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Your Internet connection may be fast, but it's probably not fast enough to send a terabyte of business data anywhere near quickly enough to matter.

That's why Google has introduced Offline Media Import/Export, a new feature for Google Cloud Platform that lets you literally ship a hard drive, flash drive, storage tapes, or whatever other kinds of storage you have to a service provider, who throws it into Google's cloud storage for you. 

The service provider can either return the drive to you, destroy it, or keep it, depending on your preference, Google says.

"Offline Media Import/Export is helpful if you’re limited to a slow, unreliable, or expensive Internet connection," writes Google's Ben Chong in a blog entry announcing the new feature. 

In that post, Chong breaks it down a little: Most business DSL plans top out at 100 megabits per second, he writes. Those plans usually offer around 1 megabit per second of upload speed. That's great for most everyday usage.

But it's suboptimal if you're moving tremendous amounts of data around. At that speed, uploading a single terabyte of data (that's the kind of scale we're talking here) would take 100 days. 

Meanwhile, the good old US Postal Service moves a little faster than that. Just overnight a hard drive to that service provider — in North America, Google has enlisted Iron Mountain as its partner for this service — and you've cut the time by one-hundredth. 

This is an aggressive move that Chong explicitly calls out as being a great complement to Google Cloud Storage Nearline, its much-ballyhooed product for storing business files that you don't need right away.

Recently, Google offered $1 million of free Nearline storage to anybody who switched from Amazon — and this move is aimed at picking up the pace by making it easier than ever for businesses to move all their data to Google, no matter where it was originally stored.

Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services has offered its own version of this service for the last six years or so. Neither Google nor Iron Mountain call out pricing for the service, but it's likely competitive with Amazon's rates of $80 per storage device and then $2.49 per hour it actually takes to upload to the cloud.

SEE ALSO: Google is offering businesses $1 million worth of free cloud storage to switch from Amazon

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: Meet 'Edge,' Microsoft's bold answer to Google Chrome

TechValidate’s research found that “30% of companies using gamification improved registration conversion rates by upwards of 50%.” But how can we use it to retain more customers?

Why Gamify Customer Retention?

Gamification is the “application of game-thinking in non-game contexts.” We borrow the mechanics of traditional games and apply them to uncommon concepts, like customer retention.

Acquiring new customers is expensive. So, reducing customer churn can greatly impact your company’s financial health. A study in the Harvard Business Review noted that increasing customer retention by 5% can generate a 25%-95% increase in profit.

The main objective of retention is to continue ongoing relationships with customers. Brand loyalty is considered difficult to measure. So, experts generally use customer engagement as an effective indicator of loyalty.

An engaged consumer is more likely to stay loyal and buy more products and services. By introducing games, businesses motivate shoppers to indulge their competitive instincts to drive engagement.

In return, your company should notice an increase in lifetime value (LTV). When executed correctly, the LTV of loyal customers should be 15-40% higher than the LTV of your average customer:

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Calculating lifetime value offers insight into the overall worth of loyal customers. Moreover, it sheds light on whether your gamification techniques are too costly.

Reward Structures

Your marketing strategy must cater to a diverse group of participants. Understand your audience to create campaigns that will appeal to your shoppers. Tailor your gamification techniques to deliver targeted messages based on your consumers’ behaviors.

Several reward structures exist. Here are three different types to consider:

1. Points

A points system is a common loyalty program. Customers earn points based on their behaviors, which translates into rewards. This method works well for businesses that promote frequent, short-term purchases.

At Smoothie King, you can earn rewards for every smoothie and retail purchase:

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Studies show that “higher point values may be directly correlated to increased customer spending.” However, what really matters is the ease of the redemption process and the rewards available.

Companies tend to complicate the points system by establishing tricky rules to redeem customer prizes or modifying the conditions completely.

Earlier this year, both Delta Airlines and United Airlines changed from a miles-flown to a dollars-spent rewards system. Now, passengers have to spend more money to earn a free flight through points.

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Make the process hassle-free for your customers. No hidden fees or rules.

2. Achievement

This approach requires participants to attain certain levels of achievement. After participants complete a set of actions or tasks, they can unlock benefits.

Some businesses couple this technique with a tiers system. That way, every level attained offers customers more rewards for more engagement. A hybrid structure like this is sufficient for higher price-point businesses, like airlines and hospitality companies.

With an achievement system, companies can recognize when, where, and how customers interact with their brand. Then, they can update the loyalty program to align with particular consumer interactions.

Virtual training academy Treehouse teaches beginners coding, app development, and business skills. To keep students from cancelling their monthly subscriptions, they motivate users to earn badges and points as they work through the course material.

A tracker displays the student’s progress as he or she works towards specific goals. Students then can show off their achievements and impress potential employers.

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3. Competition

People like a healthy competition. Let customers compete against one another and feature a leaderboard with scores updated daily.

Autodesk, a 3D design, engineering and entertainment software company, implemented this strategy to increase usage during the trial period of their 3DS Max product. They discovered that trial users were more likely to convert to customers if they used the software at least three times during the trial.

Due to the software’s complexity, Autodesk turned to gamification to create captivating tutorials.. As participants collected points in virtual “missions,” they would advance on the leaderboard. Top users received a prize for their efforts.

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The results made an impact. The contest increased trial engagement by 54% and conversion rates by 15%. In addition, there was a 29% increase in revenue per trial, meaning that shoppers were purchasing more expensive products or several software licenses.

When Gamification Fails

Not every gamification strategy works effectively. If not executed properly, it can harm your brand, instead of help you.

Merely adding game mechanics to your products won’t automatically make them better. Well-designed games highlight product benefits and add value to the customer experience.

Without clear expectations, gamification can mislead and frustrate customers, or even invite them to use your product incorrectly.

Leverage gamification as a tactic to achieve long-term benefits. Here’s two examples of how gamification backfires:

1. Subway

Before 2005, Subway gave customers a free meal after they would collect stamps on a paper-made card. Unfortunately, the fast food restaurant learned the hard way that eating habits can’t be tracked in such a manner. An influx of counterfeiters began copying these highly sought-after loyalty stickers.

Disconnected from the customers’ behaviors, the food chain made another wrong turn. Subway transitioned into a food-scoring system that yields 1 point per dollar spent. It decided that a footlong sandwich was worth 75 stamps. Why would a $75 investment be worthy of a $5 footlong?

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2. Any Supermarket Card

Yes, seriously. Supermarket customer-loyalty cards offer little value.

Colloquy Talk found that grocery store products with a Kroger loyalty card are priced higher than products at their competitor Target without a card.

Consumer Reports also notes that customers “can save big on this week’s specials, but it’s easy to blow all of your savings buying other higher-priced items while you’re in the store.”

To gain a competitive advantage, offer valuable benefits to your customers. Translation: Give the customer what they desire or need. If not, you may risk losing revenue over lackluster customer retention practices.

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The Rise of Digital Loyalty Programs

A digital approach gives way to personalization, faster turnaround, and streamlined administration for businesses.

With digital rewards, customers can receive their rewards instantly. No more stockpiling coupons and sending them via snail mail.

Digital rewards service providers offer online merchandise in various brands, value denominations, and local currencies. Companies also can manage inventory in real-time.

Here are great examples to replicate.

1. Starbucks

Starbucks creates a unique experience for their caffeine drinkers. The American coffee company has integrated payments and mobile technology into the program to make transactions more enjoyable.

Reward members can place drink orders and make payments with their Starbucks mobile app. The franchise also segments customers to send targeted messages aimed at engaging lapsed members.

Starbucks likes to incentivize consumer behavior. They want customers to engage with their brand through multiple in-store visits. In the image below, the store gives morning purchasers a discount on a Grande iced drink if they visit again in the afternoon.

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Just recently, Starbucks announced a new partnership with Lyft, the ride-hailing start-up. The deal centers around the My Starbucks Rewards loyalty program.

Under the agreement, “customers can earn points toward coffee and food every time they use Lyft.” Passengers also can tip their drivers with Starbucks points within the Lyft app.

2. Kuru Footwear

Kuru Footwear entices its customers to share products through social media channels. Every time a customer shares via Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+, the individual is awarded 25 points.

Here’s an example of the direct call-to-action:

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This type of sharing increases brand exposure that carries more trust than a typical online advertisement. The recommendation comes from a friend, not a corporation.

The eCommerce shoe store also views their loyalty program as a way to build rapport with their future customer base. Kuru encourages current customers to leave reviews after purchasing.

Kuru shoppers receive reward points when they leave honest opinions about the products and shopping experience. The company benefits twofold: candid feedback regarding inventory and social proof to spread to prospects.

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Does (Reward) Size Matter?

Rewards requiring long-time periods don’t drive customer interaction. Similar to the Subway example, the “Buy 9, Get 1 Free” takes a while to redeem.

Engage shoppers with small, quick rewards. Let them redeem prizes on the second or third store visit. Try: “Receive a free small fry after your second visit.”

Move beyond discounting your services in loyalty programs. Forrester analyst Emily Collins says, “Loyalty as we know it today, ruled by points and discounts, is insufficient.”

For some brands, discounting lowers the perception of the service’s value, and you’re inadvertently teaching shoppers that your services are not worth full price.

Instead of discounting, add bonuses to a customer’s purchase. For example, “Buy 1, Get 1 Free.”

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The rewards issued should underline your overall brand strategy. Starbucks, for instance, is able to lure people into its stores on a regular basis.

Tap into your shoppers’ emotional loyalty. Evaluate which relationships are important for your business and design a rewards program that cultivates those customers, says Michael Hemsey, president of Kobie Marketing.

4 Strategies for Better Conversions

Gamification integrated into your customer loyalty program means nothing if it isn’t optimized to produce the maximum results.

As we covered, not all companies create a winning loyalty program, either because they lack customer insight or it’s too cumbersome to maintain.

If you want to see higher amounts of revenue from existing clients and reduced customer falloff, focus on persuading consumers to become brand loyal.

Let the following strategies guide you.

1. Easy Sign-Up Process

Customers appreciate a short sign-up process. No long forms or lengthy questions. Enroll shoppers into your loyalty program by requesting basic information, like name and email address.

Use an infographic to show them how quick and easy they can join. For extra credit, tell them how many minutes it takes to fill out the form. Here’s a banner from Hotels.com Rewards:

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Eliminate any barriers for a customer to join. Gilt gives shoppers a choice to sign up for their free memberships via email or Facebook. This social login feature lets users share, buy, and interact on social sites with your brand.

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2. Give Simple Rules

Loyalty programs need easy-to-understand rules. Do not include a long list of rules and restrictions. If rules are too confusing, customers will quickly lose interest in the rewards program.

By starting with straightforward rules, your company can adjust to the consumer. Changes will occur due to customer feedback, unintended loopholes, and new business features. So, keep it simple; then, evolve as the program grows.

Take note from Jamba Juice below:

3. Personalize Offers

According to a research report by CrowdTwist, shoppers who experienced targeted offers in loyalty programs prefer personalized coupons (67%), customized offers or promotions (62%), and product recommendations (58%).

Personalized products equates to a positive brand. It inspires customers to purchase more and creates a path toward brand advocacy.

Based on prior shopping history, Sephora creates personalized product recommendations for Beauty Insider members.

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But what about prospects? Sephora solved this problem with their Beauty Profile. A new shopper inputs hair type, skin type, and other information, and Sephora generates recommendations specific to the individual’s needs.

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Deliver customized offers that match the consumer’s habits and needs. Use data integration and demographic analysis to meet these expectations.

4. Reward for Non-Purchase Activities

Slow reward accumulation is one of the leading reasons why shoppers abandon loyalty programs. So, make it easy for customers to earn points.

Customers can show brand loyalty without buying products. Reward shoppers for their non-purchase activities. Let people earn points when they refer a friend or sign up for your mailing list.

For instance, Office Depot rewards customers for joining the program and recycling their ink and toner cartridges. The office supply retailer also gives participants a special gift on their birthdays.

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Conclusion

If your team creates and executes a strategy derived from the customers’ behaviors and expectations, gamification can boost retention.

Choosing the right reward structure can safeguard your business from undesirable gamification failures. Digital rewards also can help your business avoid fraud and provide instant gratification to the customer experience. Stay away from discounting your products, instead offer personalized deals.

Leverage gamification as a tool to increase customer retention, not as a gimmick for short-term gain.

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There are a multitude of tools made available to marketers, but one annoying problem is that there are too many tabs and applications to use. Isn’t there a way to streamline everything and still give brands the data needed to determine the success of their strategies? Tenjin is launching today with the aim of solving this problem and helping marketers better discover their Return on Investment (ROI).

A member of Y Combinator’s summer 2014 batch, Tenjin automates the process that performance marketers have traditionally handled when dealing with multiple services, such as analytics platforms, attribution partners, ad servers, and others.

Typically, all of the data from these sources would be aggregated by marketers and placed into an Excel spreadsheet to determine the ROI. A complex process to be sure, but Tenjin says it will not only automate the input and analysis, but also show the break-even points for campaigns.

This isn’t a middleman platform that lets you manage all of the other services. Instead, Tenjin is a consolidator — it takes some of the best (and most commonly used) features across all aspects of ad-tech services and brings them into a single platform, such as ROI by source, 90-day lifetime value analytics, user time spent in an app, and more. Additionally, the company says it can tell you how you’re making money from a specific source using actual data (not predictive) which will help define where your money is going.

Tenjin’s cofounders, Amir Manji and Christopher Farm, came up with this marketing solution during their time at app monetization and mobile advertising firm Tapjoy. Farm told VentureBeat that people at Tapjoy developed a customized dashboard to streamline performance marketing analytics, but weren’t really using it. They were simply pulling the data and placing it onto a CSV file before importing it into their own systems for analysis.

Seeing this, Farm and Manji started Tenjin with one simple objective: help marketers calculate the ROI from their various ad-tech services.

Tenjin hasn’t formalized its pricing model yet and says that up to today, it’s been operating on a contract-by-contract basis. However, it’s looking to establish fees for monthly active users in line with those of analytic providers currently in the marketplace.

As the service appears to offer a simplified model, it may not be suitable for all marketers. In fact, if your objectives include more than just determining ROI, then Tenjin may not be what you’re looking for. Additionally, although it supports 40 ad networks, including Chartboost, Tapjoy, Supersonic, Google AdWords, and YouTube, along with Flurry and others, your business may use additional services that are not supported by Tenjin. Lastly, marketers may feel that Tenjin isn’t powerful enough for their needs, especially since Tenjin has duplicated only some features from various ad-tech platforms.

But for those that really want to associate their revenue with specific campaigns, Tenjin’s offering may sound appealing. If you’re a developer, being able to track where every dollar is coming from is important, and Tenjin provides that specialized approach.

Tenjin is funded by Y Combinator and Lightbank, and includes participation from various angel investors.

I was speaking to one of my Momentum Club members on the phone last week, and one of the topics we focused on was how to move potential clients from that initial point of not really knowing you, to where they’re ready to buy from you.

Great content has a big role to play in how you do that online, but it’s not enough. In particular, your content has to not just build your credibility and deliver value, it has to bring your potential clients closer to the specific mindset they need to be ready to buy.

In this week’s 5 minute marketing tip video I show you exactly how to do this with your content marketing.
 

Video Transcript

Hi it’s Ian here. Welcome to another 5 minute marketing tip.

Last week I was on the phone to one of my Momentum Club members and amongst other things we discussed how to use marketing, and in particular content marketing to take your potential clients from where they usually start off, not knowing much about you to where they’re going to be ready to buy from you. Now great content is a part of that, it’s an important component but it’s not enough. What you need is “breadcrumb content” that leads your potential clients step by step from where they are to where you need them to be. I’ll show you how to create breadcrumb content after this break.

Hi, welcome back. Imagine you’ve got a beautiful garden and you love nothing more than to watch the birds fly and land and eat bird seed and tweet and do whatever birds do, but your problem is that the birds tend to congregate at the bottom of your garden rather than near your window where you can see them. What do you do? You could try just throwing out bird seed randomly and the birds will fly about and grab all that bird seed but they’re going to go wherever the bird seed lands rather than by your window. What you need to do instead is to lay out a trail of bird seed, a breadcrumb trail from where they start out at the bottom of the garden up to your window so that they congregate there and that’s where you can see them.

It’s exactly the same thing with potential clients. You need your content to be great but you also need it to be breadcrumb content that leads them from where they are now to where you need them to be.

How do you do that? Well you need to know a couple of things first. Firstly you need to know where you want them, where your window is. Now in he case of potential clients where you want them to be is being ready to buy from you or maybe being ready to have a call with you or being ready to come on a webinar. What does that mean in detail and specifically? Well think through what the know and feel factors are. What does that potential client need to know and feel to be ready to hire you.

If you’re a leadership coach for example, maybe that potential client needs to know that you’ll be able to get real bottom line results for their business because you’ve done it before when you’ve coached other people. Maybe they need to know or feel that they’ll be capable of making the changes so that might mean that they need to know that you’ve worked with people just like them. Maybe they need to know that you understand their industry or their sector or their type of business. Maybe they need to feel that there will be good chemistry, a good connection between the 2 of you, etc, etc. Make sure you’ve brainstormed, thought through and written down what those know and feel factors are for your ideal clients because those are the things you’ve got to show. Those are the breadcrumbs you’ve got to lay to get people to where you want them.

Secondly you need to know where they are, where you need to throw the breadcrumbs initially. What that means for potential clients is you need to know what their big goals and aspirations, their problems, their challenges, what they’re interested in, what they care about, because that’s the type of content you’ve got to produce for them to pay attention to. You can use all the content you want in the world about how great you are or the great results you’ve got but nobody really cares. What they care about is their own problems, their own challenges, their own aspirations, the things they’re interested in so you need to know what those are because those become the topics that you create your content about.

Here’s how you combine the two. What you do is you write about or you make videos about or podcasts about or blogs about or emails about the topics that your potential clients are interested in but you illustrate them using the know and feel factors that will take them closer to where you want them to be. What does that look like in practiceS? Let’s say you were a LinkedIn trainer and that you had worked out your know and feel factors were that people needed to know that your LinkedIn training led to real business results rather than just a pretty profile and a whole bunch of other factors. Let’s focus on that one about getting business results first.

Now in order to get the attention of someone who might be a good client for you, you might write a good content article or do a video on 7 tips for improving your LinkedIn profiles. That would be interesting to your potential clients, they get value from that, it would increase their perception of you as an expert in the field but it’s a bit like throwing the bird seed out randomly. It doesn’t necessarily take them nearer to knowing that you would be the right person to work with. Instead of just writing out 7 tips for improving your LinkedIn profile article, what you might do instead is write a case study or tell a story of how one of your clients used those 7 tips, you’re still saying what the 7 tips are but illustrate them in a story of how your client used them to get the business results they were looking for. Maybe a new job or maybe a new client or something like that.

By doing that you’re still getting across the great content, it’s till highly valuable to potential clients but it’s also illustrating one of the know and feel factors, one of the breadcrumbs that’s going to take them just that one step closer to being where you want them to be knowing all the know and feel factors and them being ready to hire you. Now the key is to do this systematically so every time you put in some new piece of content, think through firstly, what are the topics that my potential clients are going to be interested in and they’re going to add value to? Secondly, how can I illustrate that with one of the know and feel factors? Now you won’t necessarily be able to illustrate with a know and feel factor every time. The first step is to get that valuable content but the more often you can use a know and feel factor in the way you illustrate your valuable content the closer people are going to get to you and the quicker they’re going to get close to you.

That’s really it. That’s the simple process. Scatter those breadcrumbs where your potential clients are by using the things they care about, their problems, their goals, their aspirations, their challenges but illustrate those topics with the know and feel factors that are going to bring them closer to your window where you can watch them. They’re going to bring them closer to being ready to hire you.

Speak to you again soon, cheers.

 
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The post Great Content is Not Enough. You Need “Breadcrumb Content” appeared first on How To Get Clients: Proven Strategies to Win More Clients.

Every boom has its bust. But every bust looks different.

Thanks to the memories of the dot-com era, a lot of investors assume that the next bust will look the same — a bunch of over-funded, overvalued tech companies who are burning too much cash and not generating enough revenue will go up in smoke. All those unicorns will turn out to have been mere horses, or worse. 

But as optimists like Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans have pointed out, some things are different this time.

For example: In 2000, there were less than half a billion people online, and no smartphones. Now, the total online population is around 3 billion with 2 billion smartphones, and both of those numbers will reach 4 billion by 2020:

So imagine that this week's stock market downturn becomes a broader recession. As consumers and businesses tighten their wallets, what will happen? Who will be hurt? 

Perhaps, instead of the tech startups vaporizing, the old inefficient businesses they've started to replace will finally topple over and die.

For instance:

• Taxi rides are generally more expensive than hailing an Uber X. So as people look to save money, overall ride volume will go down. But the already ailing cab industry will then have an even harder time competing with cheaper, more efficient service from Uber. 
• Hotels are generally more expensive than AirBnb. As price-conscious consumers look to save money on vacations, they're more likely to book an AirBnb than drop hundreds of dollars a night on a hotel. 
• At least some goods in some retail stores — think consumer electronics — are more expensive than the same goods on Amazon and other e-commerce stores. 
• Going to the movies is a lot more expensive than just staying home and renting via Netflix. 

And so on.

On the B2B or enterprise side:

• It's generally a lot cheaper for companies to rent computing infrastructure and software delivered over the Internet — think cloud services like Amazon Web Services or Workday — than it is to buy and maintain the hardware and software yourself.
• There are lots of other new enterprise trends that help customers squeeze more cost out of their IT infrastructure — for example, by having in-house developers double up on operations. (DevOps.) 

As companies look to cut costs, they're more likely to give these newfangled services a serious look. Sure, there are different break even points depending on the size of the company and how much they've already dropped into their existing infrastructure. But for the typical mid-size business who never wanted to be in the technology business in the first place, running your own data center seldom makes sense over the long haul.

Yes, a serious recession will kill a lot of pretenders. Companies who are burning tons of cash and can't raise another round to cover their burn will definitely vaporize. Companies who are spending like mad on customer acquisition and hoping to make it up on lifetime value per customer may not get the chance to turn that corner. 

But if you believe even for a second that some of the current tech darlings are actually disrupting older industries, why would that disruption suddenly stop just because the economy turns down.

Remember: Google and Salesforce emerged out of the dot-com bust. Facebook emerged out of the financial crisis of 2008. That same downturn helped kill Blockbuster, while Netflix grew stronger than ever.

There will be some big winners next time, too.

SEE ALSO: Here's the final tally of the carnage in tech stocks today

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: BLACK MONDAY: Another market meltdown

Hong Kong (AFP) - Asian shares tumbled Tuesday after a meltdown in Chinese stocks sparked a global equities rout and fuelled mounting fears over the outlook for the world economy.

Shanghai stocks tumbled 6.41 percent at the open, extending the previous day's plunge on mounting worries over China's faltering economy and its impact on global growth.

The dollar was weak against other currencies and oil prices remained in the doldrums after finishing Monday below $40 a barrel for the first time in six years, as financial markets sold off around the world.

Tokyo fell 4.13 percent in early trade, following a bruising session overnight that saw US stocks fall the most since the height of the financial crisis and European equities slump.

Hong Kong opened 0.67 percent lower, after closing at a fresh 15-month low on Monday, while Seoul was trading flat in early deals.

Sydney dropped sharply at the open before recovering to stand 1.52 percent higher by mid-morning.

"The world's capital markets are in meltdown, and investors are asking what can stop the panic," said IG Markets' chief market strategist Chris Weston.

"Despite the outrageous moves in the European and US futures markets overnight, it is Asia that is at the epicentre of this concern."

Global equities took a battering overnight, with US and European markets plunging after an almost 8.50 percent slump in Shanghai -- the heaviest daily loss since 2007 -- sparked panic among world investors. 

World equity markets have seen some $5 trillion wiped off their value since China's surprise devaluation of the yuan on August 11 added to fears the world's second-largest economy is weaker than thought.

Chinese shares have been extremely volatile since a huge debt-fuelled rally, which saw the market rise 150 percent in 12 months, collapsed in mid-June prompting Beijing to unleash unprecedented measures to support the equity market.

Dealers were braced for more heavy falls Tuesday, as they await news of more intervention from Beijing to rescue its free-falling markets. 

It looks likely "that we will carry on the recent trend and if we do, it will be a rough day," James Lee, managing director of First NZ Capital, told Bloomberg News.

The dollar remained low at 118.78 yen, little changed from 118.51 yen in New York trade Monday, but dramatically weaker than 122.06 yen seen in US trading on Friday.

The euro stood at $1.1570 and 137.50 yen in Tokyo, compared with $1.1606 and 137.55 yen in New York overnight.

US benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) for October delivery was trading at $38.47 after closing at $38.24 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, its first below-$40 close since February 2009.

Brent North Sea crude for October, the international benchmark, was as $42.86 a barrel after closing at $42.69 a barrel in London, its lowest level since March 2009.

Join the conversation about this story »

Marketers have a number of key decisions to make when outlining their strategies and upcoming campaigns. Who to target, how to allocate budget, who’s managing what – all of these decisions are dependent on the capabilities of the company and the nature of the product or service being marketed. One of the areas requiring the most consideration and justification is that of media selection.

The choice of media channels is critical to the success of a campaign, but it can often be difficult to identify which are the most relevant, the most effective and offer the best return on investment. There are a number of models and frameworks available, but one key model was developed in 2005 that offers a robust way of analysing media channels using a mix of qualitative and quantitative measures, and ranking them accordingly.

This media selection framework, developed by Coulter & Starkis, makes it relatively easy for expert or novice media planners to assess and rank the relative value of each channel. The team at Textlocal tested the model across a selection of eight different marketing communications channels and came to some interesting conclusions.

The Framework

The model identifies sixteen different factors that each channel can rank for, divided into five sections; quality, time, flexibility, coverage and cost. The factors are listed below:

Quality

1. Attention-getting capability
2. Stimulating emotions
3. Information content and detail
4. Credibility/prestige/image
5. Ability to cut through clutter

Time

6. Short lead time
7. Long exposure time

Flexibility

8. Appeal to multiple senses
9. Personalisation
10. Interactivity

Coverage

11. Selectivity
12. Pass-along audience
13. Frequency/repeat exposure
14. Average media reach

Cost

15. Development/production cost
16. Average media delivery cost

Our Method

We considered eight different marketing channels and allocated them points based on how well they fulfil each of these criteria. Many of these are highly dependent upon campaign context, so a more general approach was taken and of course, results will vary for different marketers depending on their products, aims and approaches.

Channels that fulfilled a factor very well were allocated one point, for example, broadcast media scored one point for average media reach. Channels which went some way to fulfilling the criteria were allocated half a point, and those channels which perform comparatively poorly received no points. Due to the nature of the ‘credibility’ criteria, i.e. that it is entirely dependent on the message and campaign aims, this category was missed out.

Our results

Our results ranked the channels, in descending order:

7= Broadcast media

7= Outdoor media

6. Mobile ads

5. Direct mail

4. Telesales

3. Social media

2. Email

And in first place…

SMS!

It came as no surprise to us of course, but it was pleasing to see just how well SMS performed in the comparison. The scores for each channel are displayed in the below chart, so you can see for yourself how we reached these rankings.

SMS is attention grabbing, it cuts through the noise, it’s interactive, personal and highly targeted. The delivery costs are low, and development costs are practically non-existent. It can be passed along to friends and family, saved and looked at in the future, and the message can be anything you like, especially as the technology has progressed past a simple 160 characters.

What do you think of our results? Are there any rankings you disagree with?

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn here.

As businesses continue navigating the challenges that have resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic, many sales leaders are wondering the best path forward.

It’s a tough question and doesn’t have a single right answer.

One of the toughest changes sales leaders need to adapt to is the dramatic impact the events of 2020 have had on win rates. According to research conducted by Revenue Grid, before the pandemic only 57 percent of sales reps reported that they expected to fall short on their sales quotas at the end of 2019, with that figure ballooning to a whopping 84 percent by second quarter 2020.

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A common phrase that has been used in relation to how businesses move forward is the "new normal". Before sales teams can adjust to the new normal, it helps to understand what the new normal is, and what it could look like.

After conducting in-depth research into 502 B2B sales teams and interviewing over 50 industry leaders, here are the top three things we have learned.

1. Customer loyalty is more important than ever.

Conventional wisdom dictates that the best way to grow a business is by attracting and converting as many new customers as possible. However, we’re finding B2B businesses are prioritizing their existing customers over attracting new ones.

In the fourth quarter of 2018, the average sales team reported that 37 percent of their sales opportunities were from new accounts and deals. In comparison, the fourth quarter of 2019 found that only 22 percent of sales opportunities came from new customers.

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Research suggests even a five percent increase in customer retention can increase a company’s profitability by 75 percent. Additionally, it can cost companies five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain a current customer. Not only is it more cost-effective for B2B businesses to focus more on their existing customers, it also provides opportunity for acquiring new high-value customers through referral marketing.

With these data points in mind, making your current customers feel valued can be an effective way to impact your bottom line.

Consider ways you can continue to add value to your customer’s lives beyond your core offering. For example, your organization could consider implementing a loyalty program to incentivize and reward your current customers for their commitment to your brand.

Keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for providing value. What one person might find valuable might be completely wrong for someone else, so continue experimenting to find the approach that resonates most for a majority of your customer base.

As a B2B organization, you know your clients are business owners themselves and appreciate rewards that will benefit their business in the long run. With this in mind, try to look beyond offering simple discounts and demonstrate that you understand your client’s needs and pain points by offering them something that benefits their business.

A great example of this is Mailchimp’s Partner Program, which offers Mailchimp customers unique rewards such as priority customer support, exclusive access to private webinars and masterclasses around business-building and email marketing, as well as networking opportunities with other members of the program. These incentives demonstrate the level of commitment Mailchimp has towards the success of their clients.

Additionally, participation in this program is by application only with Mailchimp selecting their strongest customers to join.

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Not only is this a fantastic way for the company to deepen their relationship with their best customers, but Mailchimp also cleverly uses their program as a way to turn loyal customers into brand advocates. On top of all the benefits members of the partner program receives, Mailchimp also offers members the opportunity to run co-marketing campaigns such as joint webinars and masterclasses with the brand.

This strategy benefits the partner by giving them access to even more exclusive benefits and rewards, as well as benefiting Mailchimp by having customers promote their product to an engaged and interested audience.

2. Sales priorities are shifting.

If companies have learned anything from the financial crises of 2001 and 2008, it’s that adapting to meet the changing needs and priorities of your customers is key.

It’s only natural that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic impacts have led small business owners to be more cautious with how they invest their resources. But as a B2B service provider, it’s vital you truly understand the reasons and motivations behind your customer’s shifts in priorities and values.

Reflect on the answer to questions such as:

• Is my customer cutting costs everywhere or just in a few places? If it’s only a few, why are they specifically cutting back in those areas?
• How can I help them achieve their main business priority?
• Has my ideal customer profile changed? How so?

With many businesses everywhere looking to cut costs, the key to winning and keeping customers is to show that you truly understand what their needs are.

According to research conducted by Revenue Grid, sales messages that emphasize the cost and growth benefits of their tools have a 15 percent higher open rate compared to messages that don’t. Additionally, messages that demonstrate the financial cost and outcome of a purchase have a 22 percent higher open rate.

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More than just being able to influence and persuade a customer, an increasingly important skill for the modern salesperson is the ability to listen and empathize with their customer.

On top of being more risk-averse and informed than ever before, the modern customer also has vastly different expectations of the type of support and value they receive from a brand. Today’s customer expects salespeople, and by extension the brand they do business with, to provide value above and beyond their core product or service.

In fact, according to the 2017 State of Global Customer Service Report by Microsoft, 96 percent of customers say that customer service is important in their choice of loyalty to a brand. Furthermore, 77 percent of customers reported that they have a more positive view of brands that actively ask for and accept customer feedback.

As always, the best way to learn more about your customers is to simply have a conversation with them. A straightforward way to gain a better understanding of your customers is to conduct a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey.

Originally developed by Bain and Company, NPS is a way for businesses to track and measure how they’re being perceived by their customers by asking the simple question such as: “On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?”

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The responses to this question alone can give you a high-level view of how your business is doing in terms of customer loyalty. It’s important to note, you don’t have to limit yourself to one question on your customer experience survey. You can also ask open-ended questions such as "What is the reason behind your score?" and "What can we do to improve your experience?" The answers to these questions can give you a world of insight into how your business can better serve your customers.

In a time of increasing stress and anxiety, customers want to work with businesses people they can trust to have their best interests in mind.

3. Increasing pipeline velocity.

After a decline in pipeline growth across the board in March and April, we’re now beginning to see sales opportunities rise again. What this tells us is that SMBs and enterprises alike are looking for solutions to help them grow.

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To acquire these opportunities, B2B businesses are restructuring their sales pipeline to move faster and improve their chances of closing a deal.

Since the decline in pipeline growth earlier this year, we’ve seen the majority of sales teams work towards removing inefficiencies from their sales pipeline such as introducing processes to better qualify potential customers, and developing better prospecting strategies to ensure that they’re focusing on decision-makers. This goes to show the increasing importance of being able to close a deal quickly with the right customers instead of filling the pipeline with as many leads and prospects as possible.

Simply put, shortening the length of your sales cycle may positively impact your bottom line.

There are a variety of ways to improve your pipeline velocity, but the most straightforward tactics to ensure that you are properly qualifying your prospects. Too often sales teams will have situations where they’ll end up wasting valuable time and effort talking to someone who will never end up being a customer.

It helps to break down your customer journey and understand what specific actions and conversations you need to be having to move someone into the next stage of your sales funnel.

Typically the customer lifecycle can be broken down into the five main stages including discovery, education, purchase, post-purchase engagement, and advocacy. These stages take into account the key interactions between the customer and the business, allowing reps to prepare for the pain points unique to each stage.

Besides being a great way to visually understand the general flow of the customer lifecycle, by breaking down and critically examining each stage of the customer journey you’ll be able to start figuring out which specific areas you can be optimizing and improving on. For example, you might discover that prospects that attended a live product demo have a far higher conversion rate compared to those that didn’t.

On the surface, it could appear this information shows the importance of live product demos, but after digging deeper into the data you might also discover that your current sales process incorrectly identifies anyone who registers their interest in attending a product demo as a sales qualified lead (SQL) regardless of if they’ve actually attended the demo or not. This causes a knock-on effect where unqualified leads are pushed further down the sales funnel and end up frustrating leads and salespeople alike.

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Armed with this information, you can start developing tactics and marketing messages specifically for prospects who have actually participated in product demos. You can also develop a process that removes unqualified prospects from your pipeline, saving your sales team from wasting their time and energy on these types of leads.

It’s a small improvement, but it’s precisely these types of changes that have a huge impact on the overall velocity of your sales pipeline and your bottom line. Though there is no official guidebook on how to handle business moving forward, focusing on the following areas is a great place to start:

• Customer loyalty and retention.
• True empathy and a willingness to listen to your customers.
• An efficient sales pipeline.

Navigating this new world of sales is going to be challenging, but it isn’t impossible. Take our research and findings and use it to help your business navigate its way through this new sales landscape.

Despite the increasingly important and ever-expanding role of technology in B2B marketing, astute marketers recognize that all truly effective marketing is grounded in a deep understanding of the needs, expectations, and behaviors of potential customers. This understanding is what enables us to develop marketing content and marketing programs that will create and sustain meaningful engagement with our potential buyers.

The customer intelligence we need to enable effective B2B marketing has several dimensions, but one essential component is an accurate picture of how our potential buyers access and consume business-related information.

We now know that most business buyers are leveraging the wealth of information that’s available online to educate themselves about business issues and possible solutions. Easy access to information has already driven significant changes in B2B demand generation.

• It’s shifted control of the buying process from sellers to buyers.
• It’s elevated the importance of content-based communications and fueled the growing use of content marketing by B2B enterprises.
• It’s caused the typical B2B buying process to become less linear and “orderly” than it once was.

Successful companies know that content marketing, when done well, can be an excellent way to generate leads and build sales. However, many manufacturing marketers think their tactics are falling short. According to the recent study, “B2B Manufacturing Content Marketing: 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends in North America,” only 26 percent of manufacturing marketers consider themselves effective at content marketing.

Why such the low rating? Perhaps when it comes to the small to medium-size manufacturers, they are simply scared to change. They have been doing things a certain way for so long they assume those efforts are working best for them. They are wrong.

Buyers are constantly bombarded with a deluge of information, and communicating product specs and stats no longer cuts it. Industrial companies must take a more innovative approach if they want to connect with their customers and prospects. The solution? Better content marketing.

Content Challenges
Almost half of all manufacturing marketers say they will increase their spending on content marketing in the next 12 months. Yet, without a solid strategy in place, these efforts may be all for naught. Only 34 percent of industrial companies say they closely follow a content marketing strategy. Problem area No. 1.

The second potential problem? Many companies are trying to be all things to all people. The average manufacturer is targeting five separate audiences. So it comes as no surprise that their go-to strategy is to push out as much content as possible in the hope that it sticks. In fact, 65 percent of manufacturing marketers say they are creating more content than they were one year ago.

But this is the wrong approach. The focus needs to be on quality, not quantity. Rather than adding to the noise, companies need to create a few key pieces that portray their brand’s unique perspective and relate to the audiences on a emotional, humanly relevant level.

Content That Works
There’s no doubt that video is a hot content marketing tactic. So much so that 87 percent of manufacturing marketers use it in their efforts. A majority of marketers (82 percent) are also relying heavily on illustrations and photos. These two tactics resonate well with the manufacturing audience since industrial companies produce precision products that often need to be seen to understand their value.

Other tactics being used include:

• e-newsletters, 85 percent
• Social media, 85 percent
• Digital articles, 84 percent
• In-person events, 79 percent
• Case studies, 75 percent
• White papers, 70 percent
• Print magazines, 65 percent
• Blogs, 60 percent
• Microsites, 56 percent
• Online presentations, 52 percent

It should be noted that while many manufacturing marketers still put money and effort into doing the tried-and-true trade shows, fewer than 50 percent say they are using the following tactics:

• Webinars/webcasts, 48 percent
• Infographics, 42 percent
• Mobile apps, 38 percent
• Digital magazines, 35 percent
• e-books, 18 percent
• Podcasts, 17 percent

Interestingly, however, some of these tactics are the very ones that marketers claim are the most effective in the industrial space, such as webcasts (62 percent) and e-books (50 percent).

This reveals a window of opportunity. By taking advantage of these underused tactics, you’ll not only be able to differentiate yourself from the competition, but you can more effectively connect to your audiences.

In It for the Long Haul
Manufacturing companies recognize that producing engaging content and measuring its effectiveness is difficult; 62 percent say they are presently challenged with and are working on creating more engaging/higher-quality content.

Here are some tips to help:

1. Focus your efforts. Many companies try to create a lot of content (video, newsletters, case studies, blogs) and spend large sums of money in year one on too many things. Such tactics can lead to disappointment if their efforts aren’t successful. Manufacturing marketers are better off focusing on a few tactics and doing those well.
2. Slice and dice. If companies can create a handful of effective pieces in year one, those materials can later be repurposed in other ways, such as social media posts or turning a white paper into shorter, more focused articles.
3. Don’t sell it. Companies can’t say they are creating thought leadership pieces if the assets read like self-promotional sales brochures. Pick topics that are educational and meaningful. Content marketing is all about building targeted awareness, which is accomplished by creating something your potential customers will consider helpful. You must focus on their changing needs and not your own.
4. Stay consistent. Maintain a regular cadence of content creation. This strategy can help you learn what topics and types of content resonate most with your audience and enables you to maintain relationships with decision-makers over time.
5. Promote it. What good is your content if no one sees it? Don’t forget to promote content through search, email, social media or paid advertising to build the audience.
6. Track the ROI. Only 12 percent of B-to-B manufacturing marketers think they are successful at tracking the ROI of their content marketing programs, and fewer than half use sales as a metric to measure content marketing success. Learn what works best and do more of it to keep ahead of your competitors.
7. Stick with it. When it comes to content marketing, you need to stay in it for the long haul. Don’t expect immediate results. Building meaningful relationships takes time.

Your company’s products are technical. The environments where industrial products are used can be tough. But your communications don’t have to be just as hard. Your audience needs you to listen to them, understand them and make real connections with them through personalized, relevant content. Content marketing is not just a one-and-done tactic, but a meaningful, ongoing conversation.

This is an excerpt. The full article appeared on FreshBusinessThinking.com

Here are the five mistakes that B2B marketers must avoid at all costs when using Linkedin and how to avoid committing them.

1. Creating a company page which isn’t optimised for converting leads

Any organisations must first create a company page which is clear and consistent with the brand. LinkedIn enables you to create special product pages, so B2B markets have that option too. By creating a company page, you allow users to find your organisation, enabling them to view what your company does and what you stand for.

However, you should be strategic when creating your company page on LinkedIn. Just having a logo and short description of what the company does is not going be enough to sustain interest and engagement.

To enhance the effectiveness of your LinkedIn company page, make sure you make it easy for your digital assets to be found. For example, if you know what words customers use to.

search for your products and services, then use those keywords in your LinkedIn page. Moreover, you can include links to your other owned social media channels such as SlideShare and YouTube which will increase the company’s rank in search results.

Another important tip is to structure your LinkedIn page so it can easily generate conversions. A trick in doing this is to have a click-through to your website in the company description or recent updates.

2. Failing to join groups or create a group.

One of the great aspects of LinkedIn is that you can find groups of people who share the same interests or are searching for the same thing. As a B2B marketer, this is invaluable as it gives you the opportunity to approach potential leads where they hang out online.

Ensure that your company is joining and creating special interest groups on LinkedIn over a sustained period. By doing this, you increase the chances of customers actively seeking the places of mutual interest, ultimately attracting like-minded associates and potential new leads to the company’s page.

However, joining a group is merely the start – you must also contribute to it as well. Contributing can be anything from replying to other users’ posts or posting relevant content such as an infographic, relevant links or video. However, a word of caution, it is important that you don’t spam group pages with sales-led content as you run the risk of becoming a nuisance and potentially damaging your brand.

Once you have joined and interacted with various groups, you may discover an opportunity to create your own groups. From a marketing perspective, creating your own group and becoming a moderator will give your business leadership and recognition. As long as you provide relevant content and avoid being too sales-focused, you can create a group where your target audience can gather and interact.

3. Failing to continue the conversation outside of LinkedIn

It is important to remember that even if your LinkedIn page has fantastic content and is designed to generate conversations and conversions, your prospects are not going to stay on LinkedIn forever and you may need to continue the conversation elsewhere.

Fortunately, LinkedIn can help you target advertising at any LinkedIn member profile you like. So you can target them in the World Wide Web after they leave your LinkedIn page with more interesting content, or even with a call to action. LinkedIn will only allow you to target profiles, down to groups of 100.

4. Creating content which is not targeted or relevant

LinkedIn with a company called Bizo have profiled most members so that means you will find it easier to target them to engage with your content and interest groups, so not only can you do it within the LinkedIn environment with inmail and Sponsored Updates you can utilise display outside of LinkedIn. And they have a new service called Lead Accelerator where you can ‘nurture’ prospects with sequenced communications. If the sales funnel still existed we would call it a bottom of the funnel product.

5. Failing to cross-publish your LinkedIn content

A trick to generate more reach for your LinkedIn content is ensure the content on your LinkedIn profile page can appear in news feeds as well as sit on your company pages. You may find only a few people engage with it but that’s good. B2B marketing is less of a numbers game, it is a quality game. Fewer engagements means you can give them the attention they deserve.

Jonathan Richards is Digital Director at OgilvyOne dn in London.

Undoubtedly, mobile has been a tremendous digital force in this modern world in terms of communication and looking for information from the web. Consumers are using their smartphones and mobile devices to research more details about a brand, product or services before commiting their money and make a purchase.

But consumers want their shopping done faster and more convenient, even while they are on the go. Many are now turning to their mobile devices not only for communication or gathering information – but for commercial transactions as well.

Now, Mobile Commerce or mCommerce is fast becoming a global phenomena that is scooping the marketplace up like a whirlwind. As more and more consumers turn to their mobile devices as a buying platform, eCommerce merchants and retailers are scrambling to make their stores ready for this next big wave in commerce – changing the way people perceive buying and selling in the near future.

1. mCommerce Transactions Are Growing Tremendously – Mobile Commerce or mCommerce is growing at a tremendously rapid rate and is forecasted to reach up to 33% of the eCommerce market in the US and 40% in the global market according to State of Mobile Commerce reports released by Criteo.

2. mCommerce Sales Taking a Bigger Piece of the eCommerce Pie – The recent “US Mcommerce 2015: eMarketer’s Forecast and Trends” report released by eMarketer projected mCommerce sales to reach figures of up to 77 billion dollars by end of this year, getting at least 22% of the eCommerce pie. eMarketer projects these sales figures to double to 153.5 billion dollars come 2019.

3. Smartphones are Driving US Mobile Transactions – While personal computers and tablets still account for majority of eCommerce transactions, mCommerce transactions through smartphones are fast closing in on this gap according to an eMarketer report based on MarketLive’s Q1 2015 Performance Index.

4. iPhone and Android Leads mCommerce Growth – Among smartphone users, iPhone leads the way over all other devices with a 12% growth rate in mCommerce transactions, accounting for up to 10% of all eCommerce transactions in the United States.

5. Discovery mCommerce through Social Media On the Rise – Social media has always been an important factor that contributed to the tremendous growth of mobile device use. So, it is of no wonder why discovery mCommerce through social media is on the rise.

6. Optimizing for mCommerce a Top Priority Among US Retailers – In a report released by eMarketer based on a study on US retailers performed by eTail and WBR Digital, it was highlighted that up to 59% of these retailers are placing greater priority in optimizing their websites for mobile web and mCommerce.

7. Shift from Apps to Mobile Web –  In their ecommerce trends and predictions for 2015, eConsultancy highlighted that consumers are shifting their focus from apps to the mobile web for mCommerce transactions.

8. Use of Mobile Coupons Steadily Rising – With mCommerce on the rise, marketers are adapting time-tested strategies to generate better sales whatever the platform may be. This includes the use of coupons in a mobile format which eMarketer forecasted will be used by as much as 40.5% of US companies that have more than 100 employees it their wing.

9. Always-On Shopping is Here – With eCommerce, consumers can shop for whatever they want or need anytime and anywhere throught their mobile devices, tablets and desktops. But with mCommerce, always-on shopping can be taken one step further as consumers can have greater flexibility in conducting online sales transactions even while they are in a car or lying on their beds.

10. Consumers Want it Faster and Quicker – In a Nielsen survey, mobile devices are the preferred channel for finding information about products or services they intend to buy, according to 42% of consumers surveyed.

Want more? Check the infographic below:

Embedded from CJG Digital Marketing.

I have been using Flipboard for over 2 years. The more I use it, the more I find hidden treasures with this powerful app.

As a social marketer for many natural product brands, I work very closely with sales and marketing teams. During our meetings, a common theme always rears its needy head — finding enough content for marketing, sales, social media and presentations. I have found this powerful app to be a great way to create marketing materials to make selling and presentations easy to view and easy to share on social media.

The Process

Currently, I have a new product launch that’s due to run in September. Starting now, we get together with our client for strategic planning sessions. During each meeting, we brainstorm ideas and flushed out to the good ones. Next we set deadlines and tasks for each team member.

After the meeting, fresh with ideas, we go back to our office and start planning the launch. Where do I begin? Ta-dah! Flipboard is my go-to resource! The advantage of using Flipboard is that all the ideas, strategies and executions are in one readable flipable format.

Below is my step by step-by-step methodology on how I organize the campaign in a team magazine.

1. Create a private magazine: This is my campaign shell. I call it “ideas”. I then invite members of the creative team to encourage them to collect all their thoughts in this magazine. It could be anything from an article they read on Flipboard, an image from Instagram or even a few notes from Evernote or any other online medium.
2. Create a strategy: Now the team reviews the magazine. We keep the ideas that resonate and discard the surplus. The next step is to tell a story that is compelling and has legs. We want this magazine to be read and to be circulated. So it has to be simple, easy to follow and clean.
3. Organize the content: Time to organize this information into something that is congruent and fluid. By this, I mean a logical sequence that leads to a brand promise. It could be a price reduction on shown items. A compelling company philosophy. Anything that the targeted audience is expecting from your brand.
4. Collecting apps: I use the following apps to gather information for our magazine.

My favorite apps to use to help in the efforts are:

1. Pocket for research and for collecting content
2. IFTT to create recipes and alerts
3. Evernote to collect notes and images
4. Instagram for information from fans and followers
5. Medium for brand blogs
6. Giphy for GIF uploads
7. SoundCloud for music
8. Press and PR from our bloggers and brand ambassadors

Let the fun begin

It’s Flipboard magazine creation time and it’s also my favorite part of the project. In this case, we are only creating one publication to launch at a trade show, to feature in a tweet chat or to email to our client’s marketing list.

We want to feature a product catalog with information, press, social media posts and product information. Because Flipboard is so very visual and versatile our magazine will have multiple uses:

1. Generate sales: Our client can show this to their reps and they can see all the social activity and the featured product itself. This can close a sale when a product rep sees all the online activity for the brand.
2. Garner consumer interest: The magazine can be shared on many social platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and most importantly on #FlipboardFriday.
3. Multiple uses: This wonderful portable Flipboard magazine can now be featured on the website and be updated with new information.

Easy Flipping!

Those were the days when we made brochures for our launch at a trade show, now all we need is a Flipboard magazine. Life is good!

Manage your marketing funnel strategically, and it will flow more smoothly…and faster. Faster conversion is what enables your company to take on new markets, engage more leads and sell more products.

Here are some strategies guaranteed to boost the velocity of your marketing and sales funnel:

Assemble deeper market intelligence for better targeting.

Finding the proper contacts within each market means your messages get to the right people. You need data to do that. Use every means at your disposal — the internet, social media, third-party databases, etc. – to discover additional contacts for your pool of prospects. Learn as much as you can about them, by studying their interests and their social and buying behaviors.

A more holistic understanding of each marketing persona and, for that matter, each individual prospect, leads to more accurate targeting. And that means attracting top quality leads. Creating customer profiles and target personas also helps you craft messages that are timely and relevant for those targets. They’re more likely to pay attention and respond.

Mine your marketing data to improve lead nurturing.

What’s your average time-in-funnel now? Where are the sticking points? Where are you losing prospects? Finding ways for marketing to address these issues is like opening the valve wider – leads will flow faster through your pipeline.

Study trends and patterns in your analytics, to gain insight and continuously refine your marketing. Better tracking builds stronger engagement, and that supports faster conversion, too.

Build momentum with content and offers.

Engagement simply plays on the time-honored sales technique of getting prospects to say “yes.”  But you have to produce the right content, and present in the right way — format, channel, timing — to the right target to get that positive response. The more worthwhile you make it, the faster they’ll flow through your funnel.

But you have to build relationships before you can close sales. Those in the top and middle of your funnel aren’t sales-ready, and not everyone enters your funnel at the top. Customizing content for each persona and each buying stage influences how prospects respond, and how fast. That’s why segmentation is so important.

Get automated.

Automating your marketing streamlines processes and helps pinpoint the strongest leads, to make the most of your sales team’s time.

Predictive lead scoring identifies the most likely buyers and those most likely to buy soonest. Focusing on the highest quality leads improves conversion rates as well as speed-through-funnel. Automated segmentation enables you to better match content and products to each target, ensuring relevance. Combined, lead scoring and segmentation allow you to precisely target broad campaigns and also to target each persona with specifically-tailored campaigns.

B2B funnels can be notoriously slow-paced, but automation helps you break through to the next level, effectively increasing that velocity. You can focus human effort on the most valuable, sales-ready leads. You can close more deals, sooner. Your marketing will be more productive, and more cost-effective, and you’ll experience faster growth.

Automation also helps build strong, trusting collaboration between marketing and sales teams, who all too often seem to be working at cross-purposes.

Follow up quickly.  

How fast you respond to requests, etc. can cement a budding relationship or kill it. It’s an indication of your company’s commitment to customer service at every step, including after the sale.

Growth is every company’s goal. For that, you need effective marketing. But profitability depends on cost-effective marketing, too. The faster you can move prospects through your sales funnel – to a successful conclusion – the faster your company can grow.

As the role of the marketing department has evolved over the years, marketers are being tasked with more and more responsibility. Not only must we be concerned with advertising and PR responsibilities, but we’re now integral players in sales and customer experience activity. As marketers take on more responsibilities and are spread thinner across organizations, media relations often takes a back seat to other priorities. And when media relations is treated as an afterthought, it can be difficult to stay up to date on the latest best practices, especially in such a rapidly changing landscape. However, common misconceptions and failing to adapt to these changes can negatively impact overall marketing results, as media relations plays an integral role in the success of an overall marketing strategy.

Here are the three most common myths that could be holding your marketing program back from its full potential:

A pipeline of company news and press releases will keep journalists interested in writing about the company. 

• What seems interesting and newsworthy to a company does not always translate to the same level of interest to the press. No matter how much a company positions its products, benefits, differentiators, events or other company-specific activity it’s not likely going to capture the media’s attention beyond a standard news write-up. For the best chance of receiving impactful media coverage, think beyond company news and focus more on validation, thought leadership and supporting data. To increase the odds of achieving good coverage, some of the best company assets and resources to leverage include customer references, third-party experts or partners, research (both internal and external), informative visuals and micro-content, and access to multiple company spokespeople with different areas of expertise.

The biggest media relations success for a company is to get an article in the Wall Street Journal or New York Times.

• During almost every new business presentation or new client kick-off meeting, I ask the new or potential client what the number one priority publication is for placing a story. Most often, the answer is The Wall Street Journal, New York Times or another top-tier business press outlet. When I ask why, there is usually an awkward silence before the usual answer: “Because it’s The Wall Street Journal.” Don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of The Wall Street Journal, and it has its place in a media program. But often, it is not realistic to make this the number one priority, nor does it necessarily bear the results you are looking for – beyond the bragging rights. A more productive approach is to consider the publications that your target audience reads daily. Develop stories that will resonate with the journalist at these publications, gain traction with your core audience and approach business press only when it makes sense based on the story and resources available. Coverage in top-tier business press is nearly always achievable, but it should only be part of a comprehensive media strategy.

Media placements are for awareness only. Results can’t be measured.

• This is a common misconception, even among PR pros. There are a ton of measurement tools available in the market today, but none of them really seem to understand the metrics that matter for media relations. I’ve spent a lot of time manually collecting metrics from disparate systems in order to report the metrics that clients care about. Some go to metrics include audience, circulation or unique monthly visitors for the publication, strategic messages included in the piece, clicks or views, social shares, influencer engagement, leads (MQLs or SQLs), Google Analytics traffic spikes and referrals, etc. I’m so passionate about metrics, and frustrated by tools available, I’ve always joked that I should quit my day job and start my own media relations analysis company. But, luckily now I don’t have to. I recently came across a new media measurement company called SeeDepth, founded by PR veteran Christine Perkett, and it’s the most on-point tool I’ve used so far. It uses an algorithm to score media based on criteria that you can customize depending on media and business priorities. It ranks media outlets by tiers, tracks for strategic messages via keywords, integrates with Google Analytics, calculates social shares and scores each media placement based on a combination of all the criteria. Eventually, the company plans to use the tool to track conversions, as well.

Marketers are often put in a tough spot when it comes to media relations, especially when high-level executives and board members demand to see impactful results. Since media relations is still an art form, not an exact science, it’s up to us to stay in-tune with what journalists want as well as how to accurately account for what’s working and what’s not. Letting go of these three myths is a good start for shaping media programs and educating others about what success looks like when it is achieved.

The Single Most Potent Marketing Tactic of All written by John Jantsch read more at Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

I get asked a simple, pointed question just about everywhere I go. What’s the number one thing I can do to grow my business right now.

Yep, everyone wants one tactic they can employ to massively grow their business.

I do have an answer, of course, but it may not be what you’re expecting.

No the number one tactic for growing a business is more of a process than some way to get more Facebook engagement or some other new, trendy growth hack.

The most potent thing any marketer can do is to create and operate a growth system.

See, no two businesses are ever alike so no prescriptive set of tactics or one size fits all approach will work for everyone.

But that’s the beauty of a system. If constructed correctly it consistently produces the tactics made for the unique fingerprint that is your business.

The system I’ve been evangelizing for some time now consists of four major components. Once in place you only operate and update.

The four system components are as follows:

• Map your marketing foundation
• Explore potential marketing channels
• Create a project catalog
• Execute focused project bets

If you put in the work to build and operate your growth system, you’ll be on your way to consistent, predictable and potentially scalable bliss.

Map your marketing foundation

In my world, a marketing foundation consists of three key elements: Strategy, Journey, and Content.

The strategy element is where you map out the personas of your ideal clients and construct the messaging and positioning for your products and services that will match what these ideal clients care about. You can read more about our approach to strategy here

The journey element consists of understanding how someone is going to move through every aspect of your business. It’s not necessarily about how you want them to move as much as how you guide them based on what they want.

This takes a deep understanding of what they are looking for well before they are looking for you and what they expect in terms of the experience with a company like yours. I’ve used a framework I call The Marketing Hourglass for about a decade to describe how to think about moving your prospects and customers logically through the stages I call know, like, trust, try, but, repeat and refer. You can read more on the Marketing Hourglass here.

Finally, you need to understand how to use content as the voice of your marketing strategy. For many businesses content in the form of blog posts, educational webinars and how to eBooks is the primary way that prospects and customers move through a business on the way to becoming raving fans.

Understanding the forms of content you need for awareness, trust, education, engagement, conversion and even referrals is crucial to success. You can read more about something I call the Total Content System and our approach to editorial content planning here.

Explore potential marketing channels

Once you’ve firmly mapped out and committed to your marketing foundation you can start to explore the various tactics for generating leads and growth.

I believe that there are 16 marketing channels available to us today. (About ½ of which are additions from the last decade or so.)

Now you could argue that there are more or less, or that something should be combined or expanded or that something like SEO isn’t a channel per se at all, but I can make a case for the rational of each on this list and besides that you’ve got to start somewhere.

The real job for any business, depending upon where they are in terms of their growth goals, is to get very, very good at getting clients in just a few of these channels. Trying to master them all is the fastest way to get stuck in the idea of the week rut.

A business just getting going may need to root around in marketing channel test mode to figure out which channels can produce sustainable growth while a more entrenched business may be better served finding ways to cut back and optimize the channels that are already working.

Here are your channels to choose from.

1. Referral Marketing – This includes intentional word of mouth activities, viral tactics as well as intentional referral generation
2. Public Relations – This includes activities aimed at receiving coverage in traditional media outlets
3. Online Advertising – This includes the use of pay-per-click platforms, social networks, display ads and retargeting
4. Offline Advertising – This includes advertising in offline print and broadcast outlets such as magazine, TV and radio
5. Content Marketing – This includes publishing, optimizing and sharing educational content that draws search traffic, links and subscribers
6. Sales Playbooks – This includes the creation of specific actions aimed at mining, generating, nurturing and converting leads
7. Email Marketing – This includes the use of targeted and automated email campaigns based on conversion actions
8. Utility Marketing – This includes the creation of useful tools that stimulate traffic, sharing and brand awareness
9. Influencer Marketing – This includes the practice of building relationships with individuals and outlets that can influence pre-established communities
10. Search Engine Optimization – This includes on page and off page optimization activities aimed at generating organic search engine traffic
11. Partner Marketing – This includes co-marketing activities run in collaboration with strategic marketing partners
12. Social Media Marketing – This includes the act of building engagement on established platforms and networks such Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as targeted industry platforms
13. Online Events – This includes events such as webinars, demonstrations and workshops conducted using online tools
14. Offline Events – This includes events such as workshops, demonstrations, seminars, trade shows, showcases and customer appreciation events
15. Speaking Engagements – This includes the appearance of company representatives in sponsored speaking engagements at events such as industry conferences
16. Community Building – This includes the intentional act of building and facilitating a community around a shared interest or topic related to the organization’s industry

Create a project catalog

Once you analyze your current business channels and start the process of considering new ways to grow, you can begin to create a list of potential projects you plan to test in your channels of choice.

A project is any tactic you want to employ to see if it show potential for profitable growth.

So, for example, in the public relations category you might decide to target small niche publications with stories in an effort to get some press that might lead to coverage in bigger publication or social sites. Or you might consider a publicity stunt or two that could trigger some viral coverage.

Here’s the trick when brainstorming potential channel tactics to try on. First map out the 3-4 biggest objectives for the quarter ahead. Then tie some trackable goals to each objective. From here you should be able to get some focus on tactics that might actually help you achieve some of your stated goals.

So let’s say one of your objectives is to build an online community and one of your goals for doing this is to grow your current subscriber list. Armed with these two ideas you should be able to create a list of potential tactics you might want to bet on to achieve this goal.

Brainstorm an entire catalog of ideas and you may produce a few months worth of hunches focused on your objectives.

From this brainstorming you can probably identify some candidates that would make likely projects to test.

There are many variables that go into determining what projects to test. Look around and see what’s working for others, ask your entire team to weigh in, network your ideas with strategic partners, and even look to competitors for ideas.

If you can tie a new channel to something that’s already working in another channel, you’ll increase the likelihood of success. For example, if sales – even cold calling – is an effective channel right now, imagine how much more effective it might be if you armed the sales team with content marketing, social selling or referral tactics.

Execute focused project bets

Once you identify your high priority project bets it’s time to start testing.

Like all things these days you want to test and fail fast so you can move on and succeed even faster. Don’t wait until you have every Facebook ad variation designed and every call to action match to a targeting goal. If you’ve never run any Facebook ads, just get in there and run one based on what you are trying to do. You’ll know very quickly whether or not it shows any promise and then you can more into full execution.

Here’s the key – and it’s always been the key to successful marketing – spend time before you test to design the project so that you know what you are trying to do and how you are going to measure its success.

So often marketers get a good idea and they run off and try it without any way to know if it worked or not. Like a science project you’ve go to be precise is what you think will happen, how it will happen and how you know if it happened.

You’ve also got to test variables – things like headlines, images, messaging, should all be part of the equation. Running A/B tests of this nature are a snap these days thanks to so many great online tools.

The entire point of the exercise is to identify a couple bets that pay off big so you can double and triple down of those and shelve the others.

When you do this repeatedly you start to find the most potent channels for profit and you can start to play in those few channels like a champ. Ultimately your goal is to simply create and refine projects optimized for your best channels.

The last component of the system is to take the winners and find the best way to document and delegate. If you can operationalize your winning bets you can free up more time to strategize on ways to make new, informed bets.

Keeping a running log of all of your tests, bets, successes and failures is not only a great way to stay focused on what works, it’s a great way to learn how to get better at creating new bets. Sometimes you learn as much from what didn’t work as what did work.

Once you get the system down you simply continue to operate and evolve. I suggest you set aside a day once a quarter to reshape goals and objectives and brainstorm a new list of projects to constantly stay on the move and many, many steps ahead of your competitors.

So you see the single most potent marketing tactic isn’t really a single tactic after all.

Do you know what percent of your addressable market is captured within your database?

Most marketers are unable to answer this question. From what we see, it ranges between 30-45%. So, what if you could increase this number to 70-80% and widen the top of your funnel? You would expose your content and nurture strategies to a greenfield, while very likely increasing MQLs and marketing-attributed revenue.

Success starts with a better data process. Better data greatly increases an organization’s capability to reach its target market.

The Data Gap

So, with data availability greater today than ever before, why are marketers still struggling to reach their audience?

In some cases, organizations rely on internal data processes or information provided by the leads themselves. This process usually leads to incomplete and incorrect information. Just think about the last time you filled out a form. Did you fill out everything accurately?

For more advanced companies that augment their data with third parties, most pin their contact acquisition on a few well-known providers. This is understandable since they provide access to millions of contact records, and the logistics of managing more vendors taxes your internal resources.

Find The Competitive Advantage – The Portfolio Approach

If you are using third-party data providers, you are on the right path.

However, our analysis reveals that their combined reach is typically half of a client’s addressable market. In addition, these contacts likely reside in both yours and your competitor’s database. As a result, it’s clear that the marketer that most effectively identifies and nurtures the other 50% will achieve a competitive advantage.

Given this landscape, we see the best success with companies who adopt a contact management strategy that includes a network of data providers along with web and social media discovery. This portfolio approach not only increases the likelihood of finding the ideal contacts, but also cross validates data points to increase accuracy.

Four Steps To Develop A Data Process

Below are a few steps we recommend based on success we have seen with some of our clients.

Step 1. Define the audience

The process starts with a clear audience definition that not only includes the standards-like job title and firmographics, but also persona information.

Step 2. Inventory your data

With the audience definition established, the next step is to take inventory by running a contact gap analysis. This goal is to gain insight into the contacts you have and the ones missing within your database.

Step 3. Determine top targets

With this insight, architect a contact acquisition strategy to find the most important contacts first.

Step 4. Analyze, rinse, and repeat

With your database in constant flux based on inbound activities and aging data, the gap analysis is re-run frequently. The updated reporting drives continual contact discovery and also supports decision making related to content development and pipeline projections.

In summary, best practice organizations rely on multiple data sets to fuel its marketing. The process is essential to attaining success.

Achieve total data quality with this free complete guide.

Want to know what the fastest and most effective way is to become great at cold calling? It’s a simple two-fold approach I’ll share in this post.

But before we go into that, let’s dispel some widespread myths when it comes to improving your phone sales skills.

None of the following activities will be the silver bullet when it comes to unlocking your cold calling magic:

• reading sales advice books (whether it’s the latest new sales breakthrough everyone raves about or the bestselling classics with hundreds of 5-star Amazon reviews)
• visiting a sales workshop by this great sales guru
• getting a personal sales coach
• reading blog posts (not even all the cold calling posts on the Close.io blog).

All of this is great and has its place. I strongly encourage continuous education. But it's not what will yield the biggest learning ROI for you.

Basically, you can improve your cold calling skills on two levels:  the inner game of sales (how you manage your own emotions, how to get yourself in the right state, how to deal with rejection and setbacks) and  the strategies and tactics you use to navigate the sales process (sales scripts, objection management documents, techniques, etc.)

But ultimately, what will really accelerate your journey to sales mastery is doing these two things:

Make a lot of cold calls

I’m talking hundreds of cold calls per week. If you’re serious about wanting to become great at cold calling, you need to expose your brain to the intense learning that comes with doing high-volume sales calls.

It’s not possible to comfortably cruise your way to the top. You have to go all in and really dedicate yourself to honing this skill for a clearly defined timeframe.

Record your calls

Record your sales calls, and then analyze the recordings. They will be the greatest source for your improvement in sales skills. It’s the most personalized sales coaching resource available to you.

Self-study

When you study one of your own sales call recordings, take notes on what you can improve. Start with the big things - don’t try to improve every detail at once. Instead, focus on one thing that you believe will have the biggest impact on your sales effectiveness, and focus on improving that particular aspect for the next week.

Put up a post-it note on your wall and schedule reminders so that it's constantly on top of your mind and doesn't get lost in your day-to-day activities.

External feedback

Then get someone else to listen to your sales call recordings and ask them for feedback. If it’s an experienced sales pro, that’s great. But that’s not the primary objective here; it’s more about getting another person to give you feedback, whether that person has a sales background or not. There’s no excuse for not doing this: it can be your co-founder, a colleague, your boss, your uncle, your mom, your friend…

Bonus tip: If you’re using our inside sales software to make cold calls, all calls can automatically be recorded and safely stored in the cloud, and you can easily access them whenever you want. You can also add and edit notes for each sales conversation, to make it easy for you to review your takeaways and share it with others on your team or share it as an MP3 with someone else.

Most importantly: share your most difficult and challenging calls, not your best calls.

This isn’t about boosting your ego or making you look great. This isn’t about impressing others. It’s about getting the maximum amount of learning in the minimum amount of time, it’s about discovering massive opportunities for growth. You want to ask them for their critical feedback, and being really open to their views and opinions.

Ideally, you want to schedule this as a recurring event in your calendar: time to review your sales call recordings.

This way you can keep track of your progress and make set yourself up for continuous improvement.

Bottom line: You're your own best sales coach

To succeed in sales, you don't need access to great talent or money to go to the best sales college in the country to become great.

You need to be hungry and humble. Hungry because that will help you push through all the emotional barriers that make people give up the pursuit. Humble because that will help you to see your own flaws and weaknesses and learn from your own mistakes.

Want to take your phone sales skills to the next level? Check this out:

Coffee, tea, and cola are just three substances many of us look to for our daily caffeine fix. But what exactly is happening to our brain and body when we take in this colorless, odorless, tasteless drug?

From our bloodstream to our brain, caffeine affects multiple areas of our body in different ways that ultimately leads to more than just a boost in wake-fullness: Caffeine can also improve our mood, enhance focus, and reduce appetite.

Here's a graphic that shows what caffeine is doing in our bodies hours after consumption. 

Kevin Loria also contributed to this article.

CHECK OUT: What caffeine does to your body and brain

SEE ALSO: What 9 common drugs including caffeine, weed, and booze do to your brain

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 8 horrible things excessive coffee drinking can do to you

It’s time to add Millennial Marketing to the top of your to-do list.

They’re well-educated, tech-savvy, information hungry and ambitious. On the other hand, they can also be impatient, have short attention spans and demand instant gratification. And be careful what you say about them because I’m one of them! Who am I talking about? Millennials.

This is the generation born from 1981 to 1997, so today’s 18-34-year-olds. (You may see information elsewhere with slightly different boundary years. That’s OK. Generations tend to vary a bit according to who is studying them.) They are often also referred to as “Generation Y” because they followed Generation X or “Echo Boomers” because they are the children of the Baby Boomers and are making similar impacts on society as compared to their parents.

What’s so great about this generation? Well, despite the fact that I’m a biased Millennial, myself, I can tell you that this generation packs a powerful punch.

According to research published by LinkedIn about Affluent Millennials, generational subset spends a staggering $2 trillion every year. With their annual income expected to reach $3.4 trillion as a generation by 2018, Millennials will surpass Baby Boomers, who are predicted bring in a generational annual income of $2.8 trillion at that point. In addition to the wealth they will build on their own, in the coming years they will also be on the receiving end of a massive generational shift of approximately $59 trillion in personal wealth.

If that’s not enough motivation to modify your marketing strategy to include Millennials, just think about the way the technology industry has flexed to the preferences and needs of this generation …not to mention the fact that a large part of the tech world is actually run by Millennials.

Face it: Millennials matter. And if they don’t matter to your brand, they might leave you behind.

So first things first. Let’s get to know the Millennial generation a bit better, shall we?

Millennials are Social

This may come as no surprise, but as the first generation that had social media as children and young adults, Millennials are a social set. They grew up connected not only to individuals in their schools and communities, but with connections across the country and, indeed around the world. As a result, Millennials value relationships and connectedness, not only with people but also with brands. They want to feel a real connection with the companies they buy from.

For example, something as seemingly transactional as a financial institution is personal to Millennials. They turn to their social networks for opinions on financial service providers, for investing advice, and for helpful content. And today, according to LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, more than half of Affluent Millennials – that is those with more than $100,000 in investable, non-real estate assets – consider social networks to be a “must have” in the financial decision-making process. That’s 34% more than GenXers who feel the same way.

In fact, 1 in 5 Millennials believes social networks will eventually become the hub of all of their financial information. Isn’t that incredible? While finances have been something so personal and confidential to generations that came before, Millennials believe their social networks will be at the center of all of their financial information in the future. Wow. That’s a shift.

What You Can Do

Get social! Think social media doesn’t work for your business? Think again. While a few years ago, this might have been true, it’s no longer the case. There are so many platforms, channels, media, groups and all around opportunities today that there is sure to be one that works for you.

If you’re a B2C company and Millennials are part of your primary persona, this is a no-brainer, right? But perhaps Millennials aren’t part of your target audience or your company is B2B and you don’t see how marketing to Millennials will work for you.

While Millennials may not be at the top of your list of targeted personas, I guarantee they are an important part of your business:

• If you’re a B2B company, chances are that either your key decision makers or their top influencers are Millennials. And in the coming years, the number of Millennial decision makers is only going to grow.
• If you’re a B2C company, again, while you may not be actively pursuing Millennials to buy your products or services, the odds are good that Millennials help influence your buyer’s purchasing decisions.

Explore the options. There are far too many to list in this post, but here are a few of my favorites:

• LinkedIn is great for just about any B2B company. Publish solid content, contribute to group discussions where your target market spends time and build a strong brand presence to establish credibility, which is important to Millennials.
• Twitter is a nice option for B2B or B2C. Share images, videos, interesting tidbits of information, and links to valuable content.
• Facebook is especially great for B2C companies. Engage with your audience through posts about your team, snapshots of your product in use, links to helpful content, offers of discounts and coupons, etc. Start a conversation and build relationships.
• Pinterest is a great option for brands that have visual content accompanied by actionable information. So whether you’re B2B or B2C, if you have tips, tricks, recipes, ideas, or inspiration, Pinterest could be for you.

Whatever platforms you choose, just remember to keep your posts fresh and that it’s all about your audience, not you.

Millennials are Mobile

In addition to growing up in a socially connected world, Millennials were also raised in a mobile world. Not only people but also information has always been right at their fingertips. Just how much of an impact has this made on Millennials as, well, humans? I’ll let Kit Yarrow, a business professor and chair of the psychology department at Golden Gate University, not to mention author of Gen BuY explain: “Our brains are forming when we’re young, and because they’re so immersed in technology, their brains are literally different than other people’s”.

That’s right, folks. Our brains are actually different. How about that?

Millennials have been wired to seek information. When they have a question, they simply “Google it” or “ask Siri”. This technology has always been there – and not just while sitting at a computer. Nope, they have had the luxury of mobile technology for the vast majority of their lives.

What You Can Do

Be sure your website is mobile friendly. Why? Because 70% of mobile searches lead to action on websites within one hour. That’s huge opportunity you could be missing out on if your website is not optimized for mobile users, particularly Millennials.

And, remember, it’s not just about your website. It’s also critically important that your digital content is mobile friendly, as well. Are your newsletters, emails, infographics and images all optimized for mobile consumption? If not, they truly should be.

Being mobile-friendly isn’t just about being Milliennial-friendly. Optimizing your online presence for mobile is important no matter who you’re trying to reach. Case and point: U.S. Internet users spend 52% of their time online consuming media on mobile applications, according to comScore. What’s more, mobile web and apps combine to represent 60% of all Internet time.

So if your brand isn’t playing nice with mobile, today is a great day to start.

Millennials Prefer Brands that Align Their Personalities

Nearly sixty percent of Millennials buy brands that they feel reflect their styles and personalities. They are self-aware, realizing that the brands they choose say something about who they are, what they value and where they feel they fit within society. In fact, as many as 40% of this generation are willing to pay a premium for brands that reflect the images they wish to convey about themselves.

While this may be true to some extent with other generations, too, Millennials are acutely aware of how often they are seen and where they are representing the brands they choose. As we saw in the previous section, social media plays a big role. It’s not just about the sneakers they wear to school or the kind of car they drive to work. It’s about the social platforms they use, the restaurants and stores where they check in, and the brands they review and mention in their posts. The brand choices of Millennials are more transparent than they have been in the past for older generations.

What You Can Do

Get to know your own brand’s personality as well as you know your best friend’s. Then, share it! Your brand should have a look, feel, tone and personality that is easy for your target audience to identify.

But, just like your mom always told you, don’t try to be something that you’re not. Just be clear about who your brand is, what it stands for and what it represents. People will like your brand for being honest, transparent, and true to itself.

Millennials Are Heavily Influenced by What Other People Think

While this may seem like they are followers and succumb to groupthink, this is not the case. Rather, they seek out peer opinions, product reviews, and user-generated content as part of the decision-making process. 84% of Millennials report that user-generated content on company websites has influences what they buy, compared to 70% of Baby Boomers.

This helps us understand the dramatic increase in demand for YouTube videos, blogs, and review sites like Yelp and Angie’s List. Millennials want to know what other people think about products and services before they buy them. So, companies are providing it. And other companies are developing technology to help those companies provide it. See how that works? The result is an influx of resources to help share and consume peer reviews and personal opinions.

What You Can Do

There are several ways to help show Millennials that your brand is credible and trusted. Here are just a few ideas:

• Post testimonials on your website and social media, particularly if you can provide videos of happy customers.
• Create case stories, best practices and use cases.
• After each sale, gently ask customers to share their experiences on relevant review sites.
• Engage customers on social media and respond to their comments, regardless of whether they are positive or negative, to show that you care.

Just remember not to overdue it! Finding a balance is key here. Offer up your street cred so Millennials can find it, but keep the conversation focused on them.

Millennials Dislike Traditional Marketing

Don’t bother wasting your time or money trying to market to Millennials with traditional marketing tactics. They don’t like them, don’t trust them and won’t respond to them.

Breaking it down a bit further than that broad and blunt statement, 84% of Millennials don’t like or trust traditional advertising. They won’t respond well to a banner ad that says “Save 20% on Jeans”. Instead, they want a native ad tailored specifically to their interests, like “What do your jeans say about you? Everything! Take the quiz to find your perfect style and save 20%.”

Sounds like more work, doesn’t it? Well, it is …sort of. But that’s why programmatic advertising was born and why remarketing campaigns now exist. This demand for personalized marketing is also what spurred rapid adoption of marketing automation technology, like HubSpot, of which I am a huge, huge fan.

And the extra effort is worth it. According to AdWeek, 57% of Millennials will engage with sponsored online content, as long as they find it interesting. So get personal and watch what happens.

What You Can Do

Get creative with new ways to reach Millennials. Try new technologies, like Periscope, and see which ones work best for your brand and your audience. Look into marketing automation (did I mention I love HubSpot?) and see how it can help your marketing reach further and be more effective.

Use technology to customize your marketing to Millennials. Appeal to them on a personal level and show them that you care about their interests, their needs, their challenges – more than you care about their wallets.

If you haven’t already reached out to the Millennial generation, I hope this post helped convince you that the time to start is now. Like, right now. Because by 2017 (that’s just over 16 months away, folks!) Millennials will hold more buying power than any other generation. Begin building relationships today. You (and your brand) won’t regret it.

It’s a commonly held belief that actual transaction conversion takes place at the very end of the buyer’s journey. This approach uses old school pitches, usually incorporated into a multimedia vertical blast aimed at bottom funnel travelers. It is also known that the “online buying” part of the journey represents a very small percentage of the total time spent on “the shopping.” That’s especially true when compared to the awareness, consideration, and affirmation or upper parts of the funnel. So one might ask, why wouldn’t someone with a message that asks the consumer to consider our product or service on qualitative points take advantage of those upper funnel opportunities? Why wouldn’t someone seize the moment to brand to a much larger group of, but still targeted, potential consumers? The answer is that attribution is complicated and few have the patience or expertise. However, branding as a full funnel endeavor, with a goal of nurturing or pre-selling, opens up countless opportunities to differentiate. So, in this writer’s judgment, it is quite a worthwhile effort. The alternative is to inhabit very crowded waters, along with equally aggressive competitors, all selling the same way. I would suggest that relying primarily on this universally practiced, vertical campaign is highly inefficient on a cost per transaction basis.

Another way to look at marketing communications is to consider the total customer lifecycle as an ongoing opportunity to connect, educate, motivate, and yes, sell. It’s a way to begin conversations and even relationships based not only direct interest in our product, service, or company but also to use a shared second interest to get to know them better. This can occur in a less crowded, less competitive, and less confrontational part of their journey. Often, short-term brand expansion in digital space is held to a quantitative measurement and direct attribution to sales growth on a timeline. Many marketing department’s anticipated sales are based on an educated guess or wishful thinking over informed analysis of market breath and receptiveness.

Even before the lower funnel goal can be considered and an expanded brand initiative can begin, we need a baseline of understanding who we are talking to and how best to do it. We also need research into what we are as a brand, what we’d like to become, and what (if anything) has to change to realistically get there. In my previous post, I spoke of the “why” as identification of core values through self-examination. This has to happen before we go to market. We should also consider the implications of not doing it. Social platforms are a great place to start to discover what the market thinks of you, good and bad. Most folks in the “C” suite, however, pass over this truth because it is abstract and complex. But content creation born of surveying, content engagement analytics, and plain old person to person interactions is informative. Additionally, competitive analysis is also being overlooked to a large extent because of the marketing community’s overconfidence and desire for something simple to sell their clients, resulting in too much bottom funnel feeding.

There is no beginning, no end to the journey, just a process of placing signposts along the way.

A well-known motivational speaker and author of the 80’s and 90’s, Zig Ziegler was quoted as saying “you don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” With full funnel branding requiring more preparation, monitoring, and contextual content creation all along the way, a more holistic approach is in order. If you’ve done your homework and know your customer, your competitor, and something about what drives consumer consumption, then it’s time to dive in and engage. Talking to your audience early and often always has a benefit greater than analytics can show. It helps you look at what you’re doing organizationally from their perspective. It promotes understanding more while assuming less.

Once you’ve embraced full-funnel marketing as an ideal way to build brand communication and expansion, you are ready to start “mapping” the journey and beginning to define the moments when your new acquaintances are more receptive. The better we start, the more relevant analytics become to your bottom line, and after a few cycles, they’re just as rewarding.

Customer Lifecycle Mapping is simply another way to describe the mechanics of full-funnel marketing. It considers and addresses a consumer’s state of mind and emotional tendencies as they relate to our product or our organization contextually. Equally important and concurrent with mapping is Customer Experience Management. Managing the mechanics and what we learn along the way helps us maintain brand integrity and customer generated content. In other words, are we doing what we say? From an organizational standpoint, most customer experience management is relegated to vertical tasking, whereas customer experience is not integrated into ongoing brand development, but rather aggregated purely for “C-suite” analysis. This kind of feedback is often function based and doesn’t employ the vision needed or produce the desired result needed to make impactful decisions. That’s too bad, because here is where insight suggests improvements in the organization and the brand that endure.

According to Forrester Research, “customer experience doesn’t drive behavior, customer loyalty does.” Creating or earning loyalty, a key component in longer term relationship building is based on trust, confidence and continuous affirmation of both. If you can do this on an emotional level, you will build a brand that can resonate through the entire funnel and carry over to the next one. To quote well-known poet Maya Angelou; “I learned people will forget what you said, and what you did, but never how you made them feel.” Considering and creating content for how someone should feel about your brand before, during, and over the product life-cycle will always trump the last minute hard sell. Getting people to feel something about a brand is a longer journey, and requires choosing the road less traveled. Full funnel is where marketing innovation will take place.

Have you ever sent a cold email and had a response and have been unsure of how to reply? You aren’t alone. Most people get excited about the possibilities of sending a cold email and quickly implement an outbound prospecting strategy based on sending a cold email. Where the big gap in the system lies is around how you are going to reply to that email. Are you going to reply by email or are you going to pick up the phone? My suggested mechanism for responding to cold email responses is always to pick up the phone. This can be daunting for many people, so let me identify the key steps and show you how easy and non-intimidating it can actually be.

Here’s how you can bridge the gap in the system.

Identify Common Prospect Responses

First of all, take out a piece of paper or go to your whiteboard and write down all of the typical responses that you’ll receive from a cold email. You might think that will take ages, since there are so many responses but there are never more than 10 main ones. These will be unique to your business but include things like:

• Please contact us
• Send more information
• We don’t have a budget
• We already have a similar product
• We don’t see a need

Once you have your responses established you’ll have a known quantity that you can plan for.

Establish Your Sales Response

With those common responses in hand, the next step is to determine your response and your next steps. Whatever your response, make it company-wide, so that all salespeople are approaching it the same way. This ensures consistency and measurability.

Here are some examples of prospect responses and your response:

Please contact me: Set a secondary performance indicator for your prospector that these emails should be called within an hour. You can then monitor your efficiencies.

We already have an existing provider/vendor: Take advantage of the fact that they just replied, and said, hey, we buy what you sell, or we’re in the right category for your ideal prospects. The fact they have an existing vendor does not mean you can’t add value to them. You may actually complement what the other vendor offers. Until you speak to them you just don’t know. That phone call is an opportunity to see if there is a fit with your expertise either now or some time out in the future. If the time is now, you can sell them on a first meeting. If it isn’t right now you can ask for permission to send them ‘authority information’ so that you can be positioned as the logical right choice when there is a time to meet.

Hi John. Thanks very much for your email. I was going to reply, but I thought it made more sense to give you a call. In your email, you said you’re under contract for another 12 months. I’ve got three quick questions for no more than 60 seconds to see if there is a fit some time out in the future. Is that OK?

That call enables you to get into that conversation, ask them great questions, and if there is a valid reason to meet now you can sell them on the value they will get from having that first meeting with you.

I’m not interested: What aren’t they interested in? The same script above can even get you into a value-based sales conversation with these tough prospects. If you have identified them as a strong enough likely fit with your Ideal Prospect Profile, then you owe it to them to help them see if there is a fit with what you do and not stop at the first contact. A sample script for this is:

Hi John. Thanks for your email. I was going to reply, but I thought it made more sense to give you a call. In your email, you said that you weren’t interested RIGHT NOW and that’s OK. I’m curious, I have three questions for about 60 seconds that will help to identify if there’s a fit some time out in the future.

Lastly, clearly stating the time frame to speak (60 seconds) shows that you appreciate their time, and that you won’t take much of it. It’s tough to say no to that, and you’re taking away sales pressure.

Another key aspect of the script are these phrases. Firstly, “you said that you weren’t interested RIGHT NOW”. This takes control of the conversation and identifies that while they have said they aren’t interested now, you haven’t allowed that to mean that they will never be interested, which many timid sales people would do. By expressly saying “some time out in the future” you are relieving any sales pressure built up due to a fear you are going to pitch them.

The Next Step: Discovery Call

Once you have the prospect interested and they are a good fit for you, transition into selling the discovery call. For example:

Well John, because of what you told me, we look like a great fit for the next stage, a discovery call with our account executive, Steve. That call will last around 20 minutes, depending on how many questions you have for Steve, and on that call you will get the following immediate benefits…

Then transition into 3 strong bullet points that sell the value they will get from that call with you.

A phone based system like this is so much simpler to implement than trying to respond to every inbound email with a further email. That causes too many workflows and is a nightmare to track and manage. And besides, this brings far greater results.

Try it out and let me know how it works.

Learn more sales tips with this free ebook.

Aly Song/Reuters

BEIJING, China – China’s stock market fell Monday by its biggest margin in eight years, defying the government’s multibillion-dollar attempt to stop a slide that has wiped out all of the gains of this year’s price boom.

The decline threatened to weigh anew on global markets after last week’s Chinese losses triggered a worldwide selloff.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index fell 8.5 per cent to close at 3,209.91 points, its biggest one-day loss since an 8.8 per cent decline on Feb. 27, 2007. The index is down 38 per cent from its June 12 peak and just under 1 per cent below its closing on Dec. 31, last year’s final trading day.

The slump has inflicted heavy losses on small investors, souring many on stock ownership and threatening to disrupt Communist Party plans to use the market to raise money for reforms of state industry.

“It feels like the end of the world,” said Pan Chong, a social media specialist. He said he invested 50,000 yuan ($7,900) in April, made 40 per cent and then saw the market wipe out those gains.

“The so-called correction will finally become a long-term bear market,” said Pan, 25. “So I’m considering selling all my shares as soon as possible.”

The Chinese benchmark soared more than 150 per cent starting in late 2014 after state media said shares were inexpensive, which led investors to believe Beijing would shore up prices if needed. Urged on by state media, millions of novice investors rushed into the market.

Prices faltered and then plunged after an unrelated change in banking regulations in June led investors to question whether Beijing’s support might be weakening. The market index fell 30 per cent, prompting Beijing to intervene by barring big shareholders from selling and promising state-owned brokerages and pension funds would buy.

Beijing’s initiatives helped to calm markets. But after the state-owned company charged with buying shares to prop up prices announced it would not intervene every day, the Shanghai index fell 11.5 per cent last week.

The declines come at a time when exports, manufacturing and other Chinese industries are weakening, leaving little economic foundation for higher share prices.

The latest fall probably was triggered by poor performance at publicly traded companies, said Guo Tianyong, a professor at the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing.

The government reported last week that profits at state-owned companies contracted by 2.3 per cent in July from a year ago, compared with a 0.1 per cent contraction through June.

“We shouldn’t doubt the government’s ability to rescue the market. If they want, they could push up the stock index to 5,000, but it is not necessary for the government to play an excessive role,” said Guo. “It still would be better for the market itself to play its role.”

Beijing’s surprise Aug. 11 devaluation of its yuan added to investor jitters. They worry the change will lead to money flowing out of China, reducing credit available for trading. The central bank has responded by pumping extra money into credit markets.

The ruling party wants to use the markets to raise money for state companies to reduce debt loads and modernize. The party also wants to encourage stock ownership as a way for families to save for retirement, reducing demand for social spending. But small investors whose holdings have plunged in value say they will no longer buy shares.

Lu Zhen, 29, an employee at a financial firm, said the value of his shares rose by 250,000 yuan ($40,000) over the first half of the year. But he said since the June downturn, he has lost that and an additional 150,000 yuan ($24,000).

“This is definitely the end of a bull market,” Lu said.

___

AP researchers Dong Tongjian and Yu Bing contributed to this report.

The post China’s stock market suffers biggest one-day fall since 2007 appeared first on Macleans.ca.

Marketing continues to change at a rapid pace. Content marketing is changing right before our eyes.

Over the past few years I have been a big support of content marketing. I have seen the value in creating quality content on blog sites as well as continually updating content on company websites.

Today – I believe we are going through another transition with respect to content marketing.

Content in the past was about telling stories, being knowledge experts, curating information. Today, content takes on even more and it will continue to move in a new direction. In the future, content will take on the following:

• Provide “quick” direction to people seeking information – Direct links to specific information
• Need to be better organized on websites. (Content Navigation)
• Need to be updated and look more like news releases, simple, to the point
• Will need to be backed up with media: audio, video, image
• Need to be validated with the author’s name and dated for more reliability
• Need to be written and organized to show value or next steps.

Why is this so important to understand?

The internet is still in its infancy. We are just beginning to scrape the surface of its potential. The mobile experience is showing us that time is of the essence and that people are becoming less patient. They are wanting more of a “now” experience. Who has time to read pages and pages of information when you can ultimately search for a particular piece of information and find it with a few clicks.

Who does it affect?

We are all affected in some way.

Clients have to be the focus here. If a company cannot provide information in the form of results or answers to questions in a timely manner, clients will quickly figure this out and move on to another option.

Client service is a premium. Our service staff need access to information to quickly provide to clients seeking the information. Our systems need to be built with a goal for more real-time experience. It is a constant state of re-engineering processes to make them better an more efficient.

What can be done?

Examine where people are going the most for information on your site. (This can be done with programs like Google Analytics) Look for ways to make this information more easily available to clients. .

Look at incorporating more media into your content.

Focus on issues and topics that are pertinent to our clients. Stop wasting people’s time with jokes or information that is not related to your company.

Finally…

I am really looking at this topic from a number of different perspectives and it really is the key to getting things right going forward. There is a huge movement away from company websites to social media sites like Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and others. People want information quickly and when they go to your site, they need to be able to navigate your site to be able to find this information quickly. Content is good if it is organized in a simple manner and it is easy to access.

I used to believe that content needed to be fresh every day to make a difference. Now, I believe content needs to not only be fresh but organized much better if we hope to bring clients back to our websites. I really think sites like Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram are competitors. It is up to us as marketers to communicate our message on these sites and do a much better job of bringing people to our websites and provide them with an experience that they will want to come back to.

Content marketing is alive and well. It is a matter of refocusing more on the right content to bring people back.

Picture Source: Pixabay

We have all had the experience. You know your firm is a fit for the prospective new client. After all, your skills and experiences align perfectly with their needs. Yet, the prospect awards the engagement to another firm that does not even play in your league.

Or perhaps a client tells you that she referred someone to you but they never call. When you follow-up, you learn they went with a competitor. They never even asked you for a proposal. Frustrating.

What’s going on here anyway?

Why the Best Firm May Not Win

Here are the top reasons why potential clients don’t always select the best firm for the job. Unless you address every issue, you will be losing work that should be yours.

1. The Prospect Diagnoses the Problem in a Different Way

Many problems that prospects encounter have multiple potential solutions. If sales are lagging, a company could hire a sales consultant, implement new sales management software, or hire a recruiter to find new sales talent.

Perhaps your firm offers business intelligence that would enable them to discover and exploit their competitive advantage and win more sales. However, if the company’s leaders do not see business intelligence as a relevant solution, the prospect will not call you.

To solve this, you need to understand the issues facing potential clients and be visible in the marketplace, presenting your perspective and potential solutions. This way, when prospective clients begin to search for solutions to their problems, they are more likely to frame their solution around your capabilities.

2. The Marketplace Does Not Know Your Firm Exists

Once the prospect chooses a possible solution and searches for vendors that can help, will they find you? If you’re lucky, they will ask someone with whom you have worked for a referral. Our study of over 1,300 buyers and sellers of professional services revealed that if they do so, there’s a 69% chance your client will be willing to provide a referral.

But what if they do not ask one of your clients? Over 80% of providers have received a referral from someone who has never worked with their firm. Of those, almost 95% come from people they have never even met.

Where do these non-client referrals come from?

Our recent study on referral marketing revealed that these non-client referrals are based on a firm’s visibility, expertise, and reputation.

Many people make non-client referrals because they have heard someone speak or read a book they wrote. Also, more than half recommend a firm due to their online presence—their blog posts, social media interactions, website, positive reviews and more.

Ask yourself, if a prospect asks people you have not worked with, how likely are they to discover your firm and evidence of your expertise? If your firm isn’t visible in the marketplace, that’s one huge obstacle to winning new business.

3. The Prospect Could Not Find Your Firm

Someone may refer your firm. However, when the prospect searches for your firm online, he or she cannot find you.

Perhaps your company is not active on relevant social networks or does not rank highly within search engine results. Maybe your firm’s name is hard to spell, pronounce, or is just a series of initials.

If the person who refers your firm does so verbally, and prospects do not capture the name correctly, they may move on to a company that is easier to find. And finally, it’s less likely your prospect will find you if you have an unusual web address. Most of these issues can be fixed.

4. The Prospect Ruled Out Your Firm Before Contacting You

Before contacting you, the prospect researches your company and may find a reason to rule you out. In fact, over 50% of decision makers have ruled out firms to which they have been referred before ever talking with them.

There are a variety of reasons why prospects may choose not to contact you. They may not understand how you can help them, feel you are more focused on sales than assisting people, or be unimpressed by your online presence.

Most of these problems are tracable to a poor website. Poorly designed websites and ill crafted messaging will cost you business. The sad part is you will never know it happened.

5. Your Proposal Is Not Convincing

Some firms are given the opportunity to bid, but the proposal they submit fails to win the business.

Think about your prospects. They likely request proposals from three to five firms. And with the rise of team-based decisions, multiple busy associates will probably be reviewing it.

They want to skim through your proposal, be assured of your expertise, and understand quickly why your firm can best assist them in reaching their objectives. It follows that the proposal that is easiest to read and digest is often the one that wins the sale.

Think about proposals you produce. Are they clear, concise and persuasive to someone who does not know you? Do they address potential objections and demonstrate how your firm’s approach will solve them? Readers gravitate towards easy-to-read proposals that answer their questions, not those that are dense and jargon-filled.

A winning proposal is one that clearly differentiates your firm’s solution and addresses likely objections.

6. They Rule Your Firm Out When They Take a Closer Look

Sometimes your prospect needs to winnow down a list of several finalists. To do so, they will check you out in more detail.

Most will look at your website, and any other information they find about your firm in a Google search. They’ll check you out on social media and talk to references. Make sure your firm is on par or exceeds your competitors in all critical areas. You do not want to give prospects reasons to rule you out this close to the finish line.

7. You Failed to Provide Insight or Demonstrate Expertise in Your Interactions.

In a study we conducted with RAIN Group, we discovered that winners sell very differently than runners-up. The top reason that folks fail to win a new client is that they do not educate the prospect and give them a new perspective on how to solve their problem.

When you’re learning about your prospect’s business and developing your proposal, you need to give them a taste of your expertise, thought processes and what it’s like to work with you. By doing so, you also help them to diagnose their issue and shape the solution.

For many people, providing insights and helping with problem-solving before gaining the business goes against the grain. They are concerned about giving away too much of their “secret sauce.”

But expectations are changing.  Experts educate. Savvy leaders recognize you have to give advice and provide insights if you expect to bring new clients into the fold.

Remember, no matter how much education you give, prospects will assume it’s the tip of the iceberg. Sharing your expertise serves as the ultimate proof that your firm is a better choice than your competitors’.

Closing the sale takes more than being the better firm. It’s also about being visible to potential clients and referral sources, getting found, demonstrating your expertise, and having a consistent message in the marketplace that is appealing to your ideal prospects.

CRM started off as a way for salespeople to build better relationships with their customers but in many ways has evolved into “just another tool for reporting to management,” according to the 2015 CRM survey from sales and marketing consultancy ZS. And not a very accurate reporting tool at that.

ZS surveyed 115 respondents, mainly from sales operations and management, whose companies used a variety of CRMs from Salesforce to SAP. 42 percent of respondents thought their CRM provided “high to extremely high” value in opportunity management, 39 percent in sales information look-up and 35 percent for sales forecasting.

But when it comes to actually helping sales staff sell, CRMs are failing miserably. Only 13 percent of respondents thought their CRM provided “high to extremely high” value in customer communication or internal coordination. The figures weren’t much better   for call and meeting planning or for account planning, with just 18 percent and 19 percent  of survey participants reporting high satisfaction, respectively.

Unsurprisingly, 72 percent of survey participants reported that salespeople do not spend enough time with their CRM solution because they “consider the platform as a means for their bosses to monitor them.”

However, there is hope. A new crop of business tools like sales productivity software provider Brisk have been created to help sales staff to fall back in love with their CRM. These tools are the next step in CRM and are capable of suggesting to salespeople what they should do next in order to close more deals. When you are juggling dozens or even hundreds of accounts, it’s impossible to remember the details of each one. Who didn’t reply to your email? What agreements haven’t been signed? Who is about to churn? The next wave of CRM solutions track of all that for you and prompt you when you need to take action.

The other big problem reported in ZS’s survey was data accuracy. Only 24 percent of respondents rated the accuracy of data pertaining to their leads and opportunities—information which could lead to future sales—as “high” or “very high”. 74 percent of respondents said that improving the quality of CRM data and using CRM to support sales and marketing processes was a priority.

The right CRM solution will help both by reminding sales staff when they need to update data and by speeding the process up so they can spend more time selling. The kind of CRM tool that can truly make a difference in today’s selling environment is on that can be customized to the sales process of each company, team and role—making the CRM a true support and not a stick with which to beat the sales team.

The romance between sales and CRM can be rekindled. The key, as in all relationships, is to understand your options and select the right tool to help achieve your organization’s goals.

Some arguments never end. As a Colts fan living in Boston, the one that I run into all the time is whether Peyton Manning is a better quarterback than Tom Brady.

As soon as I mention I grew up in Indiana, my credibility is shot. It doesn’t matter what statistics or logic I bring to the table — anything I say to Patriots fans is perceived as a biased argument and further entrenches them against my viewpoint.

These arguments usually end with a “let’s agree to disagree,” and we move on to other, less volatile subjects. That’s fine in the world of football fandom, but not so much when you’re working in a professional capacity.

Sales Ops constantly faces the challenge of converting entrenched salespeople to new ways of doing things, and their conversion attempts often fail. That’s why the OK Zone is a key concept for Sales Operations.

What Is The “OK Zone”?

The OK Zone is a management concept coined by Jen Overbeck in her article posted in the Harvard Business review. The idea is drawn from research conducted on attitude change by Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland, and is used to explain the dynamic of what happens when you try to change someone’s viewpoint (as illustrated by the Manning-Brady example).

We’re all willing to entertain viewpoints outside of our own, but only within a certain degree of difference from our own opinion on the subject. The range of views we accept outside of our own perspective is our OK Zone. If we are faced with an opinion that falls too far outside that band of acceptance, we not only reject it, but actively undermine it.

At its core, being good at Sales Operations is about being good at change management. The point of the job is to understand the current state of the sales team, identify an ideal state for the sales team, and guide it from the former to the latter.

Most companies are good at figuring out where they stand and what needs to change. Fewer are good at actually making changes happen. This is often the case because managers are prone to making changes with no consideration for their team’s OK Zone.

Using The OK Zone

Identifying your team’s OK Zone is essential to driving change. Salespeople are notorious for being entrenched in their ways, and for torpedoing initiatives they don’t agree with.

To overcome that inertia, Sales Ops has to find the common ground and take incremental steps to widen the OK Zone. From there, you can guide the perspective of the rest of the sales team to include the change you need to make.

Applying the concept of the OK Zone is similar to insight selling, in that the successful implementation of new projects hinges on Sales Ops ability to understand the sales team’s potential for change, and map out a solution that fits within its capacity.

For example, if your Sales Ops team is responsible for implementing a CRM with the end goal of increasing the organization and transparency of sales activity, you should begin by mapping out their current process for organizing leads, contacts, opportunities, and other pertinent information.

From there, you match as much of their current process as possible with features within the CRM. If you start out with that bridge between the old and the new, you’re staying well within the OK Zone, and letting your end users come to grips with the new process on their own terms.

Once your sales team is able to transfer key points of its old workflow into the new one, the OK Zone will be broader, and you can continue pushing for more expansive improvements without fear of pushback.

Using this step by step system, your team will be able to bridge the gap between where you are and where you need to be.