quarters they have gone positive for the first time since at least 2007.

There are a number of reasons for this, which the analysts point out, from American consumers having more money because of cheaper gas to higher rates of employment for key categories.

"We believe the major benefit from these improved economic conditions accrues to volumes and may have some positive impact on product mix if consumers are more apt to purchase premium brands," the analysts said.

"It is clear these improved economic conditions have turned a category prone to declining 3%-3.5% historically into one that is flat to growing."

One of the main reasons Stifel cites for the growth is the $25 billion acquisition of Lorillard by Reynolds American.

This deal combines the second- and third-largest cigarette makers in the US by market share. It means the three largest tobacco companies — including Altria (owners of Phillip Morris USA) and Imperial along with the newly merged Reynolds — control 95% of the global market.

"Although pricing has been moving up roughly $0.14 per pack annually, this rate of growth may well accelerate in part due to the consolidated market share as well as the less aggressive pressure on the low end and improved economic conditions supporting the premium brands," the report said.

This "golden age" has benefited stockholders, too, the analysts say. Tobacco companies are outpacing the S&P 500 by 14.3% so far in 2015, and even outpacing the category it is most closely associated with, consumer staples, by 3.8%.

Add up better sales, growing margins, and higher stock prices, and the analysts think the good old days are back for tobacco.

SEE ALSO: Thanks to cheap gasoline, Americans are smoking more premium cigarettes

SEE ALSO: Europe's migrant crisis is making it harder for Carnival to sell cruises

Join the conversation about this story »

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We meet a good amount of business owners each month who are looking to improve their online visibility and search engine rankings. Considering there’s no shortage of SEO and marketing advice floating around on the internet, it completely blows my mind that the majority of business websites we see don’t have the foundation SEO elements in place needed to get their website discovered online.

It isn’t the business owner’s fault that their SEO sucks – the blame falls squarely on the SEO or website design/development firm they hired.

For those who take the DIY SEO approach to their business, focus on nailing the basic stuff before applying more advanced SEO tactics; or before starting an AdWords campaign. Having a website without SEO is like moving into a half-built house – the framework is there, you just have to fill in the blanks.

Businesses who outsource their SEO need to make certain the company they hire is also fully qualified to tackle the ongoing SEO by educating themselves with the nuances of search engine optimization. You can’t ask the right questions if you don’t know the right words. And don’t be shy about asking prospect providers to explain their strategy for your business – by all means, do it! Listen for a “unique” strategy built for your unique business and pass on menu pricing and automated solutions. As you go through the process, just remember what Einstein said:

“If (they) can’t explain it simply, (they) don’t know it well enough” ~ Einstein

Any SEO or web designer/developer worth considering should be able to explain in non-technical terms; your current website status, their plans to correct any flaws as well a growth strategy.

Now that I’ve laid the foundation for my story, I’m going to pass on writing a best SEO tips article, and head in the opposite direction by pointing the most recurrent things we see on websites that are killing search engine ranking along with tips on how to fix them.

So read along and compare the things noted against your website and make it a priority to get them fixed soon – your online visibility will be all the better for it.

1. Lack Of Keyword Focus

The days of brainstorming to capture every conceivable word (called keywords) or phrase (yep, this one would be the key-phrase) that your business could rank for then stuff those onto your website are long over (they did exist though). So too are the days of making individual pages for each iteration of keywords.

Keyword research is tough, but it’s got to get done. Use Google’s Keyword Planner as a starting point. Be sure to select your targeting area so your results are geographically relevant (i.e. local). While you’re at it, selecting “Google and search partners” along with “Only show closely related ideas” under the “Customize your search” header may yield even better results.

You still should build pages based on keywords, but use them as a larger theme instead of a tight silo.

Write to be read – but in a way that search engines favor

2. The Wrong Keyword Focus

There are the keywords that people type (or speak) into their device to find answers, and there are the words that you want to be discovered by. You very well might hit it out of the park with being discovered for both – but at the beginning – focus first on the words people are using to discover you (and maybe your competition) by. Very often businesses have a long list of terms they want to be discovered for, and very often, these don’t match the words people are actually using to find businesses like theirs. The solution? See tip one.

In addition to using Google Keyword Planner, AdWords keyword conversion data as well as “search terms” data offer great insight. As does Google & Bing webmaster tools. Having these should be the defacto standard for all websites.

3. Poor META

Here’s what you need to know – every client-facing page of your website needs a unique META Title, also goes by the name Page Title. This is a primary and most foundational SEO element that identifies the title of every page of your website. Think of it as the chapters of a book, no two could be the same.

Here’s the fix: keep your META Title between 30-60 characters (top limit is 65 characters, and it’s actually measured in pixels, 200-512px if you will). Place your keyword as close to the beginning of the narrative that you can and end with your brand. Keep punctuation to a minimum, and use dashes and pipes (this > | < is a pipe) as separators if you need to and remember to write to be read – but in a way that search engines like. Nothing on your website should read robotic. Oh yea – it’s the opposite for the homepage (brand focus first – keyword focus last). Seriously – that’s how you do it.

As for META Descriptions (Page Descriptions) – not a ranking factor. But lead with your keyword and write to entice someone to click your link. This is your #1 conversion element, but few people actually read all 165 characters of it (that’s the limit – 932px if you will) so write it to be skim-read.

Lastly, META Keywords – oh stop the insanity! Stop using those, they have not been useful for a long time, give it up. For real, all the search engines have depreciated them and you’re likely to get yourself into more trouble than they’re worth. See step one instead.

4. Inconsistent Local Attributes

This one’s for businesses marketing locally and impacts more than 85% of the websites we see.

Be certain that your business Name, Address, and Phone Number (referred to as NAP) are on your website as text – not words within an image. Search engines can only see written text – they can’t see images – so make sure your contact information (and primary keywords) aren’t layered in an image.

Best practice would to have your contact information on every page of your website, and because it’s a global element, the footer is a prime location to make that happen. While you’re at it, consider adding your contact information as structured markup code (schema), it offers descriptive behind the scenes that search engines eat up.

5. Robot Tags

In the old days we instructed search engines to “index” a webpage with a line of code called a robot META tag, but that practice isn’t necessary any longer. Here’s how Google say it “The default values are “index, follow… and do not need to be specified.” Adding an index META tag to a site today could be perceived as being a bit pushy (forced directive) – so it’s best to not include it. Don’t worry though, the default has you covered as all pages are indexable unless noted otherwise (like below).

Surprisingly, just like the index META code we see a lot of pre-production/in-development websites the aren’t using the “noindex” tag when using a separate URL during the website development stages (e.g. yoursite2.com). In the absence of this code, the in-development pages will show up online instead-of or in-addition to your clients existing pages– and that’s not going to be a fun conversation.

We’ve also seen website developers using a subdomain on their own website to host a pre-production website. It looks something like this client.yourwebsite.com. Can you imagine the mess this makes when they forget to use the correct META tag?

6. Poor Image Elements

The number one thing that prevents pictures from being discovered within image searches has nothing to do with the image. It’s a poorly structured filename that will kill any chance of an image being discoverable online.

The filename is the strongest SEO element for images – as well as for podcasts, and videos

This is a super easy fix, but could take a ton of time to change. If your website is on WordPress, there are some decent file renaming tools that do a good job with the heavy lifting, but be careful of using a fully automatic one, those are usually a compromise solution that could triple your headache.

Here’s the advice we give our clients: format the filenames in lowercase using dashes-to-separate words (not spaces or_underscores) and make sure to include the keyword of the page the image is to be placed on within the filename (e.g. a “red shoe” images that belongs on the “red shoe” page of your website should contain the keywords “red shoe” or “red shoes”). This is an overly simplified explanation, but it’s not rocket science, and most business owners can do this. If you have tons of files, set up a schedule to do a few every day, you’ll get through it.

6 1/2. Not Using Analytic & Webmaster Tools

Not a ranking factor – but as the saying goes “you can’t manage what you don’t measure”. I don’t have hard data on this, but I would have to say that 1/3 of the websites we see do not have Google Analytics installed – and even fewer have Google & Bing Webmaster Tool access(Google’s is now called Google Search Console).

Before making any change to a website, make certain you can measure the effectiveness of those changes. These tools are FREE and the self-help and how-to articles on to use them are excellent.

So there you have it – six 1/2 ways to bolster up foundational elements of your website that often go missing and kill online visibility. Fix these and watch you rankings trend up!

For many app developers, the only thing harder than getting users to install their app is getting them to continue using it. Branch is a great tool for driving continuing engagement over the entire user lifecycle, from onboarding to retention to re-engagement. Integrating the SDK and turning on deep links is the first step. Here are a few things we’ve seen drive successful user engagement for our partners.

Tips to Improve Mobile Engagement, Retention, and Re-Engagement

Customized onboarding builds loyalty

User retention begins at user acquisition. The hard truth is that most app downloads are shortly followed by an uninstall. This initial usage hurdle is nearly as big an obstacle as getting the user to download in the first place.  Branch helps you get past that first big hurdle by giving you tools to make the initial experience more compelling.

Every install that comes through a Branch link has a JSON object (basically a list that’s easy for a computer to read) passed into your app from our server as soon as the user launches for the first time.  It includes how the link was created, who created it, and any campaign information or tags that were embedded.  For a link created and shared by an end user, the social context we’re passing into your app is absolutely invaluable.

Gogobot uses this information to customize the account creation screen- a picture of the user who sent the invite pops up and the incentive that the new user  was promised is displayed. Their conversion from install to account sign up increased 78% as a result. This drives engagement in the short term and sets the tone for what users can expect from your app.

Customize the user experience post-install

Customizing sign up is very powerful, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg.  Imagine you’re a book seller and you know that your new user came in following a link to one of Ursula LeGuin’s books. Right off the bat, you know that this is a user who is interested in science fiction and fantasy and who appreciates female writers. You can use that information to better select  which books you show them.

Combining Branch data about which books they interact with (sharing, clicking on shares from friends, driving their friends to install, etc) with the data you already have about their in-app behavior provides a treasure trove of opportunities to customize their experience and provide lasting value. That value is what will keep current users active and help you re-activate and re-engage users who fall off.

Here’s data from three Branch partners comparing the 1-day, 1-week, and 30-day user retention for users who came in via Branch links vs others:

An educational app

An e-reader app

These numbers didn’t happen by accident – the more you leverage the available tools to make your content relevant and valuable the stickier your app will be.

Social context and sharing for organic engagement

Speaking of social data and sharing, there are few tools as powerful for driving re-engagement as positive reinforcement by friends and peers. By making it easy for people to share and rewarding them for doing so, you embed your app into the user’s social sphere.

iHeartRadio (which streams radio stations from around the world) has done exactly this by allowing their millions of listeners to share not just their app but specific stations.  Suddenly, radio stations are no longer limited to a single geographic area and friends who grew up listening to the same stations can still engage with those stations – and each other – even if they no longer live anywhere near each other. All of that interaction drives users right back into the app, over and over again.

Re-engage mobile web users to drive them back to your app

It’s relatively easy to drive web traffic because the ecosystem is mature and visiting a web page is low cost to the user – they don’t have to install anything and they can easily click away. At the same time, once they’ve made the decision to install a mobile app and gotten past the initial learning curve, mobile apps are stickier than mobile web. The recent white paper by comScore reinforces this point. Treat your mobile website as the top of your user acquisition funnel and leverage it to drive users to your app.

So far so good – but how to get those mobile web users to change their habits and start using your app instead? Automatically redirecting users who have your app installed into that app when they visit your mobile site is a poor tactic that can backfire – especially if your mobile app doesn’t have all the same options and functionality as your mobile site. Users will often uninstall apps that do this because it denies them access to the missing functionality.

In an ideal world, one would start by making sure your app has at least as much functionality as your mobile website, but at a minimum you can avoid loss by allowing users to make the choice themselves. Smart banners are an easy and non-intrusive way to prompt users to open the content in the mobile app without being pushy. This can help users get into the habit of going to the app and drive long-term engagement.

Use Branch links everywhere

Branch links work everywhere, from email newsletters to SMS to in-app messaging.

Users on desktop can be directed to the web content or prompted to text themselves an install link. Branch links embedded into the messaging in your A/B testing platform of choice can include embedded information about which version the user interacted with so you can optimize more quickly and accurately.

You can also use Branch links behind the re-engagement ads offered by many of the mobile ad networks. Our intelligent routing makes sure that users who still have your app go directly to the promotion content and users who have uninstalled and decide to give you another try get the best re-onboarding experience possible.

As a bonus, your mobile content can be automatically added to Spotlight search for iOS users and Google App Indexing for everyone else, so when your users search on those platforms, your content will appear and they can re-engage immediately.

What are you waiting for? Get started!

Have you had fantastic success or epic frustration re-engaging your users? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Are you thinking of approaching an angel investor to put money into your start-up or to help you scale up?

Before you start contacting local angels, you should understand what they look for so you make sure you are approaching the right angel groups and providing them with the information they need to make a “go” investment decision.

How do you know if you fit the bill?

Before looking at the specifics of any investment opportunity, angels will determine if there is a fit with their investment approach.

Some angels invest in companies only in their state or region, while others invest only in certain industries: the most popular being health care/life sciences, enterprise software, internet marketing, mobile apps and related technology, and clean tech/renewal/green energy.

Some have other criteria like investing only in women-owned businesses or companies founded by military academy grads and veterans. Others are interested only in companies in particular development stages: seed, A round, or B and later rounds.

If the angel group is actively engaged in their investments, they may require a board of director’s position.

About 95 percent of the 565,000 companies started each month will be operated by their founders for many years (startups.co). Angels are not interested in these companies. They’re interested in the remaining 5 percent that have an exit plan, since this is when they get a return on their investment.

All angels will ask you about your exit plans — when you intend to sell your company and cease involvement in your creation.

Once a fit is established, angels will look at the following five factors for each investment opportunity.

Keep in mind that while the factors are similar across angel groups, each will have its own idea on the importance given to each. Be sure to think through each of these factors so you are prepared for the questions ahead of you.

Factor 1: Management and Management Team

• Is the founder/CEO tested in the current company?
• Does he/she have a strong CV with relevant experience?
• Is the founder/CEO coachable?
• Does the founder/CEO have experience starting, growing, and exiting companies; in other words, is he/she a serial entrepreneur?
• Has the management team worked together before, especially in difficult situations?
• Do the other management team members have strong CVs with relevant experience?

Factor 2: Product or Service

• Does the product or service have a clear and tested value proposition with multiple customers?
• Does the product/service have some market traction? Is it more than just an idea?
• Are favorable customer experience references available?

Factor 3: Competitive Landscape

• What are the barriers to entry by competitors?
• Is there any enforceable intellectual property?
• How long would it take a well-heeled competitor to copy the product/service and obtain market traction?
• How many viable competitors exist?

Factor 4: Market Attractiveness

• Is the addressable market several billion dollars?
• Does the company have the potential to make $10 million in annual sales? How long will it take?
• How much market penetration can be achieved in the first year?

Factor 5: Financials

• How long will it take the company to be cash flow positive?
• What is the magnitude and stability of cash flows?
• Is the current company valuation attractive and justifiable?
• Assuming the company achieves its milestones with this investment, when and how large will the next funding be?
• Have the founders, family, and friends already invested in the company? Are all current investors participating in this round?

Ready to start your search for the perfect investor?

Most angel groups have a website listing their investment approach, members, and often the names of their portfolio companies.

Here are a few other resources to help you narrow you search:

• Angel Capital Association: This trade organization for angel groups lists members by state and accredited platforms.
• Angel List: This and other such platforms connect companies seeking funding and angel investors.

You can also perform an online search for “angel groups in your state/area” or “angel groups investing in your business sector.” And ask your lawyer and accountant for their recommendations.

Key Lessons

• Angels have different investment approaches; find one that matches your situation.
• Provide angel investors with the information they need to make a “go” investment decision.

Looking for more business planning advice? Find all of Hal’s business advice on the Constant Contact Blog here.

Forget wearing a health tracker. How about swallowing one?

At the recent Code/Mobile conference in Half Moon Bay, CA all eyes and ears were on Jawbone’s CEO Hosain Rahman. He spoke with Re/code’s Kara Swisher about how ingestible sensors could play an important role in the future of wearables.

Jawbone Up, the company’s smart fitness tracker syncs with an app and delivers personalized tips and reminders to help the user make healthier choices.While Jawbone is popular in the world of wearables,Rahman believes that in the future, people will be swallowing sensors that would be capable of actively monitoring factors from within the body.

These fitness sensors, once implanted or swallowed could remain in the blood stream and give valuable data about the user.Rahman cited a situation where it could potentially track the blood alcohol level and alert the user against driving under the influence of alcohol.

As technology gets more sophisticated, such sensors, as is their nature could also interact with a variety of  other devices and constitute an “Internet of Things” network.This network connectivity will in turn enable these devices to collect and exchange data.

Imagine a thermostat that could adjust accordingly to how clod or warm the user is feeling.This can also contribute significantly to the contextual health data that can be collected about the user, thus leading to quicker diagnosis, personalized treatment and course of action.

One step forward and one that solves the current challenge of ensuring that users take to wearables and wear it constantly.

But the idea of an ingestible sensor is not all that new.Take the Proteus Ingestible Sensor, for instance.It is FDA approved and is capable of monitoring medicine intake, steps, rest and heart rate.The sensor communicates with an adhesive patch worn on the torso.The patch can then transmit the data to a smartphone app through bluetooth; thus effectively combining ingestible, wearable, mobile and cloud computing.

So, not many years in the future, but ingestibles in the here and now.This is clearly an idea whose time has come. As Jawbone and other players invest resources into this exciting technology, its a development I will be closely following.

Are wearables overrated? Are they a fad or here to stay? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Having caused quite a stir in the consumer space, wearables are already beginning to make their presence and value felt in the workplace too.But, where there is hype, there are challenges.

image :www.The verge.com

I had an interesting conversation with Pam Hege this morning. It started with a discussion of clients asking to solve a particular problem–but the wrong problem.

As consultants, we see this issue a lot. People call having an issue that’s urgent, but it’s not THE problem.

It seems to be human nature to focus on crises. We ignore something that may be a problem or are oblivious to it until a crisis occurs. The challenge is that often the crises masks the real problem. But since we focus on the crisis at hand, we mobilize the organization to “fix the problem.” In the end, two things happen, we either fix the symptom or we are diverted by another crisis so we end up fixing nothing.

To drive real sustainable change and the consequent results, we have to focus on THE problem—or at least something that’s deeper than the symptom.

But how do we start to do that?

It’s actually not that difficult. When we identify a problem–it may be the result of a crisis, before we rush to solve it, we need to ask ourselves, “Why?”

“Why is this a problem?” We have to answer this in a thoughtful way, inevitably it points us to a slightly deeper understanding of the issues.

But we can’t stop there, we have to force ourselves to ask Why again.

As with the first Why, we start pulling back the onion a little more. We begin to understand the symptom isn’t the real problem, there are some other things that are causing this problem. If we had rushed out to solve the crisis, we wouldn’t have solved the real problem, so it would become a crisis again.

To often, I see organizations solving the same problem over and over–sometimes in the same way, sometimes in different ways, but it never ends–it’s because they haven’t taken the time to ask why.

But two Why’s isn’t enough. We need to drill down three more times (for a total of 5 Why’s) to understand the real issues. It’s this inspection that enables us to identify the real issues that are being masked by the problems we see in being crisis managers.

The most important problem to solve is never the crisis. The most important problem to solve is the problem that results in the crisis. To identify that problem, you have to dig deep. Take the time to do it–the problem you end up solving will eliminate numerous other problems–and may not be that difficult to solve in the first place.

As a postscript, this is a powerful diagnostic to use with your customers. Our job is to help our customers solve their problems. They do the same things we do in solving problems-they respond to the crisis. Sometimes the insight or challenge we bring is getting the customer to drill down by asking why. Helping customers discover and solve the real problem is the ultimate in value creation.

Remember the old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups commercials from the ’80s? The ones where two people – one eating chocolate, the other holding a jar of peanut butter – collide and exclaim: “Hey! You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!” and “Hey! You got your peanut butter on my chocolate!”

At the time, I suppose they were two things that we traditionally didn’t believe went together (yea, right!) – a bit like how many think about metrics and journey maps.

As long as we’re talking about traditional thinking, when we talk about the traditional approach to mapping, images of butcher paper and Post-It Notes come to mind. This approach to mapping is still widely used today, but it has some flaws, not the least of which is that it’s difficult to analyze and prioritize touchpoints and improvement opportunities. Why? Because there’s no way to easily and efficiently assign data to each touchpoint, a precursor – and a requirement – to said analysis and prioritization, and you can’t easily crosstab and modify views to do the analysis.

In a previous post, I mentioned that mapping tools had to evolve because people failed to see the value in mapping with the then-current approaches; in addition, maps were not proving to be that catalyst for change that they are designed to be. In order to be that catalyst, maps have to be actionable. And the only way they can be actionable is if you have some data to support or to drive that action. Executives love data and metrics, right? Data-driven decisions are all the rage, and rightly so.

Where do the data and metrics come from? And what kind of data?

There are two types of data that will be critical to include in your maps:

1. Customer data: this is your voice of the customer (VoC) data and metrics, including satisfaction, importance, NPS, customer effort score, and verbatims/comments about the experience.
2. Business data: for a lack of a better way to label it, this data is all about the business impact; it’s revenue, profitability, retention, cost to fix, time to fix, effort to fix, impact to fix type of data.

When you assign these types of data to each touchpoint (for which you have it and where it makes sense), you are setting yourself up to make data-based decisions around prioritizing improvements. You’ll be able to determine if you’re making improvements that are most important to your customers, while also understanding the cost or the effort to do so.

You’ll also be able to build your business case for these improvements. You’ll easily be able to answer questions such as: “If we fix this, how will it impact our customers?” and “If we fix this, what is the business impact?” and “Why should we fix this?”

Just like the Reese’s commercial ends with, “Two great tastes that taste great together,” metrics and maps are two great tools that work great together. Once you put them together, you’ll wonder how you were ever able to do your job without them.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together. -Vincent Van Gogh

Image courtesy of Betty Crocker Recipes

Getting started with an outbound demand generation program to supplement your inbound marketing efforts can be challenging at first.

There’s many moving parts to deal with across numerous channels and partners. A few include:

• Calculating pipeline requirements (those number of contacts/leads beyond what your inbound efforts can achieve)
• Identifying, selecting and onboarding media partners with the necessary audiences to scale your reach
• Communicating with each partner individually regarding the requirements of a given campaign, typically via email or phone
• Delivering, managing and updating campaign creative/content
• Acquiring lead files and “normalizing” them for correct formatting
• Analyzing campaign performance by each variable – demographic/firmographic targeting, content type, messaging, the media partner, etc.
• Adjusting campaigns across each partner based on performance of numerous variables

It’s enough to make many marketing orgs shy away from outbound demand gen altogether. But one way or another, you need to scale your pipeline and get the leads that sales needs to thrive – and inbound alone is unlikely to get it done.

Fortunately, after years of facilitating outbound demand gen programs, we’ve found six steps that help things run smoothly.

1. Take inventory of your current database and determine pipeline needs

You’ve heard the adage “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” The principle is dead-on accurate in lead gen. You can’t develop a plan and invest your limited dollars wisely without a clear, reliable inventory of your current prospect database. You must understand what it can yield in terms of leads – before you spend any money with third parties.

Specifically, you must examine your current database to determine the contacts available in a given demographic segment to fulfill your campaigns. Subtract that number from the leads you’re committed to deliver to sales to determine your outstanding need, then compare that number to your budget and expected costs per lead (CPL) to determine what you can contract to third parties. (It’s a good idea to speak with a few media companies during this process to get an accurate estimate on what your campaign’s CPL will likely be).

2. Set KPI goals based on inbound performance metrics

When you’re just stepping into the outbound game for the first time, it’s a bit difficult to set baseline metrics, but you’ll still want to set at least a few before campaign launch. The best way is to start by measuring past inbound performance of the following variables:

• Creative/assets (such as white papers, case studies, etc.)
• Channel
• Persona or account targeting
• …or any other variables

Though performance will likely differ in an outbound campaign, it’s good to know which assets and personas typically convert at higher percentages. This will enable you to better assess the value of your outbound campaign performance by various media partners and channels.

With this knowledge in hand, set what you believe are realistic KPI goals such as:

• Volume by media partner, channel or asset
• Top-funnel lead to sales-accepted conversion rate
• Influenced pipeline

Not only will these KPI work as an initial measuring rod (which you’ll inevitably tweak after your first campaign), but it’ll help you organize campaign parameters when you start vetting potential partners to work with.

3. Create campaign parameters and expectations

Step 3 and Step 4 are usually done somewhat in tandem. Your campaign parameters and expectations will very likely be altered based on media partner feedback, but having the basics outlined will help you immensely during the vetting process.

You’ve likely heard the phrase “Crawl, Walk, Run.” You’ll want to start at a crawl with your outbound program.

What I mean by this is don’t go after all your target personas, using all your content through every available channel. Instead, pick one persona to start (but keep it general enough so that your cost per lead doesn’t skyrocket), and then pick a few pieces of content that have performed very well with this audience via your inbound efforts.

Then choose your filters. In my experience, targeting highly qualified leads by getting too specific with you campaign parameters (e.g., job title, industry, company size, budget, purchase time frame, geolocation) usually costs more money than it’s worth. It’s best to keep your outbound demand gen very top-funnel (less expensive CPL), and then nurture these contacts through a marketing automation system.  …but then again, every industry is different.

4. Identify and vet potential media partners

No marketer should ever take this lightly. There’s some great demand generation partners out there, but they may not have much influence over your target audience. And remember, the entire point of outbound demand gen is to reach your audience (personas or accounts) where they’re having relevant conversations. So always keep audience strengths in mind when selecting partners.

Once you’ve got a list of partners that specialize in your target audience, you’ll want to start vetting them with a litany of questions:

• What channels do they specialize in?
• What content types to the have the most success with? (If you only have white papers but they typically like to promote webinars, this may not be the best fit for you)
• How are leads delivered? (Manually via excel, automated via an API, through an automation platform, etc.)
• What’s the policy for pausing or tweaking a campaign in flight?
• Do they have a specific recommendations for your campaign?

Of course, you’ll want to get references and make sure they have payment terms agreeable to your organization.

Also, keep in mind that starting out with too many partners at first will be cumbersome and can potentially derail the entire program – so don’t go too big.

On the other hand, you’ll want to have enough partners so that you can compare them against one another. Three to five is optimal for most marketing orgs just starting out.

5. Organize, deliver and check campaign assets

If you’re not organized, assets will get lost – and this can bring down an entire program due to delayed launches.

For example, if you’re running a six-week campaign that gets delayed by three weeks because the wrong assets were sent to the wrong partners or assets were missing required elements (e.g., an abstract to place on a media partners landing page), that minimizes the time available to generate leads and optimize the campaign.

What typically works best (short of getting demand gen automation software with a media library), is creating an excel spreadsheet that organizes all assets in your program by campaign and media partner. And then include any required abstract or landing page content in a separate column within the same spreadsheet. Send this to every partner and keep them informed when it’s updated.

Finally, make sure all your partners use the right content. If they’re running content syndication, check landing page content and make sure it’s the right asset. If it’s a telemarketing campaign, listen to recordings to make sure they’re sticking to the script. Mistakes happen – you’ll want to catch them as soon as possible.

6. Understand roadblocks, use automation to hurdle them

I’m not trying to pitch anyone here, but manual management of outbound demand gen programs is burdensome and easily detracts from program investment returns. I won’t beleaguer the point, but a few common issues include:

• The sheer amount of time communicating with many media partners, one at a time via email and phone calls, often through which campaign parameters are misunderstood, creative assets are lost, etc.
• Scrubbing and normalizing lead files – poor quality leads will slip through the cracks if this is done manually
• More time lost manually uploading contacts into marketing automation systems, slowing lead velocity
• Lack of program transparency when everything is done via emails and spreadsheets – much harder to learn and improve results

If you can’t invest in outbound demand gen automation tech right now, the best alternative is to set up strict procedural guidelines for each of the above steps. And get all stakeholders on the same page – internal demand gen and marketing ops teams as well as all media partners – to ensure roadblocks are minimized and resources are maximized.

This will be a bit daunting at first, but the organizations that do it right and learn from their setbacks very often completely revitalize growth within six months.

Y Combinator has spawned some of the biggest startups in Silicon Valley, like Airbnb and Dropbox, only to push them out of the nest when they graduate the three-month accelerator.

Y Combinator graduates get an even $120,000 investment in exchange for seven percent of equity. From there, the alumni network helps take care of their own, but there's no more financial support from the program. 

The system has worked. The elite startup school that has funded more than 800 startups since 2005.

But the system changed dramatically this week. 

On Thursday, Y Combinator President Sam Altman announced that the accelerator had raised a $700 million "Continuity" venture fund to do just what its name implies. 

Run by Twitter's former COO and YC partner Ali Rowghani, the Continuity Fund will invest only in Y Combinator alumni after they've graduated from the accelerator. 

In other words, the startup school that used to groom and present companies to other VCs to help them grow is now going to compete with those very same VCs a few years down the road. 

How the fund will work

The first way the Continuity Fund will invest is by exercising Y Combinator's "pro rata rights," a venture capital term that means a fund can continue to participate in future rounds to maintain its same ownership share. The fund has promised to exercise those rights on any Y Combinator company's raise if it is below a $300 million valuation.

Above that, the fund is reserving its rights to be more selective.

"Its actually somewhat unusual for an investor like us to not continue to do pro rata," Altman told Business Insider. "So the founders were saying 'Can you continue to support us?' and we just didn't have the money to do it."

Y Combinator first decided it would just do the pro rate piece, Altman said, but as it started raising money, it found many "hard tech companies" — like nuclear power or rockets — have trouble raising large rounds of capital in their later stages.

"Somewhere between very hard and impossible actually. There just aren't that many investors who are willing to do that," Altman said. "So we're thinking to ourselves, if we're going to keep putting these companies through our program, it's important that we continue to support them and help them raise large amounts of capital later."

At the later stage rounds, the Continuity Fund starts looking like more of a competitor in the funding landscape.

The fund will invest in growth stage rounds — the ones typically a few years before an IPO where nontraditional investors like Goldman Sachs or T. Rowe Price participate. In a Q&A with Y Combinator, Rowghani, the fund's lead, said it will even lead rounds and join a board seat. 

"Most VCs don't love the growth rounds. Most VCs love the A and the B rounds which we've said we're not doing," Altman said.

Not picking favorites ... at first

Fellow venture capitalists, especially in the earlier stages, aren't really concerned about the change. One venture capitalist said it "makes sense" that the accelerator that that has built its reputation on supporting its investments in so many other ways would continue to do so in a financial way. This same investor also applauded Y Combinator for its transparency in how it will keep the field level for investors in the earlier stages to still come in and lead rounds.

"We will still look to Y Combinator graduates as great potential investments at the early stages where we take active board roles and help the founders build their companies," Greylock partner Josh Elman told Business Insider in an e-mail. "At the later stages, it seems that growth investors will have to compete with the Continuity fund which may have inside knowledge on the companies."

Jumping into the late-stage game will be fun to watch for many of the early stage investors who have come to know the accelerator as only the starting point of some of the highest-valued startups in tech.

"I'm really excited to see how Sam's planning on adding value to late-stage companies," said Tim Young, a founding general partner at Eniac Ventures.

This is a big bet on startups, and not all of Y Combinator's companies will make the later stage.

Altman doesn't see this as picking his favorites from a batch, and will keep a careful eye to make sure there's no unintended consequences, he said.

"There are a bunch of other firms that pick their favorite children at the end of the program, and that's just absolutely disastrous. We would never do that," Altman said.

However, he acknowledges that startups may change their view of Y Combinator over the years. What was their launch pad and debut into the startup scene will become a cash source in the future. Altman hopes he's set it up so that companies will continue to come to Y Combinator for advice on both their highs and lows, but that may change down the road when the company looks more like a potential investor and board member.

"Once a company is 3 or 4 years out, and raising a round at half a billion or a billion dollars, yeah at that point they're going to view us as potential investor and probably treat us differently," Altman said. "But during the program, as we designed this, we limited our own economic upside so it doesn't change for these founders."

SEE ALSO: Flipagram, a photo-story app that raised $70 million from 2 of the best investors in Silicon Valley, has laid off 20% of its staff

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Why new companies have it way easier now than a decade ago

Loss Aversion in Marketing and Business: For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you’ll know that one of our most popular and most visited topics is that of consumer psychology and how we can utilise this in marketing – for good, not for evil!

Loss aversion is a powerful psychological phenomenon which small business owners (in fact, businesses of all sizes) should be aware of, and can utilise. First, let’s begin by outlining what loss aversion is.

What is Loss Aversion?

In short, loss aversion describes the tendency in most people to favour avoiding losses over acquiring gains. In the real world, it suggests that most people will derive less pleasure from winning £500 than they would derive suffering from losing £500. A paper from Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman has suggested that the effect is twice as large for losses – i.e. it hurts twice as much to lose £500 as it feels good to win £500.

Loss Aversion in Marketing

Utilising loss aversion in marketing is actually fairly simple – and is utilised by larger companies all the time. For instance, a free trial of Netflix costs the consumer nothing (hence it’s free!) and so is a relatively easy sell for the company – “Try it for 30 days, if you don’t like it, just cancel your subscription.”

However, loss aversion is at play. After 30 days and, if film consumption is anything like my house, tens of films having been watched, customers are used to having the access – it has become part of everyday life. By cancelling the subscription, the customer is losing the instant access to hundreds of films and potentially adding complication (do they rent a film, scroll through TV channels etc.).

Because there is no additional effort involved in signing up – another clever element in the design of the Netflix proposition – many customers will simply stay with the company, because to lose access to their favorite films is more powerful than the effect of ‘re-gaining’ their £10 a month. In addition, moving the point of payment to a month after having experienced the product, moves the barrier posed in loss aversion terms – i.e. the loss of £10. Most people are poor at predicting their future decisions, and will tell themselves they will cancel within 30 days.

Moving forward, a few ways you can think about loss aversion in your own marketing would be as follows:

• If you offer a subscription based product, the above case study is a good one – try offering free trials
• Think about loss aversion when designing marketing messages – i.e. traditionally communications might say “Earn ten pounds a month by switching to our new current account – potentially try “Lose ten pounds a month, for every month you’re not with the Bank X Current Account’
• If you’re product is a time saving service, then re-enforce the fact that customers will be losing time by not moving to your product

One thing that you may ask is why doesn’t losing cash offset the aversion in the Netflix example? It certainly does – losing £120 is certainly more of a pain than gaining £120 is. However, again, Netflix do a good job of making use of another couple of psychological elements. Firstly, the cost of £120 (annually) is staged in £10 intervals – as humans we struggle to quantify the long-term, we think in short term affects. Second, because the transaction takes place online, via direct debit for instance, we never see the physical cash – again lessening the impact of the loss. And finally, as mentioned above, the actual loss is disassociated from the product itself by giving away a month of access for free – the process of weighing the value of £10 against the value of access to movies is moved away from the point of signup. We’ll discuss each of these in later blogs.

The press release is dead; yet it continues to be one of the main vehicles of corporate communications. New forms have emerged such as the news release, as online marketers recognise the benefits of the old PR staple. As marketing pundit David Meerman Scott puts it in The New Rules of Marketing and PR:

“The Internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media. Blogs, online video, news releases, and other forms of web content let organizations communicate directly with buyers.”

Especially for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the news release provides a cost effective, easy to manage comms tactic to market themselves on the web. But it also opens a can of worms with regards to the traditional rules and etiquette of media relations and distribution. Understanding the pros and cons of the news release strategy helps organisations balance PR objectives with broader marketing goals.

Pros
• The times when press releases were exclusively read by journalists are over. Today, anyone can subscribe to company updates on the news wires and corporate newsrooms. In many cases, companies don’t have a choice; they merely comply with their disclosure requirements. They can as well embrace it and being more conscious of non-media audiences, cater for the demand with regular updates on activities and achievements.

• Not all news is hard-hitting enough for media coverage. By publishing updates directly to buyers, investors and other stakeholders, businesses can take a more targeted approach with their messages and contents. They also make their news available to bloggers and other influencers that might not be captured through their traditional media relations program.

• The online newsroom is often the most frequently updated and as such, SEO-friendly site of an organisation’s website. The news release plays an important role in the overall success of the online marketing strategy, and also provides much needed content for social media channels and other forms of marketing communications.

Cons
• Distributing news releases directly to marketing audiences and the public can diminish the news value of the announcement. Cutting out journalists as the traditional “gatekeepers” can not only impact the quantity but also the quality of media coverage as there is less time for clarifications and analysis. Conversely, distributing updates to media that are mainly intended for customers, partners or investors (but don’t meet traditional news criteria) can also negatively affect your PR program.

• Press release templates vary from industry to industry, across countries, and depending where the company is listed, but they have certain attributes in common, such as the dateline, a pyramidal structure and above all, a more fact-driven, neutral tone. In contrast, taking its inspiration from blogs and online entertainment, the news release is less standardised. The excessive use of animated GIFs (see ZDNet op-ed piece on the topic) as an example of the more experimental forms demonstrates how this can render news releases unsuitable for the media, and even invite ridicule.

• Even with its less rigid format, the news release should be reserved for actual news updates. Consider other communication channels such as a company blog, video or slideshows for opinion pieces, company backgrounders or product information.

Each one of your leads is different. They have differing needs, goals, aspirations and requirements before choosing your product. It’s important that you provide unique value along their purchase process. This unique value should come in the form of persona-aligned, buyer’s journey-based and timely-delivered content. 

1. Persona-Alignment

Your content should be a clear reflection of your persona’s voice, needs, pain-points and goals.  When building out your content offer, avoid creating general content that appeals to all personas. When you try to create general content for everyone, you are in fact creating it for no-one. Identify your highest-priority persona (based on your marketing and company goals) and prioritize your content creation around their educational needs. After you’ve created persona-aligned content, avoid “blasting” the same content to your entire database. Again, segment, segment, segment. This will help you improve your conversion rate and reduce the amount of unsubscribes from your database.

2. Buyer Journey-Based Content

the form of content that answers certain questions and gives prospects the tools they need to help them make the best decision. This content should align with the buyers journey. Here are the 3 stages of the buyer’s journey and the types of content you need to provide at each stage:

• Awareness: Vendor-neutral, educational information that helps your prospect/lead identify a need, problem or opportunity. Here is an example of an awareness-stage piece of content
• Consideration: Content that helps your lead understand every available option to solve their problem. Comparative e-books or charts work wonderfully in this stage. Here is an example of a consideration-stage piece of content
• Decision: Now that the lead understand the available options to solve their need or problem, it’s time to provide them with an up-close look at the solution. This can come in the form of demos, trials, consultations, assessments, case studies, 3^rd-party reviews or product videos. Here is an example of a decision-stage piece of content.

Here’s a print out from HubSpot to help you provide value to your leads along their purchase cycle.

 

3. Timely-Delivered Content

The 3^rd most important way to deliver value to leads is to make sure they are getting their content at the right time. Not too soon. Not too late. Use workflows to automate the delivery of this content to your database of leads. Workflows allow you to deliver the right content at the right time. Workflow automation also allows you measure the effective of your lead nurturing and quality of content at each buyer’s journey stage.

What are some ways you deliver value to your prospects or leads?

This week Hootsuite made a pretty significant announcement confirming their move into the employee advocacy space with the launch of their new solution – Amplify.

I’ve blogged extensively about employee advocacy for many years and I’ve been in the driving seat when it comes to launching such a program within a complex multinational organisation.

As a practitioner in this space, I can honestly say that the tool alone will limit the potential success that can be achieved through employee advocacy.

Protecting The Brand & Building Thought Leadership

Training employees on the responsible use of social media protects the brand from employees sharing information (often unintentionally) that they shouldn’t have done about their work or the company.

At the same time, it can massively impact the brand in a positive way. If employees are able to build their personal brand online, they can establish themselves as thought leaders in a niche area that can help influence and educate potential buyers.

When buyers find an “expert” or “people like themselves” more credible than the brand CEO it’s time to rethink the brand social media strategy.

By enabling employees to become ‘social’ with their own personal brand, you create a wealth of opportunities that you could only dream of with your brand channels. I know because I’ve seen the impact.

Through my studies and observations, I have found that socially trained employees…

1 …Are More Likely To Share Branded Content
In my experience, when you educate employees on the importance of having a personal brand and building their network first, they are 3x more likely to start sharing content than those that haven’t been given that context. By the time you introduce social sharing into the training model, employees will understand how this will impact their profile. They will have done the basic ‘profile’ updates. They’re in a place where they’re READY to start sharing and they know what to share, how often and to which channel. They are confident.

2 …Will Yield More Impressions
Typically a trained employee will yield 3x more social impressions per share than a non-trained employee and this is mainly because they have invested time in building their network first. I always emphasise the importance of building and nurturing a strong network around your personal brand. Once you’ve achieved this you’re ready to start sharing. For example, it makes no sense to jump into sharing content if you’re only connected to 20 people on LinkedIn.

3 …Will Increase Your Engagements
Naturally, if you’re gaining more impressions you will attract more engagements including likes, comments and shares. I’ve found that trained employees will generate anywhere between 30-50% more engagements than non-trained employees and this is because they know what kind of content works well on which network. They know how to encourage engagement.

Most employee advocacy tools will often have some kind of gamification mechanism built-in. I suggest not incentivising on “number of shares” but “number of engagements” since really encourages your employees not to spam their network but actually engage their network.

4 …Will Generate More Clicks
Marketing will understand the importance of this one because in the paid media world, every click costs €€€. In my experience, employees who share content generated 50% more clicks than when I shared the same piece of content via branded social channels. WOW!

Employees who were social media trained generated 2x the amount of clicks than employees who weren’t trained.

This has a lot to do with making sure that the content is relevant for the employee’s personal brand and that it’s good content. Well written, full of useful insights and easy to read. Poor content won’t fly with your employees…or on any social channel for that matter.

By the way, it doesn’t always have to be branded content. Best-in-class community managers will follow the 4-1-1 rule. Four pieces of non-branded content to one piece of non-sales branded content and one piece of direct ‘sales’ content.

5 …Will Create Content For You
Finally, recognise thought leadership potential within your business. On average 26% of the B2B marketing budget is set aside to create content (blog posts, ebooks, white papers etc) and yet research shows that buyers are becoming less trusting of brand content and more trusting of content from peers and experts.

Some of your employees may express an interest in becoming online experts. Be sure to invest in them – fast track them through your social education program.

Pull them into your monthly social listening meetings and discuss topics that are trending. Feed them social trigger alerts that you’ve received. Enable them to create content and amplify that content via the brand channels.

So why should marketing lead this change? Two reasons:

First, Marketing should recognise the incredibly powerful potential that a community of employees will bring when they start advocating on behalf of the brand.

Second, the Marketing department is normally accountable for the online brand. Community managers know what kind of content gets the best engagement. They know how often to post and the most appropriate time to publish. This “community” intelligence is useful when training employees to build their own brand online.

If you enjoyed reading this post and would like further information on social media training for employees, then please reach out to @sarahgoodall at Tribal Impact – a social business consultancy that transforms communities into social brand advocates through training, tools & content.

Ever consider going back to school for your MBA and then life takes over and you realize it’s not a feasible option? Or maybe you determined, wisely, that the $100,000 to $200,000 for a two-year program isn’t really worth it. Regardless of why, some folks apparently feel a little down about it – and they shouldn’t.

Smart entrepreneurs are educating themselves and using that money to start their own businesses or invest it in stocks instead. How? Well, here are fifteen books that will leave you wondering why you ever considered an MBA to begin with! Even better? They’re perfect to add to an online library for your team to access through a collaborative work management platform and educate themselves as well! Win, win all around!

1. Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson

Written by the guys behind 37signal.com, Rework isn’t your standard business book. It provides real-world applications and advice to anyone thinking about launching their own business. After reading Rework, you’ll most likely rethink how you approach customers and create a business strategy. Or, as Mark Cuban said it, “If given a choice between investing in someone who has read REWORK or has an MBA, I’m investing in REWORK every time. This is a must read for every entrepreneur.”

Awesome quote: “If you’re opening a hot dog stand, you could worry about the condiments, the cart, the name, the decoration. But the first thing you should worry about is the hot dog. The hot dogs are the epicenter. Everything else is secondary.”

2. The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson

The techniques and advice shared in this bestselling book from 1981 have been used by countless managers. It clearly and simply defines what a great manager should do and how to become one with methods backed by behavioral science.

Awesome quote: “Take a minute: look at your goals, look at your performance, see if your behavior matches your goals.”

3. My Years With General Motors by Alfred Sloan

Written by the former CEO of General Motors and published in 1963, this book has been called the best business book written by the likes of Bill Gates. In it, Sloan details how he turned General Motors into an industry giant, while also providing actionable insights on management, marketing, accounting, and organization.

Awesome quote: “We have elected, as a large corporation, to build quality products sold at fair prices and while there are other in the industry who do not quite follow this policy, I am sure that we are in pretty general agreement that this is the correct policy. At the same time, however, we must admit that such a policy throws the added responsibility upon our sales departments to get the cost of quality plus a profit on quality.”

4. The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham

Originally published in 1949, The Intelligent Investor is an essential book for investors. In it, Graham discusses value investing, which is a concept he began teaching at Columbia Business School in 1928. Since its release it been revised several times and has been heralded by the successful investors like Warren Buffet.

Awesome quote: “The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.”

5. The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman founded PersonalMBA.com to provide an alternative to expensive and outdated MBA programs. In the best-selling book version, Kaufman outlines four concepts: The Iron Law of the Market, The 12 Forms of Value, The Pricing Uncertainty Principle, and Methods to Increase Revenue to assist anyone interested in business.

Awesome quote: “Every successful business (1) creates or provides something of value that (2) other people want or need (3) at a price they’re willing to pay, in a way that (4) satisfies the purchaser’s needs and expectations and (5) provides the business sufficient revenue to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operation.”

 6. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

How are certain companies able to endure while others shut their doors forever? That’s why Jim Collins wanted to know, and ultimately discovered in this book. Collins and his research team analyzed the history of 28 different companies and discovered the characteristics and strategies that make them great.

Awesome quote: “Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don’t have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”

7. Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter

This is an absolute must for any financial professional because it explains the five forces of competition: power of buyers, power of suppliers, rivalry, threat of new entrants, and threat of substitutions. With this knowledge, readers can effectively create a business strategy to help them stand out from the pack.

Awesome quote: “Many companies do not collect information about competitors in a systematic fashion, but act on the basis of informal impressions, conjectures, and intuition gained through the tidbits of information about competitors every manager continually receives. Yet the lack of good information makes it very hard to do sophisticated competitor analysis.”

8. How to Lie With Statistics by Darren Huff

This brief book full of illustrations is a great introduction, and refresher, into the errors that come with interrupting statistics and tips on how to see through the smoke and mirrors. As The Atlantic states, “A pleasantly subversive little book, guaranteed to undermine your faith in the almighty statistic.”

Awesome quote: “The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify.”

9. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael Gerber

Inc. Magazine proclaimed Michael Gerber as “The World’s #1 Small Business Guru”. So, his experience and advice in The E-Myth should definitely not be taken lightly as he takes you through the steps of starting, and eventually successfully running, a business.

Awesome quote: “Contrary to popular belief, my experience has shown me that the people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know but because of their insatiable need to know more.”

 10. The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the Business of Life by Philip Delves Broughton

Bestselling author Philip Delves Broughton traveled the world to discover the secrets and methods from the most-successful sales gurus. What Delves Broughton discovers through his journeys is that it takes tenacity to be successful in business – no matter how great a product or service is.

Awesome quote: “Selling is hard to teach because it is about what exists in your head and what goes on in your whole life. The objective in sales becomes the same as that in the rest of your life, to respect others and do best for them. Then you don’t have to be a salesperson about what you do. Selling becomes an activity consistent with who you are. (From Mrs. Shibata, the top salesperson in Japan)”

11. The Secrets of Economic Indicators : Hidden Clues to Future Economic Trends and Investment Opportunities by Bernard Baumohl

Written by the Chief Global Economist at The Economic Outlook Group, this book has already become a classic best-seller – despite only being around for a decade. It will help you better understand economic data and examine global economic indicators. According to Hugh Johnson, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at Hugh Johnson Advisors, “Every businessperson or investor should keep a copy of Baumohl’s book close at hand. It is great, at long last, to have someone who has eliminated what may have been so perplexing to so many and to have done so with such remarkable clarity.”

Awesome quote: “No single indicator can provide a complete picture of what the economy is up to. Nor is there a simple combination of measures that provides a connect-the-dots path to the future. At best, each indicator can give you a snapshot of what conditions are like within a specific sector of the economy at a particular point in time. Ideally, when you piece together all these snapshots, they should provide a clearer picture of how the economy is faring and offer clues on where it is heading.”

 12. The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield

Described as cross between Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War and Julie Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, novelist Steven Pressfield details the resistance that artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, and business owners face and how to overcome those barriers.

Awesome quote: “The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like.”

13. The Greatest Salesman in the World by Og Mandino

First published in 1968, Og Mandino’s classic sales book is a guide to the philosophy of salesmanship and success. It helps readers understand that you will never be successful in business if you are not able to sell your ideas, products, or services.

Awesome quote: “Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence and thus each obstacle is a comrade-in-arms forcing you to become better… or quit. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future.”

14. Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

Written by businessman and investor Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad Poor Dad has become the #1 Personal Finance book of all-time that has sold over 26 million copies. By looking back at Kiyosaki’s childhood, the book teaches readers the basics of personal finance and why you should start you own business.

Awesome quote: “I am concerned that too many people are focused too much on money and not on their greatest wealth, which is their education. If people are prepared to be flexible, keep an open mind and learn, they will grow richer and richer through the changes. If they think money will solve the problems, I am afraid those people will have a rough ride. Intelligence solves problems and produces money. Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.”

15. The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin

For most of our professional careers, we’ve been told that if you work hard and are persistent – along with a little luck – you’ll find success. In Seth Godin’s tenth book, however, he explains why this is the wrong approach in an honest, motivational, and easy-to-digest approach.

Awesome quote: “Most of the time, we deal with the obstacles by persevering. Sometimes we get discouraged and turn to inspirational writing, like stuff from Vince Lombardi: ‘Quitters never win and winners never quit.’ Bad advice. Winners quit all the time. They just quit the right stuff at the right time.”

Are there other books you think should have made the list? Shout them out!

With inbound marketing, you create quality content, attract your target audience to your website and turn them into leads. Then, you close the sale.

It all sounds good, but if your company is creating a lot of leads that don’t become customers, it can be frustrating. But look on the bright side: you have already cleared a huge hurdle—successfully generating leads.

Now you just have to add these five steps to your sales and marketing process to increase your conversion rates:

1.  Define a Qualified Lead

Is a form filled out on your website a qualified lead? In most cases, the answer is “no.”

According to Gleanster Research, 25% of leads are qualified and ready to buy (sales qualified leads), and 50% of leads are qualified but not ready to buy (marketing qualified leads). The remainder will never buy anything: students, people doing research and individuals who may have some interest, but not the necessary budgets or authority to purchase.

Since you only want to work the leads that have the potential to transform into sales, your first step is to define the criteria for qualified leads. A definition of a qualified lead enables you to cull through your web registrations to find those worthy of follow up.

Bear in mind that the definition of a qualified lead is where the misalignment between sales and marketing begins. That’s because there is often disagreement between the two functions on what represents a qualified lead.

To prevent professionals who should be working hand in hand from diverging, you need to define both marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads. And whatever criteria you use to place a lead in one of these buckets, sales and marketing leaders must agree to it.

Qualifying criteria may include titles, responsibilities, industries as well as budgets, the authority to buy, need and the urgency of solving the problem with a product, solution or service like yours.

2.  Qualify Your Leads

You can use marketing automation systems to score your leads based on how they engage with your online content. Scores provide some clue as to a lead’s level of interest.

However, it’s likely that some critical information is missing. That’s because to boost registrations for a webinar or guide, you may have abbreviated your registration forms. Perhaps you have the name of their company but don’t know how big it is or its industry. To learn more, you’ll want to append the data with demographic information from external sources.

With this additional data, you know which leads meet your demographic criteria. You don’t know, however, the problem they’re trying to solve and whether they have the budget and authority to buy. Also, there’s no indication of when they’re likely purchase, who influences the sale and what information your leads need to make decisions. To gather this information, you need human-to-human lead qualification: inside sales people or telemarketers on the phone, asking questions. Insights that you gain in these conversations will also help you to tailor sales presentations to a prospect’s needs.

3.  Assign Responsibilities

Marketing’s responsibility is to nurture marketing qualified leads—those that have potential to mature into sales qualified leads. The sales people then take on the ready-to-buy leads and close the sale.

Having a clear definition of leads and functional responsibilities conquers an age-old problem. Sales reps, who in the past may have failed to follow up on marketing leads, now pursue them eagerly because they know they’re qualified. And because they’re working the leads, marketing leaders no longer complain that sales people are frittering away the leads they worked so hard to produce.

Overall, the team is energized, working efficiently and is more likely to achieve the desired results.

4.  Nurture Marketing Qualified Leads

Why is it so important that the marketing department nurture leads until they are ready to buy? According to Forrester Research, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost than those that don’t.

The most cost-effective way to nurture leads is through email marketing. Email marketing, however, is not synonymous with mass marketing. The more personal your campaigns, the better.

Accordingly, you need to segment your audience by their interests. You may be able to do this, for example, based on their titles (CEO versus Manager), industries or company size. Also, you can segment based on interests and level of interest in your offering. The pages a lead visits on your website are an indication of which products or services they would like to learn more about. The amount or type of content they engage in is a strong indicator of their interest level. For example, a lead who reads a blog post may be doing early research while one who attends a webinar may be deeper into the decision-making process. This segmentation process enables you to serve up relevant emails that are more likely to produce results.

Email marketing is effective, but it’s not the only device in the nurturing tool box. Don’t forget the advantages of a telephone call.

While clicks and downloads provide some information about a lead, a one-on-one conversation allows you to ask open-ended questions and gain deeper insights into someone’s needs and how you can help them. It also provides an opportunity to answer a prospect’s queries and, if appropriate, counter their objections.

After the call, you can implement a follow-up plan tailored to your prospect’s needs. And, of course, there’s one powerful bonus to a phone call. Adding the human touch builds your relationship. Remember, business-to-business sales is really person-to-person sales. People buy from people.

5.  Close Sales-Qualified Leads

Depending on the complexity of your product, service or solution your inside sales people may be able to close the sale on the phone. If selling requires a face-to-face meeting, the inside sales or telemarketing representative can increase your sales force’s efficiency by setting up the appointments.

When it comes to closing the sale of complex B2B products and services, you cannot rely solely on automated techniques. The human touch is essential. Does that mean you’re out of luck if you don’t have an inside sales team? Absolutely not. There are companies with professional business development specialists who focus on nurturing B2B leads and appointment setting.

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GUEST:

Attribution. It’s a big challenge for e-commerce marketers. Most of these pros use a bevy of technologies and methodologies to concoct their attribution approach. They assign weights to actions across ad channels, and monitor their analytics to determine which of the channels are contributing to sales and how to allocate spend. If the attribution model reveals that email is the highest contributing channel, marketers will likely pump more dollars there. Display ads are not helping convert customers? Remove or shift budget.

But a problem with current attribution methods is that they look at how channels are related rather than how consumers are related. These models fail to consider the ways in which people, specifically families, influence one another’s purchasing decisions. Think, for example, about how much a teenager can influence a parent’s purchases.

What if marketers could see the domino effect that one consumer’s browsing behavior has on another consumer’s buying behavior? What if marketers could create an attribution model that understands a consumer’s interests or actions based on his or her relationships to others and to their online activity and transactions? Let’s unpack it.

The family attribution gap, defined

Going back to the teenager-parent example: Mom and Dad are not scouring the web to learn about the hottest new sneakers and counting down the days until their release date. That’s their son, Tim, who’s searching on Google, swiping online review sites, and ultimately clicking on a Facebook Ad for 123Sneakers.com (to use a hypothetical example) to see if his size is in stock for the latest Nike LeBrons.

But Tim is only 14 years old and isn’t approved for plastic. That’s when he goes to Mom, promises to get all A’s on his report card and do all his chores, and begs her to buy the sneakers.

Two weeks later when Tim hands over a stellar report card, Mom grabs her tablet, goes directly to 123Sneakers.com, and buys the kicks. The problem, of course, is that the retailer has no data on the attribution path that led to Mom’s purchase. To the retailer, it looks like Mom came directly to the site without being influenced by any ads or emails. There’s no credit to Tim’s search or clicks on the Facebook Ad.

That is the essence of the family attribution gap.

Enter Facebook

Facebook is in the position of understanding relationships between people. Parents, children, siblings, husbands, wives, aunts, uncles, and so on. Facebook knows because we tell it. At the same time, kids are doing a ton of product research online. All that data around who the true customer is (Tim) gets lost because a new user (Mom or Dad) buys the product.

The marketer’s attribution system would show that the investment to attract Tim did not pay off because he did not buy. In reality, the investment did pay off. Mom bought the sneakers. When the family attribution gap is open, marketers would likely pull back spend where they should fuel the fire.

So the question becomes: Can — and should — Facebook invest in the capability to connect Tim to Mom and provide that data to e-commerce marketers to help them more wisely spend their budgets?

How it could work

A retailer adds a tracking code to its site. Consumer #1 is logged into Facebook and then visits the retail site. The code tracks his behavior. Meanwhile, Consumer #2 is logged into Facebook on her own computer. She visits the same retail site and the tracking code again logs her behavior.

The technology then looks at the connection between Consumers #1 and #2 and assigns the pair a weight — let’s say 1, 2, or 3 — based on how their behaviors are related.

Category 1 = No connection on Facebook.

Category 2 = The consumers are friends on Facebook. Their online behaviors do not suggest that there is a relationship between their browsing and purchasing activity.

Category 3 = The consumers have indicated a relationship on Facebook (married, dating, related, etc.). Their online behaviors show a relationship between their browsing and purchasing activity.

The system could constantly pair users and assign them to a category. Once two users pass a certain threshold of correlated activities, the system would determine that there is a relationship between Consumer #1’s behavior and Consumer #2’s purchases.

Mom and Tim, for instance, would be in category 3. Armed with this data, marketers could accurately give credit to the channel that truly spurred the purchase — such as the ad in Tim’s Facebook feed.

Marketers could then target consumers with more relevant ads. Ads to Mom could be structured to provide recommendations for products her son might like. Ads to Tim would directly influence his choice of footwear. This “family attribution model” would let marketers hone their target market and avoid wasting spend on pushing the wrong ads to the wrong consumers. A blind spot would be illuminated.

Caveats? Yes. But the potential is immense

Certainly some conditions need to exist for this system to work. Consumers would have to be logged into Facebook — which is often the case. Seventy-one percent of online American adults use Facebook, according to Pew Research, with 70 percent of Facebook users logging in daily. Consumers would also need Facebook accounts, of course, so retailers would be able to gain data around those who are 13 and older. While this system probably would not replace other attribution systems, it could certainly supplement them.

The family attribution gap really gets interesting when you think about how far it could reach. It could close gaps beyond just parents and children. For example, connections could show a woman browsing sweaters online and then her husband buying one for her birthday. An executive might research new computers, and then her assistant purchases them.

Then there are groups and communities where one consumer can influence multiple people’s purchases — say a professor or several teacher assistants who influence college students to buy certain books or lab supplies. You can start to see how the family attribution gap can then adapt to become the “academic attribution gap.” Among co-workers, it could be the “co-worker attribution gap.” And so on.

Attribution gaps pervade our daily lives. But Facebook could be a bridge. The data surrounding the online behaviors and purchases of connected consumers could be used to understand how marketing spend flows between families, friends, and colleagues — and ultimately leads to a transaction.

Andre Golsorkhi is the founder and CEO of Sidecar. Previously, Andre was the CEO and Founder of Snipi, a patented system for people to save their interests while browsing anywhere online.

At the end of an unbelievably busy work day, have you ever stopped and wished you’d gotten more work done? Don’t worry; you’re not being an obsessive workaholic. You’re just another content marketer who’s hard-pressed for time.

Content is an over-arching requirement for all marketing campaigns, be it on social media or via email. According to Gerald Baldino’s summary of CMO Council’s State of Marketing report (2014) a quarter of content marketers are now working 10 hours a day. The demand for and significance of content in digital marketing leaves most of us marketers with a want for time. While it may not be possible to add more hours to your day, it sure is possible to simplify work processes to get more done in the little time you have. Here are eight Chrome extensions that could come in handy.

1. DrumUp

   The DrumUp Chrome extension is a free, handy tool worthy of a spot on the top-right corner of your browser window. The neat little plug-in allows you to discover interesting content even as you surf the Internet. It lets you share content on social media right from the web page you’re on, and also recommends other stories that may interest you. You can also schedule the stories you find interesting through the extension to be shared on social media any time in the future.

   

2. Snip.ly

   If you’re an active curator, sharing content from multiple external sources with your audience, you should absolutely install Snip.ly. The plug-in offers a great value-add to the content you share in the form of a pop-up on every page you share through the tool. Available for free and also with paid subscriptions, it lets you add a message with a call-to-action and a hyperlink. Think of it as somewhat of banner ad, only much less expensive.

   

3. Pocket

   The widespread use of mobile devices has made content consumption patterns more fragmented. Quite often you find an interesting piece of content but are distracted by something before you can read/watch it entirely. It may also happen that you’d like to save some content for future reference. Pocket acts as your depository for such content. The extension functions like a bookmarking tool, letting you save specific pages for later use. It also lets you organize the content you save with the use of tags.

   

4. Nimbus

   You must already be aware of the significance of visual content. Not only does it help illustrate the point you’re trying to make, but also helps improve the visual appeal of your content, making it easier to read and digest. Given the illustrative capacity of screenshots, content writers love using screenshots, but getting one in the old-fashioned way of using ‘PrntScr’ is a time-consuming, cumbersome process. Nimbus makes taking screenshots and screenscasts a whole lot easier.

   

5. LastPass

   As you and your team start using more and more tools and applications that are gated with passwords, you’ll see that managing all those passwords is a task in itself. And of course, you don’t want to compromise on security by sharing those passwords haphazardly. Plus, resetting passwords each time you’ve shared it externally is a pain. It is to avoid these hassles that you need LastPass, which is currently one of the best password managers on the Web Store. The extension stores all your passwords; allows you to sync them across multiple devices and also lets you store password data locally on a single device.

   

6. Riffle

   Engaging with followers on Twitter, and identifying popular tweeters gets whole lot easier with Riffle. It’s a smart Twitter dashboard that helps you establish meaningful relationships with your followers. The extension gives you access to all Twitter data of any user including the number of retweets and followers, the hashtags they use most often, their most popular URLs and mentions, and a lot more.

   

7. Giphy

   Nothing catches a person’s attention like a funny GIF. Yet finding and sharingthem hasn’t always been easy. But all that changes with the Giphy extension for Chrome. Giphy is a search engine for GIFs and its Chrome extension makes finding and sharing reaction GIFs easier than ever before. The extension recommends the most trending GIFs on the Internet at any given point in time, while also letting run a custom search.

   

8. Rapportive

   Marketers meet new people all the time, and Rapportive is a great tool that helps you connect with these people on social media. The plug-in also pulls out basic profile information from LinkedIn so you know exactly who you’re talking to – a great advantage when you’re connecting with a possible lead, or content partner. It also works as a way to verify email addresses.

   What other extensions would you recommend?

I'm John Ore, the head of product at Business Insider. I wanted to take a moment to discuss our product philosophy and highlight some of the recent work we've done to make our site and services better for you. Thanks very much for reading.

At Business Insider, as well as at our newer sites Tech Insider and INSIDER, our mission is to serve our readers and clients. Everything we do is in pursuit of creating a better experience for readers and clients every day. 

We serve our readers by publishing stories that are smart, helpful, accurate, fast, fair, fearless, and fun. We provide most of our journalism for free, and we also offer subscriptions for our in-depth industry research and analysis. We fund our journalism by offering an enviable audience for our advertising clients.  

Advertising has helped pay for journalism in many different media for more than a century. With the recent rise of ad blocking across the digital industry, though, this model is facing a challenge.

Many people who use ad-blockers cite annoying ads, privacy concerns, mobile data usage, and slow page load speeds as justification for blocking ads. As voracious digital content consumers, we sympathize: Some publishers take an such an aggressive ad approach that they make the browsing experience expensive, annoying, and slow. On the other hand, creating great journalism and technology costs money. So we also sympathize with the need for publishers (and journalists) to create a healthy, sustainable business.

At Business insider, we believe we can serve both our readers and clients by creating high-performance services that allow us to generate the revenue we need to fund a global, world-class digital news organization. That means fast, light, free pages with responsible ads and convenient subscription services. 

We work hard on the performance side, and as a result our mobile sites load among the fastest in the industry.

The New York Times recently bench marked 50 news mobile web sites to see how quickly they loaded with and without ads. Here’s a snapshot of Business Insider’s mobile site among some of our peers:

Similarly, the creator of Crystal, a content blocker for Apple's mobile operating system, benchmarked the load times of 10 mobile web sites with and without the Crystal app enabled:

(It's worth noting that Crystal’s creator charges for his ad blocker, because he, too, understands the need to develop a sustainable revenue model.)

As you can see, Business Insider’s pages load faster than many of our peers on mobile, even with ads. They're also lighter, so they use less mobile data. 

Some of the explicit steps we’ve taken over the past several months alone to improve the speed in which our pages load include:

• Overhauling our content delivery system to improve page load times by about 50% worldwide.

• Avoiding obtrusive, heavy ads. We don't serve interstitials between pages, pop ups, or auto-play videos (without warning) because we prize the reader experience.
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At some point, Business Insider will likely do the same, because we think many of our readers enjoy our free service. We also plan to offer a broader subscription option for those who prefer to pay us directly.

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Sales managers have a tough job. You’ve got to keep a group of reps motivated, successful, and happy while setting lofty goals that may seem unachievable. Helping people stretch to their full potential and handle the stress of shooting for the moon can be grueling. Here are a few ways you can get your team to make the most out of their effort, book more demos, close more deals and help your company grow.

1. Don’t let reps send lousy emails like this one

Have you ever got an email like this?

Dear Sales Manager,

My name is John Doe and I am the head of marketing at ACME Inc. How are you?

I’m wondering if you’ve ever received an email that was so horribly bad it contained a bunch of verbiage and particulars that you didn’t remotely need or desire and had such a high degree of balderdash in it, and it was so poorly transcribed and unfocused and confusing and just plain bad, that you didn’t even barely peruse the whole thing to find out what the whole message was actually about. Ever get an email like that? I know I certainly have on more than one or two occasions.

I’m writing because I want to educate you about something that’s so incredibly indispensable about writing emails and I think it might assist you in the future when you’re endeavoring to get the reps on your sales team to be more triumphant and close more deals and generate more money for your company. Would you be interested in learning more about this?

You might not have been apprised of this, but this is actually a very useful thing to know. When your reps are writing an email to someone they don’t need to be very formal with the language that they use. Even if they’re fledgling sales reps who might feel a little out of their league sending unsolicited emails to someone with a title that includes the word “president” somewhere in it. In fact the more formal they strive to be in an email, the less effective they will probably be in delivering the message that you actually want to deliver. It might sound crazy. I know I certainly thought it was crazy when I first learned it. But it’s in accordance with the facts.

I think I would probably get my point across better on a phone call. Would you happen to be free some time in the next few business days so we could maybe discuss this in on the phone?

Kind Regards,

John

We’ve all received those emails and rarely ever read them. Chances are you didn’t even take the time to read that example email.

A message like that has a low chance of generating a response. Review of your reps’ emails often. If their writing sounds like this sample, follow these 4 tips:

1. Read the email out loud. You should sound like you’re speaking normally. If you hear yourself saying any words you wouldn’t normally use, delete them.
2. Keep it as short as possible.
3. Clearly spell out the next step you want to take with the prospect. For example: “Are you free tomorrow at 2 p.m. for a quick call? I’ll try you then.”
4. Be a human! This mean not only personalizing the email but also striving to connect with them instead of going into a pitch immediately.

Here’s an opening template you can give your reps to customize for their next campaign. Feel free to use it or adopt a version of your own. This is taken from one of our highest performing campaigns to date.

Subject: PersistIQ < > {Prospect Company Name}

Hi {Prospect’s first name}

I saw on LinkedIn that we’re connected through {Common Connection}.

{Snippet #1: a short but meaningful piece of information about common connection}

Anyway, given your position, I thought you’d be interested in what my company does. {Value Proposition}.

What does your schedule look like in the next few days? I’d love to jump on a quick call and see if it’s something that would be useful for you.

Thanks,

{your name}

2. Give reps the confidence to follow up with prospects.

One thing we hear again and again at PersistIQ is that young reps lack the confidence to follow up enough times with prospects. They send a few emails, leave a few voicemails and then move on when they don’t hear anything back immediately.

Especially in SaaS sales, they feel like it’s rude of them to pester high-level executives again and again to get a response. They’d rather keep looking for an easier target than feel awkward picking up the phone again or sending further emails.

Great sales managers help their reps overcome this fear and give them the confidence to keep calling on a prospect and delivering a helpful sales message. How?

By instilling in them the idea that high-touch campaigns succeed. Not every campaign needs to see 10 touches within two weeks. But our own experience at PersistIQ is consistent with the feedback we get from our customers — the more a rep follows up with a prospect, especially one who is opening the emails, the more likely the prospect will become a customer.

3. Make sure everyone understands the compensation structure

A confusing compensation structure can quickly sink morale and productivity. Make sure reps know what they’re being measured on and how those metrics contribute to the overall success of the organization.

The easier it is for reps understand what they can do to increase their pay, the more likely they will be to do that. If commissions are tied to vague and hard-to-measure benchmarks, reps won’t know where to focus.

It’s also critical that pay-related metrics as ones that actually drive the business forward the most. If pay is tied to the number of deals closed, the team will find ways to close more deals. If pay is tied to the number of calls made each day, the team will find ways to make more calls, whether or not they’re of any strategic value.

Much has been written about the changing nature of today’s B2B buyer, often with consternation over these frequently cited figures:

Do you believe the CEB study that suggests that 57% of the buying decision has been made before a customer engages with a Sales rep?

Do you take more comfort from SiriusDecisions’ rebuttal, which concludes that while 67% of the buyer’s journey is now done digitally, reps enter at the beginning of the buying decision somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the time?

How do you react to Forester’s findings, stating that in categories such as  “Security Software” the sales rep is the 6th most influential channel after Tech Info Websites, Tech Analysts, Vendor Websites, Peers and IT Forums?

We could quibble over numbers, question the conclusions of the players with skin in the game, or wring our hands over whether the internet is causing the death of the salesman. But maybe we should just accept that the role of the B2B sales rep is changing, and adapt our sales content strategy to align to this buyer.

Regardless of whether your buyers are engaging with your reps at the beginning, middle or end of the sales conversation, you can be assured that 100% of B2B purchases involve independent research.  I think Google puts it best (yes, another study) with data that shows that B2B researchers do 12 searches prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site.

Now here’s the key, they’re going to talk to your sales rep at some point in the process. And that rep MUST add value to the conversation in order for that buyer to become your customer. If your sales reps can’t provide any more information, insight or knowledge than what’s widely available on the internet, then you’ve lost the opportunity to move the sale forward.

So…how are you preparing your sales reps to sell to the engaged buyer?

Step 1 – Be the buyer, and follow their journey

If your buyers are conducting an average of 12 searches before they ever make it to your site, then do those same 12 searches. Pick keywords that you are optimizing for, and keywords that are being targeted by your competition. Then use keywords from any press coverage about your industry. Keep track of all of your searches, and gather up the top 20 results from each search.

Now build a matrix for those results based on the messages contained within those sites, and how well they align to your value proposition vs your competitors. Include in that matrix, a quality assessment of how engaging the content is, For example, a text heavy page would score lower compared to a 20 second video.

Be rigorous! What does the engaged buyer know about your products, as compared to your competitor’s products? How do 3^rd party sites, news outlets and analyst sites speak to the targeted keywords, and do their conclusions align with your value propositions, or your competitors? Finally, based on your honest quality scores, what messages have stuck in the buyer’s mind?

Step 2 – Create compelling sales content

Now you need to equip your sales representatives to have a conversation with this engaged buyer. You need to distill the information you’ve gathered into a series of questions, so your sales reps can assess what the buyer knows, and what conclusions they’ve already come to. Then you need to prepare the reps to have several different conversations, based on what the buyer knows about your products vs. the competitors, and the language that they are using to describe their problem. Finally you need to enable them to position your products uniquely against the information that the buyer has gathered during their research.

What’s important in this process, is that you’re not necessarily creating typical collateral. While some great sell sheet, or infographic might fall out of this work, your focus needs to be on enabling your sales reps to have a more engaged conversation. That content is going to look and feel different – it might be a series of battle cards, or some role-playing sales training videos. Maybe it’s a flowchart, or a series of preformatted emails. There are many options for creating content that transfers knowledge and makes your reps smarter. You’ll need to experiment to find the format that is most effective.

Step 3 – Measure and track

Once you’ve created this new content, and enabled you sales reps to have a different type of conversation, you need to assess the impact it is having on the sales process. Engage with your reps. Make sure they have digested the material you’re providing them, and that there is a way for them to track when they are using the information during sales calls. Ideally you’ll have a CRM system or other technology that can facilitate these analytics, but if not, collect direct feedback on whether this content has facilitated better conversation.

Step 4 – Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Messages evolve, competitors come and go, and products get upgraded. Some messages will work to carry the conversation, and others will fall flat. You’ll have to maintain this rigorous process of understanding your engaged buyer, tailoring content to move the conversation forward, and tracking the impact of your efforts.

So, how well do you sell to the engaged buyer?  We’d love to share your thoughts and results with our readers.

As marketing technology progresses, so too do our methods of extracting data. This data can be either a marketer’s best friend or worst enemy, depending on the numbers.

Why? Because now that marketing is something completely trackable and can be directly linked to revenue and return on investment, the C-Suite pays much closer attention to demand gen marketing marketing departments to ensure they contributing to sales revenue. As a B2B demand gen marketer, you should always be prepared to prove that value with cold, hard numbers—so you need to know how to track the ROI of your efforts.

Here are five things to keep in mind when figuring out how to calculate your ROI derived from your content:

1) Know Your Metrics

If you’re going to report on data to those who write your paychecks, you have to know what’s most important to them. When it comes to metrics and key performance indicators, there are literally dozens to choose from. Leads or conversions? Email addresses or page views? Social engagement or search engine ranking? Don’t just pick what you think are the most important metrics—know which ones your supervisor and executive team think are the most critical to align with larger corporate objectives. Then use metrics to plan your content strategy and begin tracking your ROI.

2) Know the Value of Your Metrics

If you’re tracking leads, you’ll want to know the potential monetary value of a lead. Do your customers spend $10 or $10,000 when purchasing your product? Next, what is your conversion rate? If you can’t find this number, enlist help from your sales department. How many leads have you sent over in the last quarter that have converted into sales qualified opportunities and closed deals? Once you have a percentage here, you have a baseline to work with.

For instance, let’s say that your typical customer spends $2,000 on your product. Your sales team tells you that they convert 50% of leads or better. So if you bring in 10 leads in a month, 5 of them are considered sales qualified, putting your pipeline revenue at $10,000 for that month. You need to attach an actual number value to a lead to be able to further calculate the ROI on your content.

3) Know Your Attribution

Does your business place more emphasis on first-touch or last-touch attribution? Either way, it’s important to track each time a customer touches your content: first, last, or somewhere in-between. You need to be able to track how often they’ve touched it. It typically takes 7-8 marketing touch points before a lead converts to a sale—you should know how many, on average, it takes for your customers in order for you to make a case for your content.

It typically takes 7-8 marketing touch points before a lead converts to a sale.

4) Know Your System

There are several different systems out there that track analytics, whether you’re operating in a CRM or marketing automation tool, or just using something like Streak or Google Analytics. With these tools, you can track your touch points, set benchmark goals and spend, and see where your potential buyers are at on their journey. Most of these tools will provide you with information about conversions based on entry source. But many marketers are only using their analytics tools to find the bare minimum. Go deep and really understand your system to see how to most effectively get the data you need to track your spend and return.

5) Know Your Input

What is ROI, anyway? It’s what your company gets in return (in revenue) after their investment in your marketing efforts. This includes salary, technology, paid campaigns, etc.

Put simply, the equation looks like this:

Profit – Marketing Spend
_______________________

Marketing Spend

As you can see, you can’t complete this equation without knowing your marketing spend. You’ll need to know not just how many dollars go into your campaigns or what your monthly/quarterly/annual budget is, but also what your salary breaks down to in terms of hours. How many hours do you spend on your content? How about scheduling that content? Promoting that content? This is all time that must be factored into the equation before you can get an accurate number.

Now you’ve got some things to dig up in your quest to tie ROI to your content. Remember to evaluate this information early and often, retarget as necessary, and be ready to show these numbers in any meeting with executive leadership!

Data storytelling has become a powerful part of the communications toolkit, allowing both journalists and marketers to communicate key messages by using data and data visualization to drive articles, blog posts, and reports. But the power of data storytelling isn’t limited to written communication: you can also use data to deliver presentations that are both more credible and more visually compelling.

Knowing how to develop and deliver a data-driven presentation is now a crucial skill for many professionals, since we often have to tell our colleagues a story about the success of a new initiative, the promise of a new business opportunity, or the imperative of a change in strategy — stories that are much more compelling when they’re backed by numbers.

In the past four years, data has become a bigger and bigger part of my own presentations, since I frequently speak about data-driven projects like the new rules for the collaborative economy, and what social media analytics can’t tell you about your customers. I’ve enjoyed the luxury of working closely with data analysts, infographic designers, and my own in-house speechwriter, which has helped me pick up some tricks on what it takes to create a successful data-driven presentation.

As with any communication, start by thinking about your audience. Who are you presenting to, and how much do they know about the topic? If you’re presenting data on three different sales strategies to the sales team that’s been testing those approaches, you can plunge right in and show them what worked. If you’re reporting on that same experiment to another part of the organization, you need to provide a lot of context before you drop the bar charts in their laps; otherwise what looks like a clear story to you may simply confuse them. A good rule of thumb is to look at the legend on your charts: if you can’t count on the audience knowing what each item in the legend actually refers to, you need to spend some time on setup before you get to the numbers.

It’s easy to let the data overtake your presentation, so be sure you know the overall story you’re trying to tell, and use charts sparingly to support your story. You’re not trying to subdue your enemy through the sheer volume of data you can bring to bear on your argument; you’re using data strategically, when it provides clear and concrete evidence for the story you’re telling. I’ve found that audiences get overwhelmed by back-to-back data slides, so I try to intersperse charts with slides that convey my key point using images or a very few words of text. Show a photo of a shopping cart, and tell people that you now know which cash register displays are most likely to yield impulse purchases; then show the chart displaying the sales figures for different items. Follow that chart with an image or a few short bullets that emphasizes the actionable insights and implications of your data.

Further Reading

It’s rare that anyone will retain all the actual numbers in your presentation, so think about the words that capture the idea, insight, or conclusion you want them to hold onto. Instead of simply throwing up a bar chart that shows levels of employee engagement versus different working arrangements, build to that key chart with a story about the impact of working arrangements on employee satisfaction — illustrated by actual human examples, if possible.

And if there is a single number that really captures your key point — like “employees who work from home 1 day per week are 30% happier than the rest of our workforce” — then make not just that chart, but that specific data point very prominent in your deck. Highlight it in the relevant chart, and consider giving that single data point its own slide or bullet in your conclusion.

As you present, remember that it takes people some time to digest a chart or data table. Take the time to spell out the story you see in the data so that it’s clear to someone who hasn’t been poring over that dataset for the past six weeks. A simple statement like “in every region except the Southwest, email outperforms phone calls as a way of generating leads; in the Northeast, 5% of emails get a response, versus only 3% of phone calls” will help people understand what they are looking at and how they’re supposed to read your chart. Speak slower than you usually do, and consider pausing for a moment mid-chart, to allow people the time to absorb the data; even if you prefer to wait until the end of your presentation for questions, ask if anyone needs you to clarify the chart.

While clarifying statements are helpful, that doesn’t mean you can neglect the visuals. If all you do is produce your charts with a tool like Infogr.am or Tableau — both of which will produce charts that look a heck of a lot better than what Excel spits out — you’ll immediately improve your data-driven presentations. You may still need to restructure or reformat your charts to make them work on screen, however. Even if you’ve used shading to differentiate between categories in a printed document, it will be easier for people to distinguish between on-screen categories if they’re shown in different, contrasting colors.

Make sure your legend and data labels are printed in a large, visible font; if you’ve used an infographic design tool like Infogr.am, which generates beautiful charts but doesn’t let you adjust font sizes, you’ll have to add your own, larger labels when you’re producing your final deck. (My trick is to create those labels as individual text boxes in the color of my chart columns, so I can drop them on top of my columns and hide the original labels.)

If you don’t have the support of an infographic designer in creating your charts, get familiar with the very basic rules of good data visualization, like which types of charts to use for different purposes. And make sure that you don’t violate any data visualization principles when you squeeze your data onto a slide: if you simply can’t fit your entire chart onto a single slide in a way that is readable, it’s better to show highlights than to compromise the clarity of your data.  A column chart that shows eight categories of clustered columns is going to be very crowded — but don’t you dare turn it into a set of pie charts instead: if there’s value in comparing categories, you want to keep that as a bar chart where all the categories are aligned on a single base line. Perhaps you don’t really need to show all eight categories — just the five most important ones. Or maybe you will have to break your chart into two successive slides; if so, organize your categories so that the most closely related categories are kept together on each slide.

Lastly, there is a lot of value in leaving people with a physical (or virtual) copy of your charts, so that they can look at the numbers more closely after your presentation. Since data-driven decks and reports tend to get circulated, make sure that any charts you include can stand on their own, without you speaking to them: note the source of your data, make your legend clear, and annotate your charts with callouts that show people how to make sense of a specific data point (“7 in 10 customers chose the blue package”).

If this is starting to sound daunting, don’t let a vision of the ideal data-driven presentation report keep you from using data to present your work or ideas to colleagues or peers. With data storytelling, excessively high standards can keep us from seizing the opportunity to make a good story better by backing it up with quantitative evidence.

You don’t have to have the perfect dataset or the world’s most beautiful infographics to make data storytelling a valuable part of your communications toolbox. All you need is to break down the wall that keeps math in one part of your brain, and storytelling in another.

In this post, I’m going to reveal three of the best tips to have a high converting sales funnel in your business. I use a sales funnel model in my business and are highly effective at list building, low ticket sales and high ticket sales, and brand you as the authority.

So if you want to get results follow these result getting tips and get you to the top as a top earner real fast and get you making money. And I’m going to briefly cover the evolution of traffic, and why traffic sources burn-out and stop converting altogether.

The key to any home based business is positioning, credibility & authority hacking = results.

But that’s not all, let’s dive in and see what else you can do to be a top earner in your industry…

What I’m going to cover first are the five points that are pretty critical to any sales funnel. Leveraging someone else’s brand seems also seems to be an important factor, but before you can do that you need to make a list of your industries top earners. And I want to stress first there isn’t a traffic problem in marketing, there is though a conversion problem that needs to be addressed.

Here are my 3 best secrets:

1. How to position yourself in the marketplace by hacking credibility.
2. How to guarantee authority by jumping on the latest traffic trend.
3. How to 10X your results with custom sales funnels and steal them from your competition.

Before you can go out there and get the credibility you have to know who you’re going after, so get a pen and paper and write this down, and then take action.

Do an Interview Action Plan

1. Make a list of the top 10 income earners in your industry
2. Top 10 up and coming income earners (10K-100K)
3. Top 10 “Super Guru” income earners (1 million in sales)
4. Top 10 Super Elite (10 million in sales)
5. Find them on Twitter, Facebook, or on Linkedin

Then reach out to them and ask them to do a live interview. Now I know what most people are thinking, how? Connect with them first and get a conversation going, then make plans to meet with them in person.

Now, this may cost some investment especially if you’re going to ask Tony Robbins, Mike Dillard, or Frank Kearn to do one, or maybe it won’t. The point is this investment is the best way to position yourself in front of your audience and then turn them into raving fans after. I did an interview with John Chow, had pictures and a Q & A with Kevin Harrington, and many people seen pictures that I was there with him live, and boom, instant credibility, and resonated into my sales.

Next, become the founder, partner or creator of something, and say something like “I”m on a mission to empower entrepreneurs to take control of their lives and create a life they truly desire. And, associate yourself with people who are getting results, sounds arrogant, but it is all business. In this marketing business going out on a limb to crush your competition is a must, simply getting by is not an option (at least for me).

Broadcast Your Results

People love hearing about results (though I’ve kept mine a secret for a short while), and there is good reason to do this. Adding in a press release really helps your whole marketing promotion, google ranking, leads, authority, branding and credibility. Other people like to call this hack “Social Proofing,” and doing a live over the shoulder video is much better than a screenshot.

1. It leverages your results better
2. People are attracted to results
3. Do a press release (Either PRweb or E-release are my 2 top choices)

Speak On Stage

This is a really powerful authority hack, but you have to at a live mastermind or an event to make this work. This also is a big boost for your traffic and your video’s or marketing promotions. Recording it live is a must, then edit and upload to youtube. Preferably not with your phone, and is suggested that you use a professional camera OR if it’s being recorded grab a copy of it from the event promoters.

The Funnel Itself

This drives me nuts when I see people involved in a company and they all use the same squeeze page, ad copy, and landing page. I’m going to tell you that is a big mistake, and what you should be doing is:

1. Create a unique squeeze page.
2. Use credibility and authority.
3. Custom sales page that brands YOU.
4. Story based, value-driven email follow-ups.
5. Custom ad copy, that nobody else uses.
6. Be unique.
7. If you don’t know how to build a proper sales funnel, hire a team to do it.
   (This can be expensive, but you can use Click Funnels to get one made that is affordable and works.)

Evolution of Traffic

And finally in this insightful blog post I’m going to reveal why some traffic sources stop working, and what to do about it. Over saturated traffic tends to mask any good sales funnel with poor stats and conversions.

1. Adwords (2005-2008)
   Still does work but the competition is really high and so are the prices. Need a larger budget to use this traffic source.
2. SEO (2000-2010)
   SEO is really a thing of the past and nobody really uses “Free Traffic” as part of any promotion, if it gets ranked and you get some targeted traffic, treat that as a bonus.
3. Solo Ads (2010-2015)
   Over saturated and conversion rates really took a nose dive over a 5 year period. Plus people are running solo ad scams, and some vendors are not delivering as promised. Still can work but you have to find a decent list.
4. Facebook PPC (2010-2014)
   I will admit that Facebook still does work, but the cost is going way up, so factor in a larger budget.
5. Dead, time to move on…
6. The next big thing (Which is my secret)

Traffic Life Cycle

1. Underused and it’s dirt cheap
2. Everyone jumps on the traffic source
3. Gets saturated
4. Becomes expensive and unreliable
5. And stops being profitable

Testimonials

And lastly, before I wrap this post up is use testimonials in your sales funnel combined with all the other hacks I provided. This will give your sales a big boost, add more credibility and authority to you. And use real testimonials, don’t fake it or use some scammy screenshot, or else this could backfire on you real fast and wiping out any gains you have made.

Thanks again for reading my post and hope you got some real value out of it to benefit your sales funnel, your life and your business! Please comment, share, and ask questions below. See you on the beach!