Rnordman

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Samsung has now officially announced its round Samsung Gear S2 smartwatch.

The watch, which until now had been known as the Samsung Gear A, runs on Samsung’s own Tizen operating system. The Gear S2 uses a unique rotating bezel, which can be used for some of the same functions managed by the digital crown on the Apple Watch, i.e. zooming in and out of content and controlling specific movements in apps and games. The S2 design also features Home and Back buttons.

The watch comes in two options — the Gear S2 and the Gear S2 classic. The Gear S2 classic is made for users who prefer a more traditional watch design — it has a black finish and a leather band. The Gear S2 has a more minimal and modern design.

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From VentureBeat

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Samsung wisely made a version of the watch with a 3G radio inside so that users can stay connected even when Wi-Fi isn’t available. Gear S2 with 3G uses an e-SIM with voice capability.

Samsung has yet to release pricing and availability information, but T-Mobile for one has said that it will sell the watch — and the 3G service to go with it — this fall.

(See the full specs of both watches below)

The watch is 11.4-millimeters thick with a 1.2-inch circular screen with 360 x 360 resolution (302 ppi). The applications on the Gear S2 can be viewed with amazing clarity so that users don’t miss notification pop-ups.

Samsung says users can glance at notifications and check calendars, emails, and news on the watch. Text messaging from the device is possible, too.

The Gear S2 comes with NFC technology for mobile payments.

Samsung says the watch’s battery can go 2-3 days on one charge. A wireless charging dock ships with the S2.

A variety of apps optimized for the Gear S2’s circular user interface will be available at launch, Samsung says. “Through open collaboration with developers and partners, Samsung is continuing to enrich its wearable ecosystem and provide users with a more optimized and unique smart wearable experience,” the company said in a statement.

The Samsung Gear S2 will be available in a dark gray case with a dark gray band, and silver case with a white band. The Samsung Gear S2 classic will be available in a black case with a leather band.

Samsung and other smartwatch makers have been under pressure to come up with some kind of answer to the Apple Watch.

Specs:

Display: 1.2”, Circular Super AMOLED, 360×360, 302ppi

Processor: Dual core 1.0 GHz

OS: Tizen

Audio: Codec: MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+; Format: MP3, M4A, AAC, OGG

Memory: 4GB Internal Memory / RAM: 512MB

Communications: Contacts, Notifications, Messages, Email, Preset Text, Voice Input, Emoticons, Keypads

Health/Fitness: S Health, Nike+ Running

Information: Schedule, News, Maps, Navigation, Weather

Other features: Music Player, Gallery, Voice, Voice Memo, Find My Device, Power Saving Mode, Safety assistance, Privacy lock

More information:

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Much of the current conversation around personalization in marketing focuses on B2C companies. But that doesn’t mean B2B organizations are being ignored. Far from it.

While the latest research shows that simply calling someone by their name in an email subject line increases open rates by up to 41 percent, such basic, decades-old personalizations are the tip of the iceberg.

Today, Seismic announce the launch of its Seismic for Outlook solution, which aims to solve two distinct B2B sales problems: Finding the right sales collateral at the right time, and personalizing it so that it is super-relevant.

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From VentureBeat

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The company, which was founded in 2010 and has raised $24.5M in funding, showed me the solution in action. In short, Seismic’s Outlook integration allows sales reps to find the right follow-up materials such as case studies, tear sheets, presentations or proposals without leaving the ubiquitous email client. Here’s how it works.

When a salesperson is looking at an email in Outlook, they can invoke the Seismic plugin. A window opens, showing the full catalog of available sales collateral — everything from overview sheets, statements of work, proposals, videos, training courses, and pricing sheets. In fact, anything the business has created to help the sales team win the day. But that’s not the smart part.

When linked to Salesforce a “suggested content” section appears that shows the best possible content for that recipient. This will choose content based on a number of factors including where the prospect or customer is in the buying cycle, and any current opportunities.

A new prospect may have “getting to know us” documents appear in the suggestions, whereas a prospect that is about to close may find they’re about to receive the advised “terms and conditions” or “proposals” the system recommends.

The content is then able to be personalized further before sending, including the use of the contact’s name, address, details, products they’re interested in, pricing, and more, using Seismic’s LiveDoc feature. Analytics tell salespeople how the content is performing in the field, and whether prospects are interacting with the material.

Seismic for Outlook is available today. For those wanting to see it in person, the company will be demonstrating its new content suggestion and personalization solution at Dreamforce 2015.

More information:

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You’ve finally scored an interview for your dream job. How will you land a job offer? And how can you really tell if it’s a perfect match?

For our latest series on LinkedIn, “How I Hire,” we asked some of the world’s top business leaders for the inside scoop: What makes a successful professional in their eyes?

From Richard Branson and Apple’s Angela Ahrendts to Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec and Warby Parker’s Neil Blumenthal, 50+ Influencers reveal how to get through their doors — and what it takes to succeed once you’re in.

***

YOUR TURN: Whether you’re the one doing the interviewing or the one being interviewed, what are your secrets to getting hired?

Write your own post here; please use #HowIHire somewhere in the body (not the headline) of your piece.

***

You can’t fake a personality, purpose, or passion.

Billionaire Richard Branson believes you can teach someone skills, but “you can’t train a personality.” The Virgin Group founder also believes in recruiting those who can compensate for his weaknesses. But above all, Branson relies on this litmus test when hiring:

“Purpose is no longer a buzzword. It’s a must-have. Passion and purpose will keep people focused on the job at hand, and ultimately separate the successful from the unsuccessful.” — Richard Branson

 

Show me how you think — and feel.

If you ever spend an hour interviewing with Angela Ahrendts, count on questions that have more to do with examining how you think rather than whether you got the right answer. From gauging the size of your ego to assessing whether you’re a left-brain or right-brain thinker, Apple’s SVP of retail details what she might ask — and why:

“By the time [candidates] have reached my office, I think it is pretty safe to say they are incredibly smart in their field. I want to make sure they are culturally compatible. Are they empathetic, compassionate, caring and giving of their mind and heart?” — Angela Ahrendts

 

Be able to articulate how your critics would describe you.

Having hired Navy SEALs, Stan McChrystal knows the importance of putting the right people in the right place at the right time. And yet, the retired U.S. general admits that there is no secret formula for hiring. Now the co-founder of a leadership consulting firm, McChrystal has narrowed down his interviewing technique to this one revealing question:

“’What would someone who doesn’t like you have to say about you?’… Answering requires a combination of self-awareness, honesty, and courage that is hard to find.” — Stan McChrystal

 

Realize that “back-door” references can affirm — or sink — hiring decisions.

So you made it through a gauntlet of interviews, and you’ve shared a list of glowing references. Kevin Chou, the CEO of Kabam, goes one step further by checking “back-door” references: “Know that your reputation and accomplishments speak louder than your answers in a job interview. What’s said about you often carries more weight than what you say about yourself.” Remember:

“Your daily interaction with everyone around you, including those junior to you, may affect landing that dream job down the road.” — Kevin Chou

 

Know that the qualities I value most aren’t found on resumes.

Character traits like integrity and credibility “make a difference between achieving our business goals and being tomorrow’s headline,” writes Ralph de la Vega, the president and CEO of AT&T Mobile and Business Solutions. “If you don’t have integrity, I don’t want you on my team.”

“It boils down to this: The people who work with you must have no doubt that you will do the right thing, whether anyone is watching or not.” — Ralph de la Vega

 

Nailed the interview? Now comes the hard part.

If a bad hire is one of a company’s worst nightmares, how can you set yourself up for long-term success? From making your boss and your team look good to retaining your sense of originality, General Electric’s CMO Beth Comstock outlines her strategies for succeeding as a new hire.

“Remember that your company hired you because your background, skill set, and personality filled a specific need they had — it would be a real shame to suppress the exact things that make you unique once you get your ID card.” — Beth Comstock

***

In the coming weeks, we’ll reveal more hiring secrets from Influencers and other business leaders:

• “Hire People Who Aren’t Like You (and Other Tricks We’ve Learned While Transforming GM)” — Mary Barra, CEO, General Motors Company
• “Why I Don’t Really Care Where You Went to School” — Elliot S. Weissbluth, CEO at HighTower, a financial services firm
• “A Great Career Move is Not About the Money” — Lou Adler, CEO and founder of The Adler Group, a consulting and training firm
• “Why Entitlement Is the Root of All Evil in a Company” — Neil Blumenthal, co-founder and co-CEO at Warby Parker
• “My Secret to Building a Team of Passionate Travel Geeks” — Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Expedia, Inc.
• “Find People Who Can Do a Job Better Than You Can” — T. Boone Pickens, founder, chairman and CEO at BP Capital and TBP Investments Management
• “Find the Person Who is the Solution to the Organization’s Problem”  — James Citrin, leader of Spencer Stuart’s CEO Practice
• “Why Recruiting the Right People Is Helping Us Develop Breakthrough Medicines” — David Schenkein, CEO at Agios Pharmaceuticals

YOUR TURN: Whether you’re the one giving the interview or the one being interviewed, what are your best strategies for getting hired?

Write your own post here; please use #HowIHire somewhere in the body (not the headline) of your piece.

Graphics by Jacqueline Zaccor/LinkedIn

Unable to solve their impossible problem, VV and Reza went out for a ride. Miles down the California coast, they parked their bikes under the eucalyptus outside a winery conference center. It wasn’t a random stop. They knew that FundersPlatform, a rival to their start-up, AndFound, was holding a networking event there, and they were curious about what sort of crowd it had drawn.

They soon found out.

“VV! Reza! What are you guys doing here?” It was their old friend Cynthia Finlay, a well-known angel investor in Silicon Valley.

“What are you doing here?” asked VV. He’d assumed that FundersPlatform wouldn’t be able to attract high rollers like Cynthia. Reza seemed taken aback, too. He looked down and busied himself with his bike.

“Just because I love you and your site doesn’t mean I ignore what else is going on,” she replied. “These guys do a good job of matching us angels with promising start-ups. It’s like speed-dating. I must have talked to 20 entrepreneurs today. But don’t worry,” she added. “They’re no threat to you. Their fees are killer — thousands for the companies, $500 per deal for the investors. They’ll never be able to compete with free!”

Free. That was the towering advantage of AndFound, an online platform that connected investors with a curated selection of start-ups. It’s why the service, launched in 2012, had grown so popular with users. But it was also potentially a business model weakness — it was the impossible problem that had prompted the contentious discussion at the office and then driven VV and Reza onto their bikes.

VV put his helmet back on. “You’re right,” he said. “You can’t beat a free service — as long as it survives.”

Editor’s note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and e-mail address.

 

A Hard Slap at VCs

Friends since their engineering days at Stanford, VV Tikekar and Reza Rastegar had each been involved in several start-ups before joining forces on AndFound. At first it was just something to do between jobs — a way of “giving back” to the entrepreneurial and angel communities, while also giving a good hard slap to Silicon Valley’s competitive, exclusive, information-hoarding venture-capital culture. Reza, especially, relished that, having experienced firsthand — and hated — the VC world as an associate and partner at a couple of firms.

It was an ugly business, they believed. VC firms knew so much more about funding than entrepreneurs did, but they rarely offered any guidance and tended to back only people they already knew. Where was the objective, helpful advice and merit-based access to money?

AndFound had started as a blog on topics such as how to find funding, pick a team, and make a capitalization table. When VV and Reza began to get queries from entrepreneurs asking for referrals to angel investors, they decided to build a comprehensive database of funder profiles, using information collected from the investors themselves — what they were interested in funding, past levels of investments, and so on. Soon VV and Reza were playing middlemen, putting founders in touch with people in their database. The next step was to hire engineers to develop technology that would enable start-ups to create online profiles, like Facebook pages, and investors to filter results — for example, allowing them to search only for founders who’d previously worked at Google or graduated from Harvard or MIT.

In fact, they deliberately chose not to charge fees because they sensed that doing so would drive away the best entrepreneurs and investors, and that once they lost the top-caliber participants, the whole thing might very well unravel. They assumed that, eventually, as the site became more and more valuable to the start-up community, some way to monetize the business would emerge.

Before long AndFound carried information on 10,000 investors and 100,000 companies, ranging from hair salons to tech start-ups. Screening algorithms highlighted the best new entrants so that they could be individually reviewed and featured. It was a full-blown social-networking hub, with participants “following” people and companies, commenting on posts, and “liking” other users’ updates. As a result, everyone in the start-up community was using it — even VCs.

VV and Reza weren’t the only players in the space, however. Numerous accelerators in the Valley and elsewhere provided coaching for entrepreneurs and opportunities to pitch ideas to investors. One was AndFound’s competitor FundersPlatform. In one sense, it was well behind AndFound — it had only a few thousand investors on its site — but in another it was way ahead: It had raised $10 million in funding since its seed stage. AndFound had opted not to raise a penny beyond its first round.

 

Never Say Never

Cycling back toward Mountain View, Reza yelled something over his shoulder that got lost in the wind. VV pedaled hard, caught up, and shouted, “What?”

“I said we’re never going to charge our users for meeting each other!” Reza shouted back.

VV pumped his legs harder to get out in front of his partner and stayed there for the rest of the ride. Reza’s categorical opposition to charging fees was what had stalled the business-model conversation earlier in the day. VV knew they needed to continue that discussion, but they weren’t going to do it on their bikes.

He thought back to a meeting the previous month with Hap Berger, an investor even wealthier and more connected than Cynthia. He’d flown VV and Reza to Los Angeles on his private jet, sent a car to drive them to a Newport Beach marina, and taken them out on his boat, which was so big VV actually got lost on it. The purported goal was to look for the huge, weird-looking ocean sunfish that sometimes lolled just below the surface of the water, but VV and Reza knew Hap’s real intention was to kick the tires of AndFound and decide whether to invest.

He was talking very informally, but it was about real money — at least $10 million, maybe as much as $25 million — which VV thought the company desperately needed in order to hire staff, improve its technology infrastructure, and sustain the kind of growth it had seen so far. The problem was that Hap was looking for explosive revenue growth. VV explained why he and Reza cared so much about “best” and “free,” and why AndFound wasn’t chasing revenue yet. Then Reza used the “never” word — and that was that. Hap, his mood suddenly sour, said it was probably too late in the day for sunfish and turned back toward shore.

VV understood why Reza was so adamant about not charging user fees. He too saw AndFound as a vital service to all the extremely talented but unconnected entrepreneurs and investors who were suffering through a badly broken funding system. But, in VV’s opinion, the site couldn’t survive for much longer — much less keep pace with its competitors — without an influx of cash.

There were alternatives to charging user fees, and VV and Reza had discussed them on the way home from their visit with Hap.

First, there was the company’s new Talent portal. Aware of how difficult it could be to find entrepreneurial talent, VV and Reza had set up a section of the AndFound site to connect start-ups with job seekers in technology hubs around the country, allowing them to apply filters, just as investors could with companies. They were now making 2,000 introductions per week on behalf of 30,000 candidates, and estimated that the service could save a typical company $25,000 or more in recruitment fees per candidate. The service was currently free, but it was certainly a potential source of cash that wouldn’t conflict with AndFound’s primary mission of linking the best investors with the best start-ups.

The tools and documents that VV and Reza had developed to help facilitate the funding process were another potential source of revenue. Many had already been made available for free, in the form of blog posts, but perhaps AndFound could set up a paid membership or subscription play for access to them.

But none of these revenue model options seemed to be a silver bullet; so, as had happened so often before, VV and Reza put the decision off.

 

Point of Contention

It was so late when they returned to AndFound’s offices after their bicycle ride that everyone else had gone home. Physically spent, VV and Reza sat down in chairs and simply looked at each other.

“We need to do a funding round,” VV said.

Reza didn’t answer.

“We need twice the staff we’ve got now,” VV continued. “And we’re way beyond tapping angels or foundations.”

“Personally, I think we can manage for quite a while as we are,” Reza finally said. “But OK, I’m game for a funding round.”

“For that, we need a revenue model. If our aim is to raise $10 million to $25 million at a pre-money valuation of $100 million to $150 million, high-quality investors will need to see how, exactly, we’re going to get to a billion-dollar valuation in a few years so they can get their required return.”

“All those things we’ve been talking about — the Talent portal, the tools, the shared brokerage fee, the carried interest,” Reza said. “Let’s get serious about investigating them as monetization strategies.”

“But are they really going to take us where we need to go?” VV asked. “They’re probably capable of generating some decent money, but even in combination, they’re probably not going to generate anything like the growth we need.”

“I think you’re wrong there. We won’t know until we try. But even if you’re right, we’ll just have to come up with other options — something else that taps into third parties’ interest in what we’re doing,” Reza said.

“But we can’t rely on just tiny slivers of our offerings and community. We need a revenue stream that comes out of our core business and strength: connecting good start-ups with good funders.”

“OK, so let’s postpone the funding round,” Reza said, sounding frustrated. “In our business, six months is a century. Our traffic could be up by 200% in that time, which could drastically improve the potential value of all the revenue streams we’ve talked about. It would change our valuation and leave us less vulnerable to dilution from any Series A funding. I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: If we commit to a model now, we risk hamstringing our business.”

Now VV was frustrated. “Six months? We’re barely able to handle everything we already need to do.” Improving algorithms, maintaining the site infrastructure, continuing to review all the start-ups and select the ones to feature to investors — the list went on and on. “As the site degrades, we’ll lose business,” VV continued. “FundersPlatform may not look like much of a competitor now, but wait until it starts to pump its new capital into its operations — while we get weaker.”

“We’re never going to lose business, because we’re the best thing that ever happened to the start-up community,” Reza said. “And we’re free.”

 

Should AndFound commit to a revenue model right now?

If you want to improve your sales numbers, start by having more conversations. According to The Bridge Group’s recent SaaS Inside Sales Survey Report, there is a strong correlation between the number of conversations reps have each day and quota attainment. According to the study, the average sales rep has around only 6 conversations a day. But top prospectors are having a lot more conversations than that.

There’s a lot of revenue to be won through successful sales prospecting. And the good news is that there’s a science to having more conversations every day. In this post, I’m going to show you five awesome hacks that can help you connect with far more conversations with your prospects every day.

Dial at the Right Time

You may have noticed that it’s easier to connect with prospects during certain times of the day. The early morning is often a good time to reach prospects, before things get too hectic. In the late morning through the early afternoon, decision makers are likely to be too busy to take calls.

You might have much better luck later in the day, after the dust clears. So do as much dialing as you can during this window. According to data from KISSMetrics’ infographic, the best times to dial prospects are between 8 and 9 AM and between 4 and 5 PM.

Accelerate Productivity

According to the recent Sales Development Technology Report from Topo, it now takes an average of 18 dials to have a single conversation with a sales prospect. Now by using any of the tactics in this post you’ll be connecting with way more prospects than the average rep. But perhaps the easiest way to have more conversations is to dial more leads.

The Bridge Group’s recent Sales Metrics and Compensation Report shows that by using dialing technology you can engage in at least 22% more conversations. Tools that can help you increase dialing velocity, research accounts faster and slash the time you spend logging data in CRM can enable you to dial and connect with more of your prospects.

Dial from Local Area Codes

One of the reasons that prospects are picking up their phones less is because they’re using caller ID more. Let’s face it – most people don’t want to answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize. However, according to a survey conducted by reviews website Software Advice, prospects are up to 400% more likely to answer calls from numbers with local area codes. I don’t know about you, but I’d be way more likely to answer a call from a local number than some toll-free or out-of-state number I don’t recognize.

Convince More Prospects to Call You Back

Ask anyone who has used the phone for outbound prospecting and they’ll tell you that you’re going to be sent to voicemail. A lot. While some reps don’t even bother leaving voicemails, seeing it as a waste of time, a compelling voicemail can definitely inspire prospects to pick up their phones to call you back (or at times, even respond by email). So if you’re looking to have more phone conversations, encourage prospects to call you.

Here are some tips I’ve picked up that have really improved my voicemail response rates.

• Keep it brief: No voicemail should ever be longer than 30 seconds. Period.
• Be easy to call back: Leave your phone number clearly (don’t rush). And say your name, company and phone number twice if possible.
• Say their name: I like to say prospects’ first name twice during sales voicemail messages. People tend to like hearing the sound of their own names.
• Sound amped: this is more important than anything. If you sound bored, tired, angry or nervous no one is going to want to call you back.
• Hold off on the pitch: unless you’re selling something with a really simple value prop (refinancing comes to mind) save your sales pitch for the call. Instead, lead with a benefit.

Here’s an example: “Hi Elizabeth. This is Jesse from RingDNA calling. I wanted to talk about a couple ways that I can help you quadruple the number of sales conversations you have each day. Call me back at… Again this is Jesse at RingDNA. Looking forward to hearing back from you, Elizabeth.”

Use a Multi-Channel Contact Strategy

This post is about how to get your prospects to pick up their phones. But the truth is that there are some people who will never take calls from reps they’ve never heard of from companies they don’t recognize. The best prospectors I know don’t just call prospects. They send emails, connect on LinkedIn, use Twitter and a variety of other channels. The more you can familiarize prospects with your brand, the more likely they’re going to be to take a call with you.

To help yourself stay organized, I recommend working out a contact schedule for your prospect.

Here’s an example:

Day One: Send email

Day Two: Connect on LinkedIn

Day Three: Call

Day Five: Follow-up email

Day Six: Follow-up call

Day Eight: Another follow-up call

etc.

Outbound sales will always be a challenge, but, with the right approach, it’s a challenge well worth undertaking. By using the tactics I’ve laid out for you, you can sustain yourself with more than enough call connections to create the opportunities and revenue you need to thrive. Just remember to be relentless. After all, sales is a profession of persistence.

 

Headed to Dreamforce? RingDNA will be introducing an all-star panel of phone and email sales experts including Sales Hacker CEO Max Altschuler, Datanyze Co-Founder Ben Sardella and Salesfolk Founder Heather R. Morgan. Register now before it fills up!

 

The post 5 Ways to Get Your Prospects to Pick Up Their Phones appeared first on Sales Hacker.

I just returned to the office to find around 900 emails waiting for me  While purging my inbox, I found some interesting and useful items that I am sure you would want to know about.

I have previously written about how important it is to quickly and consistently follow up on inbound leads. This article from September of 2013 included two great infographics that demonstrate lead conversion statistics. However, Russ, from FindAccountingSoftware.com, emailed me a link to this case study on 63,256 outbound calls that has much more specific, useful information.  

Companies invest a lot of time and money in generating leads. So it's a shame when they're wasted by a well-meaning but misguided sales rep.

I see two critical problems with the way sales reps handle incoming calls and web inquiries and then attempt to work those leads to closure:

1. They assume that just because someone contacted them, the inquirer is ready to buy immediately.
2. They don't assume that a prospect might be ready to buy right now.

Huh? Did I just contradict myself?

Kind of, but not really. Here are two important points to address both of those issues.

1) Handle leads with critical urgency.

You should approach every inquiry with a sense of urgency. Why? Because you might be talking to a "hyperactive buyer" who is ready to move instantly. As in, they wanted your product yesterday.

I’m often in this mode. If I want something badly enough I will usually make a snap decision based on who can give me the satisfaction now -- not tomorrow, or even another call from now. If you snooze you could lose out with these prospects.

Tweet this one out:

Treat a lead like a burning match. When the flame goes out, the fire is gone. Take action now! @ArtSobczak (Click to tweet)

With every minute that goes by after someone raises their hand to show interest, that interest wanes exponentially.

2) Always be in discovery mode.

You want to treat every lead with an attitude that you will help them at some point, and the sooner the better. But -- and this is a huge "but" -- it will be on their schedule, not yours.

I’ve seen reps fast-forward to a pitch and attempt close on an initial conversation, but the prospect was not ready. The rep then discarded the prospect.

Some prospects are in the early stages of interest and information-gathering and will buy eventually. They are not putting you off. The timing is just not right, and that won't change regardless of any sales technique you might use.

Instead, you need to question.

Here's an example. One of my passions is cooking, and I’ve won several competitive barbecue championships. Right now I have a nice outdoor setup that is way above average by most standards, but my plan is to blow that up and build an over-the-top outdoor kitchen and bar with all the bells and whistles. Some guys obsess over boats or motorcycles ... I lust for smokers and side burners.

I’m not quite ready to start construction yet, but I am planning and gathering info on some of the products.

I stopped at one of my favorite outdoor kitchen/barbecue stores the other day to study their highest-end grills. The sales associate, whom I’ve come to know, did a nice job of asking me what I wanted to do, and when. He also found out the “why” -- my motivation for buying. (It's not because I need something new -- far from it. It's because I want it, which is a key piece of information when selling high-end products.)

He loaded me up with literature to study and drool over, and got my agreement that when I'm further along I will come back to discuss my more specific plans.

He knows I am a serious buyer, but he also recognized that I wasn't going to purchase that day. Trying some goofy close or "objection rebuttal" would have alienated me. Instead, he planted the seeds for what I likely will buy, and got commitment. Perfect.

So how can you manage the prospecting process to get your prospects to go from "considering" to "buying now," and have them do it with you?

Ask simple questions similar to these:

• “Why are you looking at X?”
• "What prompted you to call/fill out the web form?"
• “What are you looking for in X ?”
• “Is this something you have decided you are going to do?”
• “When are you going to move forward?”

After identifying needs and desires, and discussing how you can meet those, the next question you ask should gain some kind of commitment from the buyer today. Here's a good question to use to achieve this goal:

“When you do buy, can we be the ones you work with?”

Follow these two tips and you'll close more deals, both now and later.

Editor's note: This post originally appeared on Smart Calling Online and is republished here with permission.

Inbound marketers are armed with a serious about of data that can be used to help a sales team close more deals. There are two primary ways to nurture leads down the funnel faster:

1. Segmentation
2. Personalization
3. Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Both tactics give your leads the i-am-a-special-snowflake feeling and help build trust.

1. Segmentation

A marketer who is a master at identifying and segmenting leads is worth their weight in gold to a sales team. When you are able to segment leads based on persona, industry, stage of the funnel, or any other qualifier it helps sales make a more accurate prediction for their forecast. Additionally, segmentation (with the proper data) improves the sales and marketing meeting because you have proof of what the sales team should expect to come into their funnel in the near, and not-so-near future.

2. Personalization

Personalization is of the utmost importance in marketing today. The most common way to personalize marketing assets for your leads is through email. Today, you can personalize the email with any contact information you have in your database. But, what if you could go beyond personalizing emails and actually personalize your website content. Imagine a lead coming to your website who has looked who has downloaded an ebook. Now, imagine a customer coming to your website. Shouldn’t each person see something different? Yes. How do you do this?

While there are new tools being developed daily, one of the first to implement a sleek personalization system into their CMS is HubSpot. They launched Smart Content and marketers fell in love. Now, not only can you tailor downloadable content to leads at different stages in the funnel, you can actually tailor website pages to say different things as well. If you haven’t checked out Smart Content yet, you should.

In addition to Smart Content, HubSpot’s CMS offers Smart Calls-to-action that can be assigned segmented lists, lifecycle stage, or contact properties. This way the compelling content you create is getting shown the right people.

3. Lead Nurturing Campaigns

Also known as drip campaigns, lead nurture campaigns are instrumental in moving your leads closer to buying. However, you need to be methodical in the way you approach this. If you find yourself creating many “general” campaigns, you are defeating the purpose. Lead nurturing campaigns should be specific, personal, and solve a pain point for your persona.

Here are nine tips for creating great lead nurturing campaigns:

1. Understand your sales cycle and the buyer’s journey
2. Decide which persona you are targeting with the campaign
3. Set specific goals for the campaign
4. Map your content
5. Always use email marketing best practices
6. Mix up the types of emails you send out (some marketing-style, some more personal)
7. Test before launching
8. Track and report on your results
9. Do not be afraid to update the campaign or delete it if it is just not working for you.

Remember to view lead nurturing as more than just what your website provides. The first download is an invitation to a conversation about how you can be the solution to the lead’s challenge. It’s up to you to follow through with great nurture campaigns to prove it.

If you follow the three items above, not only will sales be happy with you, but you will also be able to prove marketing ROI for you company. Changes like this are a win for you and all of marketing

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VB WEBINAR:

Join us for this live webinar on Thursday, September 10 at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern. Register here for free. 

The face-to-face B2B sales process of the past — the many phone calls, the gratuitous lunches, the exhausting trade shows, followed by more phone calls — has been transformed by the digital landscape. The number of touchpoints and opportunities that now exist to intercept prospects and turn them into viable leads is unprecedented.

That doesn’t mean lead generation has become easy. It takes a healthy mix of art and science to succeed in a hyper-competitive, crowded space. And it takes a well-honed knowledge of all the available channels and how they can compliment one another.

That’s because there’s no one silver bullet for lead generation. If you think email alone is going to give you the results you’re looking for, or an aggressive adword campaign, you’ll be overlooking many of the tactics that successful B2B marketers bring together to turn the top of the funnel into leads that convert.

Email, search marketing, display ads, webinars, social campaigns, content marketing and syndication, on-demand events, blogs — not to mention strategic use of your own website — are all elements that need to be considered.

Of course, that list, which is not exhaustive, can be exhausting. In this webinar, we’ll look at the kinds of tools marketers need to ease the process, and ways to test and scale that make it all manageable — and ultimately get you the ideal mix of lead gen tactics for your business.

Join our panel of expert B2B marketers who will share insights and best practices that can heat up your lead gen game.

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Don’t miss out!

Register here for free.

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In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• Under-the-radar B2B ad channels including technology reviews sites and content syndication
• How to make the most of search, display, and paid social media campaigns for B2B audiences
• Low-risk ways to test new lead gen tactics before scaling your spending

Speakers:

Nick Bhutani, Senior Digital & Acquisition Marketing Manager, Booker
Rochelle Sanchirico, VP of Marketing, mHelpDesk
Jamaal Saunders, Senior Marketing Analyst, Salesforce

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This webinar is sponsored by Capterra

More information:

Powered by VBProfiles

The problem with eating one donut is that from that point forward, you give yourself permission to eat whatever you want. The day is already lost, so what’s the point of eating right the rest of the day?

The problem with opening Facebook and scrolling through the stream is that one link leads to the next link, and pretty soon your quick check-in has stolen an hour of your time. There’s no reason to start anything else because you don’t have time before your conference call or meeting. You might as well hit Twitter while you’re browsing the Internet. Social is a donut.

The problem with leaving your email open is that the notification that you received a new email will take you away from what you are doing—or what you should be doing. You might intend to take a quick look to make sure it isn’t something important, but before you know it you’re responding to some relatively unimportant email. Ten minutes in, you might as well finish writing the response, right? Email is a donut.

The problem with the water cooler chatter is that there are so many things you want to share and so many things your peer group wants to share with you. There just isn’t enough time. That one comment about the sporting event or the new hot Sunday night television show turns into 20 minutes. Not enough time to start the project that needs your attention. The water cooler is a box of donuts.

The decision to eat one donut isn’t often a decision to eat one donut. It’s a much bigger decision, with a greater impact.

The post The Problem With One Donut appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Successful salespeople are able to build connections with their customers and earn their trust. They know how to empathize with their buyers, see things from their point of view, and offer solutions based on that. To help you make that human connection with buyers, ask yourself these questions.

TORONTO – Economists say data out this week is likely to show that Canada slipped into a technical recession in the second quarter, but the contraction should be short-lived.

“A number of positive elements are coming through,” said TD Bank chief economist Beata Caranci. “Even if, like we’re expecting, we get a contraction in the second quarter, the consumption numbers are likely to be fairly healthy.”

According to Thomson Reuters, economists expect Statistics Canada to report Tuesday that the economy contracted at an annualized rate of 1.0 per cent in the second quarter.

Among other data expected from Statistics Canada this week are July trade figures on Thursday and the jobs report for August on Friday.

The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.5 per cent in July amid concerns about the impact falling oil prices and weak exports on the economy.

In its July monetary policy report, the central bank estimated the Canadian economy contracted at an annual pace of 0.5 per cent in the second quarter, but predicted things would pick on in the second half of the year.

Caranci says the benefit of the lower loonie to Canada’s export sector should boost growth in the third quarter.

Although exports were supposed to see a boost sooner, Caranci says the sector’s sensitivity to the loonie has diminished over the past decade as the U.S. — Canada’s biggest trading partner — has been importing more from China and Mexico.

“For every percentage point of deprecation you get to the Canadian dollar you’re getting less of a lift to exporters,” Caranci said. “You’re getting not only less sensitivity but also a more delayed response, so it’s coming in much later than we had been forecasting.”

TD is forecasting economic growth in the two to 2.5 per cent range in the third quarter — more optimistic than the Bank of Canada’s 1.5 per cent prediction for the three-month period.

Caranci says that would make another rate cut from the Bank of Canada unlikely.

“If we get momentum picking up in the third quarter, and we get the economy expanding more than the Bank of Canada is expecting, which is a low bar … then the probability of a Bank of Canada cut gets less and less,” she said.

“If you’re going to pull the trigger and take rates pretty much effectively close to zero, you need the economy to show that weakness in order to justify it.”

However, Capital Economics economist David Madani says he anticipates growth in the third quarter to be “unspectacular.”

“Most of the forward-looking indicators are pointing to further weakness,” says Madani, noting that business confidence indicators suggest the economy will continue to struggle during the latter part of the year.

“We are expecting a return to positive growth, but I think it’s going to be growth that’s fairly weak — well below the economy’s potential growth rate of two per cent.”

— Follow @alexposadzki on Twitter.

The post Canada’s ‘technical recession’ will be short-lived, economists say appeared first on Canadian Business - Your Source For Business News.

According to a recent survey of 120 B2B e-commerce professionals, 80 percent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their customers’ expectations followed B2C shopper practices. For this reason, amongst many others, it’s important that your B2B e-commerce site follows the best practices for both customer adoption and adoption by the business itself.

More and more wholesalers and brands are talking about the shift to online B2B sales, and the buzz is only mounting. Increasingly, and very quickly, B2B businesses are evolving to introduce e-commerce channels through which they

While you may think the shift to online sales will make sales rep jobs obsolete, hold your horses, because this is a vital and changing role. What other changes are behind the adoption of a B2B e-commerce site? Here are the best practices your business should be following.

1. Sales Reps being compensated for their online sales

It’s essential when adapting your B2B business to e-commerce that your sales reps are being compensated also for the sales taking place online. While the sales are coming through online, it was still largely because of their own efforts that the sale was made.

Sales reps could have many different accounts they’re selling to, they should be compensated for their direct orders be it in person, or ordering directly through a B2B webshop from an organization. They still took the time to build a relationship, and that relationship resulted in them spending money in the e-commerce store.

2. Sales and marketing coming together

The total amount of money that a customer spends with a brand or wholesaler is a derivative of the direct sales and marketing e-commerce sales coming in from that account. Together the two departments have the same goal – increased revenue. When working together they can help piece together the missing pieces of the puzzle.

B2B e-commerce platforms that align their sales and marketing teams enjoy 36 percent higher retention rates than those who don’t. A modernized sales team ready for B2B e-commerce adoption is one that has highly integrated sales and marketing teams to collaborate and utilize one another’s information.

3. Sales Rep becomes an agent for change

While the adoption of B2B self-service is still itself in the stages of infancy, sales reps have other responsibilities. Not only do they sell the merchandise directly, but they also train customers on board to do all of the transactions by themselves. The first time a sales rep may work through the customer on the tablet or PC, while 30 percent of customers do it by themselves.

In many cases, the sales reps are becoming even more involved leading this change in adopting the new B2B self-service. However, not all self-service systems are able to easily adapt to the needs of both the customer and the sales agents alike. Self-service tools which fail to understand the exact nature of the inquiry actually create more work for the sales agent since they bring them frustrated customers who are tired of dealing with a computer which cannot give them valid solutions for their problems. In contrast, smarter customer service technology, like Service Cloud for example, can help bring instantaneous answers based on natural language, helping to reduce the number of difficult interactions between sales reps and customers.

The role of the sales rep definitely isn’t disappearing; however, it is changing to accommodate to the needs of the new technologies put in place. It’s important to reiterate that without the reps being compensated accordingly there’s no drive to adopt the new adaptations of B2B e-commerce.

4. Pricing Promotions

In some cases wholesalers and retailers may need a little extra motivation to check out your e-commerce store. Differential pricing and incentives to go online provides that extra bit of motivation. Particularly in a B2B setting, you can offer benefits by making a portion of your overall offer available.

Try things like offering a ‘starter’ value, or  ‘entry level offer’ for new customers. Existing customers could be persuaded by a simple product extension or contract renewal online. These pricing promotions can be a benefit to both your business and your customers.

5. Mobile Storefront

When you’re in the store, you’re oftentimes disconnected from the internet with no wireless connectivity. This can make it rather difficult to access applications or look up products in stock with reasonable speed. By utilizing a solution with a mobile storefront, the application can work entirely offline and once you become connected again at home, you can still access all of this data.

A cloud-based store front which allows users to interact with the interface just as they would a B2C shopping experience eases your users through the shopping process without depending on wifi. Best of all, such tools help manufacturers and wholesale distributors boost sales by as much as 20 percent.

Brands: Stop Doing These Things!

Influencer Marketing is hot and that means the value of influencer relationships is higher than ever.

Working hard to romance in-demand experts to collaborate, co-create and even advocate can be a substantial investment. The mutual benefit from these long term relationships can mean anything from hugely successful marketing programs for brands to top billing at speaking events, book deals and consulting work for the influencers.

Unfortunately, outreach communications, expectations and negotiations with influencers to work together are often so lacking of empathy, relevant context or even courtesy that the industry expert “checks out”. Losing influencers is sad and wasteful.

But it doesn’t have to be that way if you know what makes them leave. Trust me, I work on influencer outreach nearly every day (sending and receiving) and am both guilty of committing some of these influencer marketing sins and having them committed against me.

So, with a little help from some of my marketing influencer friends, here’s a big list of what NOT to do.

50 ways to lose your influencer:

1. Using the wrong name in a pitch email or other inaccurate information (that should really be correct).
2. TLDR requests that take forever or never get to get to the point.
3. Irrelevant requests that have little if anything to do with the influencer’s expertise.
4. Not making it clear what the value exchange is.
5. Being too familiar and friendly with influencers on the first contact. Hey, we’re not actually friends (yet) are we?
6. Making it difficult by asking numerous, complicated questions, like those fun essays in college.
7. Unreasonable deadlines: “Hi you don’t know me,  but please send me 1,000 words by tomorrow.”
8. No credibility. Emailing a pitch from a gmail address and pointing to a website that looks really spammy or just bad.
9. #influencerstalking Following up one day after the first pitch. Then again the next day. Then again the next day and so on.
10. #failuretofollowup Asking for participation and then never following up.
11. Cold shoulder. Engaging an influencer online several times and then ignoring them when in person at industry events.
12. Lying or being disingenuous in any way.
13. Bait and switch. Offering access to a tool to preview, then requiring an guided demo where the influencer is “sold to”.
14. Bait and switch 2. Inviting the influencer to an event, then requiring attendance of a presentation where the influencer is “sold to”.
15. Micromanage. Requiring an unpaid influencer to cover specific topics in specific ways to the brand’s benefit that are not natural to the influencer (or their community).
16. Taking advantage. Expecting an influencer to do for free, what really should be paid for – moderating a panel, writing substantial content, extensive participation requirements.
17. When a brand takes unearned credit for ideas the influencer created, wrote about and used in their business.
18. Misappropriating. Using influencer content in ways never intended, especially when it is monetized by the brand or someone else entirely. Also, misrepresenting how the influencer’s contribution will be used. For example, saying it is for a public article and then using it for a gated ebook.
19. Making public, disparaging remarks or being disrespectful about an influencer.
20. Not being patient – these people are busy!
21. Switching the conditions of participation – shame on everyone if there is not a written, signed agreement for specific expectations.
22. Not being thankful for the influencer’s efforts. This goes both ways too – influencers should be thankful for the opportunity as well.
23. Failure to communicate. Managing communications and coordination poorly, in a disorganized way and without clear direction.
24. No edits. Publishing influencer content “as-is” without copyediting.
25. Being an asshat. Going over the line with sarcastic humor in influencer communications – you really need to know if they’re in to that.
26. Slimy SEO. Taking the influencer’s contribution and then SEO-ing the heck out of it with keywords and anchor text galore.
27. Backchannelling. Reaching out the the influencer’s “boss” or co-worker to ask why the influencer hasn’t responded to pitch emails.
28. Not being clear about the premise or context of the ask and thereby confusing the pitch.
29. Being one sided. When brands do not follow through on commitments made to the relationship.
30. And you are? Changing the client side contact and not doing any kind of hand off to ensure continuity.
31. Making it incredibly difficult to share the result of the brand/influencer collaboration. i.e. not providing pre-written tweets and social shares, properly sized graphics, embed codes, etc.
32. Inappropriate asks. “As for asks like promoting your product (books, webinars, conferences, etc.) in exchange for affiliate revenue please DON’T.” via Carlos Gil
33. “Out-of-the-blue Asks. I get requests from people I know really well every week. What makes you think I’ll make time to work with you if I’ve never interacted with you before? Take some time to comment on my posts, rate my podcast, review my book. I’ll return the favor in a heartbeat. If you hit my inbox out of nowhere… Delete.” via Drew Davis
34. Too soon. “My pet peeve is when someone follows me on Twitter or Instagram and/or fans me on Facebook and immediately reaches out to me with a request to check out their business.” via Kim Garst
35. “Ask Them To Sell. Your influencer is there to help you increase the awareness, association and consideration of your brand in a certain space – not to shill for you.” via Gerry Moran
36. Using the wrong channels to communicate: “Sending me a message about LinkedIn using Facebook.” via Jason Miller
37. Hello, can I interrupt you? Calling an influencer without an appointment to pitch. via Mark Schaefer
38. Peerless pressure. PR people that try to persuade influencer involvement because their peers are involved too – except they are not. via Mark Schaefer
39. Impersonal pitches. When companies send out generic en masse pitches, like a robo-call, but via email. The personal touch can make or break an influencer’s decision to engage. via Chad Pollitt
40. “Don’t tell me your story, let me tell my story. ‘LESS fabrication, MORE facilitation’ = a boost to your Return on Relationship, #RonR.” via Ted Rubin
41. Lazy duplication. “When you get that really interesting Tweet inviting you to take a look at something and then when you click through to it you also see that they have composed basically the same message to 579 other people on Twitter.” via John Jantsch
42. Delegated and impersonal. “Reach out to me directly yourself. Do NOT delegate this critical step to your marketing agency, PR professional, team member, assistant or intern. Do it yourself and make your note personal. If you want me to respond, I expect you to do the asking yourself.” via Heidi Cohen
43. “Not greasing the skids. Influencers are most likely to add commentary if there is some kind of existing relationship.  This means at least some kind of history where the person reaching out has already been sharing the influencer content.” via Joe Pulizzi
44. “Expecting too much in one ask. For example, writing a 1000 word article on your platform due this week without a previous relationship.” via Joe Pulizzi
45. Misleading opportunity. “Asking for 30 minutes of my time to discuss a “partnership” – which actually means you want me to sell your stuff to my clients.” via Ardath Albee
46. Asks that are complicated, ambiguous and without deadlines. via Rebecca Lieb
47. Not following up with that blog post, ebook, or copy of the interview the influencer contributed to. Influencers are indeed interested in seeing the fruits of their labors. via Rebecca Lieb
48. Abusing the kindness of an influencer by asking over and over again without showing any special consideration. “Set the tone and rules upfront. Influencers can’t be expected to take part in everything you do, so say that. Set the ground rules and expectations.” via Bryan Kramer
49. Giving up, as in not being persistent (over time) with credible, relevant offers and reasons to engage. “Give them a reason to come back, ask them what they are working on and keep the conversation going.” via Bryan Kramer
50. Spamming. “Signing up for an app that spams your “top influencer” with automated messages is a sure path to a rocky relationship.” via Glen Gilmore

Basically your takeaway from this list is, don’t do these things! Learn from these mistakes, pet peeves and advice.

To be successful with an influencer relationship, brands need to consistently make an effort to research the experts they want to engage and find out what motivates them. Create value and set clear expectations. Make working with your brand a very easy and satisfying experience. Listen and communicate in a meaningful way – not too different than any relationship, actually.

For brand marketers that want to point their influencer marketing efforts in the right direction, I recommend these collections of resources for best practices:

• Featured Influencer Marketing Resources – Traackr
• What You Need to Know About Content & Influencer Marketing. BONUS: Case Study and 18 articles – TopRank Marketing
• Influencer Marketing eBooks – GroupHigh
• Influencer Marketing Education – Onalytica
• Social Listening in Practice: Influencer Marketing – Brandwatch

You can also learn more about the influencer marketing services at TopRank Marketing.

If you’ve been on the receiving end of influencer outreach and communications, what are some of your pet peeves?

Photo: Shutterstock

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© Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®, 2015. | How to Improve Influencer Engagement? Avoid These 50 Fails | http://www.toprankblog.com

The post How to Improve Influencer Engagement? Avoid These 50 Fails appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Your firm’s brand is arguably its most valuable asset. This is our mantra. We preach this to our own audience. All. The. Time.

We are used to hearing that a firm’s most important asset is its people, not necessarily the brand. But people come and go. And unless an individual’s reputation and industry presence is so strong that they impact the entire firm’s marketplace position, “people” only get you so far.

Your brand is what prevails over time and beats the competition.

Strong brands hinge on strong differentiators. Differentiators are the foundational components of communicating your brand clearly and consistently. If there is no difference between what you say about your firm and what competitors say about their firms, you have a weak brand. Unfortunately, this can have a negative impact on your firm’s growth and profitability. In our own research, we’ve found that high growth firms are 3X more likely to have a strong, easy-to-understand differentiators.

And within the realm of professional services, technology services firms struggle to articulate the right technology differentiator. With often complex service offerings with even more complex acronyms and terminology that describe those offerings, technology firms too often fall back on differentiating around being a “trusted partner” and having “best in class people.”

Here is a quick test to see if you have a true differentiator. Think of some way you believe your firm is different. Then ask if a potential competitor could ever say the opposite. If the answer is “no,” it is probably not a good differentiator (this is why having great people and offering great client service don’t pass this test).

Remember that a truly strong differentiator must pass three criteria: It must be true. It must be relevant to your clients. And it must be provable.

Let’s first peel away some very common misconceptions about what makes a bonafide technology differentiator:

• Your differentiator is not your firm’s name.
• Your differentiator is not your logo or tagline.
• Your differentiator is not your website or marketing collateral.
• Your differentiator is not your mission statement, culture, or core values.
• Your differentiator is not your people.

Instead, each of these are tools that help your differentiator communicate your brand. But they are not differentiators in and of themselves.

How do you then come up with relevant brand differentiators, ones that support your brand and help you stand out in the marketplace?

Our research points to five key factors around which firms should consider building their differentiators to achieve brand strength:

1. A Well-Defined Target Audience

While it’s tempting to think of your firm’s differentiators as having universal appeal, it’s rarely the case. It’s far more strategic to build your differentiators around a clearly defined and well-understood target market. To be meaningful, a differentiator must be relevant to “someone.” No differentiator can try to be relevant to everyone. Many professional services firms are reluctant to specify a target audience. They do so at their own disadvantage.

2. Relevance to the Success of the Target Audience

Your differentiator must also be seen as being relevant to the success of your client. It’s not enough to be nice people or even knowledgeable and helpful. Those fall into the “nice-to-have” category. The real driver of a successful brand through relevant differentiation is your ability to define the problem, solve the problem, and make your clients successful. You aren’t just a bystander. You are a contributor to your clients’ success.

3. Proof Through Marketing With Informative Content

Content marketing involves providing a steady stream of useful information to potential clients or influencers. Think educational rather than promotional. Over time, potential clients learn how you approach problems and develop trust in your firm. When they need assistance, your firm is at the top of their list. Content marketing relies on winning clients by sharing something of value rather than trying to persuade or “sell” them. As such, it is a great way to call out your differentiators, build a brand, and generate leads.

4. Promotion of Your Visible Experts℠

While your people in general are not a strong differentiator on which to hang your brand, many firms have legitimate experts that become well known and influential among their target client group. While small in number, we call these fortunate few Visible Experts. By deliberately developing one or more of these high-profile experts, a firm can dramatically increase the power of its brand.

The strength of a Visible Expert’s personal brand transfers to the entire firm by virtue of the “Halo Effect,” so well known in the marketing community. In the same way, as a university becomes more prestigious when it has a Nobel Prize winning faculty member, so too a professional services firm benefits by having a nationally known industry thought leader on its team.

5.  Soul Searching Your Expertise

What industry verticals do you already have strength in? What kind of services are you good at delivering? Where do you offer the most value and enjoy the greatest success? Most established firms have a large number of industry or service combinations to consider, since growth has often been opportunistic.

Because the differentiators on which you develop your brand are so central to the ongoing success of your firm, they should be a matter of focus and investment. In reality, this is rarely the case. Because so few competitors are giving brand building and differentiators the attention they require, you have a great opportunity to benefit and gain a meaningful competitive advantage.

As marketers, we accept that conversion rate optimization (CRO) will never be removed from our to-do list. Less of a marketing project and more of an ongoing priority, CRO is built on constantly trying new tactics and tweaking old ones to get results.

To develop a prospect-rich network of fans and followers and keep the funnel filled with leads, marketers endlessly test which tools provide the best optimization outcomes.

Here are seven conversion hacks straight from our own playbook—and why they’ll work for you.

Hack #1: Try a new type of form. 

Why it works: In this case, human nature moves the needle. Everyone is motivated by the thrill of a free gift, a special offer, or a chance to win.

With that in mind, try changing up the types of online forms you use. That contact form you’ve been using for years only converts at a measly 1%. But the 2015 Form Conversion Report found that contest forms convert at 35%, and event forms convert at 11%.

Hack #2: Only ask users what you really need to know.

Why it works: Keeping forms short saves your customers time and effort. More importantly, it shows them you’re not asking for a full commitment at first hello.

As an industry, we’re backpedaling a little on this. Survey conversion rates, while still high relative to other form types, have experienced a seven-point drop in conversions since 2014. That change is likely linked to the increased length of the average survey, which now contains 22 fields.

Long surveys can take too much time to complete, especially on a phone or tablet. Faced with 22 fields, a potential customer might decide to abandon your form. So keep it short, and only ask the most critical questions for registration. If your first encounter is positive, you’ll earn the right to ask for more information in future interactions.

Hack #3: Catch your audience when they’re active online.

Why it works: You make best use of your resources by posting on Twitter and Facebook when your audiences are already there.

Don’t just auto-schedule your content to post at midnight. The Form Conversion Report revealed that the peak time for form submissions is between noon and 3 p.m. To get the most bang for your buck, coordinate social media and email campaigns to deliver at the time of day recipients are most likely to click submit. You’ll achieve better reach without any additional effort.

Hack #4: Make everything as mobile as possible.

Why it works: Being mobile-friendly provides convenience for your customers and strengthens your brand esteem.

According to one study, 57% of users would not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. With this in mind, make sure your most important content displays in the top few pixels of the page, and whenever possible, reduce your viewers’ need to scroll.

And don’t forget about ultramobiles. Gartner predicts that this product segment—which includes tablets, hybrids, and clamshells—will eventually take over as the main driver in the device market. So make sure your mobile site looks as good on tablets of all sizes as it does on the traditional smartphone screen.

Hack #5: Offer social login and autofill options.

Why it works: We live in a fast-paced world, and we’re all busy. Plus, many of us struggle to remember the slew of usernames and passwords required today. The easier it is to fill out your form or log in to your site, the more likely customers are to stick around.

Offering social login has unparalleled potential to improve the consumer experience. An estimated 64% of users who frequently leave sites due to forgotten login information say social login is an option that companies should offer.

And leveraging Social Autofill is just as important. Formstack data shows conversion rates can increase up to 189% when form users take advantage of Social Autofill features that decrease the time it takes to fill out a form.

Hack #6: Supercharge your call-to-action button.

Why it works: The call-to-action (CTA) button is the “X” on the treasure map. It’s where we want customers to go, so we want to do everything we can to draw attention to it.

First, position your CTA at the top of your landing page to deliver maximum views to your form without requiring page visitors to scroll to the bottom. And make sure your CTA and all other buttons are big enough to be easily tapped from a mobile device.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of using the right color. Colors like red and orange create a sense of urgency and encourage immediate action, while yellow is a good attention-grabber. Green is also a great choice; we all know green means go, which is a good message to send when it comes to CTAs.

Hack #7: Brand it.

Why it works: Branding is visible verification of legitimacy that earns trust and clicks.

A generic form isn’t just uninteresting; it can appear less trustworthy. Don’t risk form abandonment by taking an aesthetic shortcut. Make sure your customers know they’re submitting their information to you, and only you.

In the HubSpot Blog's recent survey of over 500 sales professionals, we tried to see what sales leaders hope to achieve when training reps and the top sales coaching tactics they use to get there — and our survey produced some interesting insight on both fronts.

Here, we'll take a closer look at sales leaders' primary coaching goals — along with some perspective on the methods they use to achieve them. Let's dive in.

Sales Leaders' Primary Coaching Goals

According to our survey, most sales leaders prioritize improving reps' sales performance when structuring their coaching strategies — with 52.6% of respondents citing it as a major goal.

The next most popular coaching goal among the sales leaders we surveyed was aligning their sales teams on common goals — with 44.6% of respondents saying it was a priority.

Strengthening relationships between leaders and sales reps to help create an environment of trust was another popular answer — with 43.3% of respondents citing it as important.

Several leaders also stressed the importance of training reps on the tools and resources they need to succeed — with 38.5% of respondents identifying that activity as a goal of theirs.

And finally, 37.8% of the leaders we surveyed said their sales training strategies at least partially revolved around providing consistent and ongoing coaching or feedback to reps.

Now that we have some perspective on the "why" behind how sales leaders structure their coaching strategies, let's take a closer look at the "how."

Managers' Favorite Coaching Tactics

Weekly Check-Ins

Of the sales leaders we surveyed, 63.3% say managers at their organizations conduct weekly check-ins with their reps, making it the most popular coaching method they leverage. The strategy also has the largest proportion of respondents citing it as the most effective sales coaching strategy — garnering 39.4% of the vote.

Conducting weekly check-ins is popular for a few reasons. For one, it's straightforward and readily accessible. It generally doesn't cost anything beyond 15 to 30 minutes of a manager's time per rep once a week.

Routine one-on-ones or team stand-ups can help facilitate reps' growth, give them the space to air questions or concerns, and add another degree of mutual accountability to the manager-rep dynamic.

The consistency these kinds of meetings offer can help teams align on common goals and foster trust and familiarity between salespeople and their managers. All told, conducting weekly check-ins is a simple but effective method sales orgs can employ to address virtually all of the goals mentioned earlier.

Internal Training Sessions and Coaching

The second most popular sales coaching method sales orgs leverage, according to our respondents, is internal sales training sessions and coaching — with 60.9% of sales leaders saying they use the strategy. And with 34.4% of the vote, internal sales training and coaching comes in as the second most effective sales coaching method.

Offering internal training sessions and coaching is a staple of most sales org's coaching frameworks — particularly as reps are getting started and finding their bearings.

Having dedicated sessions to help reps develop extensive product knowledge, understand a company's market and competitive landscape, learn how to use its CRM, and familiarize themselves with its sales process are all essential to setting them up for success.

And this strategy isn't just applicable to new hires. Ongoing training sessions on elements like the technical specs of new products, any new sales methodologies you might be leveraging, or the nature of new territories or verticals reps might be taking on are all central to maintaining a thriving, consistently improving sales org.

Reviewing Sales Correspondences Between Reps and Prospects

Reviewing sales correspondence between reps and prospects is the third most popular coaching method among sales leaders — with 44.3% of respondents claiming to use it. And with 19.1% of the vote, it also ranks as the third most effective sales coaching strategy.

Though it might be considerably less popular than the previous two methods listed here, reviewing sales correspondence between reps and prospects — including calls or emails — can be an excellent way for managers to understand how their reps are performing and where they might have room for improvement.

Activities like direct call shadowing or leveraging conversation intelligence platforms for call transcripts allow managers to see whether reps are effectively employing their orgs' sales messaging, where they might be over- or under-stepping when talking with prospects, and which elements of their conversations represent their biggest roadblocks.

Training Sessions With a Third-Party

The least used, least effective method for sales coaching among sales leaders was training sessions with a third party — with just 24.6% of respondents saying they use it and only 6.7% citing it as the most effective sales coaching strategy.

Training sessions with third parties tend to be more expensive and typically offer sales orgs less control of what their reps are learning. This particular method doesn't lend itself to more focused information on company-specific elements — like the nature of an org's sales process or relevant product knowledge.

These programs often cover more general skills, such as sales negotiation or relationship selling. Those steeper price tags, coupled with these trainings' less specific nature, mean sales orgs are typically less inclined to employ third-party training sessions on a consistent basis — making the method the least popular of the four listed here.

Even with these facts and figures, it's still worth noting that your sales org's coaching strategy is going to be exactly that — yours. The combination of resources, processes, and tactics you wind up leveraging is going to be specific to factors like your company's needs and organizational structure.

There's no one-size-fits all coaching infrastructure that universally covers the interests and issues of every sales department — and there's a good chance you'll pull from more than one of the methods listed here when putting your broader strategy together.

Regardless of how you choose to coach your salespeople, make sure you understand your company's goals, your sales org's dynamic, and your reps' needs when plotting your course of action.

When you’re developing or refining your value proposition, the number one mistake that most salespeople make is they just come up with the words on their own. They develop their value propositions in a bubble, without talking to their prospects and clients.

Salespeople think they know what their prospects or clients want to hear. The problem is that most reps come up with very trite phrases to describe what they do, such as the following:

• “We provide great service.”
• “We care about our customers.”
• “We provide unique solutions.”  

Are these really unique? No. These are platitudes that anyone could say.

The key is to find ways to express your value that are different from what everyone else is saying. And one of the best sources to find out what makes you different? Your current clients or customers.

When you are thinking about how to market yourself or writing copy for a brochure or website, go to some of your clients and say, “Look, could you help me with this a little bit? I could use your feedback.” Whether you pick their brain over lunch or you send them some questions in an email, get their feedback. They will tell you their perception of your value, and I guarantee they will give you words and expressions you would never think of on your own.

For instance, I had a client tell me, “Bill, you make asking for referrals as natural as breathing." Now, I would have never thought of that. Do I use that in my marketing? You bet!

That’s an example of what happens when you go to your clients for their perceptions of your value. They will help you come up with unique and compelling word and phrases -- much better than anything you could come up with in a vacuum.

If you have any result-producing tips you’d like to share with me, please send them to BillCates@ReferralCoach.com.

There are 3 LinkedIn profile questions you must answer when creating your profile, or LinkedIn will likely not deliver anywhere near the results it should for you. That would be a crying shame, because the suit and tie social network can deliver in spades, if you let it.

LinkedIn Profile Question 1

Who is your target audience?

Are you targeting HR at financial institutions, for your next step up the corporate ladder? Maybe you’re selling

medical software. Okay, great; who are the decision makers for those purchases? Your sports marketing company does a bang-up job building sports brands. I bet; who hires you, and who has their ear?

The key is knowing who you want to appeal to, and what they want. It’s the age-old marketing truism that’s lost none of its luster: “Know Your Audience” If you know them and what makes them tick, you’ve overcome the biggest obstacle to not only creating a compelling LinkedIn profile, but marketing you and your business.

LinkedIn Profile Question 2

What are you offering them?

Okay, so you know your audience better than they know themselves, and you’ve got detailed buyer personas up the Whazzoo! Great! That’s a damned good start, but what do they want?

More specifically, what problem are you solving for them? Sure, that may be a little basic if you’re a marketer, but most of the people on LinkedIn aren’t….. except that they are! Everybody’s marketing themselves and/or their organizations on LinkedIn, whether they’re professional marketers, automotive engineers, or landscape architects.

Who do you want to attract, and what unique value can you give them?

Craft your profile so that your value comes through. Let them know you’re solving THEIR problem.

LinkedIn Profile Question 3

Why should they care?

What’s unique about you as it relates to them and their needs? The last part of that question is VITAL. Sure, you may be solving their problem, but there are 350 million LinkedIn members. You can bet at least some of them are solving the very same problem. For example, if you’re a landscape architect, there are 33,866 on LinkedIn as I write this. What do you have for your target audience that the other 33,865 don’t? What makes you not only one they should consider, but THE one they should decide on?

Look at your profile carefully. Does it showcase your:

• value
• target audience appeal
• uniqueness

Okay, great, does it do all this with credibility? That’s the next step to attracting your next client or employer. They’ve got to not only be impressed by your profile, and feel some attraction, but believe it. Sound like a prospective date? You’re not far off. You’re trying to start a great relationship, and whether that’s business or personal, it requires many of the same attributes.

Get these wrong, and you may as well post last month’s Batman comic. Don’t leave your LinkedIn Profile to chance. You career or business may be at stake. Ask these 3 questions before you publish you profile. If you didn’t, go back through it and see if it answers them.

Can’t write? So what, there are hundreds of folks out there who do excellent LinkedIn profile work. We’d be happy to take a look at yours and help you tick the boxes.

LinkedIn is one area where doing it right sure beats the pants off doing it wrong; especially if only one other competitor IS doing it right. If their LinkedIn Profile ticks all the boxes, they’ll likely get the business opportunity, and you won’t. You know how business works. You may never get another chance.

Your prospect loves your product. They're drooling over the features, and they’re already planning the integration into their own system. You’re both ready to sign on and get cranking.

Then you mention your setup fee or deposit. It's nothing out of the ordinary, but to your prospect, it's a punch in the gut. They're offended. They don't want to pay. They're ready to walk away.

If your product or service has a deposit or setup fee, you definitely recognize this scenario. Entire sales hinge on whether you can sell the fee to the customer.

All the prospect sees is another expense, and it’s impossible to sell an expense.

But what you can do is change the terms of the conversation. Make the fee valuable to the prospect, and they’ll actually want to buy it. Here’s how.

Why you have an upfront fee

It’s counterintuitive, but the reason why you have an upfront fee or deposit is for your customer’s benefit—it’s to make them more successful.

A deposit filters out customers who aren’t willing to make a longer-term commitment to the relationship. That filter means that you can focus 100% of your attention on serious customers and do your best for them, rather than spreading yourself out too thin over a huge number of customers.

A setup fee makes it possible for you to pour resources into the customer relationship from the get-go so that the customer can hit the ground running. You’re able to put a customer success manager on the account, conduct training and onboarding for the team, and pour engineering time into custom integration and development to make sure that they’re 100x more successful down the road.

Your company has these fees for a reason. They allow you to perform your service better, help your customers, and deliver a better product. Your job in sales is simple—to help the prospect see that value.

Position your deposit as part of an exclusive, top-tier service

Value: Be part of an exclusive service that only works with the best and most committed customers.

When you communicate that you have an exclusive service that doesn’t accept everyone, you’re signaling to your prospect that those customers who you do accept will get a premium product and experience that’s worth the deposit and more.

Consider Mailbox, the wildly successful email app that Dropbox eventually acquired for $100 million. 800,000 people downloaded the app and signed up to join the waitlist for a product that they couldn't use. It is precisely because they can't use it, and have to wait, that they think it must be an amazing product that they must have.

This is hardwired into your brain. In a 2008 Caltech study, researchers scanned people's brains while they sampled different priced wines. The subjects always reported that the more expensive wines were more flavorful, and this was backed up by the scans, which showed increased neural activity in the brain's pleasure center. The catch? Actually, the wines were all the same, only the price was different. We get more pleasure out of a premium product. As founders, we often undercharge for our product because we lack the confidence - but being cheap is not the way to go. Instead, aim to create more value.

Objection:  Can't you make an exception? We want to try it first to see if it’s effective before committing.

Closing the deal: If you’re not ready to make a commitment, no big deal.

At this point, it'll be tempting to try and negotiate, offering to lower the fee just to close the deal. Don't. Not only will this lower the status of your product in their eyes, it will also harm your team’s ability to deliver your top-tier, premium service.

By showing that you’re okay with not getting the prospect’s business and by backing up your talk by not negotiating, a funny thing happens—customers will want you even more. That’s because everyone wants what they can’t have.

Embrace your deposit as part of your branding and positioning as a luxury brand, and you'll turn it into something that shows your customer your value and ultimately makes you even more desirable.

Re-frame your fee as an investment in success

Value: Invest in your success now, and you’ll be paid back 10x.

Framing the fee as an investment helps your prospect understand what you’re going to do with the money. You’re not nickel-and-diming them. You’re not making any money at all off the setup fee. The entire amount is going to the cost of ramping up premium support, engineering consulting, and more.

New customer relationships involve investments by both sides, not just on their end—and prospects often forget that. Make the prospect aware of how much you’re committing on your end to make the relationship a success. They’ll see that you’re making investments in success and that it’s only fair that they invest as well.

Objection: Your competition doesn't have this fee.

Closing the deal: Our competitors do have the fee—they're just not up front about it.

All these services have to be paid for, it's just yours are explicit and upfront.

Offering bad news upfront might seem like a bad move. But here's the thing — people trust negativity. Studies have shown that even infants show a negativity bias. We implicitly give more credibility to bad news, increasing our trust in the giver.

If the prospect goes with a competitor that doesn’t have a fee, then in two months they are going to face one of two negative consequences—one bad, the other worse.

1. Months wasted ramping up slowly

Instead of charging the fee up front, your competitor builds the fee into their monthly recurring price. That means that rather than ramping up quickly and all at once, they ramp up slowly over several months.

Your prospect loses the full value of his investment, while your customers speed past, having ramped up immediately, from day one.

2. No resources spells total failure

No fee at all means no resources, no staff in place, and no dedicated engineers or account managers. None of the support and infrastructure that you are offering them with this one-time payment is available without the setup fee.

When they realize that, they'll spend 2x as much on hiring their own staff and separate consultants. Six months down the line and they will have invested more time, money, and resources and will be months behind where you promised they would be.

Using your service, with your setup fee, they're investing at a fraction of the cost, upfront, and in 6 weeks they are up and running, and crushing it.

Change a fee from an expense into added value

Don't hide your fee. Don't apologize for it. Own it.

Whenever a customer balks at an upfront fee, don't worry. They can only initially see it as an expense to be negotiated down or out. But you can use your knowledge of what these fees are for to reframe them to showcase their true value.

Remember these 3 points:
By doing this, you can close the deal, protect your product’s value, and define your own space in the market.

There’s been a lot of (technical term here) “hullabaloo” in the online marketing world about Facebook’s waning influence.

Type “Facebook Reach” or “Facebook Fans” into Google and you’re probably going to get something that looks a bit like this:

Are Facebook likes useless? Is the era of success on Facebook over?

Rather than beating around the bush and teasing you any more I’ll get right to the point…

These articles are sensationalist and condense a complicated subject into a single, overwhelming conclusion.

I think it needs to be addressed.

So before we let this thing really get out of hand let’s take an analytical look at it. Do you have five minutes to give Facebook another chance?

An Introduction to, and Justification for, Fallen Facebook Reach

Facebook reach is down. That’s just a fact. I don’t need to show you the graphs for you to believe me. You know this. Facebook knows this. We all know this.

But why is it down? Is Facebook really just looking to drive businesses towards its ad platform, or is it more complicated (and less sinister) than that?

The truth of the matter is, it’s a little of one and a little of the other.

On the one hand, the mass majority of Facebook’s revenue is generated by advertising. So yes, they have a vested interest in driving businesses towards paid promotion.

Why that’s not a bad thing I’ll get to in a couple moments. For the time being, though, let’s just acknowledge that yes, of course, Facebook is interested in driving you towards Facebook Ads.

But they also have come out publicly to talk about the fall in organic reach (in fact, they warned us about it before it happened). The reason they gave is a genuine one: they asked their users what they wanted to see on their newsfeed, and their users unanimously answered “no promotional brand stuff!”.

Long story short, Facebook amended their algorithm and your brand saw a drop in organic reach.

But jumping on that sentence and running to the hills with it isn’t a very constructive attitude.

Think about it. The changes to Facebook’s post reach algorithm were made to ensure that anybody who actually wants to see your brand content has a higher chance of doing so. The un-engaged (possibly fake) Facebook users who Liked your business are no longer being reached. In short, while the number of people who are seeing your posts may have dropped, the ones who are, are probably more valuable.

While I know it’s tempting, if you’re seeing low engagement on your posts don’t (necessarily) jump to the conclusion that it’s Facebook’s fault. All they’ve done is their best effort to remove the useless Fans. If you have poor engagement, let’s prove it’s not the fault of your own Facebook posting strategy first (because that’s something you can change).

Reason Facebook Likes Aren’t Useless #1: You can probably reach more of them than you are

If we can agree that reaching more valuable Facebook Fans is a good idea, we can help Facebook a bit by honing in even more.

Each Facebook post you share on your Facebook Page can be narrowed down by segment of your Fans.

Depending on your business type, you’ll be targeting based on a lot of different characteristics. If you’ve ever used Facebook Ads, you’ll be familiar with the structure of post targeting:

• Gender, Relationship status, Education, Age: SaaS and B2B probably won’t care about this kind of targeting but it could be really effective for brick-and mortar or ecommerce businesses.
• Location: This is an effective one, especailly if you’ve noticed in Facebook Insights (or Facebook Audience Insights, if you’re fancy) that your most engaged Fans come from a single country or location.
• Language: At Wishpond we have dedicated English, Spanish and Portuguese customer support specialists. Because of this I might target posts to those three languages even though all of our social posts are in English. I do this because people who have their language setting to a foreign language may still see them.
• Interests: This is where it gets cool. Consider targeting your Facebook posts (particularly when promoting content) at Fans Interested in the type of content you’re sharing. Note that (unlike Facebook Ads), Facebook post targeting doesn’t combine your target market, but rather targets each Interest individually. Here’s what it might look like:

Reason Facebook Likes Aren’t Useless #2: You can drive leads from your Facebook Fans

You’d rather have a prospective customer’s email address than keep them as a Facebook Fan, right? You’d rather have an assured way of communicating with them (plus know a bit more about them) than create a Facebook Post and hope, right?

In many ways, I view a Facebook Fan as stage one of customer acquisition. They’ve indicated interest in your business, but perhaps aren’t quite ready to convert to a sale.

So let’s use your business’ Facebook Likes to generate leads, and push your prospective customers down the sales funnel a bit.

Yes, I’m talking about Facebook Ads. Deal with it.

Here’s why Facebook Ads are worth thinking about, in the simplest terms:

If you were to devote 6 hours a day to Facebook exclusively, you could not (even before the drop in organic reach) effectively market your business to as many people as a Facebook Ad reaches with a $25 ad spend and a half hour of ad building.

What is 6 hours worth to you?

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But let’s get back to the value of a Fan when it comes to advertising. Here’s the nitty gritty of this whole thing: Targeting a Facebook Fan is far more likely to generate a click than targeting users by interest or demographics. Not least because the people see your ad already know who you are.

How do you generate email addresses from existing Fans with Facebook Ads?

One of my favorite strategies to turn your Facebook Likes into leads is to run a Fan-only sweepstakes.

Here’s why I like this strategy: You can use the whole “exclusive to our Fans” shtick, which is guaranteed to increase engagement, as people like being part of a select, exclusive group.

You learn which of the Facebook users who Like your Page are genuinely interested in your product (and which were just there because they clicked “Like” on something they thought was a post a couple years ago…)
You can promote your contest with both organic posts and Facebook Ads.

An example:

Think about it – we’d be giving away something cheap for us (subscription to our tool) in exchange for the email addresses of hundreds of people we know are interested in our business. A well-designed email campaign post-contest might convert anywhere from 5-15% of them to a paid subscription, but only if we have their email addresses in the first place.

Top Tip for Turning Fans into Leads: If you’re looking to collect emails from your Facebook Fans, upload your email list as a custom audience and then “exclude” that list from your post or ad to be sure that you’re not wasting paid or organic reach on people you already have in your contact list.

Reason Facebook Likes Aren’t Useless #3: They’re easier to get than you think

Last November, Facebook removed the “Like-gate” from its promotions. Basically this meant that your business could no longer require users to Like their business Page in order to enter a promotion.

This kinda sucked for some of our merchants, who used Facebook contests to generate Fans.

So we came up with an answer – well within Facebook’s regulations, but also a bit on the line: the Like “Recommendation. It looks like this:

This allows your page visitors to say “No, Thank You” to Liking your Page. Sure, it’s not a guaranteed Like, but that doesn’t mean running a contest on Facebook isn’t still an awesome way to increase your Page Likes, nurture existing relationships and increase brand awareness on Facebook and the web in general.

A few Facebook contest ideas:

• Generate Fans or leads with a sweepstakes contest: With a low barrier of entry and simple incentivized lead/fan generation strategy, sweepstakes have always been our most popular promotion. Use them (alongside an excluded custom audience) to drive leads from your fans. Or, use them (alongside an excluded Facebook Fan list) to drive Fans from Facebook users.
• Increase brand awareness with a photo contest: Get some user-generated content, increase engagement with Fans and generate leads. Facebook photo contests are also a great place to find ammunition for later Facebook posts (and remember to mention the person who submitted each photo).
• Increase Fan engagement with a vote contest: Take two or three of your most popular products/blog posts/resources/headshots, etc and get people to vote on the one they like best. Stir up some friendly rivalry to boost reach.

And if you need some ideas for what kind of prize will work best for your business (and when) check out 101 Best Prize Ideas to Give Away in Online Contests & Competitions.

Bonus strategy to reach more of your Facebook Fans

A couple years ago, Facebook rolled out the auto-play newsfeed video. They talked to a few users, who pretty unanimously declared they liked seeing video on their newsfeed, so the post-type went up a couple notches in their algorithm.

We took a detailed look at the effect of video on our own organic post reach in an article entitled “How We’re Using Video to Boost Engagement on Facebook’”. Long story short we saw a tripling of organic reach when we posted a video with a blog article (over a simple image and link).

But, even then, we weren’t tapping into the strength of video on Facebook. As Josh Kalven noted in his Medium article on this subject, more and more brands are implementing the “silent video” – essentially “B-roll” and music over images or video with large written text to deliver your message.

This effectively communicates your brand message within the “no-sound” world of Facebook’s auto-play videos. So that’s 300% increase in organic reach without sacrificing your promotion or message at all. Not bad.

Here’s an example from NowThis:

And, because these videos are centered around the text, they’re actually easier to create. All you need is some image stills, a simple video editor and some creativity. Think about it.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article has given you a bit of “get-up-and-go”, as well as the inspiration to give Facebook marketing another chance.

Facebook marketing of 2008 is done: no more throwing a post onto the platform and knowing that thousands of people will see your promotion. No more guaranteed Likes, Shares or Comments. You’re going to have to think outside the box, and work for your return.

But, if you work smart, that return is still an impressive one.

Most everything I’ve learned (and continue to learn) about marketing and the web has come via the inspiration and example of others—reading amazing blogs, learning from great content, and diving deep into favorite books.

I’d love to share, in particular, the books that have been most influential to me and other digital marketers.

I’ve put together a list of 30+ that include some of my personal favorites, some favorites from my Buffer teammates, and some favorites from a handful of the best marketers online. Hoping to make it easy to browse and find your next book to read, I’ve split it into clickable categories as well—plus a SlideShare for easy flipping and finding.

Does your favorite business book make the list here? I’d love to know which ones have been meaningful to you as well.

The 30 Best Business Books for Marketers

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12 of the Best Business Books for Psychology and Neuromarketing

1. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The book that has informed the bulk of our culture and values here at Buffer, How to Win Friends delves into the specific ways with which you can communicate and empathize with everyone. We’ve gained such great value from this in the ways we seek to grow and improve as people and as marketers.

From the book:

Talk to someone about themselves and they’ll listen for hours.

2. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

Perhaps the most well-known and influential book on persuasion, Influence is referenced all the time by marketers who desire to be thoughtful and smart in their approach to creating campaigns and copy that appeal to others.

From the book:

A well-known principle of human behavior says that when we ask someone to do us a favor we will be more successful if we provide a reason. People simply like to have reasons for what they do.

3. Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal

We’ve gained such great value from the ideas in this book, in particular the Hooked model of Trigger > Action > Reward > Investment. There’s tons of great insight here into how people get hooked into products and how to replicate this model for your brand and business.

From the book:

Many innovations fail because consumers irrationally overvalue the old while companies irrationally overvalue the new.

4. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

Written by behavioral economist Dan Ariely, the book touches on the irrational decisions that we often make, sometimes subconsciously.

From the book:

Trust, once eroded, is very hard to restore.

5. Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky

A great read for finding motivation and drive to complete creative projects, Make Ideas Happen touches on the aspects of productivity that are critical to creative jobs (which seems to fit well for those with a marketing mindset).

From the book:

An idea can only become a reality once it is broken down into organized, actionable elements.

6. Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger

What makes things go viral? Why are do some products take off and others don’t? Jonah Berger answers these questions by going deep into the science of word-of-mouth and social persuasion—all of which is incredibly applicable to the high-level thinking in social media strategies.

From the book:

Virality isn’t born, it’s made.

7. Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath

Made to Stick digs into the reasons behind the longevity and stickiness of ideas, and it’s easy to draw the line to content and social media marketing as well. Chip and Dan Heath cover six key principles as to why some things stick and others don’t: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions and stories.

From the book:

The most basic way to get someone’s attention is this: Break a pattern.

8. Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman, who holds a Nobel Prize in economics, shares about the science of our minds and how we often take one of two paths: fast and intuitive thinking, or slow and deliberate thinking.

From the book:

Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.

9. The Culting of Brands: Turn Your Customers into True Believers by Douglas Atkin

Atkin’s research into brands with devoted followings reveals a lot of interesting details on how to cultivate and grow a community. Some of the ideas mentioned here aim to build relationships with an audience by helping people feel unique, important, and belonging to a group—values that may resonate with many marketers.

10. Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow

This book fits in really well with our Buffer value of working smarter, not harder. Shane Snow, co-founder of Contently, takes a look at a host of different success stories—everyone from Jimmy Fallon to Alexander the Great—and identifies the ways in which these people have found to achieve great things in a short amount of time.

From the book:

There are a lot of great inventors and improvers in the world. But those who hack world-class success tend to be the ones who can focus relentlessly on a tiny number of things. In other words, to soar, we need to simplify.

11. Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom

A great guide to how our minds respond to advertising, Buy-ology looks at our reactions to marketing messages and the elements that resonate with us most.

From the book:

When we brand things, our brains perceive them as more special and valuable than they actually are.

12. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay

Perhaps the original book on marketing psychology, Extraordinary Popular Delusions was first published in 1841 and contains truly timeless insights about the way that our brains process and respond to media and messaging.

From the book:

I never lost money by turning a profit.

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The 9 Best Books to Learn Marketing, Growth, and Social Media

13. Tribes by Seth Godin

All of Seth Godin’s books are wonderful resources for feeling inspired to achieve great things with your marketing. Tribes, in particular, seems to have a lean toward the social media side of things as it covers the topic of audiences and communities (and how to become a leader).

From the book:

The secret of leadership is simple: Do what you believe in. Paint a picture of the future. Go there. People will follow.

14. Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah

The go-to source for an introduction to inbound marketing, the book from Hubspot’s co-founders touches on all the elements of inbound marketing and the amazing value that comes from this approach. (Inbound marketing is very much aligned with what we aim to do here at Buffer.)

From the book:

You’ve got to unlearn what you have learned.

15. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook by Gary Vaynerchuk

The title of this one hints at the message: Be strategic with the way you sell on social media. Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the most influential names in online marketing, and the ideas he shares in this book have been key to his growth.

From the book:

Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read.

16. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

We gained so much from reading this book together as a marketing team here at Buffer. The book covers 19 different traction channels that might be worth exploring for your business, as well as the specific exercises needed to find the channels that will work for you.

From the book:

This is what we call the 50% rule: spend 50% of your time on product and 50% on traction.

17. To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink

Offering a fresh perspective on marketing, To Sell Is Human discusses the idea that we’re all salespeople, not just those of us who hold marketing titles. It’s a very clarifying conversation for anyone who sells (or shares) online.

From the book:

Anytime you’re tempted to upsell someone else, stop what you’re doing and upserve instead.

18. Everything I Know by Paul Jarvis

Author, designer, and creator Paul Jarvis shares all his best tips in this book—lots of specific, actionable ways to take control of new projects and build and launch things.

From the book:

If we don’t let our weirdness rise to the surface, we don’t let our work stand out.

19. The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

A hugely comprehensive resource, The New Rules features case studies and examples of great marketing campaigns, as well as providing insight and ideas about what might work for your brand and business as marketing evolves.

From the book:

Barack Obama is the most successful new marketer in history. Study his campaign so that you can adapt the ideas for your business.

20. Youtility: Why Smart Marketing Is about Help Not Hype by Jay Baer

Youtility suggest an approach to marketing that focuses on being useful and providing value to your audience. I really enjoy this line from the book: “The difference between helping and selling is just two letters.”

From the book:

Redefine the market into something much smaller and more manageable.

21. The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Offering a simplified view of many successful marketing ideas, this classic book comes form a neat perspective of high-level marketing strategies that were working when the book was published (over 20 years ago) and continue to work today.

From the book:

The only reality you can be sure about is in your own perceptions. If the universe exists, it exists inside your own mind and the minds of others.

—

9 Amazing Books About Writing

22. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

My all-time favorite writing book, Bird by Bird takes such an empathic perspective to what it’s like to be a writer—whether you’re writing fiction or blog posts, the advice rings true. Anne Lamott shares a great bit of vulnerability in the book, which helps make the advice feel all the more real and useful.

From the book:

If you give freely, there will always be more.

23. Everybody Writes by Ann Handley

A fantastic introduction to content writing, Ann Handley’s book covers all the basic steps of how to write online—and how to write well.

From the book:

In an online world, our online words are our emissaries; they tell the world who we are.

24. On Writing by Stephen King

Full of great wisdom on writing books and stories, On Writing also contains great bits of advice on writing in general, with tips on how to best form sentences and organize ideas, all of which can come in handy with blog posts, emails, and updates, too.

From the book:

The scariest moment is always just before you start.

25. Epic Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi

There’s lots of great stuff in this content marketing guide from Joe Pulizzi, both in terms of the writing itself and also in approaching content marketing from the right perspective.

From the book:

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.

– Herbert B. Swope, American journalist

26. Nicely Said by Nicole Fenton and Kate Kiefer Lee

Covering the best ways to write for the web, Nicely Said also comes at the topic from a neat perspective: That of voice and tone and engaging directly with your reader.

From the book:

Helping people and making them happy is the best kind of marketing you can do.

27. The Robert Collier Letter Book by Robert Collier

This classic collection of sales letters shows the thought and care that goes into choosing the right words and angles with which to create your copy. Collier’s explanations of why things work (and why they don’t) is hugely applicable for online writing as well.

From the book:

You have to compete in the same way for your reader’s attention. He is not looking for your letter. He has a thousand and one other things more important to him to occupy his mind. Why should he divert his attention from them to plow through pages of type about you or your projects?

28. Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy

Ogilvy, who is regarded as the “Father of Advertising,” mentions that this book contains all his best advice and strategies for copywriting. It’s all timeless and priceless pearls of wisdom that continue to hold up 50 years after Ogilvy first used them successfully.

From the book:

In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.

29. On Writing Well by William Zinsser

A great resource for new writers, Zinsser’s book touches on several key topics that can help tighten up one’s writing and make for a smooth and polished finished product. Some of the advice gears toward journalism and authors, while still being quite applicable to the day-to-day copy tasks of online writers as well.

From the book:

Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.

30. Style: The Art of Writing Well by F.L. Lucas

Style was a wonderfully surprising and useful resource for me and one that quickly became an all-time favorite writing book. I’ve found more useful anecdotes and examples in Style—useful for the work I’m doing today, online—than I’ve found in most any writing book in the past several years.

From the book:

How is clarity to be acquired? Mainly by taking trouble; and by writing to serve people rather than to impress them.

Plus even more …

Business, product, and entrepreneurship

• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
• The Product Hunt Manual by Kiki Schirr
• Intercom on Product Management by Intercom
• The Burned-Out Blogger’s Guide to PR by Jason Kincaid
• A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web by Mark Boulton
• The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick
• Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson
• Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston
• The PayPal Wars by Eric M. Jackson

The Way We Work

• Rework by Jason Fried
• Remote by David Heinemeier Hansson & Jason Fried
• The Year without Pants by Scott Berkun
• Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux

Inspiration

• The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
• Daring Greatly by Brene Brown
• Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity by Hugh MacLeod
• Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
• Make Your Mark by the 99u team
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
• The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

Productivity

• Getting Things Done by David Allen
• Do the Work by Austin Kleon
• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
• Virtual Freedom by Chris Ducker
• The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan
• 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam
• Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
• Manage Your Day-to-Day by Jocelyn K. Glei

What are you currently reading?

It’d be so great to hear what’s currently on your reading list or wish list.

Right now I’m reading or am about to start:

• Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
• Brainfluence by Roger Dooley
• The Brand Gap by Marty Neuemeier

It’s be wonderful to hear from you—either what books have been your favorite business and marketing reads so far or which ones you’re excited to pick up and explore soon.

Image sources: Unsplash, Pablo, IconFinder

As of July 2015, there are over 1.5 million apps in the App Store and 1.6 million apps in the Google Play Store.

It’s more important than ever to stand out from the crowd. To be talked about. To be remarkable. The question is: How do you develop a mobile app that is so valuable that people use it every month? Every week? Or better yet – every day?

Over the last few years, I’ve built 13 mobile apps — 4 of which have hit the Top 100 in the Entertainment, Lifestyle and Business categories — and have worked with leading apps in industries such as technology, transportation, travel, e-commerce, retail and more.

Along the way, I’ve taken copious notes on what makes great apps stand out from the crowd and secure those coveted top spots. I consolidated this into a list of tips to help developers, mobile product managers and marketers develop mobile apps that can launch into the stratosphere.

The tips are organized by phases of app development. You can click on a link to jump to a specific section:

User Acquisition Strategy

App Discoverability

App Performance

Analyze User Behavior

Optimize App UI Design

App Onboarding Flow & A/B Test Ideas

User Retention

User Acquisition Strategy

Tips on acquiring new app users.

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1. Build a product that solves a problem: Really amazing apps solve a glaring problem. Do you hate standing on the corner on a freezing cold night in an attempt to try to wave down a taxi cab? Use Lyft. Do you want to learn a language but don’t want to commute 45 minutes to sit in a classroom? Use Duolingo. Solve a problem. And do it in an awesome way. This will drive word of mouth referrals. Speaking of referrals…

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2. Build a referral program: Incentivize your early users to refer your app to their friends. Uber did a fantastic job by leveraging $10 ride credits for people that referred the app to others:

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3. Build a wait list: People want what they can’t have. A wait list helps you capture demand and build a database of emails early. When you to announce your app is generally available, you’ll have a long list (hopefully thousands) of people ready to download it. You can easily build a website landing page through platforms like Wix.com, Unbounce, or Squarespace and use this to capture email.

Robinhood, a zero-commission stock trading app is a great example of using a waitlist effectively. Nate Rodland, COO of Robinhood, said referrals alone accounted for over half of their million-person waitlist!

“We built a waitlist in order to gather a list of potential customers and beta users ahead of our app launch. Combining our waitlist with a referral system was crucial – we took the people who were most excited about Robinhood, and gave them an easy way to spread that excitement to their friends.”

-Nate Rodland, COO, Robinhood

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4. Leverage a freemium model: Make your app available for free with a freemium model. It’s possible you’ll get more downloads in a free version of your app. You could then offer the option of purchasing virtual currency for premium features.

Coffee Meets Bagel, one of the top dating apps, does this well. They allow people to use core features (viewing the profile of one potential match per day) for free. But, they also offer premium features (like viewing mutual friends and choosing a match from a pool of 10 people)  that users can purchase.

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5. Make your paid app free for a limited time: Not a fan of the freemium model? No worries! Make your paid app free for a short promotional period and promote it to various publication outlets like LifeHacker, Gizmodo, Forbes Tech and The Guardian. You can tweet the promotion to their twitter accounts or submit it directly to them on their website.

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6. Write and promote content about the problem your app solves: Produce content that adds value to your customers: whether it’s blog posts, eBooks, videos or webinars. Target topics and keywords that are related to your app so you reach the right audience. If your content helps people overcome challenges, you’ll be perceived as a thought leader and expert in the space. Promote the content on your blog and social media profiles to drive network effects. This video for a new app, Knock Knock is a great example of framing the problem the app solves.

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7. Answer questions on Quora: Target questions that center around pain points your app solves to help build awareness around your target audience. If you offer a really valuable answer, the Quora team could recommend your article to the major media outlets. I wrote a post on Quora and it ended up being picked up by Forbes, Inc., The Huffington Post and Business Insider. Cumulatively it generated over 7,700 shares, 33,000 views and cost absolutely nothing. Zilch. #freemarketing

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8. Attend and host local marketing events: In our world that’s so driven by swipes and texts, remember how impactful in-person events can be in building buzz. Hosting an event could help you build a community of champions that could become the foundation of your app’s success. Use Meetup to find an event or promote your own.

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9. Consider the paid acquisition route: If your organic marketing and in-app growth levers aren’t growing your users effectively, explore the paid acquisition route on channels like Twitter, Facebook, Apple iAd, Chartboost, Google Admob and more (here’s a great list from Localytics).

Keep three questions in mind when using paid acquisition:

• Is the cost of acquiring this user justified by the lifetime value of that user?

• Have you stack ranked your acquisition channels based on ROI?
• Do you know which paid acquisition route is actually leading to the app install?

Use mobile attribution tools like Apsalar, Adjust, and Branch to find those answers.

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10. Reach out to the press: Press is a great way to drive short term awareness and will often lead to a spike to downloads. Reach out to publications like TechCrunch, VentureBeat, CNN, Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Inc. Don’t worry, you don’t need to be in PR to pitch the press. Look up editors from each of those publications on LinkedIn, craft a short message on how your app is a game changer (use app metrics where you can), give them access to your app as well as screenshots so that they can get a sense for how it works.

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11. Create strategic partnerships: Look for mutually beneficial partnerships that can expand your app’s reach to more people. For example, if you’re developing a workout app for biking enthusiasts, you could reach out to local bike shops (or even a national brand) and offer an exclusive special premium feature in the app for their shoppers in exchange for their help with promotion.

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12. Cross promote in your other apps: If you have more than one app in the store and they’re in similar categories (for example, gaming), you can add in a call to action to promote your other apps.

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13. Experiment with how you ask users for reviews:  Ratings and reviews are one of the most visible components of an app’s listing and do influence a person to tap through or download. Reviews are social proof. If all these other people like it, then it’s probably good. So what can you do to get more app reviews? Experiment with how you ask users for reviews: when you ask, how you ask and who you ask. Here’s a blog post with examples and test ideas.

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App Discoverability

These are tips for App Store Optimization (ASO) and ways you can make your app more discoverable in the app store.

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14. Understand how powerful ASO can be: According to Sensor Tower, over 60% of apps are discovered through App Store search. Since there are over 2 million apps in the major app stores out there today, it’s great that there are many App Store Optimization strategies you can implement to get you your fair share of visibility.

App Store Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of an app in the app store. The idea is to drive more people to your app page so that they download your app.

Here are great tips from the app marketing intelligence tool called Sensor Tower to get you started with ASO. Their tools can also help you with each of the tips below!

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15. Pick relevant keywords: The first thing to consider when optimizing your app’s visibility is keywords. You should choose keywords (words or phrases) that are relevant and truly representative of your app. For example, if your app provides dog walkers locally on demand, the keyword “dog” by itself may not be that valuable because it doesn’t indicate download intent for that specific use case. The phrase “dog walker” however, could be a much better indicator of intent. After all, when someone finds your app, you want a conversion to occur (meaning you want them to download it). If a person comes across your app listing by unrelated search terms/phrases, they probably aren’t your target audience, and probably won’t download your app.

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16. Consider keyword competitiveness and traffic: Consider how competitive those keywords are. Look at the total number of keywords you’re competing with. If there’s too much competition, aim for another keyword. Here’s a glimpse of LinkedIn’s app keyword traffic from Sensor Tower.  At Sensortower.com you can enter any app and see which keywords are driving traffic to their app.

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17. Consider keyword placement: As Sensor Tower notes, “there is a clear correlation between having a keyword in the name of an app and ranking for that keyword. 74.3% of apps that rank #1 for high traffic keywords have the target keyword in their name.” But do be careful because you app may be rejected for spamming if you use the keyword too many times.

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18. Determine keyword weight: The keywords included in app titles (for both iOS and Android apps) are by far the most heavily weighted in the algorithm. If you want to improve your rank for a specific keyword, putting it in the title is your best bet. For Android apps, keyword density matters not just in the description, but in the title as well.

Example: I create an app called “SF Tunes – Local Radio Music.” I am guaranteed to rank for all five of these words. However, the more space a keyword takes up in the title, the higher that rank will be. Let’s say I want to increase my rank for “music” – I could consider removing “local” or “radio.”

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19. Target multi-word or long tail keywords: “A common mistake that app publishers make is to only target single-word keywords,” Sensor Tower writes. “Then they wonder why the Difficulty Scores are so high and their app’s rankings are so low. Multi-word keywords are usually searched for less often, but will also be less competitive.”

You’ll automatically rank for combinations of your single-word keywords but target phrases, or “long tail keywords” because they can be much easier to rank for. Targeting the long tail is a great  place for new developers/new apps to start.

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20. Have an eye-catching Icon: The icon makes a huge first impression. Have you tested different variations? You can do this by testing out various designs on mobile advertising networks, like Admob, Google Adwords, and Facebook, and then measuring how potential app users react to different versions there before rolling it out in the app store. Another quick tip: you generally want to avoid putting the name of your app into your icon. More tips to increase downloads apart from keyword strategy.

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App Performance

Make that first user experience unforgettable.

Studies show that if your users have a bad first experience, 65% of them will delete your app. Experiences are made up of more than slick UX design, intuitive usability and modular code. The infrastructure and performance are key players in your app’s success. Here are tips to make sure your app runs fast and smooth.

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21. Monitor your app consistently: Factors outside your control affect your app. Cloud services, device upgrades, or even other apps can influence how your app behaves. And an update to the OS can dramatically increase crash rates in your app. Monitoring your app’s performance through all variables will keep you from having to be reactive when issues occur. A performance management solution like Crittercism or Crashlytics gives you visibility into your apps while they’re in production, so developers can be proactive and resolve issues as soon as they’re detected. But it also continues to give you insight on all the above mentioned (latency, crashes, transactions) and more, while your app is in the wild. In addition to those tools, you can also leverage phased roll outs with Optimizely to mitigate risk.

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22. Choose a proven cloud provider: Crashes aren’t everything. Network performance can also affect the user experience. Everyone hates the spinning wheel that indicates network slowness, but it’s hard to simulate these conditions during dev and test. According to Crittercism’s data, 68% of apps use 5 or more cloud services – and 17% use 20 or more! If even one cloud service is slow, if impacts your app. So choose a solid cloud provider like Parse!

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23. Pay attention to performance in the real world: Your work isn’t finished when you launch – in fact, it’s just beginning. It’s not enough to monitor your latest app version. Retail apps, for example, often have high conversion rates on the oldest versions of their apps, so you need to make sure that those users are supported well. Nothing is like releasing your app into the wild where hundreds of millions of variables can impact its performance.

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Analyze User Behavior

Do you have deep insights into your users? To really drive user growth, improve retention and increase monetization, you’ve got to have deep insights into user behavior. Analytics will help you achieve that.

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24. Understand the 3 levels of complexity for app analytics: There are 3 levels of metrics that app makers should look at.  When you’re getting started, you should make sure you’re tracking level 1 goals but as your organization grows and gets more sophisticated, you should look to expand to more complex levels of analysis to form a holistic view of your app’s performance.

Level 1: Counters (DAUs, MAUs, Revenue)

Level 2: Where are my problems (Funnels, Retention, Segmentation, Events)

Level 3: What drives growth: Behavior-Based Cohorting / Data Science

Image from Amplitude Analytics

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25. Measure your Level 1 analytics: Metrics typically measured here include MAUs (Monthly Active Uniques), DAUs (Daily Active Uniques), page views and revenue. These metrics are absolutely important and give you a baseline of your app’s success with regards to engagement, retention, and monetization.

These metrics are a great start, but how engaged are your users?

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26. Measure your Level 2 analytics: The metrics you’ll measure in Level 2 help you track events to give you a high-level picture of user behavior (ex. how many actions users take per day, what actions are most common, what actions are users not taking). This allows you to locate any problems occurring in the app. From there, you can create different segments of users based on behavior (i.e. active users vs. inactive) or demographic (i.e location, age). and glean a deeper understanding of how different types of users interact with your app.

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27. Measure your Level 3 analytics: Level 3 is where you uncover your secret sauce on what drives growth. Which behaviors correlate to lifetime value?

As an example, Facebook was at 50 million users at one point and was trying to figure out what user behaviors led to long term retention.

Was it the percentage of profile completed? Was it the number of photos added? Was it the number of walls visited? Was it the number of posts about bacon?

The answer: It was none of these.

Facebook famously discovered that adding 7 friends in 10 days was the leading indicator for an engaged user.

“Get any individual to seven friends in 10 days. That was it. You want a keystone? That was our keystone. There’s not much more complexity than that,” Chamath Palihapitiya said in a 2013 talk on how they put Facebook on a path to 1 billion users. “There’s an entire team now, hundreds of people that have helped ramp this product to a billion users based on that one simple rule.”

Arriving at this insight was not just a matter of checking their analytics dashboard. The Data Science and Growth teams at Facebook crunched the numbers on countless user actions. They ran analyses to determine which actions and attributes were most highly correlated with engagement while controlling for lurking variables and outliers. It was a big undertaking and a fantastic example of how applying predictive analytics to your data  will help you uncover potential improvement areas that could dramatically affect the trajectory of your app.

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Optimize App UI Design

These are tips focused on how to understand qualitative feedback about how people are interacting with your app to improve your mobile UX.

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28. Leverage heatmaps to understand user focus areas: How are users physically interacting with your app? Where do they tap, swipe or pinch? Touch heatmaps are a  key UX analytics feature. Touch heatmaps aggregate all users’ gestures (taps, swipes, pinches) and help you see where on the screen they are (or are not) focused. These are some questions heatmaps help you answer a very important question: Are users paying attention to the things you want them to pay attention to?

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29. Watch recorded user sessions: You can use tools like Appsee to watch recordings of real people using your app to understand exactly how people interact with it. For example, the user recordings below show a user who cannot create an account with Facebook due to a technical problem, as indicated by the popup message. Gaining this insight, you will know why users are dropping off the registration screen.

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30. Deconstruct your funnel to start building an A/B testing plan: A/B testing enables mobile app makers to improve their key metrics and KPIs by trying out new designs for everything from signup flows, gating features, messaging, review process, in app referrals, onboarding flow, guiders within the app, discovery of features, checkout funnel and CTAs.

Mobile developers and mobile product managers are increasingly adding mobile A/B testing SDK (like Optimizely’s SDK) to make their apps more engaging.

To get started with testing, here’s a mobile A/B testing tip from expert Kyle Humphries, Senior Product Manager at Everyday Health (What to Expect) recommends you “Map out all of the micro-interactions a user must complete as part of a funnel or flow in your app. Then use use that to plan out which elements to test first.”

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31. A/B test all app updates to reduce risk. Any mobile app developer will tell you that releasing new features in an app or changing aspects of the underlying architecture can be risky business. This means the stakes for app updates are high and PMs should do everything possible to ensure they are high quality. If something isn’t caught, an app update could include bugs or interaction issues that damage the user experience or unexpectedly tank business metrics.

“A/B testing allows us to try things out in our app without hurting our conversion funnel,” says  Raman Bhatia, Director of Mobile at Fareportal (CheapOair). “Nothing goes out without an A/B test.”

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App Onboarding Flow & Mobile A/B Test Ideas

Onboarding is the process of turning a first-time user into a repeat customer during their first interaction with your app. Here are tips to improve your mobile app onboarding hook, educate, so new users feel well-equipped and excited to continue using your app.

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32. In onboarding, test different login/signup options: How do people want to login or signup to use your app? Is signup necessary at all? Maybe your users prefer to login by email and password. Test prioritizing different options like this app did.

Here are more test ideas for testing social sign-on.

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33. In onboarding, test previewing the in-app experience: OpenTable and Paperless Post show users previews of the in-app experience, mentioning specific features and their value. This is a smart hypothesis to test to measure whether it drives more engagement or activation. Test which screenshots you use and which features you spotlight.

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34. Test the order of your user onboarding tour: Experiment with the order of your onboarding tutorial, like French Girls did. Which steps should come first? How many steps are included?

More test ideas for your user onboarding tour.

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35. Test the CTA button: What’s the right size, color, location for your CTA? If it was larger, would that make people notice it more and ultimately increase conversions? Here are more test ideas for your app CTA buttons.

Maybe a SWAG button would change the game.

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36. Test changing messaging and help text: I’ve spoken with one company that changed the messaging in their app and dramatically changed the game. They went from “We will not spam you” to “We respect your privacy” and saw a 50% increase in conversions! Here’s a test idea we suggested for Pandora: show different upgrade CTA copy to drive more premium subscriptions.

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37. Test different navigation layouts: Try testing different navigation layouts. Let’s explore WhatsApp together for testing ideas.

WhatsApp could test moving the navigation bar to the top. They could also test removing the bottom navigation bar completely and having it be a dropdown navigation menu from the upper left hand corner.

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38. Test removing distractions from your CTA: If you have other elements on the screen near the CTA, try removing them so that it makes things simpler for the user experience.

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39. Test progress bars in your onboarding tour: Good mobile onboarding flows should quickly teach people how to use the app. Progress bars can be a valuable way to encourage people to finish a tour because they give people a sense of achievement as they progress in usage of the app! Duolingo does an amazing job of this. Every time you answer a question correctly, an indicator marks your progress.

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41. Test discovery functionality: Test how users discover new products or experiences within your app. For example, Instagram lets users tap a banner to discover new people. What if they simply started inserting suggested Instagrammers for you to follow in your feed? Would that boost user discovery?

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42. Test targeting images to different audiences: First, identify your primary audience with tools like AppAnnie. Let’s say you find out that your audience is primarily made up of the 21-30-year-olds. An an example, the 7-minute workout app could test out using images of people in that age group to see if that might drive more engagement.

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43. Test discounts: If you rolled out a special promotion, would that drive additional conversions and would the revenue from those additional conversions cover the cost of the discounts? Here’s an example below where the retail app Oasis could test a discount promotion on the home screen.

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44. Test leveraging video in the app: Most apps today leverage images for their onboarding flow or guided tour to explain how to use the product while you in the app. What if you rolled out video? Would that increase activation?

Find many more test ideas for mobile on our blog.

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User Retention

These are tips for retaining users and preventing churn.

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45. Create a habit forming experience in the first 3-7 days: A great first-time user experience is key to retention. “…the average app mostly loses its entire userbase within a few months, which is why of the >1.5 million apps in the Google Play store, only a few thousand sustain meaningful traffic,” Andrew Chen writes on his industry blog. He goes on to say that he sees most leverage in improving these retention curves “in how the product is described, the onboarding flow, and what triggers you set up to drive ongoing retention.”

Whether it’s a push notification at the same time everyday or every week, think about habits you can try to develop in your app users to bring them back.

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46. Include social elements to create network effects: MapMyRun created a feed where you could see your friends’ recent runs and encourage them with likes and comments. It helps to make running more fun, engaging and competitive!

Sometimes running is better with friends.

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47. Leverage push notifications thoughtfully: Kahuna’s data shows that by using push notifications, companies can expect a 45% retention rate for 30 days; a 125% increase over consumers who either did not receive or who did not opt-in for notifications. One great way to create urgency with push is to create a time bound or time-sensitive campaign. Here’s an example below:

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48. Consider timing, especially for global audiences: Sending a push notification to all your users at a specific time may not work with a global audience. For example, a push notification in the morning for a California user at 9 AM would send that same notification to someone in Spain at 6 PM. Be thoughtful in terms of segmenting your users by time zones. It can make a huge difference!

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49. A/B test opt-in messages for notifications: Kahuna recently did a study with some amazing results: The average short- and long-term retention rates for users who have opted in to push notifications are more than twice as high than rates for users who have not opted in. For opted-in users, the average 30-day audience retention rate is increased by 125%, the average 60-day retention rate is increased by 150%, and the average 90-day retention rate is increased by 180%. Make sure you’ve clearly highlighted the value to the user of why they should opt in! (You can download their study here.)

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50. Segment your users to drive effective campaigns: For example, a dormant user you’d like to revive would receive a very different push notification from an active user. You could use an offer through push to “reactivate” them!  Below is an example for a user that used Wanelo’s app quite often and had saved an item to their shopping cart before going dormant.

I hope these 50 tips help to make your app amazing!

We’d love to hear from you. Do you work on a mobile app? Do you have tips for others to improve the way they develop mobile apps?

Let us and others know what tips you have in the comments section below. We’d love to keep adding to this list!

Cara Harshman, Suneet Shah, and Sean Oliver also edited this list.

Do you ever look at prolific blogs and get frustrated by how easy they make it seem?

Thousands of people read, comment and share each new post on the blog.

It can be discouraging, especially if you’re a new blogger.

In contrast, your blog may only get a few dozen hits each post. And the only shares that happen come from your own social media accounts.

“Why aren’t people reading my blog posts?”

This same question may have popped into your mind. I know it’s one I’ve struggled with before. Every new blogger has struggled with the concept of traffic, audience and building a successful blog. And that’s why many give up on their blogging before they see success.

Don’t be another one of these failed blog statistics.

Identify the reasons people aren’t reading your blog. Then take strategic steps to improve.

These 27 reasons will help get you started on your quest:

1. You haven’t identified a strong audience persona

You can’t create compelling content without an in-depth knowledge of your audience. Personas not only help you create better content, but they also help guide your topics, strategy and monetization efforts.

2. You aren’t creating content specifically for the persona

It’s not enough to just have a persona. You must create content specifically for it.

(source)

This level of hyper-targeted content attracts the right reader to your blog.

3. You don’t know how your audience searches for content

This requires a deeper step into your overall persona.

• What does the audience search for?
• What kind of things do they need to learn?
• How can my content serve those needs?

Answer those questions and you’ll not only have a path for content creation, but you’ll know exactly how to optimize for SEO.

4. Your content’s style and tone don’t align with your brand

If you have a serious brand, but write in a laid-back, silly fashion, you create a brand misalignment. And when this happens, you confuse readers and detach them from what you’re saying.

5. You focus too much on products, services and promotions

People don’t always want to read about you.

(source)

The occasional announcement is okay, but you shouldn’t always be promoting something. Make your content about the reader – not you.

6. You don’t publish new posts on a regular schedule

Readers want consistency. Without it, they’ll never become attached to your brand’s content.

It can be tough in the face of competing priorities, but create a schedule and stick to it.

7. You aren’t creating content that provides enough value

Time is a precious thing. If you don’t offer immense value, why should someone waste what little time they have consuming your content?

Answer: They shouldn’t.

As an example, take a look at a recent Currency Liquidator post on the Iraqi Dinar. Clocking in at nearly 2,500 words, the post offers the kinds of in-depth statistics those interested in foreign currency need to make investment decisions:

(source)

8. You don’t test different types of blog posts for engagement

There are numerous types of content that drive traffic.

(source)

That should keep you busy for a while. Test out different post styles to see what type of content your audience actually wants to read – not just what you think they want.

9. You’re not infusing any personality into your writing

Bored!

That’s what people think when your content lacks personality. Even the most serious brands can allow their personality to shine through. Don’t be boring.

10. You don’t include enough images throughout the post

We’re visual creatures.

Including images throughout your post creates natural breaks in the content. This keeps readers engaged and reading, instead of distracted and leaving.

11. You aren’t formatting your posts for reading on the web

Please stop writing posts with huge blocks of text.

The online world has its own style for writing. If you don’t adhere to these guidelines, people will leave the page without ever reading a word.

12. Your content doesn’t add a new perspective

If you don’t have anything to add to the conversation, don’t say anything at all. There’s no reason to regurgitate the same thing hundreds of others have already said.

Position your content from a fresh perspective for best results.

13. Your posts don’t stick to the intended topic

Try to avoid veering off topic in your posts. If you’ve ever muddled your way through a post that jumps from one subject to another, you know how frustrating this can be.

When I feel myself getting away from the subject at hand, I make a note of the digression and use it as the springboard for a new post.

14. You use poor grammar and make spelling errors

This should be obvious, but I see so many mistakes online that I’ll say it anyways. Do your best to avoid mistakes, even small slip ups here and there.

(source)

The online world may seem forgiving, but that’s not an excuse. Major syntax, grammar and spelling mistakes throughout are always unacceptable.

15. You only use cheesy stock images in posts

The visuals you use in your content influence your overall. tone, style and branding. Most stock photos are cheesy. They’re staged and unnatural.

(source)

If you only use stock photography, it may be doing you and your brand more harm than good.

16. You have an outdated or unprofessional blog design

In many ways, design – not content – is king.

If you have an outdated, unprofessional blog design, would-be readers will leave your site before they ever give your content a chance.

17. Your blog isn’t optimized for mobile reading

More and more people are using their mobile phone to consume content. It’s also increasingly important for SEO.

A responsive design ensures that your website is optimized for mobile viewing. Don’t overlook this key design aspect.

18. Your blog takes too long to load

By nature, the Internet gives us information as fast as we want it.

If your website takes too long to load, readers will abandon their quest to get information from your site – and they’ll quickly find it somewhere else.

19. You haven’t optimized for social sharing

Publishing solid content is only half the battle.

Getting people to read it can only happen if they know it’s there. Social sharing optimization makes it easy for the readers you do have to help you spread the word.

20. You don’t optimize every post for SEO

You don’t need a full-time, in-house SEO expert to make strides in the search engine rankings.

Plenty of tools make it possible for you to rank well from the content you post. Take advantage of them and watch your readership soar.

21. You aren’t crafting compelling headlines

The headlines you use could mean the difference between dozens of people reading your post and thousands of people flocking to your blog.

Learn how to write compelling headlines.

(source)

Spend as much time on the headline as you do for the entire post, if that’s what it takes. It’s that important to the success of your blog.

22. You aren’t testing new headlines using social media

You know you need to create compelling headlines. But have you tried using social media to test different variations?

Formulas and the success of others don’t guarantee your success.

Use your social profiles to test several variations of headlines to see what kinds work best to capture clicks from your audience.

23. You don’t promote the post on social media enough

Don’t post just once.

That’s a huge mistake that many bloggers make. People consume more information in a day than most of their ancestors did in their entire life. Go ahead and promote your new post a few times. You might just be surprised by the results.

24. You haven’t reached out to influencers about the post

No man is an island.

Successful bloggers are always leaning on the influence of others to gain readers. If you want readers, reach out to the people in your industry that already have them. A few ways you can build a connection include:

• Adding immense value to influencers by providing your assistance.
• Asking for their input or expertise on an upcoming post.
• Interviewing them for their new book release.

25. You aren’t building a targeted social media audience

It’s great if you have thousands of followers. But if you’re running a marketing blog and you’ve bought a bunch of fake followers, what good will those bots do for you?

Ultimately, it’s better to have dozens of highly-targeted followers than thousands that don’t care about you.

26. You spend more time writing than promoting

Some people really like taking an 80/20 approach to their work.

And if you’re applying this concept to your blogging, you’ll want to spend 80% of your time promoting and 20% of your time writing. Don’t get bogged down by the writing. Go find your readers.

27. You don’t update your email list about new posts

Anyone who’s starting a blog needs an email list.

But if you don’t do anything with that list, it won’t do you any good. Set up your email marketing service to update list members each time a new blog post releases. This can typically be done automatically, giving you a quick and easy way to get more people reading your blog posts.

It’s frustrating when people don’t read your blog posts, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Which of these areas are you struggling with on your blog? I’d love to hear about your challenges in the comments below.

As sellers, we waste over 90% of our time. We need to find prospects, get them bought-in to the possibility of using our solution, get them what they need to understand our solution and how it might fit, get past gatekeepers, manage objections, get to the right people who will know how to buy us, and wait. And then, we only close a small fraction.

 

There must be a better way to do this, no?

1. if we knew who would be a prospect on the first call, and get rid of those who will never buy, how much time would we save?
2. if most gatekeepers would get us to the right person, how much time would we save?
3. if we can connect with all of the folks who will ultimately be (or are already) on the Buying Decision Team, how many more sales would we close?
4. if there are no more objections of any kind, how much time would we save and how much more money would we make?
5. if buyers could make a buying decision in the time frame that we believe is possible (i.e. those buyers who call up and purchase quickly are good examples of what’s possible for every sale),

how much more business would we close? And why can’t we make these things happen?

THE REASONS YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE RESULTS YOU DESERVE

To begin with, you are beginning at the end of the buyer’s journey – the purchasing decision – and must wait while they manage the internal, systems and change issues necessary prior to any purchase. As sellers, you have been trained to find appropriate prospects: you have not been trained to help them begin or traverse their journey through the pre-sales behind-the-scenes decision path that is change-management/systems based, and has more to do with internal politics, relationship issues and time lines than it does with purchasing a solution or choosing a vendor.

As a result, you have learned ways to manage the fallout you’ve received from attempting to offer a solution at the wrong time. (objections, no call backs, stalls, no appointments, no response to appointments or proposals, unwillingness to speak, no purchase) Or from attempting to offer a solution that folks might not know they need.  Or know they need but haven’t figured out how to get buy-in. Or they haven’t figured out all of the right people to assemble for the buying decision team.

Every buying decision is a change management problem.

The only reason you aren’t closing more sales, and the reason you end up wasting time with non-buyers and delayed sales cycles,  is not because of your solution. Your solution is fine. So is your care and respect and personality.

You’re wasting your time trying to place a solution before the buyer has lined up the change management issues they must contend with. But that’s the job of the sales model. It was not invented to facilitate the buying decision path. That’s why I invented Buying Facilitation®.

THE BUYING FACILITATION® MODEL WORKS WITH SALES TO MANAGE THE BUYING DECISION.

Buying Facilitation® works as a precursor to sales – it is not a solution placement model – to manage the back end of issues buyers must address privately before they can buy. By starting your prospecting by first helping buyers address change issues on their way to seeking excellence (hopefully with your solution),

• Gatekeepers will help you find the right people to talk to rather than put you off.
• You can help buyers put together their entire Buying Decision Team on the first call.
• You will no longer get objections (fallout from the sales model) – price or otherwise.
• You will be differentiated from your competition immediately.
• Your buyers will buy in approximately 1/8 the time (sometimes with very large sales the number drops to 1/4).
• You will know who is a buyer and who is not, on the first call.

Buying Facilitation employs a different skill set; Listening for systems rather than need; formulating facilitative questions that help change rather than using questions; following a coded sequence that enables change rather than gathering information. It’s not sales. But really – do you want to keep having those super long sales cycles and getting objections? Do you really want pipelines that aren’t converting?

Read some articles on www.sharondrewmorgen.com and then go to www.dirtylittlesecrets.com to at least read the 2 free chapters.  There is no reason you shouldn’t be doing Buying Facilitation® AND sales, and stop wasting time. The sale model is great to understand need and place solution – but by using it too early in the buyer’s change management process, you’re not helping buyers buy. You deserve better.

______________

Sharon Drew Morgen is the NYTimes Business Bestselling author of Selling with Integrity and 7 books how buyers buy. She is the developer of Buying Facilitation® a decision facilitation model used with sales to help buyers facilitate pre-sales buying decision issues. She is a sales visionary who coined the terms Helping Buyers Buy, Buy Cycle, Buying Decision Patterns, Buy Path in 1985, and has been working with sales/marketing for 30 years to influence buying decisions.

More recently, Morgen is the author of What? Did you really say what I think I heard? in which she has coded how we can hear others without bias or misunderstanding, and why there is a gap between what’s said and what’s heard. She is a trainer, consultant, speaker, and inventor, interested in integrity in all business communication. Her learning tools can be purchased: www.didihearyou.com. She can be reached at sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.com ; 512-457-0246. www.didihearyou.com; www.sharondrewmorgen.com

How Much Time Do Sales People Waste? is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

With the potential of digital marketing becoming increasingly evident to all businesses, companies are allotting more of their budget to establish their ground in the digital sphere. However, keep in mind that no matter how much a brand invests in its digital marketing scheme, the company’s objectives won’t be met without starting with an on-point strategy.

One of the crucial first steps in doing so is to figure out who your target audience is and how to efficiently reach them. Moreover, the goal should go beyond by striving to make your ideal market respond in accordance to your purposes. To effectively direct your resources, take a look at some of the scenarios that should not be happening when it comes to your brand’s digital marketing strategy and how you can take actions to make your tools work for your business.

Your digital marketing strategy aims to please a target audience that is too broad

Brands, even the most established ones, cannot be everything for everyone. If you sell car accessories, you simply cannot target anyone who has a car. This is where the value of knowing how to define your target audience comes in. This helps you find, talk to, and please the consumers who matter for your brand. Begin with assessing what your brand is and what you have to offer. Next, find out how your existing online audience perceives your brand. Take into account as well how you fare compared to your competitors. Then, refine your target market and group them further in sub-segments. Create personas, if you have to, just to be able to better keep your target customers in mind when you finally polish your digital marketing strategy.

There is little conversion from all of your social media metrics

It is one thing to be active in terms of social media marketing, but it is another to reap actual results using a smart social media strategy that focuses on getting you more revenue. Remember, reaching your target market on social media platforms and getting their likes and shares are just parts of your marketing plan. Stop expending your time on aimless social media activities and start converting your online followers into buying customers.

Once you locate your target audience, deliver high-quality, relevant, and timely content on the right social networking sites and at the right time. Draft KPIs when setting goals to guide your social media marketing no matter what adjustments you make. Keep in mind the word “social” in social media and focus on creating rich product experiences that will appeal to your customers. Aside from product information, emphasize what’s in it for them and include reviews from regular people that your customers can relate to. Most importantly, put links in strategic places to help your customers once they decide to heed your call to action.

Your online presence does not significantly generate foot traffic to your physical store

If you are an offline brand that is just starting to establish your online presence, reaching your target market presents an additional challenge especially in this age of online shopping — making customers drive to your physical store. According to the Close-Loop Uber Funnel for local stores by Gary Viray of Propelrr, a revenue-driven digital strategy uses social media sites to draw people in and leads them to more focused and less crowded channels such as microsites. These channels, unlike social media that are a borrowed channel, will also let you mine audience information more effectively as you have greater control of your own site. Eventually, by thinking out of the box, these online visitors are then enticed to flock to offline stores where they become likely buyers.

There is little or no online and offline marketing integration

Regardless of what tools and channels you choose, a sound overall marketing scheme depends on how seamlessly in sync its components are with one another. Your online and offline marketing aim to reach the same target market — it only makes sense that these channels should be integrated to prevent your audience from receiving conflicting messages from your brand.

Furthermore, having a clear and impeccable online and offline marketing integration imprints a stronger brand image on your target audience. This increases the chances of them becoming more receptive to your message when you reach them with your online and offline marketing channels.

One way to achieve incorporating your online and offline marketing is to utilize a mobile-first design, which web designer and consultant Brad Frost defines as prioritizing mobile to maximize this medium. Make your website load on any mobile device to reach your audience no matter what smartphone or tablet they use. Study your audience’s location to market to them wherever they are. Understand and meet their needs with apps that have tangible benefits to them. The list goes on.

You don’t experiment enough with your digital marketing tools

Because dynamic consumer behaviors result in a constantly changing digital landscape, there are no hard and fast rules on how businesses should formulate their digital marketing strategy. With this, stick to your marketing objectives, but leave enough room — and allocate ample budget — for you to freely experiment with different tools. Study the patterns and shifts that happen within your online community and use your analysis to keep up with your target audience.

You are trying to do all of it on your own

Business owners can get too focused on reaching their ideal audience that certain aspects of their marketing scheme are sometimes overlooked. Aside from taking a step back to assess the big picture, businesses could use help from digital marketing agencies. These external parties will study your brand inside out, but will provide an impartial and a more comprehensive analysis. Such agencies can give you fresh perspectives on things like expanding, limiting or refining your audience further. Also, their expertise will make digital marketing easier for you especially if you do not have sufficient technical know-how.

In sum, digital marketing holds a powerful spot in today’s marketing field. Make it even more potent for your brand by knowing not only how to reach your target audience, but also how to make them responsive to your message.

The #1 Key to Killer Promotions written by Alex Boyer read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Promotions are everywhere. It seems like whatever you or your business needs, you can find a promotion to receive it. Free this, half-off that, limited-time offers are everywhere. They’re so prevalent that many business owners feel pressured to hold a promotion or event to be competitive.

But having a promotion just for the sake of it is pointless. You’ll end up being disappointed with the results.

The #1 key to having a successful promotion is simple – have a goal in mind. Much like the Duct Tape Marketing philosophy of strategy before tactics, you must have a strategy or a goal for every promotion you execute.

What Do You Hope To Achieve?

You must have a goal in mind for every promotion. This can be something as simple as generating more leads or getting more names on your email list. It can be more complex like trying to move inventory to make room for more shipments, or drawing more people into your store.

For example, try offering a free eBook in exchange for email addresses. Those addresses are valuable because you can use them to promote your other paid services and products, and these customers have already shown interest in your product and your expertise.

If your goal is simply to move inventory, a cost reduction may be in order, but with proper promotion this can also help draw new customers in. You see this all the time with car dealerships as they try to move last year’s cars to make room on the lot for newer models

Analyze The Cost

Every promotion has a cost. There are four types of promotional costs:

1. Potential revenue – sales, cost reductions, etc.
2. Time – promotional content such as eBooks or other valuable content that takes time to create
3. Purchases – gifts or prizes, the cost of which comes out of your pocket
4. Reciprocity – gifts or prizes provided by strategic partners that will need to be reciprocated. You’ll want to consider what you’re offering them in return.

Be sure to analyze all of the potential costs of a promotion before executing. You want to weigh the costs with the value of what you are getting in return. Price promotions work because they result directly into sales, so the loss of revenue is worth it. The car dealership above gets the added benefit of making room for new products.

Have a Way to Measure Results

The final consideration you must make before beginning a promotion is simple: you must install a way to measure results. Cost promotions are easier than most, just set a goal of how many products you want to sell. Others can be trickier, especially if you just want to get customers in the door.

I’d suggest having a plan for tracking your promotion, whether it be simply asking a customer “How did you hear about us?” at the point of sale or using special promo codes or coupons based on the outlet customers may find them. At the very least, be sure to track your sales or lead numbers prior to the promotion so you can compare to your numbers during the event.

You must be able to evaluate whether or not your promotion is worth it or not after the fact. 

Promotions are important for any business, but you must have a strategy before giving something away. This is the #1 factor to your promotion’s success.

Alex Boyer is a Community Manager and Content Ninja for Duct Tape Marketing. You can connect with him on Twitter @AlexBoyerKC

After going through drawing board after drawing board and multiple business plans, you have finally reached the production stage for your innovative product. Now you’re ready to show the world what you’ve got, but how?

Trade shows are great avenues for product and brand exposure. Benefits include opportunities to network, scope out the competition, get media coverage and seek sales. Sounds pretty neat, right? But of course, there are always caveats; the biggest being costs. If you don’t prepare correctly, you may fail to increase sales, resulting in losses. With 300 other companies around you doing similar things, you need to give prospective clients something to bite on — a way to draw them in. Here are seven tips to make the most of your trade show booth and beat out your competition.

1. Dare to be Different  

Your booth should look clean, synchronized, and sharp, and so should your team. Signs and logos should be clear, and easy to read. Display tables should only have brochures, samples, and other relevant material on them — no candy wrappers or half-finished coffee cups. Your team doesn’t have to match, but should be coordinated for optimal impact. However, cleanliness and uniformity are usually not enough. You want to catch every passerby’s attention, and that requires you to think big; maybe even look big. Try loud uniforms, a mascot, or an eye-popping prop, but make sure that it is relevant and consistent with your brand. If retailers see something cool and different, they’re going to want to check it out at some point. We all have that childish urge deep down inside of us.

2. Perfect the Pitch

You have less than a minute before you lose a prospective retailer’s attention. Use that time wisely. Remember that we have the internet now. This means that retailers can find all of the details and information they need about your product without you. At a trade show booth, your goal is to lure retailers in with your brand and story, not necessarily your product. There are 20 other tea distributors within a three-foot radius. What makes you different? Tell a story that resonates with others, something that they can relate to. Emotional reach is gold. After you have the customer’s full attention, give them a quick sentence or two about the product itself and how they will benefit from it. Will it boost their environmentally friendly image? Help them be a part of a larger charity?

3. Exchange Contact Information

When the conversation hits its peak and you see that downhill, prepare to flatten it out. The conversation is not over yet. Give customers a clear option to continue their relationship with your company. An easy way to do this is to have one of your reps walk around with an iPad. After your pitch, direct your customer to this rep who can then ask for an email to be put the client on a listserv, or better yet to set up an appointment to further discuss products or services. This gives clients an extra face to attach to your company as well. The more connected they feel, the more likely they will stay engaged in business with you.

4. Raise Awareness Beforehand

Appointments can and should be made before the day of the trade show, which means you need to raise awareness of your presence at the tradeshow before the event even occurs. Some ways to do this are emails, social media posts, and blog posts. Retailers may see something they like and do some research beforehand. They’ll mostly likely come with questions ready.

5. Keep track of the Questions

Keep track of the questions that come your way. At the end of the event, you can compile the questions, see which questions were repeated, and have a clear picture of what you need to communicate better on your website or at the next trade show. Sales aren’t the only thing you can get out of your consumers!

6. Add a Giveaway

Who doesn’t like free stuff? These can be general giveaways like pens with your logo on them — you can never have enough pens lying around — or food and drink samples.  In addition to small giveaways, try a more selective giveaway as part of your inbound strategy. If clients sit through a 15 minute demo, they get a free tote or beach towel worth $25. Whichever freebie you choose, make sure that it means something to your company’s brand.

7. Follow up

Do it, and do it fast. It sounds pretty commonplace but I can’t emphasize the importance of this crucial step to maintaining customer relations enough. Forbes contributor Ken Krogue revealed a shocking statistic that only 27% of leads ever get contacted. Following-up tells clients that you mean business. Don’t be afraid to be persistent either. While average salesmen make an average of 1.5 phone calls to prospective clients, research shows that this number should be more around six or seven.

Remember, sometimes it simply isn’t beneficial to attend a trade show. Make sure that the profit from the leads you generate will exceed or at least meet the costs of attending the show. If you’re dying to make it to the mecca of all trade show cities, Las Vegas, think twice before you book that flight. While you may want to be in the face of big retailers, the flight, in addition to the hotel, transportation, employee, and booth expenses may not be worth it. Most major cities hold trade shows. Try to find the trade show closest to you. There’s value in being local nowadays.

When is the last time that you were cold called? Think back.

OK, so how did you react to it? As a salesperson myself, I always think that I am steeled for someone calling me out of the blue and asking me for something. I always assume that it will go something like that pretty awesome scene from Boiler Room where Seth coaches the sales guy selling newspapers. But, in reality, when I’m trying to get work done, a cold call can catch me completely off guard and sometimes even be disruptive, too. Let’s take a look at the transcript from the last cold call I received, from a fellow salesperson:

Cold caller: “Hello there, I’m X from Y company.”

Me: “Hi, how can I help you?”

Cold Caller: “I’m trying to reach John. He’s your VP.”

Me: “Listen man, I’m so far removed from power. I can’t help you.”

Cold Caller: ***Laughs*** “I’m in sales; you’re in sales. Why don’t you just patch me through to your boss?”

Me: “Sorry, I can’t help you.” ***Hangs up***

I sat there reflecting for a moment. Did he think that I was just sitting there next to my VP, and that we were both just waiting around to be called? Did he even look at my LinkedIn to see what my position is in the company and what my potential relationship to the VP may be? I felt upset with how he had expected me to give him something just because he called. The key here is that he totally missed sharing a value proposition that John or I would want. To my surprise, he called back the next day, only to have basically the same conversation all over again…really?!

The Mistakes

The problem with the cold call I received is that the sales guy forgot that there was an actual person on the other end of the phone. I suspect that lots of salespeople out there are falling into the same trap. As a salesperson, if you’re just dialing randomly through a list of numbers like a machine, that’s a shame. When performed tactfully, cold calls can be a very effective way for salespeople to break through the noise to start an engaging conversation and a real relationship…which will go a lot further in the long-run.

Let’s take a quick look at the mistakes he made and how you can avoid them, improving your sales approach:

1. Do your homework

With the availability of information online nowadays, it’s inexcusable not to know someone’s role and recent job history. A better way to approach me would have been: “Hey, I noticed that you’re an account executive. Do you work under John?” With this more personal approach, I would have wondered “Does he know John?” and would have felt inclined to continue the conversation.

2. Ask for permission

Being forceful doesn’t work when someone can just as easily hang up on you. You’ll need their consent to get the outcome you want. Try, “Have I interrupted something here? Do you have a moment so I can explain why I called?”

3. Explain why you’re calling, and have a good reason

Until proven otherwise, the person on the other end may think you’re a cheap telemarketer and so they’re just looking for an excuse to hang up. Give a concise value proposition like, “We help companies like yours increase revenue. Is that something that affects your role?” If you’re not up-front with your reason for calling, then people will suspect the worst and assume that you have bad intentions.

4. Build rapport before asking for something

People like people who are like them, and you’re going to be much harder to turn away if there’s a connection between you. Try something like: “I couldn’t help but notice that you went to State University. I went there, too! What did you study?”

5. Provide value

I can’t stress this enough: Without providing an element of value, you’ll get nowhere with your call. People have to clearly see how you will be helping them to gain something they don’t have or to alleviate one of their pain points: “We drive revenue for sales teams, so we’ll help you hit your number. Do you think John would be interested in that, too?” If I want to hit my number (I do), I’m at least willing to hear more.

6. Respect getting a firm “no” and preserve that bridge

There are hundreds of reasons that your prospect doesn’t want to talk to you right now, including just being tied up or even in a bad mood. Gather more information on why they don’t want to talk and be prepared to call again another day with a line like this: “I understand that you’re not interested right now. I can respect that. I have to ask though, is my timing just off, or are you flat-out not interested? Either way is totally fine. I don’t want to bother you if I’m way off the mark.” Show that you’re human and understand that there’s a real person on the other end who wants to be treated the same way you would.

Can you see the difference? The improved version empowers the prospect to accept the conversation, to understand why you’re calling, and see why they would want to keep talking rather than rush toward ending the call. This is the only way you’re going to see genuine success with cold calling.

So now you may be wondering, when your sales team performs cold calls, do they sound like the sales guy who called me, or are they more in line with the improved script? If you’re not sure, you better go check. If it’s the former, you’re leaving leads and, ultimately, revenue on the table.

Have you ever received a cold call that impressed you? What did the caller do well? Share your story below!