Rocket Readings

Plugging In: The Six Communities with which Your Business Needs to Connect

2012-02-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

Plugging In: The Six Communities with which Your Business Needs to Connect:

As you build, maintain, and manage your online social presence, you need to remember that communities don’t grow themselves. Whether you’re on Twitter, Facebook, or any other platform, you need to cultivate those communities, especially if you’re a small business.

In most cases, that means that you need to reach out and connect with them first. They won’t just show up on your doorstep.

In particular, as you seek to build your following and online communities, there are six main communities with which you need to connect. If you start with them, your job will be easier down the line.

1. Your local community of individuals – On Twitter in particular, you can start out by searching for local people to follow. Once you find some of the key local individuals, see who follows them or who they are following. These may be the people you see around town, and they may or may not be your customers, but perhaps they are potential customers. Or maybe they are connected to potential customers.

2. Your community of existing customers – Find them online. And use your offline presence to let them know you are online. If social media is built on a foundation of word of mouth, then your current customers will be incredibly important to you online. You need to find ways to make all of your customers aware of your online presence. Whether they are local or around the world, remind them to connect with you online.

3. Your local business community – If you are a “local” business, don’t just connect with people. Connect with other businesses. “Like” and follow their business accounts from your business accounts. Connect with the individuals personally. Even if they might be perceived as competitors. When local businesses collaborate, everyone wins.

4. Your larger industry community – If you run a restaurant, connect with other restaurants around the country as well as industry associations, food bloggers, etc. Almost every business category has both formal and informal groups and organizations designed just for them. Connect with them online and learn from them. Share ideas. Learn what works and doesn’t work for your industry peers. No matter how long you’ve been in business or how much of an “expert” you are, you can always learn from others.

5. Your internal community – Don’t forget your employees. I understand that a lot of staff members might not want to connect directly with you on Facebook, but you can create an employee only group on Facebook to enhance internal communications. You can do similar things on Google +. Many businesses struggle with internal communications, especially when they have multiple locations, and staff that works different shifts.

6. Your non-business/industry community – If you meet a plumber out on the town at night, I’m betting he won’t only talk to you about plumbing. If he does, you’ll be headed in the opposite direction pretty darn fast. Connect with other individuals and entities that share your interests. Do you like sports (or a specific sport)? Connect with those folks. Perhaps you’re interested in books, cooking, fashion, or music. In other words, it doesn’t all have to be about your business. Being well-rounded actually will help you and your business in the long run. Your customers aren’t one-dimensional, and you shouldn’t be one-dimensional either.

Have you connected with all of these communities online? You might even be surprised at how many of them overlap!

How to Map Lead Nurturing Content to Each Stage in the Sales Cycle

2012-02-16T12:18:00.001-08:00

How to Map Lead Nurturing Content to Each Stage in the Sales Cycle:

Lead nurturing is a crucial part of your marketing and sales success. Studies show that 50% of leads are qualified but aren't immediately ready to buy something from you [Source: Gleanster Research]. With lead nurturing, however, you can bring those leads through your sales funnel and garner 4-10 times the response rate compared to a regular email blast while doing it [Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report]. To nurture those leads correctly, however, you need to somehow adjust your messaging based on their point in the sales cycle. But how do you do that?

The best lead nurturing campaigns begin with content mapping, a process in which you decide what content is most appropriate for a person to receive at a given time. And to be honest, sometimes it feels like you have to be psychic to nail it. But while a little bit of psychic ability would certainly help, there's actually a structure you can follow to map your content very accurately for your lead nurturing campaigns -- after which you can simply make tweaks on your messaging, email sending frequency, and calls-to-action based on feedback, open rates, click-through rates, and other email marketing metrics. Here's how you can map lead nurturing content to every stage in the buying cycle.

Understanding the Buying Cycle

To understand content mapping for lead nurturing, you need to understand the buying cycle. People have broken it down into many sub-stages to align with their particular business model, but it can universally be boiled down to these three stages:

Awareness: Leads have either become aware of your product or service, or they have become aware that they have a need that must be fulfilled.
Evaluation: Leads are aware that your product or service could fulfill their need, and they are trying to determine whether you are the best fit.
Purchase: Leads are ready to make a purchase.

Content mapping becomes important during these stages because prospects' needs are different depending on which stage in the buying cycle they fall into. David Skok explained the buying cycle well on For Entrepreneurs with a retail scenario. When you're walking around on the weekend and wander into a store with nothing in particular you're looking to buy, you don't want too much attention from a hungry sales person. It's annoying, because you're in the awareness stage. But when you make a beeline for the store because you need to buy a black sweater immediately, you want a sales person to approach you right away so you can find the sweater, purchase it, and get out of there. That's because you're in the purchase stage of the sales cycle.

The same concept applies when someone is interacting with your brand online. If they're just seeing you for the first time, they have different informational needs -- and thus require different content -- than someone who is ready to purchase something from you. Mapping the most appropriate content to each stage in the buying cycle will help you speak to the individual needs of each lead so you're having the right conversation with the right people at the right time.

How Content Mapping Works

Doing content mapping is very specific to each individual business -- you have a different sales cycle, different buyer personas, and different content assets and topics than other businesses -- but the content mapping structure outlined in this section will be transferable to any scenario. Here are the 4 questions you need to ask yourself when content mapping.

1.) What are the logical pathways to take a lead from awareness, to evaluation, to purchase?

Content mapping can be tricky because you have to work backwards. Start by determining the logical pathway a lead would take when navigating through the sales funnel. To do this, you'll need to lay out several scenarios in which leads convert into customers, and trace back which actions they took from their first conversion to close. If you're using HubSpot software, you can take a look at the activity history of leads to see what patterns emerge.

What pages did they visit? In what order? What offers did they convert on? What emails did they click through? Here's an example of what a logical conversion pathway might look like:

Visit company blog >> Convert on ebook call-to-action >> Click through to site on ebook nurturing campaign offer >> Navigate to Product/Service pages >> Click through to site on case study nurture email and download data sheet >> Receive free trial email >> Download free trial >> Receive coupon >> Become a customer

There will be more than one logical conversion pathway, but as you examine how your leads have historically converted into customers, a few pathways will emerge as the most common, the shortest, and the most profitable.

As you're determining these conversion pathways, you may notice that there are pieces of content, calls-to-action, or nurturing campaign emails that you aren't sending out yet, but should be. That's okay! One of the benefits of doing content mapping -- aside from improved content relevancy for your lead nurturing campaigns -- is identifying holes in your content strategy that you can now remedy.

2.) What specific content assets can be deployed along those pathways to help advance leads to the next stage in the buying cycle?

Now that you know the logical pathways a lead might take to convert into a customer, what type of content assets should they receive to nurture them along that path? It seems like the options are endless, but there are actually certain types of content that are more appropriate for certain stages in the sales cycle than others. Reference this table of content asset types that are aligned with their appropriate stage in the sales funnel.

The content assets listed in the 'Awareness' stage are appropriate for that stage of the buying cycle because they help educate your lead -- not on your solution, but on their need. The content assets in the 'Evaluation' stage, however, speak directly to how your company can help solve their needs, bridging the gap between the educational assets and product/service information. The assets in the 'Purchase' stage require more action from the lead -- actions the lead is more likely to take because they're now more educated about their problem and why your company is a good choice for solving it.

You'll notice some content asset types appear in more than one stage of the buying cycle -- webinars, for example. This is due to the content in that content asset type. A webinar from the 'Awareness' stage of the buying cycle would be educational about a general subject matter, while a webinar from the 'Evaluation' stage would be centered around your specific solution.

When assigning content asset types to the touchpoints in your conversion pathway, you should also assign topics to those assets. Those topics will obviously change depending on the nature of your business, but here's an example of how to execute this step correctly based on the conversion pathway defined above:

Visit Unicorn blog >> Convert on Unicorn Hygiene ebook >> Click through to site on ebook nurturing campaign offer "10 Best Tools for Grooming a Unicorn" >> Navigate to Unicorn Accessories product pages >> Click through to site on Glittery Farms Unicorn Grooming Case Study nurture email and download Unicorn Grooming FAQ >> Receive Unicorn Grooming Kit Coupon email >> Redeem coupon and become a customer

Notice how the content asset types move along from 'Awareness' assets -- like an ebook -- to 'Evaluation' assets -- like a case study -- to 'Purchase' assets -- like a coupon. We will examine an example of a real business' content asset types and how they map to a conversion path later in this post as well.

3.) What content assets are you missing?

At this point you might be saying, "That's great, but I don't have all of those content assets at the ready." That's ok. Remember, in addition to knowing when and where to use your content assets, part of content mapping is identifying which content assets you need to create to execute lead nurturing effectively. Once you've created your list of content assets and where they belong on the conversion pathway, perform a content audit to see what assets you already have and which ones you need to create. Then get going with content creation!

4.) How do you need to adjust the messaging in those content assets to align with the persona to whom you're speaking?

If you haven't created buyer personas yet, pause at this step in your content mapping exercise, read this guide to creating buyer personas, and create them. Pay particular attention to the question of how to identify the personas -- if you can't identify them based on their information and behaviors, you can't appropriately target your marketing to them.

For example, a company that sells personal tax software may find that they have two buyer personas -- one that is identified as a professional accountant, the other identified as an individual looking to prepare his or her own taxes. You wouldn't speak to these two audiences the same way, right? That's why it's important to not only create your buyer personas, but ask them to self identify when they become a lead so you can appropriately segment them in your lead nurturing, create content messaged just for them, and map the content appropriately.

If you have created your buyer personas, ask yourself how you need to tweak the messaging in your already existing content assets (and those on your list to create) to speak most appropriately to each persona. Some content assets you may find can exist as they are -- an FAQ about your product or service, for example -- while others may need to be rewritten -- like a case study, perhaps -- to be more easily digestible for two personas who don't quite speak the same language.

Applying Content Mapping to a Real-Life Scenario

Now you know how to map content to each stage in the buying cycle, but let's take it from (unicorn) theory to real life application. HubSpot customer Magic Software successfully moves leads who filled out a form to receive an educational whitepaper -- a top of the funnel offer -- through the 'Awareness' stage of the buying cycle to the 'Purchase' stage with these content asset types. Take a look:

Step 1: Download an educational whitepaper -- this lead is in the 'Awareness' stage and is looking to learn about integrating two pieces of software.

Step 2: Instead of pushing the lead right to the 'Evaluation' stage, this email encourages the lead to review more educational content in their Resource Center about software integration.

Step 3: Now that the lead has spent some time reading educational materials, it's time to move them gently along to the 'Evaluation' stage of the buying cycle by offering some software integration webinars. The lead is still being educated, but webinars are a more time intensive content asset to consume, and indicate a lead's willingness to seriously consider your solution.

Step 4: Still in the 'Evaluation' stage, this email makes the jump from the webinar -- educational but high-commitment content -- to content centered around the solution they offer. Now the lead is ready to read about how a Magic Software product can solve their software integration problem through its product documentation.

Step 5: Finally, this lead moves to the 'Purchase' stage of the buying cycle with high-commitment content. This email asks the lead to sign up for product training -- an offer only a lead seriously considering a purchase would redeem. Because this lead wasn't rushed through the buying cycle, but instead received content appropriate for their level of interest and education, they are in a far better position to turn into a customer.

Have you mapped content to each stage in your sales funnel? Share tips from your experience in the comments!

Image credit: Sudhamshu

Connect with HubSpot:

How To Use Social Media Internally To Build Your Brand And Business

2012-02-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

How To Use Social Media Internally To Build Your Brand And Business:

Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide recently launched this fantastic infographic that does a great job of delineating an overlooked aspect of social media engagement – the benefits of internal social media to a company and its employees.

As readers of my blog know, I’m a huge champion of brand definition and purpose because that enables a company to be more meaningful to its customers lives. But too often brands fail to ensure internal alignment around a purpose, core values or mission, which means customers often hear one thing from a brand but experience another from its employees. Gagen MacDonald and APCO Worldwide do a great job of a teasing out where to start and what to focus on internally to avoid this pitfall.

What stuck me about the first section below if how how executive leadership accounts for employees perception of internal communication. At 75%, it is critical to get leadership buy-off on the need for a social media ecosystem within the company itself. It will not position the brand to be social with its customers but set a powerful example for employees to invest in social media training and engagement themselves.

In the next section, it’s critical to note that a company’s employee base – like its customers – is a media-savvy audience that judges the effectiveness of internal social media. That judgment, in turn, affects the ability of a company to attract top talent as potential employees who know only too well that a successful company must also be a social engaged company.

Finally, I have isolated the top five criteria for effective internal social media as defined by employee. What could be more important to a company that the ability to attract and retain top talent, to collaborate and innovate more effectively, and to generate business referrals. Each has a direct bearing on the ROI of social media and the productivity of a company’s workforce.

Armed with such insights, here are the steps you must take to adopt, integrate and proliferate internal social media to build employee satisfaction and your company’s bottom line.

1. Consolidate C-suite internal social media commitment

2. Establish a clear social media protocol/crisis policy

3. Share this policy with all employees across all divisions

4. Provide employees with organic social media training

5. Create a collaborative, cross-division culture that communicates using social media channels

6. Create a coordinated content calendar across different social media platforms

7. Grant employees social engagement permission and reward their participation

8. Integrate traditional, online, social media efforts to ensure a consistent customer experience

For the full infographic, click here. To follow Gagen MacDonald, click here, and APCO Worldwide here. To see all the results of the 3rd Annual Employee Engagement Study here.

What would you say is the major obstacle to internal social media at your company? What would be the greatest benefit?

The Future of Content Marketing – 6 Differences Between Good and Great [Part 2]

2012-02-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

The Future of Content Marketing – 6 Differences Between Good and Great [Part 2]:

In part one of this series – The History of Content Marketing – we covered how the barriers to entry for brands becoming media companies have fallen, and now the differences are all but gone.

But don’t start the party just yet.

In a recent study from the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, although 90% of all companies employ some form of content marketing, the majority are still struggling with creating content that truly engages their customers and delivers results for the company.

Good to Great Content Marketing

So, what separates the good from the great when it comes to content marketing? Well, that’s not an easy question to answer. That said, through all the research (both quantitative and qualitative), we’ve found six differences that are separating good to great content marketers.

1. The Focused, Educational Content Platform

Great content marketers have developed (some for many years) targeted, educational content portals similar to what media companies have been doing for decades. A best-of-breed example is P&G:

Home Made Simple – targeting “Moms” on the go
Being Girl – targeting adolescent women
Man of the House – targeting husbands and Dads

What is key about these sites is a laser-like targeting of a super niche category. Where most average content marketers fall down is by going to broad with their content focus. A key to P&G’s success is very specific content targeted to a very specific buyer.

2. Opening Up New Content/Media Markets

The best content marketers are helping to shape the story, and the terminology of their respective markets. Citrix launched Workshifting.com years ago as the online answer for those people whose offices are anywhere – the coffee shop, the airport, the home office…anywhere. The site is chock full of amazing stories to help this buyer, and is perfectly aligned with Citrix products like GoToWebinar and GoToMeeting.

The site and company, through the creation and distribution of compelling and relevant content, have defined the content market for themselves, their customers AND the media. So much so, that leading media publications such as BusinessWeek use Citrix’s own terminology of workshifting.

3. The Chief Storyteller

We are seeing more brands embrace the role of the Chief Storyteller or Chief Content Officer within the marketing organization (more here on team workflow).

Content is being created and distributed in multiple silos in an organization, including:

Social Media
Public Relations
Marketing
Email
Mobile
Search

In many of our interviews with marketers, the heads of these departments were unaware of the stories being created and distributed in other silos. This type of content workflow does not set up for a working customer experience, as content often doesn’t align.

Leading organizations are hiring individuals with strong storytelling backgrounds (often journalists and publishers) to help coordinate and fine tune the content marketing process inside and outside the organization. Examples include:

Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, Eloqua
Rob Yoegel, Content Marketing Director, Monetate

4. Leveraging Employees in Content Creation

Best of breed content marketers are looking for ways to engage employees in the content creation process. Probably no better example exists than Boston-based VC firm OpenView Venture Partners.

OpenView has gone from literally no original content creation just a few years back to becoming a content marketing powerhouse by leveraging their expert employees. A full 90% of OpenView employees now blog on a regular basis. That blog is a major part of their content platform – OpenView Labs -built specifically for entrepreneurs looking for early stage funding (their target prospect).

Some of the results of OpenView’s content marketing program include:

Over 10,000 opt-in subscribers in 18 months
850% growth in site traffic
Significantly shorter sales cycle
Direct leads and sales
Over 1,000 pieces of original content, including videos, podcasts and blog articles (OpenView has an in-house studio).

For more, see the full case study on OpenView here.

5. Removing the Brand from the Story

For top of the funnel, attraction-oriented content, stories are shared at a significantly higher rate when the brand is removed from the story. That means a removal of sales pitches entirely from the content to engender trust and credibility. Examples include:

PTC – Creo Launch
Adobe – CMO.com
GE – Ecoimagination
Sherwin Williams – Stir

6. Building a Community by Leveraging Outside Experts

More and more, leading brands are working to dominate a content niche, not necessarily through internal experts, but by leveraging outside industry experts as the majority of their thought leadership content creation. According to CMI research, over 50% of brands outsource some part of the content creation process (rising from 55% to 58% year-over-year). Great content marketing means that leveraging outside content experts is a must.

Examples of influencer and expert community sites include:

This original presentation was given at Online Marketing Summit 2012, and the slides are below. Additional details on this presentation can be found at TopRank Online Marketing, who covered the event.

Good to Great Content Marketing – 6 Differences

View more presentations from Content Marketing Institute

The original post is titled The Future of Content Marketing – 6 Differences Between Good and Great [Part 2] , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .

5 Ways to Get Your Entire Company On Board With Social Media

2012-02-16T11:34:00.000-08:00

5 Ways to Get Your Entire Company On Board With Social Media:

Is everyone supporting social media at your company?

Are you struggling to get the support you need?

And although there are many reasons why social media campaigns fail, far and away one of the biggest reasons for failure is the lack of top-to-bottom “buy-in” from all employees in a company.

In some cases, the CEO thinks the idea is frivolous.
In others, management has their doubts.
And in a large majority of companies, employees have no understanding of what social media is, what it does and how they can play a role in its success.

This, my friends, must change.

The Time for Complete Buy-In Is Now

The time has come for companies big and small to achieve complete social media buy-in from ALL employees.

The days of, “Yeah, we let the marketing department (assuming there is one) handle that stuff and we just do what we do,” must come to a close.

In fact, if I had a dollar for every head of marketing who has approached me in the last few years and said, “Marcus, I just can’t seem to get anyone else in the company to buy into social media and assist me in my efforts,” I’d be a rich man.

So again, to say this is a problem would be an understatement.

Whether it’s an army of 1 or 1,000, when all members of a team share the same vision of success, amazing things can happen. Look no further than the business example of Apple to see exactly what I’m talking about here.

Just as Steve Jobs helped his entire company, plus the world, to catch the Apple vision, so too must businesses small and large look to help their employees have a unified social media vision.

So that’s what this article is all about. We’re going to discuss 5 actions any company, large or small, can take to achieve this social media buy-in. And once we’re done, I can’t wait to hear your further thoughts and ideas below.

5 Ideas for Achieving Complete Social Media Buy-In From All Employees

#1: Someone Must Take the Lead

Every great project calls for a great leader. And if you want your company to dominate in social media, someone is going to have to take the reins.

No, this does not mean all responsibilities fall on one person’s shoulders; rather, the person is a coordinator, a motivator and a filter for all of the company’s core content and social media.

The position we’re talking about here is sometimes referred to as a CCO (chief content officer) or a CMO (chief marketing officer), but when it comes down to it, the name doesn’t matter as much as the activities performed by that person. (Note: Even if your business is a one-man show, you still need to embrace the mentality of a CMO.)

Not too long ago, the position of chief content officer didn't even exist. Today, industry leaders like Ann Handley, CCO of MarketingProfs, are becoming household names.

When it comes to true social media success, one thing is certain—if a company’s social media marketing is left up to chance and the unguided efforts of many, it will undoubtedly fail.

#2: Educate Via an Event

In so many cases, the manner in which a CMO or CCO establishes a social media campaign is incredibly lackluster and ineffective. Here are some examples of what not to do:

Send out a sudden mass email to all company employees asking them to write blog articles.
Notify staff of the company’s new Facebook page and suggest they Like it.

The reason for this is very simple: The majority of company employees, no matter the industry, do not understand the power and potential of social media. Blogs make little sense to them. Search engine optimization and its benefits are completely foreign. YouTube is something their kids do for fun. The list goes on and on.

This is why I strongly suggest that when a company decides to start a serious social media campaign—whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, blogging, video, etc.—that they bring as many staff together as possible for a company “social media summit.”

There is a magic that can occur when a company meets together to fully lay out there social media goals and vision, as everyone can then start off on the same page. Image: iStockphoto

During this summit, the first half of the event is really meant for education. This is where all employees can become familiar with types of social media, the potential power of these platforms, how content marketing works, etc.

Once employees understand how social media can impact the company by increasing sales, revenue and customer satisfaction (thus discovering the “why”), we can now move to phase 2 of this important summit.

#3: Encourage Employee Action

The next step of this summit is to implement an action plan of how each person in the company can make a difference. There are many examples of this, but I’ll just demonstrate one here.

When I taught at a recent social media summit for a company in Michigan, the CMO and I decided content marketing (blogging) would be the main emphasis of their social media marketing efforts. To make this happen, we brainstormed as a group (about 60 people in this case) the common questions received each day from prospects and customers. Within 30 minutes and after much participation and enthusiasm from the entire group, we had well over 100 common questions.

Later on, the CMO turned each one of these questions into the title of a blog post, and assigned each article to different employees, with corresponding due dates for each.

Now that everyone in the company understood the power and importance of content marketing, each accepted his or her role in producing the assigned article. And because there were so many employees who were now willing to take part in this activity, it was easy for this company to produce multiple blog articles a week, all without putting too much burden on the shoulders of the CMO/CCO.

This example is powerful because before the summit, the CMO had been struggling for about a year to get other employees involved with the company’s social media efforts. But now that all were brought together in a manner that not only educated but also involved all parties, the reaction to “We need your help” was completely different.

Talking about social media is one thing, but merging the brain power of everyone in an organization is truly special. Synergy Works. Image: iStockphoto

#4: Create a Company Social Media Newsletter

As with every movement, a great launch like a company social media summit is not enough to sustain the long-term practices necessary for social media success.

For this reason, I strongly urge all chief content and marketing officers to send out a regular newsletter to all employees explaining the results of their social media efforts.

Examples of things to include in this type of newsletter:

Special mentions of excellent blog articles and the employees who wrote them
Increase in the number of website visitors due to social media/blogging efforts
Leads and sales that were a direct result of social media campaigns
Positive customer testimonials/comments referencing blog posts, videos, etc.
Examples of how specific pieces of content led to a sale that otherwise likely would not have occurred
Question and feedback opportunities for the employees

As you can see, the amount of information that can be included in a newsletter like this is significant, but the importance of such a tool cannot be emphasized enough. Constant awareness is key to building long-term momentum with any marketing campaign, and by increasing this awareness, the process of making social media part of a company culture can then become a reality for any business.

Launching your social media campaign is only the beginning, but if everyone is going to work together on this, a newsletter of some type will be imperative going forward to keep everyone sharing the initial vision. Image: iStockphoto

#5: Continue Training and Education

Nothing is developing more rapidly in this world than the Internet and social media. What was yesterday’s MySpace is today’s Facebook, so staying up to date and educated is necessary for long-term success.

Just as the newsletter helps employees to see the fruits of their labors, ongoing education with respect to social media marketing allows for continual improvements, innovations and ideas to come from staff members.

For example, because video marketing is becoming increasingly necessary going forward, it’s a great idea to train all employees in the basics of producing video. Once they have this knowledge and understand how to look for content opportunities, they can then start producing product- and service-related videos that can have a major impact on the company’s brand and web presence. And the more employees who jump in, the greater the results will be.

Just because someone on your staff might not have certain skills today to help with your social media efforts doesn't mean they won't excel in that area at some point with a little bit of guidance and training. Image: iStockphoto

Your Turn

So there are 5 suggestions for helping achieve complete social media buy-in with any organization. This being said, I know there are many other ways by which companies can establish such a social media culture. As always, we’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments section below. Also, if you’ve tried any of the above steps in the past, what has been your experience? What did you do well and what would you have done differently?

What do you think? Jump in, folks. Your thoughts and questions matter. Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

Images from iStockPhoto.

Create a World of Marketing Automation Through Good Content—and Imagination

2012-02-16T10:56:00.000-08:00

Create a World of Marketing Automation Through Good Content—and Imagination:

“The way to get started is to quit thinking and begin doing.” These words of wisdom were spoken by Walt Disney who took his own advice and began building a world out of imagination—Disneyland—in 1955 with only 20 attractions. I think Disney’s advice rings true today for those considering marketing automation. From time to time I speak with marketers who tell me, “We would love to get started but we don’t have enough content.”

If you wait until you have enough content, or the timing is perfect, or your CRM platform is a well-oiled machine, another year will pass and you will have missed another opportunity to enhance your company’s revenue performance. When it comes to content and marketing automation I tell people to consider the following:

Use quality over quantity—You can effectively start your journey into marketing automation with just a few key pieces of content. An industry analyst report, a technical white paper, and a short customer case study are enough to build out a lead nurturing campaign. An investment into a webinar and complementary white paper would give you the opportunity to promote the live event and promote the archived event for months after. If you have minimal resources or budget to create content, record an employee speaker presenting at an event with someone’s personal digital recorder and then post it. Use your imagination. You may have to start by pushing out links to favorable industry articles that mention your products or services. Just make sure the content has value and is not self-promotional.
Repurpose. Repurpose. Repurpose—Think big. Start small. With a just a few pieces of quality content you can make a big impression by promoting the content through Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels. You can use the content as follow up with seminar/webinar registrants—both those who attended and those who did not. Promote links to your content on materials distributed at trade shows, seminars, webinars, directory listings, and more.
Make it engaging—Be sensitive to your prospect’s attention span and schedule and make your content easy to digest and remember. Use videos as a change of pace. No matter the format of your content, the general rule is keep it short, sweet, and to the point.
Know the buyer role—As the amount of content you have grows, try to target the content by specific industry, role, and company size. If you are an international company you may also want to target your content by geography. Of course, if you are just starting out you may not have that luxury. However, pushing out content horizontally through marketing automation is definitely more effective than what you are probably doing today.
Know the buyer stage—As you become more sophisticated with your content distribution you will want to map your content to where the prospect is in the revenue cycle. Educational pieces work well during the early awareness stages. Industry-oriented pieces work well just as prospects start looking for a solution. Solution-oriented and company-focused materials are appropriate for prospects engaged in an active buying cycle.

Getting started is the key. Take small steps and implement in phases. Build on your successes. The wonderful part of getting started with marketing automation—even if you do not have all the content you would like—is that you will show the full impact that your marketing department has on company’s sales leads, opportunities, and revenue. (You may even be able to justify getting more content development dollars or hiring a staff member to write more content quicker than you think.)

While marketing automation is designed to do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, there may be a couple of small challenges to overcome along the way depending on your business processes. That does not mean you should not move forward today.

When Walt Disney opened Disneyland in 1955, more than twice the number of guests showed up due to counterfeit tickets. It was 101 degrees that day. The drinking fountains did not work. The warm asphalt had just been applied that morning and high heels were getting stuck in it. The vendors ran out of food. It was a public relations nightmare. Walt Disney continued to move ahead, adding attractions, fine-tuning processes, and tracking visitor experiences and metrics. Today, Disneyland has the largest cumulative attendance of any theme park in the world—with over 600 million guests since it opened.

What’s your strategy for content and marketing automation? Did you find these tips to be helpful? Please join the conversation in the comments section below.

4 Problems Killing Thought Leadership Marketing

2012-02-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

4 Problems Killing Thought Leadership Marketing:

Chris Koch shared Four Reasons to Hate Thought Leadership earlier this week. He made some great points in his call to end the use of the phrase thought leadership, but ultimately I disagree with his conclusion. We don’t need to stop using the phrase, we need to start using it right.

The problem is thought leadership has become a catchall for any marketing that includes content. Unfortunately, looking back, it isn’t surprising that this happened.

Here are four of the underlying problems that created the situation.

1. Thought Leadership Isn’t Created by Marketing

At the heart of the problem is the idea that you can market your way to thought leadership. The role of marketing is to shine a light on your company’s thought leaders and thought leadership. Marketing can facilitate, organize and amplify. But unless your business is marketing, thought leadership needs to come from your business.

2. Thought Leadership Isn’t a Real Priority

Your potential thought leaders are valuable people in your organization, and everyone wants more of their time. When it comes to getting time, it becomes clear that thought leadership isn’t the real priority.

3. Thought Leadership Is Human

Today, it seems some businesses are so busy humanizing their company or brand that they forget to include real humans. I see logo-ed social media accounts that don’t indicate who is behind it, or blog posts on corporate blogs posted by “admin” or “blogger”.

Notably, in this discussion of thought leadership, all of the example given were individuals, not companies.

4. Thought Leadership Isn’t About You

Marketing organizations are instinctively focused on their product, message and position. Real thought leadership needs to exist on its own, independent of your company and product. Thought leadership and “Product X is the fastest in its class” should never coexist in the same space.

In Summary

Despite the problems marketers have created for thought leadership, it is still valuable. According to Wikipedia, the distinguishing characteristic of a thought leader is

“the recognition from the outside world that the company deeply understands its business, the needs of its customers, and the broader marketplace in which it operates.”

Many other definitions would add a unique and forward-looking element as well.

This is a position that creates differentiation for a company, before getting to any individual product or service. It is not a position every company is able to claim, but for those that are, it continues to have significant potential.

We are slowly killing thought leadership, and it will be our loss if it dies. So let’s keep using the phrase thought leadership, let’s just start using it right.

Your Turn

Should thought leadership stay or go, and why? Share your perspective in comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Super Bowl was a Two-Screen Experience

2012-02-15T12:50:00.000-08:00

Super Bowl was a Two-Screen Experience:

For decades, lots of attention has been devoted to making TV more interactive, but Super Bowl viewers showed Sunday that they already use TV in an interactive way, but with two screens, not one. And that second screen increasingly is a mobile device.

During Super Bowl XLVI, 41 percent of Google searches related to Super Bowl ads were made from mobile devices.

And that behavior is not unusual. A Nielsen poll found that about 45 percent of respondents who own both smartphones and tablets say they routinely multitask while watching television.

Separately, a nationwide poll commissioned by Velti indicated nearly 60 percent of mobile users planned to use their mobile device during this year’s Super Bowl.

The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, also suggested that nearly a third of viewers under the age of 45 would be watching the game with their device in hand, while almost half of all viewers age 18 and older expected to check or use their device up to 10 times during the game.

You might say much television viewing has become a two-screen experience, with complicated implications for content marketing or advertising. The Google data suggests users were prompted to engage more heavily with brands featured in commercial breaks during the Super Bowl. For advertisers spending $3.5 million for each 30-second spot, use of the second screen might be seen as a positive.

The Velti study found that 13 percent of viewers were likely to use their mobile devices during game play, while about 26 percent expected to use them during commercial breaks. So commercial breaks were twice as likely to be the times when users were turning to the second screen.

“Mobile is the second screen that completes the full circle of user engagement, turning advertising into content,” said Krishna Subramanian, Velti chief marketing officer.

That might be true when the content users are looking for on the second screen is related directly to a brand’s ad and message.

On the other hand, users often are multitasking in ways that compete with TV ads for attention. A study by Razorfish and Yahoo found that 38 percent of survey respondents found use of the Internet on a mobile or tablet device an enhancement to the viewing experience while watching TV.

That suggests an opportunity to build more directly on television as a two-screen experience. TV executives with long memories will remember the last 30 years of thinking about interactive TV, when researchers, suppliers and pundits looked for ways to create compelling experiences based on viewer input and response.

As it turns out, users already have voted on how they want to interact, and it involves the Internet and a second screen of some sort, including PCs, notebooks, tablets and smartphones.

The Razorfish study found the top five content categories that seem to encourage multitasking are

Reality shows
News programs
Comedy episodes
Sports events
Food programming

But most advertisers did not actively incorporate social media or overt Web addresses in their TV ads shown during the Super Bowl.

According to an analysis by Altimeter Group, 32 percent of the ads had no references to websites or social media sites, and only Best Buy had an “Act Now” promotion.

Still, the two-screen trend seems well established. TV is no longer a passive experience, but it is now interactive in ways that some might not have foreseen. And content marketers and advertisers need to pay attention to that and adjust.

Football trophy image via Shutterstock.

How to Forecast Ad Revenue

2012-02-15T12:49:00.000-08:00

How to Forecast Ad Revenue:

This is the fifth post in this series on online advertising revenue forecasting which has included thus far:

- Why do you need to reconsider your forecasting models?

- What are the current methods used to forecast advertising revenues?

- What are the required data points, for what period and from which sources, needed for proper advertising revenue forecasting?

- How to forecast your website unique visitors and page views?

I used my forecasting tool for 3 years, constantly keeping it up to date; even though some numbers started varying from month to month where projected and actuals were concerned, when I looked at quarterly or the annual forecast it ended up bang on with the actual yearend figures.

Two posts back (require data points) I spelled out which data points you needed on a monthly basis, going as far back as you could. Here I will explain in detail how to set up your ad revenue forecasting tool. Here again are the data points you’ll need:

- Monthly actual (final and net) sales figure per sales team per website, or a clustered contextually similar bundle of sites.

- Monthly budget objective per sales team per website

For this exercise, I’ve remained with the same website I used to manage as an example. You’ll see I’ve filled in on the horizontal months. They actually start at December 2005, but for the sake of clarity I’ve only shown here 2009 through to the end of 2014. In other words I’ve taken the last three years’ worth of data for forecast the next 2. Ideally, you should try to go as far back as you possibly can, even if it’s only one month here and there – it’ll give you more background on which to rely.

As I’ve stated in my initial post in this series, the websites I used to manage had sales coming in predominantly from 2 sources: a local sales team dedicated to a radio station and its website; and a national sales team that sold every website we managed and a few others. There were other sources, but for this demonstration we’ll keep it to those 2 sources.

Let us begin by plotting monthly actual local sales for as far back as you have the data up to the last completed month. Ignore the “Projected” line for the moment. You might want to add a “Budget” line to compare actual to budget, and eventually projected to budget to see if you’re likely to achieve it or not.

Next you’ll plot national sales the same way.

You’ll add as indicated a sum of both in the Total Sales “actual” line (i.e. =an13+an17). Let us skip the “initial projection of sales” and its index, along with the “Original UV projection,” we’ll come back to that in a minute.

You can click on the image below to see it full size.

Now you can calculate your Local RPMUV (Revenue Per Thousand Unique Viewer) and National RPMVU. Your total will simply be an addition of both of these. To calculate each, you’ll first take your actual local (or national) sales for that month, divided by your actual UV count for that month (divided by one thousand). The formula should look like this: =AN13/(AN3/1000).

You can also calculate your eCPM if you so desire. Here I calculated it only on page views, but you could further add a line in the traffic section of this spreadsheet for total ad impressions if you’d rather look at it that way.

Tracking your average RPMUV

In order to forecast revenue in the future, you’ll need to know the average RPMVU for a given month over the past few years. Looking at the chart above, we want to make this average in cell BX29 for local sales, and BC30 for national sales. In both you want to calculate the average RPMVU for January of every prior year you have data for. The formula should look like this for local, the same for national but on the right row: =average(BL29;AZ29;AN29;AB29;).

Forecasting Future Sales

In order to forecast what your local sales team, and what your national sales teams should achieve in sales performance for a given website, for any given month in the future, you will finally need the two pieces of information which we’ve been constructing until now:

- Forecasted monthly reach (UV) per website

- Average monthly RPMUV per website, per sales team

What we want to start filling in automatically based on our two pieces of collected and averages data starts in cell BX14 for the local sales team and BC18 for the national (again, these could be any two distinct sales teams that can bring in revenue to a particular website – they could be sitting next to each other or be in different markets, it doesn’t matter, but being in different teams with different realities affects each team’s performance enough that you cannot bundle them together). The formula for predicting what your sales team should achieve (if no major unforeseen event occurs) is by multiplying your projected reach (UV) figure for January 2013 in BX3 by your average RPMUV for the month of January up to 2012 in BL29, and so one for every month going forward. The formula should look like this: =BX3*BL29/1000.

Benchmarking your forecasts

I took the habit of benchmarking my forecasts for both reach and sales, up to 3 years out, to see down the road how accurate my initial predictions were vs actual, and how much they varied over time as new monthly actual traffic and sales figures became available. This is how you’ll know this tool works, and how you’ll convince others around you that your predictions are rock-solid.

That’s why you see line 24: Initial Sales Projection; and in line 26: Original UV projection. I recommend that once you’ve done this exercise, as I’ve shown above in image 2, cut & paste as figures (not formulas) your initial sales projections and UV projections for the coming 12 months or fiscal year.

Next add an index of that initial projection against your eventual “actual” figure to see how close you were. The index will rarely be 100%, but should be relatively close to it as an annual average – unless major events occur that you had not anticipated.

I personally went 1 step further. I tallied up in a separate sheet the annual projection next to the date, every time I made changes to this forecasting tool. Explained differently, every month when I added actual sales figures and UV numbers for every website and sales team under my responsibility (like I said before there were 4 distinct revenue sources and 14+ websites), I would in a separate sheet note the date and the new total for that year (summing the forecast for my fiscal period which followed the broadcast calendar). Every month new numbers would swing the annual total for this year, the next and the one after that a little up and down. Needless to say I did not keep those files when I left, but I can assure you that ultimately, the 3-years-out tracking swung up and down quite a bit as all manner of unforeseen events occurred and affected things, but the average remains fairly close to the initial prediction – which to me validated the whole effort.

Do you have a different and equally solid projection model? Please share your thoughts and comments.

This post was previously published on Samuel Parent’s blog on February 14^th, 2012.

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers

2012-02-15T12:48:00.000-08:00

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers:

Chris Sietsema is Social & Digital Operations Lead at Convince & Convert. He also runs a digital agency called Teach to Fish Digital where he provides insights on search, social media, email marketing, and analytics.

Do you remember this trick question from grade school: Which weighs more – 5 lbs of bricks or 5 lbs of feathers? Some of us (self included) were initially fooled by this obvious test of common sense, but as it relates to your content marketing, should you be focused more on building substantial content productions or presenting your audience with a steady array of minute snippets that define your brand and message?

Defining Bricks & Feathers

Bricks are larger content productions such as research reports, events, white papers, video series, mobile apps, etc. They typically require decent budget and time to produce but have the potential to make a larger splash when executed and promoted correctly.

Feathers are comprised of simple text and photo content published via popular social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Less intensive than bricks from a production budget standpoint, feathers are created consistently to maintain an ongoing stream of communication between a brand and its audience.

Deciding Between Bricks & Feathers

The graphic below illustrates the key differences between bricks and feathers for content planning and production. Here’s an more detailed explanation of the attributes you should consider.

Position / Identity

While there are varying degrees of thought leadership, larger productions allow you to position your brand as a reliable resource for superb ideas. By continuously sharing small bites of information, you would likely be considered a news maker by the audience. Both positions are attractive in their own right, but businesses which have the capacity to create and share short, informative posts on a daily basis are more inclined to go the feathers route. Those brands that simply cannot provide entertaining, enlightening and/or educational content on a daily basis (e.g. law firms, insurance companies, some medical facilities, etc.) should focus more on building bricks for the purpose of conveying their value to prospects and influencers.

Content Life Span

Video series, graphic illustrations and even research reports have a greater chance of becoming evergreen compared to your everyday tweets and Facebook posts.

SEO Potential

One key reason to consider incorporating more bricks into your content mix is their propensity to attract high quality and relevant links, a “must have” for any organization focused on improving activity from natural search. To a lesser degree feathers can be utilized more as a social signal or as a link to key content on your website/blog. If shared by key influencers, shorter posts can have a noticeable impact.

Required Resources

Simple posts merely demand the attention of a dedicated community manager to create and measure impact. Bricks, on the other hand, are typically more involved. Due to the various skills required to produce an event, a podcast, a high quality infographic or a mobile application, you could potentially include creative, technical and other marketing resources in your development process.

Opportunity Cost

One potential issue with bricks is that there is really no way to predict what will resonate. Your organization may have research to support that there is a demand for a specific piece of content within a particular medium. However, there are no guarantees that your bricks will generate interest, links, traffic, leads, sales, etc. Thanks to the time and resources needed to create bricks, there is a much higher opportunity cost when compared to feathers.

Primary Metrics

Success for feathers is often gauged by how many audience members saw a posts and, more importantly, how many of those people actually took some action (i.e. clicked or shared). In addition to those important metrics, you may find other crucial means for reporting the impact of bricks such as downloads of content, number of event attendees, leads collected in exchange for access to content and so on.

Best of Both Worlds?

Does your organization (or do your clients) produce both bricks and feathers? How do you determine what kinds of content to produce? What methods do you utilize to manage production and promotion of all that you create?

Does Your B2B Marketing Content Address Cause?

2012-02-15T12:46:00.001-08:00

Does Your B2B Marketing Content Address Cause?:

How deep does your marketing content dive into the problems and priorities your B2B prospects are facing? In B2B marketing, we talk a lot about addressing problems, but quite often we don’t talk about what that really means or how to truly help our prospects solve the systemic issues that cause the problems in the first place.

This post is inspired by the following point in a list of reasons about why managers struggle on Leadership Now blog. This is reason #9:

They Fix Problems, Not Causes. Unless the manager fixes the cause of the problems they encounter, valuable time will be spent fixing the same problem over and over again.

How often do you think about why a problem exists for your prospects? As marketers we need to look beyond the obvious and get to the root of the issue to elevate the value our content provides. That’s when we start to become interesting to our prospects — when we invite them to think.

I love blog posts about people who are representative of my client’s prospects. Posts about managers and leadership are really good sources of information to help you help them by gaining a bit of insight to things they may be struggling with or how they view opportunities.

This particular insight can help us begin to consider the potential causes behind the problems that prospects say they want to fix.

Here’s an example:

If your prospect says he wants to improve team productivity and collaboration, why might that be an issue? Some possible causes may include:

Did the company grow too fast without the infrastructure in place to support it?
Did the company expand via mergers or acquisitions and is trying to mesh cultures?
Is the company’s culture old school but the manager is trying to force the adoption of new trends?
Was there insufficient onboarding to drive adoption of the last solution he tried?
Is IT not responsive to resolving issues with the system reported by users?

Given whatever you determine might be the cause of the issue your prospect is trying to resolve, can you see opportunities to create content that helps them get to the root cause rather than just buying another bandaid?

I can see you reading this and thinking “Hey, how would I know which cause to focus on because I don’t market to one prospect at a time!”

The trick to this is to figure out which are the most likely scenarios and create content that addresses those. Theoretically, in the scenario above, each of those causes may exist for some percentage of your prospects. Think about it this way, if you can validate that customers have addressed specific root causes and salespeople tell you similar stories, you know that content designed around the cause will be on target for some prospects.

Monitor who spends time with which “cause” content and continue nurturing them appropriately with extension pieces. There’s always more than one angle to any story. Use as many as you think are relevant. It also makes sense to have salespeople as what’s behind the issue in their follow-up and share those insights with marketing as part of the validation process.

When marketers consider how they set up the problem-to-solution stories they share to build a buyer experience, they must also consider the longevity of customer lifecycles. After all, if the cause of the issue is addressed during the implementation of your solution, it’s less likely to happen again. And that means higher customer satisfaction and adds to the value derived from each customer for your company.

Are you thinking beyond the surface of the problem when you design your content marketing programs?

The 17 R's of Savvy Mobile Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

2012-02-15T12:46:00.000-08:00

The 17 R's of Savvy Mobile Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]:

Do you know what the top three Google searches are for mobile marketing? The first is “mobile marketing,” and the second is “mobile media.” But the third most popular Google search about mobile marketing is “What is mobile marketing?”

Data like that suggests that businesspeople are still trying to wrap their heads around this growing and evolving industry. If people are still asking what mobile marketing is, then they’re probably also struggling with how to use it to drive leads for their business.

With that in mind, we’ve written this blog post and created an infographic called The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing. It’s based on a chapter from Go Mobile, the best-selling mobile marketing book in America written by HubSpot VP Marketing Jeanne Hopkins and Jamie Turner, a HubSpot customer and founder of the 60 Second Marketer.

The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing, which we elaborate on below, should help you ease your way into the world of mobile and show you some best practices for using mobile marketing to generate leads for your business. As always, feel free to embed the infographic on your own blog or website.

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The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing

1) Review your web analytics to determine what percent of your visitors are using mobile devices to access your website. A simple way to check this is to use Google Analytics, which provides data on whether your visitors are coming in from a desktop or a mobile device. If you’re a retail location, your mobile visits may account for up to 50% of your total traffic. If you’re a traditional B2B company, your mobile visits may be closer to 15%. Either way, tracking mobile visits vs. desktop visits can give you insights into how your prospects are finding information about your products or services.

2) Relevant messages are a critical part of mobile marketing. A great way to keep them relevant is to ask people who opt-in for mobile marketing messages to indicate their interests when signing up. For example, if your company is taking part in a trade show, you might encourage people to sign up for a free giveaway by scanning a QR code at your booth. When they scan the code and opt-in, you can ask them to indicate their business interests, which will ensure that future messages to them stay relevant and meaningful.

3) Request feedback from your subscribers on how they perceive your mobile marketing campaigns. This can be done through regular email, or via a mobile survey subscribers can answer via their smartphone. If you’re requesting feedback via smartphone, keep questions short and closed-ended. Questions like “Can you rate our customer service on a scale from 1 to 5?” are great. But open-ended questions such as “Can you explain your most recent customer service experience in the form below?” won’t be thumb-friendly and should be avoided.

4) Recruit customers and prospects that are receptive to your mobile marketing campaigns. If your target market is between the ages of 14 and 45, the odds are they’re smartphone-savvy and would be likely to connect via a mobile marketing campaign. But if your target market is under the age of 13 or over the age of 65, mobile marketing may not be your best option since mobile usage is lower for those segments.

5) Registering for your mobile marketing programs should be easy, so keep forms extremely short. Forms that are thumb-friendly will get better results than forms that are longer and more in-depth. As a side note, even if your forms are short, your privacy statement shouldn’t be. Prospects and customers will want to know how their information is being used, so be sure to provide an easy way to read the fine print.

6) Rate the usefulness of your campaigns to your subscribers on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most helpful. By doing so, you’ll be able to track the percentage of your campaigns that provide high value. Why is this important? When someone provides your business permission to reach them via their mobile device, they’ve given you a very personal invitation. (Think about how many people keep their mobile phones by their beds, and this will all make sense.) Therefore, your mobile marketing messages should provide something of genuine value. In other words, be sure to send them more 10s than you send them 1s.

7) Region or location-centric messages can be very valuable to your customers – particularly if the subscribers are encouraged to visit a location for a special promotion. SUBWAY sandwiches in the U.K., for example, sponsored an opt-in SMS campaign where customers received special offers via text when they walked by SUBWAY locations. Similar location-based campaigns have been run on the B2B side of the equation, most notably at trade shows where location-based banner ads were deployed to people participating in the event. When you deploy mobile marketing messages that acknowledge the recipient’s specific location, you’ll generate a higher conversion rate. Ultimately, that results in a better ROI.

8) Reminders about time-sensitive information or tasks are another great use of mobile marketing messages. Doctors and dentists are using SMS to send appointment reminders to patients. And TV networks have run mobile ads that allow people to set up reminders on their mobile calendars about program schedules.

9) Respect the frequency of mobile message use. One study by CTIA.org indicated that text messages are read within 4 minutes of receipt compared to 48 hours for an email message. Since people read some mobile messages immediately, the wear-out factor is higher than with other forms of marketing. Keep that in mind when deploying your mobile marketing messages – too many messages will result in a high unsubscribe rate.

10) Return important notifications to keep customers updated on the status of their engagement with your company. “Your order is being shipped” and “Here is your tracking number” are two helpful messages that customers would like to receive once they’ve opted in to receive messages from you via mobile. Always include a reminder that says, “Click here to opt-out of future messages like these.” Providing that kind of flexibility builds trust with prospects and customers.

11) Respond to “Reply” texts quickly. Text messages from prospects and customers are just as important as a phone call or an email. Unfortunately, they’re often overlooked or fall through the cracks. Be sure to have systems in place that prevent this from happening since there are very few things that will frustrate a customer as much as being ignored.

12) Record and document any issues or feedback concerns, then act on those concerns in a timely manner. Sometimes this may mean a change in the campaign strategy or it may simply mean a change in tactics. Either way, by keeping track of feedback and concerns, you’ll be able to adjust your campaign and improve your results over time.

13) Responsible campaigns and programs will encourage customers to look for the next notification. Design your campaigns to be brief yet tantalizing for your target groups. A successful mobile marketing campaign provides something of value with the promise of additional value for people who stay engaged. That’s why mobile apps like Foursquare and SCVNGR often provide extra bonuses for people who “check in” more than once.

14) Referral campaigns can be a great way to gain new subscribers and customers. One way to do this is to run a mobile banner ad campaign that, when clicked, sends an email or text message to the mobile user’s friends. By providing this “forward to a friend” feature, you’ll get more bang for your buck and improve the ROI of your mobile marketing program.

15) Rely on good systems and software that not only deploy your mobile marketing messages reliably, but also measure and provide statistics about campaign performance. The old saying “Garbage in, garbage out” is as true in mobile as it is in other forms of marketing. The more reliable the data that goes in, the more reliable the results that come out.

16) Reality is that mobile marketing is new, and therefore not many companies have fully adopted a mobile marketing strategy for their business clients. While the vast majority of companies have plans to launch mobile marketing campaigns in 2012, up until recently, most companies didn’t even have a plan in place. Have patience knowing that this is a growing segment – and the growth is definitely accelerating.

17) Rapid adaptation to new trends and techniques in mobile marketing must be incorporated into your plan's strategy. If a mobile campaign is not working, or if there is a better way to implement a program, don’t be afraid to change your plans. Also, the world of mobile users often expect there to be frequent changes – so set routine changes and improvements as part of your strategy.

There are so many changes happening in mobile marketing today that it’s hard to keep up, but that shouldn’t discourage you from diving right in. The fact is, your consumers are using mobile almost every hour of every day, so shouldn’t you use it, too? Let us know your thoughts on what’s working for you in mobile marketing – the HubSpot community would love to learn from your experiences!

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The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

2012-02-15T12:45:00.001-08:00

The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing:

Congratulations! If you’ve already realized the importance of building a business presence on the social media, you’re right on track.

However, don’t picture the task ahead as a matter of throwing mud pies at the wall and hoping they’ll stick. Nor should you assume that it’s all about setting up accounts at multiple social media channels to simply use as outlet for your promotional material.

In the physical world, as in social media, there are rules and even if they are often unwritten they are still altogether important. By failing to acknowledge such principles, you will undermine your efforts and bring about your own gradual demise.

That’s why we must urge you to be attentive not to commit the seven deadly sins of social media marketing; and if you’re not quite sure what that means, this article will keep you in the loop.

Sloth

Going nowhere fast

The most common way that most newcomers to social media fail to get worthwhile results is by failing to take proper action. There’s no point in setting up social media channels unless you plan to use them diligently to convey your messages and build your audience.

This is something you should do gradually; dedicate 30-60 minutes each day to this task and you will be on the right path.

Should you allow procrastination and laziness to get in the way of your social media engagement, don’t be surprised if nothing good comes out of it.

Gluttony

Too much, too soon

Another extremely common way to fail at building a reputable social media presence is when people attempt to be instantly omnipresent.

You set up your social media channels, and get utterly obsessed about using them, to the point it starts diverting your attention from other responsibilities.

Saturating your platforms with content and updates is unhealthy and will dilute the quality of your posts. Careful planning and pacing of your social media output are essential practices when building a healthy community for social media marketing.

You should know that peaceful persistence trumps sporadic agitation in terms of building a positive reputation. Try to favor the former, and resist the temptation of over-doing it.

Greed

A synonym for egomania

There’s a fine line between letting people know who you are and getting on people nerves because you’re excessively self-centered. If all your interventions across the social media tend to focus on yourself, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Resist the temptation of using the social media as a self-promotional tool; that should be a natural end to your efforts, rather than an artificial beginning.

Wrath

The internet is full of traps and trolls

Understand that social media users come with all temperaments and tolerance levels. Some people are nice and easy-going, some are fanatical and annoying; most are somewhere in between.

Fail to realize this and you’ll routinely lose your temper and let anyone get on your nerves. This also means that you’ll lose credibility to your potential audience who catch sight of your tantrums.

Be courteous and patient while using social media. Don’t engage with people who are obviously just looking for an outlet to their frustrations.

Envy

The grass is always greener

There’s nothing wrong with a little envy, provided it makes you work harder. There’s everything wrong with envy, if all it does is source negativity and rudeness.

If you spend more time criticizing people who are better known than you, rather than building a positive impression on your own, make no mistake: people will be able to tell that you’re actually jealous, and they will look at you as a really small person.

Stay focused at building your own popularity, rather than obsessively attacking others who have already succeeded at building their own.

Lust

Humping the legs of the bigger boys

Another good way to make a fool of yourself in social media involves stalking opinion makers and agents with large audiences, then compulsively praising them and going all the way down to licking their figurative boots, hoping they’ll somehow reciprocate your subservience.

This kind of attitude will not sit well with the people that matter, and instead will project a really poor, negative image of you.

There’s no problem with occasionally expressing your admiration about someone, provided it’s genuine; but if all you do is praise others, you’ll never have anyone look up to you.

Pride

It comes before a fall

So you always act like you know what you’re talking about, even when you don’t? Do you never admit you were wrong, even when you happened to be? Do you make a point of always showing off your wits and brilliance?

If so, we’re sorry to let you know that people are probably starting to look at you wrong. Nobody likes a smarty-pants, even if the person tends to be relevant in their interventions.

Humility is a great quality that will open many doors for you during your social media endeavors. Arrogance and pride are sure-fire ways to raise conflict, rather than instill order.

Does that help you put things in perspective? If you realize you’ve been getting caught up in some of the cardinal sins of social media marketing, that’s great news! Because it means you can now start threading a temperate path, armed with that newfound awareness.

If you liked what you read here, there’s plenty more on the Brandwatch blog and at the Slices Of Life blog, where you can find upbeat and informative articles about positive living.

Author: Pedro Cardoso, writer at Slices Of Life, has created a helpful guide on the perils of social media marketing.

Sometimes “No Sale” is the Best Deal

2012-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

Sometimes “No Sale” is the Best Deal:

Cash flow is the lifeline of every small business and generating consistent sales month after month is an ongoing challenge for most small businesses. Many owners struggle with ups and downs and peaks and valleys which makes it difficult to create a consistent cash flow.

As a result, they often accept deals that they shouldn’t.

A few years ago I was working with the owner of a specialty retail store and during one conversation she mentioned that she had one customer who always compared her prices to a competitor in the same mall. She went on to tell me that she always matched the competitor’s price even when it meant she sold the product at cost.

She was convinced that eventually her customer would pay full price because of the service she offered. Unfortunately, she was grossly mistaken.

You see, she had actually conditioned her customer to never pay full price because he always got the product at the lower price. The owner justified her actions by saying that she would rather get the sale at cost than have her customer go to the competitor.

This is not an uncommon mindset among small business owners.

They are so eager to capture any and every sale that they sometimes fail to think of the implications.

In the case of the store owner, she actually lost money if her overhead costs were factored into the equation. She really should have summoned up the courage to say to her price-focused customer, “I’m sorry but I can’t match that price” and let the customer buy the product from competitor because he (the customer) was actually costing her money. Since that customer kept returning to her store I suspect that he would have full price if she had stood her ground.

I have also talked to small business owners who offer a significant price break simply to “get into” a particular company. What they don’t realize is that this behavior sets the tone for future sales and negotiations.

During a sales training workshop I conducted, a participant told me that his company had finally landed a major account—one that he had been courting for the better part of a year. I knew of the account’s reputation of grinding people for the absolute lowest price and asked him if it was worth it. He shrugged and gave me a wry smile as he said, “We’ll see.”

Here’s my perspective…

If a particular sale does not make good business sense, you should probably turn it down or walk away.

Sometimes it makes sense to accept a deal with thin margins but—and this is a big one—your decision must be very strategic in nature.

If the long-term impact of accepting a low-profit deal will have a positive impact on your overall sales and/or growth, then it makes sense to accept or move forward with it. However, if the outcome is unclear, vague or uncertain, then you need to give it serious thought.

This approach is easy…at least conceptually. However, it can be extremely difficult to apply in the real world especially if you are in the middle of a dry spell or sales slump. I know from personal experience that your ability to walk away from a low-profit sale is extremely difficult when sales are tight.

That’s why I stress to my clients the importance of keeping a full sales pipeline. The more sales opportunities you have in front of you, the less likely you will feel compelled to accept deal that doesn’t make good business sense.

It’s tempting to get the dollars in the bank but if that deal ends up costing you money, you will end up in worse shape. In the long run, if you close a sale but don’t make any money from it, your cash flow will suffer.

Before you agree to a hefty discount in order to capture a sale consider if it makes more sense to walk away and say, “No thanks.” Sometimes, saying, “No sale” is the best deal for you and your business.

How Clorox used content marketing to help me fix a toilet

2012-02-15T12:41:00.000-08:00

How Clorox used content marketing to help me fix a toilet:

At 2 o’clock this morning, Clorox helped me fix a running toilet – and in doing so provided a brilliant lesson on how to build a connected brand through useful and visible content marketing.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of running water – a panic-inducing moment as any homeowner can attest. Fortunately I discovered a most mundane but maddening problem: a bathroom toilet that would not stop running.

Unfortunately I am possibly the most incompetent homeowner in the western suburbs of Chicago. I consider loading the dishwasher properly a major achievement in home maintenance. But at two in the morning, so long as I was wide awake, I decided to see if I could get the toilet fixed. And by God, I succeeded! The process was shockingly easy:

1. I Googled “Toilet won’t stop running.”

2. I clicked on the link that appeared at the top of the page: “How to Stop a Running Toilet” on the DIY Network.

3. Since I’m completely incompetent, I did exactly as I was instructed and left nothing to personal improvisation. The site had me onboard at Step 1, “Watch an Overview Video.” The concisely edited video, “brought to you by Clorox,” gave me some ways to diagnose the potential causes of a running toilet within 60 seconds. (In my case, the culprit was a faulty float connection, which I was able to fix easily.)

Within 60 seconds, Clorox built a connected brand with me by being useful. Instead of telling me how great Clorox is – something I did not care to hear at two o’clock in the morning – Clorox built goodwill by sponsoring content that I needed at the right time and place. When I watched the video, I was focused on stopping a problem that was keeping me awake. I found exactly what I needed, and Clorox got what it wanted, which was two brand impressions (the “sponsored by Clorox” messages that appear twice — unobtrusively — in the video voice-over).

And, importantly, Clorox was visible: the video appeared at the top of my search engine results page. Like many multi-tasking and easily distracted consumers, I lacked the energy to do an extensive search. Had the DIY page been buried inside the search results, I might have overlooked information that I needed.

Being useful and visible are two of the five tenets of brand connectedness espoused by iCrossing (the five tenets are as follows: being useful, usable, desirable, visible, and engaging, as discussed in a major iCrossing report, Building a Connected Brand). By helping a consumer in need, Clorox demonstrates how connectedness in action helped me return to a good night’s sleep in the process.

— David Deal, vice president of marketing, iCrossing

How to Create Smarter Content Using Semantic Keyword Research

2012-02-15T12:39:00.000-08:00

How to Create Smarter Content Using Semantic Keyword Research:

Ever hear two people arguing and then someone dismisses their differences like this: “Well, that’s just semantics”?

What the person means by that is the difference boils down to “just” a difference in the meaning of the words. In other words, the meaning of a word isn’t all that important.

Really?

For serious SEO professionals (and marketers), the specific shades of meaning of a word can make a world of difference. That’s why modern search engine optimization has gone beyond basic keyword research into synonym creation, semantic search optimization, and further into semantic themes.

It might sound a bit complicated, but it isn’t really. So let’s explore — what does semantic keyword research mean for your online marketing efforts?

Here’s a short guide to help you create content that attracts links, builds page authority, and ultimately rises in the search rankings by using semantic-themed keyword research.

Let’s start at the beginning

What does the word semantics mean?

The dictionary defines semantics as:

Semantics is about how somebody or something interprets a particular word.

From a search perspective, users have a very clear goal in mind when they search using a specific word.

Imagine someone searched using the word “lemon.” Do they mean the fruit? The tree? A car? The color?

We don’t know.

Hopefully, they’ll expand their search query to something like “How to avoid buying a lemon.” Even in that case, it’s not absolutely clear if they mean the fruit, tree or car. We’ve eliminated the color, but that’s it.

This is where semantic search comes in. Search engines have developed complex algorithms that allow them to understand that the best way to interpret this term is “how to avoid buying a lemon car” … in other words, a car that’s defective or of poor quality.

That’s something most 6th graders can understand, which is the highest level of intelligence for search engines, and you should understand it that way, too.

How to create “core” keywords

The work of effective semantic keyword research begins with defining your core term/s.

This is basic SEO stuff, but let’s not breeze over it — we want to build a solid foundation for the following two levels.

Using our example above, “how to avoid buying a lemon,” we would develop a list of core keywords and phrases that were relevant to that search. Just using the Google Keyword tool, I came up with this:

Notice how closely the keyword phrases are tied to our intended meaning? This means that Google recognizes the typical meaning of the phrase. There isn’t much deviation — no one is trying to avoid buying the yellow citrus fruit when they type that phrase in.

So our core keywords could look like this:

“avoid buying bad car”
“prevent buying bad car”
“avoid purchasing defective automobile”

The variation of the core words run between “avoid,” “buying,” “bad,” and “car.” We’ll dump those into what I’ll call our “core basket bucket.”

How to create “supporting” keywords

As you build this semantic theme, your next step is into the circle outside of your core terms. These are your supporting keywords, the ones you sprinkle into your content, meta sets, and headers.

For the phrase “avoid buying a lemon,” the supporting keywords would look like this:

“buying from a used dealer”
“battery life”
“good alternator”
“fan belt condition”
“dead battery”
“alternator died”
“broken fan belt”
“engine oil leak”
“mechanic checkup”

Do you see the feeling you are trying to create with these supporting terms?

You’re developing a piece of content that not only explains what can happen when you buy a car from a used dealer, but also some related topics, like how it feels when the car breaks down, and a list of things to look for when buying.

You are being instructive and practical. And the content naturally addresses the problem in its entirety — you’re not glossing over the topic.

And we’re not finished yet …

How to create “stemming” keywords

Now it’s time to step into the outermost circle of our keyword research, with keyword phrases that emphasize issues not directly related to the search. But because we are trying to predict the search, we need to think about these things.

Don’t forget that the search engine is trying to do the same thing.

For example, why is the user typing in “avoid buying a lemon”? The most obvious answer is they are a buyer and they are thinking about buying from a used car dealer or someone who is selling a car personally.

Of course, you can create two pieces of content that address both of those possibilities. But which one will the search engines deliver to the user on the SERPs (search engine results pages)?

It’s hard to know, but it’s probably going to be the most comprehensive, most authoritative piece … even if your user doesn’t need all the information. That means you need to write comprehensive content … which is where the “stemming” keywords come in.

These keywords are building a larger picture behind “avoid buying a lemon.” They’re getting to the real question the searcher is trying to answer.

Here’s what I mean:

“consumer used car rights”
“consumer law”
“used car buying rights”
“used car law”
“consumer protection agencies”

At stake here is what the user can expect his or her legal rights are, and actions they can take if they do buy a lemon and it dies.

That’s the underlying theme.

What to do with these keywords

Notice that you haven’t written any content at this point … you’ve just built three buckets of keywords.

From those buckets, you can create a rough outline. In fact, let’s build two:

How to Avoid Buying a Lemon from a Used Car Dealer

Definition of a lemon
Definition of a used car dealer
Things to inspect on a used car
When a lemon dies
Your legal rights
Who to approach and how

How to Avoid Buying a Lemon from a Private Seller

Definition of a lemon
Definition of a used car dealer
Things to inspect on a used car
When a lemon dies
Your legal rights
Who to approach and how

Keep in mind: the content within each section will have to vary to avoid duplicate content issues, and to work well for the human readers who are always your primary focus.

You will receive greater relevance weight and authority when you define terms absolutely, the way a Wikipedia or Dictionary.com does.

In addition, this research will be useful when it comes to building links to the site.

When will the authority and links come?

It is very difficult to predict for certain whether a page will become authoritative on a topic, and attract high-quality links. But, like forecasting weather, you can study the elements behind successful pages. And unlike the weather, you can apply those elements to your own work and improve your chances for a good ranking.

Here’s what we know: great keyword research alone won’t do the trick.

It’s a great start — and can help you build content architecture that leads to authoritative pages — but it’s not a silver bullet.

So here are the things you can control:

The core, supporting, and stemming keyword collections
The content architecture of the page
The comprehensiveness of that content
The usefulness and readability of that content
The promotion of that content
The measurement of users’ reaction to the content
The adjustment of the content based on user reactions

Of course what’s out of your control is other people’s reaction. Will they view it as authoritative? Will they find your writing compelling? Will they link to it? You create the best-possible content to try to influence those factors, but ultimately they lie outside your hands.

Follow the advice I’ve laid out here, however, and you will have a better chance of influencing reader reaction in a positive way, ultimately getting search engines to recognize your content as a relevant and significant contribution to the web.

Don’t forget to write for humans first

All of this sounds a bit technical. But after you’ve done your keyword prep, when you finally sit down to write, be sure you’re writing in a natural way that doesn’t smack of spam.

When done properly, SEO copywriting should never sound robotic or stiff.

Write for humans first, then gently tweak for optimization. Get in the habit of reading each article aloud to make sure your keywords are included in a natural, reader-friendly way, and read sites like Copyblogger for pointers on writing voice and other elements of high-quality writing.

Your final step is to read your content to another person and get their reaction. If they think it sounds spammy or awkward, rewrite it. Nothing will flush your work down the drain faster than a spammy article. It pays to get it right.

What do you think of this semantic-based approach to building authoritative web pages? Let us know in the comments …

About the Author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics and an SEO consultant. He also blogs at Quick Sprout.

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How Clinton Managed Tens of Thousands of Contacts

2012-02-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

How Clinton Managed Tens of Thousands of Contacts:

Relationships matter. A lot. World leaders probably understand this better than anyone, and it’s fascinating to learn how people in power have handled it. Check out how Bill Clinton created a systemized approach to make sure he remembered and kept in touch with the tens of thousands of people he met:

“Clinton had built up an amazing contact network, but all the essential information about his political supporters was found in handwritten notes on thousands of loose slips of paper and three-by-five index cards that he kept in shoe boxes. Wright put all this data into a computer. The dedicated computer room in the campaign headquarters near the Capitol ran around the clock, churning out Glad-to-Meet-You letters, fundraising solicitations, special letters for first time supporters, for teachers, for the elderly… No other politician in Arkansas had anything comparable. The computer became the extension of Clinton’s tireless personality…” - In search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

So what exactly was on these cards?

“Each card recorded a piece of his history and reflected his relentless campaign style. On the top corner was the county where the subject of the card lived, or, if the name was from out of state, the era in which that person came into Clinton’s life: Georgetown, Oxford, Yale, McGovern campaign. Running down the left-hand side of the card were dates, starting with the first time Clinton had met the person and every important contact they had had since. In the middle were names, telephone numbers, addresses, sometimes contribution amounts. Another row of dates noted when that person had received a letter from Clinton or his aides known as a GTMY: for Glad to Meet You.” - First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton

Amazing. And even more amazing is that now this secret to success, a robust organizer for relational capital, is available for everyone. Mingly is designed to be like your own dedicated assistant, constantly monitoring your network and reminding you when it’s time to get in touch, so you can build relationships with people who can help you be your best.

How do you keep in touch with your growing network?

3 Ways to Use Pinterest For Marketing Research

2012-02-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

3 Ways to Use Pinterest For Marketing Research:

Barely over 1 month into 2012 and folks around the web have been dubbing Pinterest as this year’s social media site to watch. This propelled by the sudden growth in users and talk of how businesses have seen considerable referral traffic from the site. Brands like Whole Foods, Land’s End and Etsy have set up profiles and amassed tens of thousands of followers across their pin boards and profiles. Even our very own Jason Falls has been sharing his thoughts on Pinterest’s marketing potential.

A quick overview for those new to the site, Pinterest is essentially a virtual cork board where you post images from all over the web. The images are “pinned” and organized into collections called “boards” which you name based on themes, topics, or just about anything you want.

For instance, I’ve created a a board for my favorite iPhone & iPad apps linking to the apps in the iTunes App store. Also, as someone who likes to frequently cook (and eat) I created a board for dishes I want to cook and inspirational ways to present food. Each pin links to the original web site where it was originally published so I can possibly backtrack and find out how to make that great recipe I found or others who follow me on Pinterest can discover some new iPhone apps I’ve pinned.

Pinterest users can also do much of the standard stuff such as “like”, “repin” or comment on any image they find. Additionally, one of the ways Pinterest is different than other social networks in the way that users can follow individual boards that interest them instead of being forced to follow a user and everything they share. That allows folks who prefer to follow interests instead of a particular person an opportunity to do so.

That said, I’d like to share a few ways you might use Pinterest from a different angle for some quick and dirty research.

Discover What Are People Pinning from Your Web Site

When clicked, every image on Pinterest displays corresponding information like comments, “likes,” other images in the same board and more. The info I find interesting is the area on each pin that shows what other pins came from a specific web domain. Take a look here for instance. You can see all images pinnned from socialmedaiexplorer.com from all users on Pinterest. You can see right off the bat that people enjoy the infographics here on the site. Most popular after the infographics is an image of Jason’s recently published book. Remember, each of these images could have been pinned from any page on socialmediaexplorer.com. Pinterest conveniently collects them all in one place for you.

Want to try it on your site? Type the following into your browser and replace “yourdomain.com” with your own web site: http://pinterest.com/source/”yourdomain.com”. You’ll likely find out something interesting about what visitors to your web site find visually interesting to them.

Let’s look at another example with the folks at FastMac: http://pinterest.com/source/fastmac.com/. Here we can see, out of all the products that Fastmac sells, 99% of people have pinned images related to their USB wall socket. Not only an image of the product itself, but the actual ad image on the product page.

This by itself is insightful, but let’s take it a step further.

Understanding Customer Perception

It’s been said that your brand is not what you say it is, but what your customers say it is. That said, understanding customer perception is important. Pinterest can give you a little insight into that by simply taking a look at the name of the boards that users have pinned content from your web site. In the case of Fastmac, you can see board names like “Products I love…”, “I Want”, “Geeky”, “Home Decor”, “Brilliant”, “For the Home”, and “My Future Home”. If only a few images have been pinned from your web site then this might not be enough for you to care about, but with hundreds or even thousands of pins it has more meaning. Additionally, by clicking each board name you will be able to see what other images that user has found worth of shuffling into “I Want” or “Products I love…” and how many other users are following each of these boards. Similar to the common Twitter metric, the number of board followers could be counted towards the “reach” of any content shared in that specific board.

Again, let’s dive a little further shall we?

Capturing Descriptions, Comments & Board Names

Being able to take a look at what folks have pinned from your web site is one thing, but might it be helpful to capture it to cull through later? There is a quick way to capture all of the board names, pin descriptions, user comments, likes and repins all into one document. First bring up all images pinned from your web site as described previously. Now scroll to the bottom of the page. When you hit the bottom of the page Pinterest automatically loads up any additional images. Keep scrolling until no more images load. Next, hit “control + a” on your keyboard (“command + a” for Mac users) to “select all” . You should now see everything selected on the page. Open up a blank Word document and hit “control+v” to paste everything into the document. Depending on how many images there are it might take a few seconds for it all to paste. Unfortunately the images are not captured, but all of the other information including links to the boards and user profiles, will be in your document. You can also paste into an Excel spreadsheet. It doesn’t look pretty, but you can use it to review later.

The Wrap

Beyond this there is still more you can do to dig a little deeper to get to know some potential customers and even competitors more. You might take a closer look at the users who seem to be getting the most repins or likes on the images they share. What else are they into? Have they added more social links to their Pinterest profile so you can connect with them on Twitter or elsewhere as well? What might you find out if you looked up what people were sharing from your competitor’s web site?

On a side note, I have recently launched a digital marketing podcast called the SoLoMo Show. In our next episode we will be discussing more about Pinterest and its prospects as a marketing channel. Want to be a part of the conversation? Then leave us a voicemail with your thoughts on Pinterest at (415) 633-6123 or tweet us. We might include it in the show. Also, feel free to check out my Pinterest profile here. Lastly, feel free to share your thoughts here in the comments. Were these tips helpful? is Pinterest a contender or just a fad? Share your thoughts.

4 Ways to Win the Deal When You Don’t Have the Lowest Price

2012-02-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

4 Ways to Win the Deal When You Don’t Have the Lowest Price:

Some companies and salespeople feel like they can’t compete with their competitors because of their pricing. But just because you know you’re not the lowest price around doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to win the deal and it also doesn’t mean that pricing is all that your prospects can be swayed to buy with. Read on for some tips to help you position your company as the better choice — even if you’re not the lowest priced choice.

1. Demonstrate Value

Things can have major selling points based more on perception of the brand rather than based on pricing alone. Demonstrating your value will help people see that your offering is a better choice. There are various ways to demonstrate this, including:

Warranty and Guarantees. People may be willing to pay a bit more for your product because the warranty is superior to that of your competitors. And if you’re offering something with a guarantee, this also helps to minimize risk in their eyes.
Quality and Superiority. If your product or service becomes well known for being better than that of your competitors, you’ll get more clients this way. A good way to demonstrate this is via customer testimonials.
Appealing to the customer’s wants and needs. If you’re selling in person, you can find out what’s most important to the client and sell based on that need. If you’re selling online, you can do this in your copywriting. Appeal to their wants and needs. By working hard at appealing to their wants and needs and illustrating that you can meet them, pricing becomes secondary to most people.
Show return on investment. If your product or service will substantially benefit the prospective customer in some way, illustrate this. Show them the math and the pricing can become much less of a factor than before because it plants the seed that that the purchase won’t be a cost as much as it will be an investment in future ROI.

2. Customer Service

There are times when customer experience is much more important than pricing, especially if a prospective customer has had a bad buying experience with your niche in the past. If you do customer service really well, you’ll have not only a better chance of getting customers through word of mouth referrals and building a positive reputation but you’ll have a better chance of having people come back as well. Make sure you work to show them why you’re the ideal choice. (Tip: don’t just blurt facts and tell them, take the time to actually show them)

3. Set the Right Price

Some business models have more room for more profit margin. Some do not. If you’re trying to achieve huge margins when the nature of your business is a volume business and most of your competitors are charging people way less for the exact same thing, you probably won’t be able to pull off that higher pricing. Make sure you know your niche and know your competition and this will help you ensure you’re setting pricing in a competitive but profitable way. If you’re in a position to charge more, by all means, make more money, but be reasonable about it and you’ll probably do well.

4. Know Your Customer

There are times when you might want to lower your margin to win a deal. There are times when you won’t have to or where it won’t make sense to. It’s important to get to know the customers and the prospects you have so that you can set the right pricing structure to help you win and retain that customer’s business. If you’re not using a CRM tool to help you keep track of vital information, it’s wise to implement one.

Replacing “Authentic” in Social Media

2012-02-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

Replacing “Authentic” in Social Media:

Authentic. You can’t turn around in the social media echo chamber without bumping into this word. The problem is, beyond the social media land of unicorns, authentic isn’t relevant.

As I explored in Don’t Be Authentic: Real Social Media Marketing Advice on SpinSucks, we don’t really want to see authentic in social media. It is an idealized view that for most organizations is as unrealistic as it is attractive. (Aaron Wagner makes some great comments about this in the discussion here on Social Media Today as well).

Authentic is the wrong objective. What is the right one?

Be Believable

The advice to be authentic has been distorted along the way. What is important is how your audience sees you. It does not matter if that image is you with no changes or a carefully refined version of you.

1. Believable is Audience Focused Authentic creates a conflict. On one hand, you are advised to develop personas and a deep understanding of your audience in order to create an effective social media program. On the other, you are advised to be authentic to who you are. The problem is, authentic focuses on you when you need to be focused on your audience.

Believable solves this conflict. Being believable in social media allows you to deliver value, through education, entertainment or function, based on the personas and audience insight you have developed.

2. Believable Requires Good Social Media Behavior If you say one thing and do another, you are not believable. Being believable requires being true to what you say you are. It requires identifying a well rounded image you will project and never veering from it.

3. Belieavable Encourages Personality Today, brands need to engage, not broadcast. Personality creates more memorable conversation, and brands are no different. Being believable requires having a personality (or even lack of one!) that is infused throughout everything you do.

Be Believable

Being believable is about how your connections see you. Believable focuses us on why authentic mattered while acknowledging authenticity often isn’t desirable (if you haven’t yet, read Don’t Be Authentic: Real Social Media Marketing Advice now).

I would offer believable as the word Augie Ray means in his post about Chrysler, Fiat and the Brand Value of Authenticity. Augie doesn’t know if Marshall drives a Chrysler, but he believes it could be true.

This is not about authentic, it is about believable. Chrysler was believable, Fiat was just a thin marketing veneer.

Is Authentic Worth Anything?

There are hints of your authentic business everywhere, and when you deviate too far, you are no longer believable. But as Chrysler did, you can shape the image you project as long as it remains believable.

It’s time to move past authentic and the misdirection it provides and realize social media and modern marketing are about being believable.

Parting Thoughts

Always remember, social media audiences are empowered and can be ruthless in their applcation of power. Being believable means living what you say you are. Slip up and your audience will call you out. Slip up twice and they may never come back.

Your Turn

Do you agree, is it time to replace authentic with believable? Share your thoughts in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake).

Don’t Worry: Content Marketing Can’t Kill Social Media

2012-02-14T10:37:00.001-08:00

Don’t Worry: Content Marketing Can’t Kill Social Media:

Last week Michael Brenner, Senior Director at SAP and co-founder of Business2Community, released the blog “Will Content Marketing Kill Social Media?” If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to take the time to do so. It is a well-written piece on how content marketing is changing the B2B marketing landscape. There is a flood of comments on the post and some really great dialogue.

So will content marketing kill social media?

Here’s my take – No.

Social media won’t be killed by content marketing. I think the two really go hand in hand. To me, content marketing is all about providing relevant, consistent and valuable content for your target audiences to support and educate them. Simply put. Content marketing is present through the entire buying and sales cycle. It is in the form of videos, infographics, articles, and newsletters throughout the early stages and case studies, interactive demos, whitepapers, and data sheets help guide buyers through the later stages of the process. And to me, social media is a channel that companies can use in order to better communicate and engage with their prospects and customers. And content can be a great way to engage with a community. It gives B2B companies the opportunity to show some personality and have a little fun while doing so.

Ardath Albee chimed in and brought an excellent point to the table:

Instead of ‘content marketing will destroy social media’ how about ‘noise and selfishness will destroy social media?’”

I’d like to echo her sentiment. While social media can be an effective channel for communication, it should be left at just that. Lay off the purely self-serving posts and try to always add value rather than simply broadcasting. A great way to monitor your social outposts would be to apply Andrew Davis’s 4-1-1 rule (for every one self-serving tweet/post/update, share four new pieces of content and one re-share).

Now, what about editorial and advertising?

Brenner also asked a few questions about editorial and advertising. In general, I think the lines are really blurred for two reasons:

It is clear that editorial has changed because of the growing popularity of social media and content marketing. Since we are bombarded with thousands of promotional messages day in and day out, it is clear to see why companies and brands are experimenting with new media in order to reach a target audience. We even practice this at OpenView and I know that our portfolio companies do as well. We specifically target certain print and online publications to republish our content to extend our reach and boost awareness. One site that I have been monitoring in particular has seemingly changed to only sponsored guest content, and I imagine it is a way to earn the ever-fading advertising dollar. And it makes sense, for better or for worse.
On one hand, there is an influx of content marketing in marketplace, and many companies and brands are viewing themselves as publishers now. So the traditional publishers now have a new set of competitors that they may have never really expected.

So, let me know what you think!

Romance Your Readership, Not Your Traffic

2012-02-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Romance Your Readership, Not Your Traffic:

Valentine’s day… a day dedicated to that person/those people in your life that are the most dear to you. If you’re anything like me though, most of your day (or at least until you get home this evening) will be spent thinking about a different group of people…the ones that visit your website. However if you’re thinking about traffic or visitors then your thoughts are misplaced: you need to be thinking about your readership.

What’s the difference between traffic and readership?

TRAFFIC is the amount of people that are attracted to your website for one reason or another. They might stumble across a link to your blog, have a quick read but generally don’t tend to stick around and won’t necessarily return. Traffic is measured very simply by the number of people that visit your site.

READERSHIP is the amount of people that are attracted to your website and decide ‘hey this is a pretty cool place to hang out’. They might comment on your content and are more likely to return to your website in the future. Readership metrics include: length of time visitors spend on your site, number of page views, number of subscriptions, number of shares, comments etc

Why is readership more valuable than traffic?

The bottom line is that readership is more likely to generate leads than traffic. An audience that is listening to what you have to say and coming back to your website time and time again perceives your brand as an industry authority and one which can genuinely help them. Your readership will share your content, building your audience for you: they become pro-active brand ambassadors in contrast to the very passive nature of traffic.

So how do you romance your readership?

In short, you need to provide people with:

a reason to stick around
a reason to come back

For this, you need:

to publish a fresh supply of high quality, shareable content (such as news feeds)
to facilitate conversation

When someone visits your website, you need to give them a reason to interact with your content: it needs to educate, add value and entertain, inspiring them to share it or leave a comment. Once they’re engaged, you should encourage the conversation instead of just letting it die with a two second ‘thanks for the comment’ reply. At the end of their visit, you want them to leave with a valuable takeaway which helps them to solve a particular problem and inspires them to come back again. Don’t leave it there though, give the conversation a chance to flourish on other channels by connecting on social media or commenting on their blog.

Sound like hard work?

Well, it absolutely is. You not only need to create the content in the first place (that’s a job in itself!) but you need to put the hours in afterwards to make sure that your content is working hard for you and actually converting your traffic into readership. At the end of the day, whether it’s your Valentine or your online audience, if you don’t put the work in, don’t expect them to either.

Would be great to hear your views below…

Savvy Toolkit - How to Build a Business Presence on LinkedIn via @hubspot

2012-02-14T10:32:00.000-08:00

Savvy Toolkit - How to Build a Business Presence on LinkedIn via @hubspot:

I am guilty as many people are of neglecting LinkedIn. Its lack of back and forth and snarky cartoons make it my 3rd favorite social media platform. Whereas Facebook and Twitter live on my desktop, iPad and phone poor little LinkedIn only gets pulled up when I actually "need" information! It is the reference desk of social media.

The thing about LinkedIn is, because it lacks videos of monkey's sneezing and rants about the short short dress your sister-in-law wore to Christmas Eve mass, it gets more credibility than Facebook and Twitter with your boss and other business professionals. Once known only as the place where job seekers and the disgruntled went to begin mining for a future job search LinkedIn has become the Who's Who of the Corporate world. The never ending on-line contact list indexed by company name and title! Your company needs to be on that list or you risk getting scooped by the competition who is doing it bigger and better.

The folks at Hubspot have crowd-sourced an eBook on How to Build a Powerful Business Presence on LinkedIn. It does require registration to download but its 55 pages of actionable content you will find well worth giving up your email address for!

The Secret History of Pinterest — REVEALED!

2012-02-14T10:26:00.000-08:00

The Secret History of Pinterest — REVEALED!:

Do you feel like you woke up a week ago and Pinterest had taken over the world? I read on Twitter (so it is true, of course) that Pinterest is now bigger than Google, will be running for President of the United States, and is recording an album of Justin Bieber cover songs.

The meteoric success of Pinterest has shocked everyone.

Except me.

I have it all figured out. You see, Pinterest makes perfect sense if you just look at the natural evolution of social media …

THE GOLDEN AGE OF BLOGGING: 2005-2009

When blogging first caught on, people actually wrote things. There was a post, comments, debate, and dialogue. But then something happened. Blogging went mainstream and became so popular that soon there were thousands and thousands of blogs. Even plumbing companies had blogs (a sub-genre known as clog blogs). What to do? Where to go? We needed something to help us consume more of these blogs quickly. So that led to …

THE GREAT ERA OF LISTICLES: 2009-2010

Numbered lists! That’s the answer! Bite-sized morsels of information like “The 10 Worst Blogging Mistakes” and “The Five Biggest LinkedIn Tips!” Bloggers learned how to dumb-down the content by counting it down! Putting a number in a headline was the key to RT Nirvana. But the information density continued to get progressively worse as companies of all sizes got in on the content marketing game. Now what do we do to communicate to people who have less and less time to read our lists? I know! We’ll make our blog posts into a picture called an infographic! This led to a strategy where companies and bloggers could communicate with EVEN LESS CONTENT!

INFOGRAPHICS A-GO-GO: 2010 – 2011

A typical well-researched Infographic

Well if people won’t even read our listicles any more, let’s turn our content into a colorful illustration. It’s kind of like using cartoons to tell your stories. Let’s not make people read. Let’s just SHOW them what they need to know. And if we don’t have the data, we’ll just make it up. Only 4.6 percent of social media users ever check a fact any way. And yes, I just made that up. See how easy that was? But soon, the web was FLOODED with infographics. We needed another breakthrough — an innovation that would be even less challenging to over-taxed web users. Let’s just cut out the information! We’ll simply show people photographs of stuff!

PINTEREST, THE NATURAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL MEDIA – 2012

Pretty pictures! Woot! And MORE pretty pictures! Let’s face it, that’s all we can really handle these days, right? We’re just too busy to read, think, or process an idea. Just show us a picture of a cute dog or a wedding dress dammit. Of course … It all makes perfect sense. Pinterest is truly a reflection of our society, and a natural evolution of a need to create and distribute information that takes less and less time and attention.

Where will this all lead? In my mind it can only go to …

MONDRIAN — THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL SHARING – 2013

So we have moved down the line from meaningful, debate-worthy blog posts to pictures of crafts and puppies. Where can we go from here? I think the painter Piet Mondrian had it right. When he and other painters moved their craft into a new level of simplistic abstraction, all they had left was lines and primary colors. So I predict that the next big thing will be a social platform I dub “Mondrian” (maybe I need to delete a vowel to be cool – Mndrian?) which will consist solely of colors, lines, and occasional grunts, which will replace the too-complicated “like” button.

So there you have it. The history of Pinterest and the future of social media in five paragraphs. Hope it wasn’t too much to read? 8-)

The Lead-Nurturing Payoff for the Tech Industry

2012-02-13T17:02:00.000-08:00

The Lead-Nurturing Payoff for the Tech Industry:

Lead nurturing can give tech marketers a seat at the revenue table. This report, compliments of Marketo, by independent research firm, Forrester Research, Inc., discusses how lead nurturing can help technology companies connect with their customers earlier in the buying process and stay connected throughout the buying cycle.

Download the research report to discover how to:

Expand your vision for lead nurturing
Use lead nurturing to improve marketing and sales alignment
Automate the processes of lead origination and nurturing

This must-read report will ensure you are able to build a robust lead-nurturing program that delivers more sales leads, shorter sales cycles, higher close rates, and larger deal sizes. Download the new Forrester research report today.

Is your mobile user experience fit for purpose?

2012-02-13T16:56:00.000-08:00

Is your mobile user experience fit for purpose?:

Insights and examples show why a mobile-optimised experience is becoming essential

The focus for many brands over the past ten years has been getting the fixed line website right. This is often the reason brands give for delivering their full site to customers browsing on mobiles.

The vast majority of brands – 83% according to research on UK smartphone usage by Google – still have not optimised their websites for mobile. This stat is mirrored by dismal bounce-rates for mobile sites, which stand at 88% on average. Clearly, consumers won’t hang around on a mobile site which gives a poor browsing experience!

As marketers, we need to understand how consumers use their mobiles; what are the triggers, what type of information are they looking for and in what situations are mobile used?

This can then help inform the business case and decision to adopt mobile. In this post, I’ll show how Amazon and eBay have worked to create an effective mobile experience and end with some suggested steps to make sure the mobile experience is optimal once the business case is agreed.

How do smartphone users access the web today?

The Google research I mentioned above has some really interesting insights on this. I’ve summarised the main 3 learnings I think are most important (you can download the PDF if you’d like to read the full study).

1. Smartphones are used regularly for web activities

This chart shows how frequently a smartphone is used for different activities in a 7 day period. One of the best ways for gauging active use. It also shows the increasing importance of mobile search.

2. Triggers for smart phone usage

The striking figure here, is how often smartphones are used for passing the time, showing opportunities for brands to engage and entertain. They’re also used for quick answers – here it’s important that the mobile experience means they are quick answers.

3. Co-consumption with other media is common

You would expect that tablet devices are commonly used while watching TV, but of course, not everyone has a tablet. Smartphones are also commonly used for this. So if someone searches on a brand after seeing an ad, the brand needs to be visible within the search results and to deliver an engaging experience.

Learning from how the digital superbrands and their customers use mobile

Digital superbrands including eBay and Amazon have proved the central role of mobile. Although the mobile experience may not seem like a matter of life and death, but to brands in sectors like retail and travel, it my not be far from the mark.

eBay and Amazon are now using mobile to deliver a personalised mobile internet experience built on previous shopping behaviour data which is fully integrated with your content management system, and sophisticated targeting.

This is often to the detriment of brick and mortar retailers, whose bewildered store staff are confronted by growing numbers of smart shoppers doing price comparison shopping in their stores. Many of us are intent of seeing the product in the store, checking if we can buy cheaper on Amazon, then placing the order using our mobiles and waiting 24 hours for free delivery.

How Amazon is using mobile

Amazon’s sales on mobile hit $1 billion on 2010, a figure surely surpassed in 2011 and heading north in 2012. User experience is a significant success factor.

If we take a look at their mobile site, we see Amazon encouraging use of their App together with a relevant Kindle promotion:

As you’d expect, Amazon have ported their signature personalisation features to mobile:

Peter Fitzgerald, country sales director for Google UK and former Amazon marketer, who delivered the keynote speech at the Annual IDM Lecture in 2011, likened a poor mobile site to closing your doors on the High Street for a couple of days a week. Poor sites turn away customers, and through their social networks, they turn other customers away. Into the open doors of your competitors.

How eBay is using mobile

eBay is now processing a transaction every second on its mobile platforms. Whether you’re buying a pair of skis on your smartphone or replacement cartridges on your feature phone, eBay detects your handset and delivers a consistently easy browsing experience from product search to reviews and check out. eBay’s year on year sales on mobile grew from $4 billion to £5 billion in 2011.

According to eBay’s head of retail, Angus McCarey, mobile’s effect on High Street retailers is unavoidable, and comes in the form of “shoppers hitting you in store with internet shopping in their pockets”. eBay calls for collaboration with other retailers.

eBay’s mobile experience starts with search as it should; their using the platform targeting available within Adwords to feature their mobile site and recommend the app:

On the site itself, the app is again promoted, with an option to bookmark, but through a pop-up which fades after a while so as not to get in the way of the mobile optimised experience:

The implications for other transactional sites

Retailers must act fast to make sure they are providing an optimised mobile sales channel which is easy to find, quick to navigate, and secure to transact. In a previous article I showed how many retailers were failing to develop an effective mobile experience.

But there are other good examples of mobile user experience. M&S, a true mobile pioneer, has developed a mobile strategy matching the mobile behaviour of its target audience. At the heart of its targeted mobile CRM programme, developed by Incentivated , M&S offers customers an optimised transactional mobile site which handles one-off transactions exceeding £3,000.

Specialist brands are also reaping the rewards of optimised mobile sites Kiddicare is one of the largest online retailers of baby gear in the UK, and one of the most successful brands to benefit from Google’s support in mobilising retail brands’ web presence

According to Fred Soneya, Kiddicare’s head of e-commerce, “We knew that our customers are watching product videos on mobile, they’re shopping on mobile, and they’re looking for answers on mobile, so support and community for those experiences are essential”, Kiddicare developed a transactional mobile site, with product reviews and store finder.

The site took just 7 weeks to design and build, from concept to launch, and the first order was placed within minutes. Mobile now accounts for 11% of Kiddicare’s daily revenue and this figure is expect this to grow to 20-25% in 2012.

In this post, I haven’t looked at the relative merits of mobile sites and Apps, which can provide a rich user experience to your smartphones users. As browser capabilities improve, we’ll start to see more mobile sites looking like and performing like Apps. But in the short and long run, there’s no substitute for the internet, whether accessed on PC or mobile, if you want to reach all your customers.

Top tips for brands launching mobile sites

I believe Amazon and eBay do all of these well. These are general guidelines for creating a mobile experience which works for all transactional sites:

User experience is fundamental. Make sure content is quick to find and easy to navigate
Use handset detection software. Once detected, redirect to a mobile optimised site matching that handset’s capabilities
Ensure all other media channels drive traffic to your site. Add SMS calls to action or QR codes on above the line media, mailers, point of sale materials
Use personalisation. Personalised content, derived from full integration with your CMS, encourages return visits
Evaluate payment options and optimise checkout. Minimise steps in the check-out process to reduce drop off
Test! Test the site prior to launch to remedy errors, test text and layout variables to optimise user experience
Monitor! Monitor traffic and page views constantly, and refine content in realtime

12 Ideas for Marketing using Pinterest

2012-02-13T16:55:00.000-08:00

12 Ideas for Marketing using Pinterest:

A short guide to help review if and how you use Pinterest

Prompted by interest in my first post on the marketing opportunities for Pinterest a couple of weeks ago, I thought a more considered ideas post might be useful. So I’ve summarised the key points that I feel are relevant to consider if you’re set on taking your brand onto Pinterest. I’ve not got into the mechanics of how it works, others do it better already. First things first…

A reminder – what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a platform for crowd sourced visual content grouped into topics (mostly lifestyle at the moment). From a broader perspective, it’s a social network that allows users to visually share new interests by ‘pinning’ images or videos to their own or others’ ‘pinboards’ (a collection of ‘pins’ that have a common theme).

Crucially, Pinterest has a huge visual emphasis, a lot of shared mood-boards is how it first stuck me. It represents a collated view of a person’s lifestyle or set of interests. The benefit to the user is that I can discover ‘people like me’, and so stuff I might like.

Pinterest’s objective is to connect everyone through the things that they find interesting. Oh, and once you’ve registered with your social network of choice, you can upload directly to it, use a bookmarklet in your browser or via a mobile app, so it’s easy stuff.

Gorgeous design

The design of Pinterest is pretty unique which is adding to its appeal with non-marketing-or-tech-geeks, Mashable covered this here – essentially the user benefit is that it’s pictorial and panel orientated, highly visual and easy to move around different topics.

Text content is at a minimum and you’re not forced into a linear, reverse chronological order browsing. This makes it the opposite, from an experiential perspective, to most blogs, Facebook or Twitter.

Before you dive in

Two important questions…

Have you got enough time and resource to take on another social media outpost? It’s best to not have magpie syndrome and just dive in because you can, resources for all of us remain at a premium, no matter how hot Pinterest might sound right now. Of course, worst case, you can create an account and trial it, but consider the reality of pitching time into another outpost in the social media mix since you’ll probably have to steal that effort from somewhere else. More importantly…
Does your brand have a natural place within Pinterest? Is it a relevant part of your strategy right now? I ask this since Pinterest, as it stands at least, is all about lifestyle content and I’m assuming it always will be weighted that way. Real people sharing real stuff that they’re interested in. Of course you can come up with ideas to bridge into that (more on that below), yet I’d sense check if it feels natural for your brand at this time? If you’re already creating relevant content for a blog or a social media marketing plan then it may be a natural, low-effort step for you. The main users right now are 18-34 year old upper income women from the US, so did think about that.

So you think Pinterest is worth exploring for your brand?

Great – it’s seriously on the up as the fastest growing site, ever! This post by Techcrunch covered how the site has surpassed 10 million users after only 9 months. That’s the fastest growth ever for a standalone site. Users aren’t spending that much time at the site just yet — about 90 minutes / month, compared with 7 hours for Facebook. But it’s clear that Pinterest is a huge phenomenon. Most interesting when you consider the hype around Google+, Pinterest has also taken off among non-techies/geeks/marketers first, unlike Google+.

Ready to dive in? Our tips for Pinterest marketers

1. Register with a business email (and Twitter) on account set-up: Once you receive an invitation to sign up for Pinterest (it’s still invite only!) use the same email address you use for your business Twitter profile, then sign-up with Twitter in order you can easily share your new pins through your Twitter account. Pinterest doesn’t offer a connection to Facebook business pages, so Twitter it is. Of course, choose your company name as your username then add a company description, logo, and a website link.

2. Don’t upset fellow pinners! The site naturally discouragse blatant self-promotion. If there is a photo or project you’re proud of, great, just don’t use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion.” [Read: get lost marketers!]. Think up creative ways to promote your brand on the network – showcase the lifestyle that your brand promotes. If you’re a footwear company like PUMA, a pinboard of PUMA shoes is a no-no. A pinboard of a people wearing them, especially famous folks like Professor Green, Thierry Henry or Aguero, ideally in cool places, would be much better for fellow pinners to interact with.

3. Be worth following with great visual content: To get started, spend time looking around, this way you’ll get some great ideas and a feel for how the network works.

See this post here on some of the most successful brand who are using Pinterest effectively so far. Get your great, non-promotional content uploaded – see point 2! This way, new followers will have a reason to follow your pins; just as you would populate a brand new blog before you start promoting it. What images, graphics, info graphics do you have or could you easily get together?

4. Promote your presence externally:

Add the Pinterest follow button to your website and write a blog post to promote it.
Promote your presence on Pinterest through your other social networks by encouraging your followers/fans on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter to follow your pins!
Consider a Pinterest contest (see below).
Start following users you think would want to follow you back.

5. Create a fan Pinboard: You can allow other users to contribute their own pins to your hosted pinboards, so involve fans and customers in your marketing as you would in any other social channel. Dedicate a pinboard to your top fans or customers – ask the customer to pin images that showcase your brand within their lifestyle. Does your product allow the user to look good, be better at something, feel better – get images the illustrate that, think of it as a pictorial testimonial.

6. Oh no, another dam contest: I know, I know. Marketers and their dam contests in social networks! Yet, they work to a point in making your brand shareable. In Pinterest it’s all about the images (and videos) – what pins of your brand, products, or services could people share on a board as a part of a contest – to get what exactly? Re-pin the top boards to your own Pinterest page and ask followers to vote on the boards to select the winner. Just keep it natural and on-brand for Pinterest and the pincers, remember Pinterest’s terms of use!

7. Demonstrate an expertise on a topic: Become the go-to Pinterest account for pins about a certain subject or topic relating to your industry. You’ll see this by looking around the network. Some people are really owning certain spaces and you’d have to say there’s an early, possible gold-rush potential within Pinterest at the moment to do just that. I like this graphic designer and their logo love board - a great, simple idea. What about other forms of design, art, fashion that are so immediately relevant this way, so easily done. Harder for those of us that need to find the lifestyle link – but the principal is their with a little imagination – more on that here…

8. Learn about your buyer personas: View pinboards of your customers, learn more about who they are and what they’re interested in. Use Pinterest as a tool for understanding the interests and needs of your ideal customers. Then… show your expertise within those areas, be valuable and interesting. Very simple, and very time consuming to do it properly. Yet that’s surely the opportunity.

9. Remember videos: Pins can be videos as well as images – worth remembering! Existing footage you can use, interviews, fun stuff?

10. Integration with other channels: Do you attend or run offline events that your fan base would find interesting to see behind the scenes? How about features around the best photos and video footage – this is good for those not attending and it helps you generate buzz and promote the next event you run or will be present at. Consider online integration too – you can use hashtags in Pinterest, if you use them then create a pinboard around it, tag it with a hashtag you’re using on Twitter and Google+ and help integrate Pinterest within the campaign. You can use your Pinterest account to promote a relevant section of your site this way – driving multiple links (traffic) back to your domain around a particular topic, theme or campaing. Assuming the content is good enough of course.

11. Showcase your people: How about a pinboard that showcases life around and in your organisation, whether day-to-day stuff or events, even parties. It’s subtle, basic stuff but every little helps.

12. Measure traffic back to your website: Make sure this is all generating results and proving it’s worth your time and effort. Whenever possible, include links back to your website and landing pages in your pins. Keep track of referral traffic and leads generated from Pinterest to see what resonates and what doesn’t.

Just remember that as a social network Pinterest requires that you spend time to increase your following, engage with those followers, keep your presence updated, and generally add value to the eco-system. It’s not another magic bullet, of course.

What are your ideas on using Pinterest – do let us know!

Salespeople Should Never, Ever Do This ...

2012-02-12T16:06:00.000-08:00

Salespeople Should Never, Ever Do This ...:

When Forbes magazine interviewed me about what salespeople should never do, the five "no-nos" below immediately popped into my mind. But it was so fun thinking about them that I decided to run a NEVER-EVER contest.

This is a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other's mistakes.

Post your "salespeople should never" advice in the comments section. Make sure you tell us how you learned this lesson.
The best entries will be included in my upcoming ebook on this topic.
10 lucky contributors will also win an autographed copy of SNAP Selling.

Don't forget to share your never, ever story below. And make sure you read my thoughts too!

_________________________

5 Things Salespeople Should Never Do

Here's what I shared with the writer from Forbes magazine:

NEVER allow failure to enter your vocabulary. Redefine everything as a "learning experience" and then focus on figuring out how to get different results.

NEVER talk politics with a prospect or customer -- unless you are 100% sure you're totally aligned. And, even then it might not be smart because other members of the decision team may have different feelings.

NEVER look at your email first thing in the morning. It'll suck you in and you'll lose a couple hours.

NEVER ask questions about things that can easily be found on a company's website. You'll lose credibility and look like a fool.

NEVER look at your cell phone during a meeting. In fact, you should turn it off so you won't be tempted to check a text or see who's calling.

YOUR TURN: What should salespeople NEVER-EVER do? Share your no-nos in the comments section below.

The 4 Steps You Must Take to Stop Collecting Useless Sales Data

2012-02-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

The 4 Steps You Must Take to Stop Collecting Useless Sales Data:

One of our most common discoveries in B2B organizations is that sales managers are drowning in a sea of sales data but getting little value from all the effort spent in collecting and reporting on it. Further, even though the purpose of analyzing sales data is to support effective decision-making, oftentimes the one is divorced from the other.

How frustrating!

One of the key benefits companies realize in implementing a sales performance management (SPM) framework is that they stop the habit of collecting sales data for its own sake. What they do instead is to collect that sales data necessary to answer the vital sales questions, track performance against strategic objectives, predict future outcomes, and support ongoing decision-making. That is a tall order indeed. So how do they do it?

Step 1: Design a process for decision-making

The first thing best-in-class sales operations do to get their hands around the process for making decisions within sales. The graphic at the top represents one enterprise view of how the SPM process spans multiple disciplines within the Sales function (e.g. Talent Management, Compensation Planning, Territory Design) and requires system integration (CRM, Knowledge Management, Marketing Automation). It also needs to connect the day-to-day activity of front-line sales professionals with the boardroom strategies driving the business.

Step 2: Inventory your Decisions

The best way to do that is to first inventory the decisions made by and for the Sales organization. Find out who decides what, when, why, and most importantly, what data so they need to make that decision. It is easiest to assess and inventor decisions at three levels:

Sales Reps
Sales Managers
Sales Executives

Each of these communities will have a different set of data needs, decision frameworks, time horizons, and degree of accuracy. Sales performance management addresses each one separately to optimize the data flow to them and for them.

Step 3: Stop Reporting on ‘nice to have’ Data

Once you have inventoried the data and compared it to the decisions that need to be made the result will be a great mass of sales reporting that is no longer needed. Typically this was the fruit of some exercises long ago forgotten and no one has re-evaluated the need for the data. You can save a lot of cycles just by cutting out this legacy sales reporting activity.

Step 4: Institute a Periodic sales Data audit

So that your efforts do not become a one-off improvement, the final step is to set up a periodic audit of data collection, reporting, and usage. This job typically falls to the sales operations function and can be woven into their other annual planning tasks as it relates to the re-issuance of the corporate and sales strategies. Doing this every so often ensure that the data made available to all levels of the organization is timely, relevant, and tied to the decision-making.

Add your thoughts -- What's the Most Useless Sales Report you have ever seen?

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8 Steps Every Business Needs To Take When Forecasting Sales

2012-02-12T16:04:00.000-08:00

8 Steps Every Business Needs To Take When Forecasting Sales:

This post originally appeared at American Express OpenForum.

Whether it's Gap officials determining how many sweaters to stock on their shelves or a local diner making waitstaff decisions, businesses large and small rely on forecasting methods every day.

And experts say these forecasts can play a major role in driving company success, or failure, since accurate forecasting can help keep prices low by minimizing business losses.

"One of the ways you can be better than your competitor is not just by offering a better product," says Notre Dame Professor Barry Keating, an expert in business forecasting. "It's by forecasting better than your competitor does."

So you know how important forecasting is. But what are the best ways to go about it?

"When firms ask, what's the best forecasting technique? The answer is, it depends. Businesses don’t like to hear that, but it does depend," Keating says. "It depends on how much data you have, on what you’ve done in the past, and it depends on the kind of thing you’re forecasting and its importance."

There are two major categories of forecasting methods: qualitative, which typically uses expert opinions, and quantitative, which relies on historical or "time-series" data.

While it's not a perfect science, there are some factors that can help you determine which forecasting method is best for your business. Here are eight questions to ask yourself to help you make that decision:

1. Do you have historical data available?

While most major businesses use quantitative "time-series" methods for forecasting, according to Keating, these methods can be used only if you have the data to draw from. So if you don't have historical data to use, you're likely going to want to turn to a qualitative method.

2. How much time and money are you willing to spend on your forecast?

This is another important question to ask yourself before you start diving into various forecasting methods, according to University of Pennsylvania Professor J. Scott Armstrong, since forecasting methods can range from those run on simple Excel plug-ins to the pricey assembling of industry experts.

3. Is your product or service a new offering?

One of the most common times that you won't have historical data is if you're trying to open a new business or launch a new product. If you're in these situations, there are a few strategies you can take, according to the experts.

If you're starting a new business, Armstrong recommends that you consider using the Delphi technique, a qualitative method which makes projections based on a structured survey of experts.

"You can draw a variety of expertise and have them all answer specific questions," says Armstrong, who teaches business forecasting at University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. "That’s a useful method."

On the other hand, if you're an established business that's offering a new product or service, you might still be able to use a time-series method, Keating says, by using data from a similar product to make your projections.

4. What kind of product or service do you sell?

This question is especially important when trying to narrow down which kind of time-series method you should use. If you're a retailer that needs to take into account any sort of seasonal differences or other trends in your forecast, you should look into using the exponential smoothing model, a relatively simple technique.

"It breaks down the data into different patterns, and then it allows you to forecast that into the future," Keating says. "Does it work? Yeah, it works really well. It is definitely one of the most-used forecasting techniques."

The exponential smoothing model is especially useful for firms that need to make forecasts for lots of different stock units, he adds.

Businesses that offer only one or two main products, such as a utility company, should likely employ a more complex and time-consuming technique, such as one that uses a statistical regression.

5. Is your company being affected by the current economic downturn?

Unfortunately, a lot of traditional forecasting methods go out the window when the economy tanks.

"The Federal Reserve bank did a study last year of businesses forecasting. It turns out when an economy goes into the recession, like we just did, that forecasting errors of firms quadruple," Keating says. "The error increases 400 percent from what it normally is."

So what's a business to do? If your company has seen its business affected by the recession, Keating suggests the use of time series decomposition, a method that adjusts for trend and seasonality, but also for business cycles.

"If you use that method you can reduce your errors back down to a normal range," he says.

6. How many years of data do you have available?

The exponential smoothing method is relatively simple and accurate, but it also requires roughly three years of data. If you have less historical information, such as when attempting to forecast sales for a recently launched product, you can turn to a logistics model, which needs fewer data points, Keating says.

7. How far out are you attempting to forecast?

While time-series methods are often the most accurate, they are most effective for forecasting relatively near into the future. If you're attempting to forecast years or even decades out, you're probably better off relying on experts as opposed to statistics.

This is best illustrated by thinking of a hypothetical current attempt to forecast the percentage of students who will use electronic textbooks in ten years. "If I extrapolated out from the current data, I would tell you that it would be 6 or 7 percent," Keating says. "Now I'm pretty sure that’s wrong."

In such a situation, Keating recommends using a survey of expert opinions.

8. How important is your forecast?

All forecasts are important, but some are likely more make-or-break than others.

If you are making a major investment or taking a big risk based on a forecast, you will want it to be as accurate as possible. In those cases, Armstrong says that using multiple methods and taking the average result can help improve accuracy.

"You can hardly ever make things worse," Armstrong says. "You can only improve things. You can always reduce your risk."

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Why marketing is not lead generation

2012-02-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

Why marketing is not lead generation:

All too often Marketing is considered as just lead generation. However Marketing and Lead Generation are completely different functions in a company having different goals.

Lead generation is now

Lead generation is feeding the funnel and directly related to day-to-day operations and sales. Lead generation requires the use of all kinds of marketing methods and marketing automation tools to get people interested in the current products or solutions. Lead generation uses advertising, content marketing, trade shows, conferences, website presence and cold calling. Lead generation is for the short term and is closely related to sales. As Sales is solely focused on revenue with ever higher budgets, the ever increasing quarterly targets will put pressure on generating more leads.

Marketing is about tomorrow

Marketing is about preparing your company for the changes in your target market. This is for the long run in order to be in line with the long term plans of the company. Marketing is beyond quarterly results and even beyond yearly revenue.

Marketing is about market research and market trends, but also building product and brand awareness. Marketing has to analyze trends, market data and forecast the future.

Still Marketing uses advertising, trade shows, conferences too for reaching its’ goals, but in a different way. This is a long term investment.

The origins of the confusion

The origin of the confusion comes probably from: - the fact both are related to the future but on a different time scale - the same marketing tools both use, but with a different goal. - the lead generation function that marketing has inherited due to their actions

If lead qualification is involved in the process it is not marketing but lead generation. If it is about groups and market segments without being specific about one company then it is Marketing.

Using Content to Sell Without Selling

2012-02-12T16:00:00.001-08:00

Using Content to Sell Without Selling:

I was over on the BundlePost blog the other day and saw this post titled ‘My Biggest Social Media Mistake So Far’ and it got me thinking about my extremely right-sided (or maybe it’s left) leaning towards vendor-agnostic content.

I have always been the one within any organization I have worked for or spoken to that said ‘we are talking about ourselves too much. We aren’t helping anymore, we are just selling and we are pushing it too hard.’ That blog made me think about this a little differently.

My current company is targeting marketing professionals, the ones that make decisions when it comes to advertising. Now this group has a slew of things I can speak to. I can write posts on how to run a webinar or what’s the best approach to take when it comes to building a lead nurturing plan or how you can extend a whitepaper into multiple formats of content and of course about mobile advertising.

Now if I develop content for all these things and publish it, do you think that anyone reading our blog will know what we actually do? I’m not so sure. In fact, I am questioning this heavily right now.

My goal is to help. Become a thought leader in the space. To be the ‘voice’, the ‘answer’, the one that people go to when they have a question or are facing a challenge. But at what cost?

Am I costing the company potential business by posting a blog about how to run a successful webinar program and not mentioning our business? What would be the effect of staying on a straight line and focusing solely on mobile advertising?

I was in a live #blogchat once and Christina ‘CK’ Kerley said something very smart. She said ‘my website tells people what I do, but my blog convinces them that I know how to do it.’ Take a look at her blog and it’s straight-up focused on mobile marketing. She is selling without selling.

When you read a post a say to yourself ‘hey, this person/company knows their stuff, I’m going to check them out and give them a call’, the blog is effective.

Hey, if your blogging goals are not to support sales and grow revenue, then keep writing whatever and whenever. But if you are using it as a sales tool, then use Robert Caruso’s post as your cautionary tale.

The second you digress and start writing to write without having a clear point of view, a clear mission, your message gets muddy and your audience doesn’t know what you do or that you even do anything for that matter.

When it comes to content, help your audience but don’t digress too much from who you are and what you offer.

Content Marketing: 51 Ideas for Blog Posts

2012-02-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

Content Marketing: 51 Ideas for Blog Posts:

51 Blog Post Ideas for your Content Marketing Strategy

A blog is an excellent component to any content marketing strategy. (Here is a great series on Corporate Blogging if you are just getting started). Blogs may be a critical tool to help boost customer engagement with your company since blogs are an excellent way to provide some personality.

Have you ever been stumped when sitting down to write a blog post? Maybe you are new to blogging and don’t know where to start.

Here are 51 ideas to help your approach to blog content development:

Your company’s elevator pitch
Interview with industry experts
Interview with a customer
Interview with a partner
Interview with the CEO
Meet and greet with the management teams
Your viewpoint on hot industry topics
Your company’s mission
Your company’s vision
Your company’s values
The history or a timeline of your company
Your company’s one word
Your aspirations
Overview of your product suite
Screencasts of your products
Explanation of features/benefits of your products
Tips and tricks for using your software
Map out your company’s competitive positioning
Interviews with your customers
Interviews with your partners
Case study showcasing your customers’ success stories
Written testimonials
Write a controversial post
Rewrite a popular song’s lyrics to match your business (include a video of in which members of the company belt it out as an added bonus)
A funny comic
Create an infographic
Photo tours of your office space
HOW TOs relevant to your industry or product
Educational blogs on relevant topics
Compare two tools
Turn successful written content (blogs, whitepapers, ebooks) into a shorter, more digestible blog post
Report on the most popular bloggers in your space
FAQs
Comment on a post you’ve written before
Respond to a post you’ve just read
Write a series
Ask someone to write a guest post on your blog
List out your recommended reading for a certain topic
Write about your daily activities at work
Discuss networking events you like to attend
Write a book review
Dispel some myths
Include your commentary on a video
Post a press release
Highlight your favorite bloggers from the community
Highlight your most popular blog posts
Provide solutions to your customers’ top issues
Ask a question
Post a checklist
List out common mistakes
Be honest about your mistakes

If you are still stuck, check out this list of 101 ideas from I Help You Blog.

Please feel free to comment with some of your ideas for blog posts.

This Is How You Beat Your Opponent During A Negotiation

2012-02-11T14:46:00.000-08:00

This Is How You Beat Your Opponent During A Negotiation:

Negotiation skills are crucial in the workplace. You'll have to negotiate for the rest of your life, so it's best to learn now how to do it right.

According to Kevin Dutton in his book Split-Second Persuasion: The Ancient Art and New Science of Changing Minds (via Psychology Today), there are five simple tactics that can help you conquer your opponent, which he calls S.P.I.C.E:

Simplicity: In order to convince someone what you're saying is a fact, communicate it in a very simple manner. For example, "The way you set up that meeting yesterday was ineffective." Whatever you do, don't draw out your argument or your opponent will start losing track of what you're saying.

Perceived self-interest: Dutton says the trick to convincing others that your argument is better is to "focus on the benefits of the person whose mind you want to change, rather than emphasizing your own wants and wishes." For example, don't say "I would like you to do this..." but rather say, "You'll be glad if you do this..."

Incongruity: Throw your opponent off track by using information in a way that isn't consistent with how they are used to hearing it. For example, tell them something costs 400 cents instead of four dollars.

Confidence: The most obvious strategy, but a very crucial one if you want to win. Confidence goes hand-in-hand with being aggressive but you need both if you want other people to think you're right.

Empathy: The trick is to look people right in the eye, nod when they nod and conduct other characteristics that make them trust you. People feel connected to people who are similar to them, so use those similarities to your advantage.

Beyond these simple strategic rules to abide by, there are still a couple of things you should consider when trying to convince someone that what you're saying actually makes more sense than their argument, writes Farouk Radwan in his blog Pick the Brain.

When you're negotiating your position, make sure you listen carefully to what your opponent is saying and keep a mental list of everything they say in its exact order. You will need to confront what they're saying one-by-one and in the order that they bring it up during the conversation. This tactic will make the negotiation more effective for you.

Also, keep in mind that you shouldn't try to attack everything they're saying all at once. In other words, "don’t try and bring the castle down all in one; chip away, soldier by soldier, until you start to make a big dent."

You will know that you're winning if your opponent starts making new arguments instead of sticking to their original ones. At this point, continue to repeat your reasoning and arguments and as soon as they say, "I don't know," end the conversation: You've successfully won your negotiation.

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How Kate Spade Uses Pinterest For Marketing

2012-02-11T14:45:00.000-08:00

How Kate Spade Uses Pinterest For Marketing:

Kate Spade, the bag and apparel designer, recently launched a Pinterest account. Like a lot of brands, the company realizes that Pinterest is suddenly big, particularly with women, and driving a huge amount of traffic.

Rather than pin products that Kate Spade sells, the brand's marketing department has been trying to operate the same way other Pinterest users do — by pinning inspiring or pretty pictures that happen to fit well with the brand (like this one of a young Mick Jagger).

Pinterest, therefore, has essentially become a public mood board for Kate Spade. (A mood board is a collage of related images that marketers often use internally while preparing campaigns or new design so that staff can see what the end product is supposed to "feel" like.)

At Business Insider's recent Social Commerce Summit, I sat down with Johanna Murphy, Kate Spade's vp/ecommerce, to talk about what she's doing on Pinterest.

"We sat around and had beer and pretzels and pinned."

Jim: What are you doing on Pinterest?

Johanna: So we’ve recently launched, I think it’s in the last month and a half. It’s the perfect medium for us at Kate Spade because it really is kind of how we operate and think.If you walk into one of our offices and go down to our creative marketing team, there is nothing but just these mood boards hanging up of things that inspire us. And there’s some product mixed in there, but not really, it’s really images that inspire us, an old image of Mick Jagger from the ‘60s. An image of a woman walking in Central Park, beautiful photography. You know, it’s design inspiration, and that’s really what Pinterest is. So,a perfect channel for us. We launched about a month and a half ago. It’s really things that inspire us. We pin things we think are pretty. And when we launched, we actually we had a “pinning party” at the office.

Jim: When was that?

Johanna: A month and a half ago. And our design team – it’s basically our designers that fuel our Pinterest page — sat around the table, sat around and had beer and pretzels and pinned.

Jim: What does that brand get out of it? Are you driving traffic?

Johanna: No. No. We don’t look at social media like that. We think that if you look at every social media channel and your ultimate goal is to drive immediate commerce out of it, you don’t get it. We look at, again, it’s kind of the fuel for the overall fire to the brand that will then ultimately drive sales.

Jim: So it’s purely for presence?

Johanna: It’s for presence. It’s to communicate our brand: who we are, what we believe in, that’s it. And I believe that those who will succeed in Pinterest, from a brand perspective, will take that attitude because if you go up there and start just pinning your own stuff, without having the mood and the spirit of the community, you know, you’re going to turn people off.

Next page: How other Pinterest users reacted when Kate Spade showed up>>

“Oh gosh! Get out, this is our space!”

Jim: And once you started doing this, what kind of reaction do you get from the other users on Pinterest? What feedback are you getting?

Johanna: When we first launched, we started getting negative comments from people on Facebook. They were like, “Oh no! Brands are getting on Pinterest. There goes the neighborhood!” It’s one of those things that the community, because they see brands start to dabble in it, they’re like “oh gosh! Get out, this is our space!” But if you look at what we do on Pinterest, there’s very little Kate Spade product. We get the standard “Oh I love that.” It’s strange…It’s a strange and wonderful place, Pinterest, right? It’s really just people pinning things that they like, you know. And again, we do have a very distinct and unique aesthetic, and it resonates with a lot of people that participate in that community.

Jim: Are you getting any kind of analytics or metrics off it at all? Do you even care?

Johanna: We care. We care, but, you know, it’s not my priority to track. Especially coming from the e-commerce side, I’m tracking what’s going on in e-commerce; I’m tracking the things that I can track in social. But again, we’re not looking at Pinterest as a revenue-driving channel; I don’t believe that it will ever be. To us it’s that fuel that’s going to light the fire to the brand, so light interest, and then hopefully they’ll come over to the e-commerce site and eventually transact or walk into one of our stores.

Jim: It seems like a good way to give people an idea of the environment in which you would imagine your brand, once you take it home. You know, walking through Central Park or whatever…

Johanna: If you look at our blog, we really have an amazing blog. We’ve spent an enormous amount of time investing in creating content there and it’s content, and it really has nothing to do with product. For example, our design team went on a hot chocolate crawl in December and there was a three-part blog about that. One of our design team, our design team a couple of weeks ago went to the Damien Hirst exhibit and blogged about that. The biggest reaction we get on our blog is when we actually talk about what it’s like – we call it “behind the curtain at Kate Spade” – when they get a little glimpse into the things that we like and the things that we do, it blows up. Like, if they’re, the community is really kind of interested in the lives that we lead and the things that we’re interested in. You go to katespade.com and you can either go to the ecommerce site or the blog. So we watch traffic go back and forth all the time.

Next page: How sharing is part of the Kate Spade brand>>

“We live interesting lives.”

Jim: How open, would you say, is Kate Spade about that? Because some companies are really, really closed about it. They don’t want to discuss, you know, process and behind the scenes and stuff like that.

Johanna: I mean it’s part of our, it’s really part of our brand. One of the things about Kate Spade is that when you get hired one of our brand attributes is “we live interesting lives.” And, they really do. They walk the walk, they talk the talk. Like you walk into Kate Spade and there’s always something interesting going on, like I said, the design team going off to the Damien Hirst exhibit. You know, doing a hot chocolate crawl, a huge Halloween party where the whole staff dressed up like the royal wedding. You know, there’s just always interesting fun things going on there.

Jim: Are you seeing companies really screw it up on Pinterest?

Johanna: I haven’t. I…no. Not yet, but it’s a matter of time.

Jim: It is driving traffic for some people though. Like for small businesses it is driving traffic.

Johanna: Well it’s old school brand marketing. You know, you look at an old ad and you’re like this has nothing to do with Calvin Klein. You know what I mean? What does this sexy woman on a jet have to do, you know, with… It’s the aspirational aspect of it, right?

Next Page: How work on Pinterest is divided among Kate Spade's marketing team>>

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The 5 Most Overused Cliches in Content Marketing

2012-02-11T14:01:00.001-08:00

The 5 Most Overused Cliches in Content Marketing:

Content marketing is awesome. Yet, despite its effectiveness in growing audiences, engaging and retaining users, and generally giving freelance writers work to do, content marketing has lately been on a bit of a lame streak.

That’s because the people who are most eager to do it are the ones who are selling it. They’re growing their content marketing businesses by doing content marketing … about content marketing! So we have a glut of content about content, which naturally has led to a lot of recycling.

It’s good, because we’re all learning. And, (to use a cliche myself), the rising tide does lift all boats in this industry. But we who are educating the world on the benefits of publishing high quality content need to make sure we actually produce meaningful content ourselves.

I think that means more insights, more research, more reports and fewer gimmicks. Let’s stop scratching the surface and trying to win the Google Search War with generics and cliches.

And for the love: Please no more content marketing articles that start with, “If a tree falls in the forest…”

Here are the five things I think content marketers should stop saying:

1. “If a tree falls in the forest…”

Recently, I became aware of the immense overuse of this phrase. In fact, over the last couple weeks I came across three articles about content marketing that began sections with some variation of it:

They are all decent articles. Let’s just find some new analogies to draw from before we bore our readers!

2. “If Content Is King, Then XYZ Is Queen (Prince, Princess, etc.)!”

I’ve seen this one used so many times I could build a royal pedigree chart of content concubines, princesses and jesters. “If content is King, social media is Queen.” ”If content is King, design is Queen.” “If content is King, distribution is Queen.”

Here are some real links:

“If content is King, storytelling is Queen.“
“If content is King, credibility is Queen.“
“If content is King, curation is the cutting edge.” (what?)

The analogy has been beaten to death. It’s time to retire it.

3. “Top 10 XYZ For Content Marketing” (When There are Only 10 of XYZ Anyway)

This one is pure gimmick. Bloggers know that Top 10 posts are easy clicks. They’re cool, when they’re real. But often these posts are just a cop-out because the author can’t think of a better story idea.

The point of a Top 10 list is to actually rank the best few things among a group of many, not just list all of them. Billboard doesn’t have a Top 1,000,000 Bands list; they curate a Top 200. Why would you write a “Top 10 Free CMS For Bloggers” when there are only maybe 10 examples of free blogging CMS in the world anyway!

Yes, you could say that this post is an example of this cliche itself. I’m well aware. I will argue, however, that there are many more blogging cliches out there than just these five.

4. Tips Posts With Useless/Obvious Tips

Another quick-fix for bloggers is the Tips Post. Anything that professes to be a collection of insightful tips had better be more useful than eHow if it hopes to gain some reader loyalty. But a lot of content marketing tips posts amount to little more than obvious generalities.

I don’t want to pick on any one author too many times, but I got wicked sad after reading this guest post on Mashable (disclosure: I also write for Mashable). Tip #6 for “10 Tips For Better Content Marketing” was — I’m not joking — “Develop Content.”

The post did not cover how to develop better content. It just said that you should actually, you know, develop it. Not helpful.

5. “How [Current News Event] Is Like Content Marketing”

Yes! We have a news peg.

I’m as guilty as the next blogger of using this tactic in the past. It used to be novel to blog about “How copywriting is like Invasion of the Body Snatchers” or “Marketing tips you can learn from hurricanes.”

But let’s be honest: now that everyone does it, it’s pretty uninspiring.

There’s a difference between being clever and being useful. If I’m taking time out of my schedule to read about content marketing, I’m not doing it to be entertained. That’s what Buzzfeed and BoingBoing are for. I want information that will help me become better and smarter. Your customers probably do, too.

Final Thoughts

Rigorous newsrooms keep their eyes open for cliches and recycled old prose. Editors yell and scream. Reporters take pride in their stories. The New York Times would never run “Top 10 Social Networks With More Than 100 Million Users” and start it with, “If a tree falls in the forest…” Neither should you.

If content marketing as an industry is going to teach the world that brands can produce the kind of quality content that used to be exclusively the domain of newspapers and magazines, then we need to step up our game.

This isn’t Little League. It’s time for content marketers to start playing with the big boys.

Image courtesy of Tom Newby Photography

8 Basic Tips for Writing an Amazing White Paper

2012-02-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

8 Basic Tips for Writing an Amazing White Paper:

Writing a white paper isn’t easy, but it can be an awesome way to stand out as an expert in your field. Although crafting a white paper is more of an art than a science, there are general guidelines you can follow to help you out along the way.

Have a topic people will want to read. This seems obvious, but finding the right topic can be your biggest challenge. First, figure out who your audience is; who are you trying to reach? Then, choose an issue that’s interesting to them — perhaps a common problem they’re faced with, or a case study of successful companies in your industry.
Be descriptive and professional. Writing a white paper is not the same as writing a blog. You need to use a business writing style and be fairly descriptive. You will probably end up writing at least ten pages to make your point.
Set up a great intro. Be captivating. You want to catch people right off the bat with your introduction. Pique their interest, and then tell them what they’re going to accomplish by reading your white paper. This means writing a summary of your white paper and including an organized list of topics.
Emphasize the value you will create. Your white paper is not a billboard for your business — it is an opportunity to create an image of expertise and insight that will help your readers. In return, they may buy from you later. First, though, you need to give them something of value, and you can only do that by filling your white paper with useful tips and information.
Organize your draft. Come up with a clear outline first, and then proceed to write your paper. Be sure the flow of your white paper is in line with your goals. Grab their attention, deliver value, and get them to take further action.
Write first, edit second. Once you have your outline put together, get your thoughts down while they are still fresh in your mind. Just start writing. Don’t worry about editing until you have completed the draft. You will have no problem going back and making everything flow well afterwards.
Proofread. Go back over your draft and see what needs to be done to make it read better. Ask for other people’s opinions, because they may be able to catch mistakes you overlooked. Read it out loud to ensure there are no run-on sentences or awkward phrases.
Follow up with how you can help. If you are selling a product or service that will help your readers, make sure to mention it at the end. You shouldn’t use the body of the white paper to sell your product or service, so make sure to use a catch that is naturally incorporated when you summarize the paper.

White papers are great tools for generating credibility. Customers respond better to informative write-ups than they do to blatant ads. The trick is to make sure your white paper is organized and well thought out so that you will create a natural and genuine interest in your services.

Image courtesy of Flickr, crafty_dame

In Marketing, What You Don’t Know Can Kill You

2012-02-11T13:59:00.000-08:00

In Marketing, What You Don’t Know Can Kill You:

I’ve spent an interesting day, as is so often the case, here in the online world. I had a very interesting conversation with Chris Young (@chris_eh-young), Brandie McCallum (@lttlewys), and Carrie Wilkerson (@barefoot_exec) about various marketing myths that are floating about in the online world. For example, the fact that everything “is dead” is something we all agreed is really getting old. They are good people. You should talk to them.

This evening I read a post by Robert Gembarski, who I encountered by following Marieke Hensel to her blog site. The post is called How To Make Social Media Marketing Part Of Your Overall Marketing Plan. In this post there are some interesting statistics about business usage of social media marketing which made me want to do more research, and in the process of doing THAT, I discovered this rather amazing B2B research that Penton Media from here in Northeast Ohio did in 2011. I found the study via a post by Jeffrey Cohen which was just published last week. Now Jeffrey posted on what the study revealed about the world of B2B and its relationship with social media. Interesting stuff. But what catches my eye about this study is everything the survey participants did NOT know.

Here is a small sample. The survey was returned by 5,000 “executive level subscribers” 3,835 of whom said they were involved in their company’s marketing strategy.

• 41% said they did not know if their website used metadata or meta-tags

• 14% didn’t know whether they were using a link building strategy

• 14% didn’t know if their competitors were actively involved in social media

• 26% said they are not engaging in social media because they don’t know how to measure it OR were not sure it would be valuable (we assume the worst about things we don’t know)

• 32% said they are unaware of how their company is talked about online

These are, according to the study, executive level subscribers of publications that range across 17 different industrial publications that Penton Media publishes. The majority of them have at least some role in marketing. And yet, they are unaware of these extremely significant facets of 21st century marketing within their own company and in regards to their competitors? That is pretty disconcerting, don’t you think?

The sad news

The really sad thing about these gaps in knowledge is that the doors are wide open for these survey participants to get misdirected in their marketing efforts. If they start listening to a lot of what is passed around in the world of social media, which often has no real basis in marketing and which is often based exclusively on the world of B2C, they may react in the following ways to their lack of knowledge.

41% said they did not know if their website used metadata or meta-tags; 14% didn’t know whether they were using a link building strategy

The lack of knowledge present in these two bullet points could easily be dismissed with a, “Well, you don’t really need a website now” answer. I see this more and more in the world of social media. There is a lot of buzz about how a blog or a Facebook page can serve as a company website or online hub. For some companies, this may be true. For the B2B world, I’m not sure it really is. The kinds of information a B2B company needs to make available often require administrator walls, dealer and customer log-ins, and more.

While SEO experts wax and wane about the importance of meta tags, there is little change when it comes to the importance of white-hat link building strategy. If you don’t even know if you have such a strategy, you and your website could be in big trouble. It would be tantalizing to think you could leave all of that behind and jump into the social media waters. I hope that companies hesitate and think before they make that leap.

14% didn’t know if their competitors were actively involved in social media

This information is extremely easy to find even if you don’t have any experience in social media. In many cases, all you have to do is Google a competitor or a person whom you know works for a competitor. Does their LinkedIn profile show up? A Twitter account? Beyond that there are PLENTY of ways to conduct searches to find out this information. If you are unsure of how to search, talk to an agency or consultant who knows how and where to look for key competitors in the online world.

26% said they are not engaging in social media because they don’t know how to measure it OR were not sure it would be valuable

Many in the social media world would respond to this and say, “Well of COURSE it will be valuable. You’ll expand your reach and the measurement will be easy to see in Twitter followers, blog subscribers, and Facebook fans.” Right?

Not so much.

Factually, there are plenty of ways to measure the success of your social media campaign – the ROI, even – but you need to have a plan, and a lot of folks in the online world find the concept of planning somewhat old-fashioned If you have a plan of what you want to invest and a goal for what you want to receive, your social medi marketing campaign can be extremely valuable. If you do your research first and make sure your plan has you working in fertile areas for company growth, you’ll be even more successful.

32% said they are unaware of how their company is talked about online

Again, this is extremely easy to explore. The new adage that “your company is being talked about already even if you don’t know it” isn’t necessarily true. There are plenty of companies who could only wish they were the topic of a Twitter conversation. But there are tons of ways to explore this online world and see if your company or brand names are coming up in conversation. You can even see exactly what people are saying about you.

Two Big Problems

The way I see it, there are two really big problems here. The first is that people in the c-suite are immersing themselves just enough in marketing to not have a 100% full grasp on it. This makes these people likely candidates for the social media silver bullet syndrome. When the money coffers are empty and the pressure is on, a silver bullet in the shape of a tweeting bird and a blogging Bonzo can look pretty good, right?

The other problem is that there are far too many people in the world of social media who will dismiss this lack of knowledge in the B2B world as nothing to be concerned about. Websites are old hat. Link building strategy is voodoo. It’s all about engaging.

What can we do about these two problems? That’s the real question.

What do you think?

By the way, you can download the study and analyze it for yourself. It’s available for free and is called Truth from the Trenches.

1st Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uncene/385671543/ via Creative Commons

2nd Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uaeincredible/217849066/ via Creative Commons

Digital Locker Market Grows with Increasing Consumer Interest

2012-02-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

Digital Locker Market Grows with Increasing Consumer Interest:

Earlier this week, Google announced the arrival of its own cloud-based digital locker service. Called Google Drive, this cloud computing service is not the first of its kind. A growing trend, companies like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft already have running with gradually growing success. Cloud computing storage technology allows users to store extended content online and access this content on their home computers or on the go using tablets, smartphones or a hotel computer, for example, with nothing more than an app or Internet connection. One of the main benefits of the digital locker is its centralization of personal data and potentially unlimited availability.

A recent study uncovered a growing interest in cloud computing. A tremendous 90% of their survey participants were ‘somewhat’ to ‘very interested’ in digital lockers. Surprisingly, the demographic with the most interest in using digital lockers is the oldest survey group, between the ages of 50-59. The two younger age groups are 18-24 and 25-34. Despite the age difference, almost everyone in the study actively streams or downloads content monthly.

It is no surprise that additional content and access is so appealing. However, only 68% would be willing to pay a low fee of $25- $99 per year. Overall, a lot of people love the idea of a digital locker, but many are not willing to pay for it. Fortunately, big tech companies are beginning to realize this too. Apple’s iCloud offers accounts from free to $100, with $24.99 for iTunes Match. Google Drive is expected to be free with a limited amount of storage but with the option to purchase larger plans.

The study ended with some thought-provoking suggestions. With interest in digital lockers as high as it is, digital media companies should consider taking advantage by heavily marketing their offerings, particularly toward baby boomers who are more interested in compiling their data in one place and may be more willing to pay for a service. Targeting younger age groups through devices they use heavily, like game consoles or mobile devices is another great tactic. Additionally, companies should try to educate consumers about copyright policy and potential violations associated with digital libraries.

6 Tips to Start Your Mobile Marketing – Part II

2012-02-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

6 Tips to Start Your Mobile Marketing – Part II:

This is Part II of my 2 Part blog series. To view Part I, click here.

In my last blog post, I revealed how important it is to make sure you have a good idea of how your clients are using mobile technology, and how if you don’t know, it will be valuable to do some market research or perform a survey of your clients’ mobile habits.

Once these questions have been addressed, and you have established that it makes sense to include mobile in your marketing mix, you can get started planning the mobile campaign. You must begin by establishing which mobile channel best suits your marketing goals and your target market.

Once all these things have been accomplished you should determine what your mobile marketing message will be and how you will integrate your mobile marketing campaign into the rest of your marketing efforts.

Here are tips #4 through #6 to start your mobile marketing channel selection, message development and mobile evaluation:

Tip 4 – Establish Which Mobile Channels Best Suit Your Marketing Goals and Your Target Market

and

Tip 5 – Determine Your Mobile Marketing Message

I’ve added ‘Integration Tips’ so you can see how to integrate your mobile marketing campaign into the rest of your marketing efforts.

Some of the mobile channels I will discuss are represented in the matrix illustration using concentric rings, leading to the brand at the bottom:

Mobile Website: The way people engage with mobile marketing starts with them accessing your website on their mobile device.

Integration Tip: One way to integrate your mobile marketing with your mass media and outdoor marketing, is to place banners and ads that reference your mobile friendly site at bus stops, subway stations and on billboards. People have idle time in these places and your ads will get traction.

Mobile E-mail: Your email campaigns need to be optimized for mobile considering many people access their email via mobile device. You will want to : 1) Test your e-mail messages on a couple different mobile devices 2) Use compelling subject lines that include the important information in the fist 30 characters. 3) Include your brand name in your ‘Subject’ line 4) Send a text alternative to html e-mails, and include a link to an online version of the e-mail (this way people can click the link if they have trouble viewing the email).

Integration Tip: Mention any promotion you are sending in e-mails on your home page, and include a link to the online version e-mail to integrate your e-mail campaign with your website.

Short Messaging Service (SMS) (Text Messaging): Text messaging rather than reaching your customers through a phone call with up to 160 characters of text (many phones will activate text to make it clickable) that is similar to a short email is a great way to broadcast your promotions.

HAVE A TELEPHONE LIST? If you have access to your customers’ mobile telephone numbers, you can send them a text message. If you have promoted to the mobile list previously, you can create an intriguing follow-up message with an attractive new offer.

DON’T HAVE A TELEPHONE LIST? You can use your other marketing channels to encourage your customers to interact with your brand by sending a text message to a short code number to get a special offer. This kind of mobile marketing is location-based and has short life cycle.

When users send the text message a computer replies with a code or password they can give the cashier to receive the discount. This is a good way to build up a list of mobile phone numbers that you can use later with other more targeted text messaging campaigns.

Integration Tip: It is a good idea to allow people opt in to your marketing messages by sending the recipients a text message that also confirms their number and makes the offer, like this: “Our customer database lists this your mobile phone number. Reply with ‘OK’ to receive coupons & other messages at this number.”

Picture Messaging (MMS): These type of messages must be of high value to your customers since they cause users higher fees than text messages. As compared to text messages, picture messages are more versatile as they include pictures, animation, text and sound and are traditionally sent form a mobile number to an email account. Like in text messages, most phones will recognize and activate text to make it clickable if it is a phone number, web link or short code.

Integration Tip: Encourage users to sign up and receive new product notifications or birthday e-mails on their cell phone on your website. Include links to the website in the picture message that encourage the recipients to view the site from their mobile phone.

Location Based Marketing: To take in-store promotions one-step further and remind customers of advertised deals or create special incentives for mobile users, location based marketing, will reach customers when they are in within range of a physical store location. This is achieved when messages are sent to the phone via bluetooth or Infrared technologies but has limited range.

If your customers interact very frequently with your brand, using GPS enabled cell phones to send users targeted e-mails or text messages based on your location is acceptable BUT if they are not, then this way is considered intrusive and personal so it is not advised.

Mobile Pay-Per-Click: As your ad is displayed along side regular search results, as a paid listing, when users click through to get to your site, you are charged a fee. You bid on keyword terms that are related to your product offering and when users search for those terms, your ad is displayed.

You are given a certain number of characters to describe your products and you can link the advertisement to any page on your website.

Mobile Pay-per-Click prices are still reasonable since it is so new and there’s less competition on keyword phrases. Search engines and third party providers are still testing different means of displaying these ads so now is the time to build up a history with the Pay-per-Click providers and beginning to learn the ropes.

Integration Tip: Whenever you run a special promotion or marketing campaign you should update your Pay-per-Click advertisements. You may decide to bid on different keywords associated with your promotion or you may need to change the text of the advertisement to reflect the new marketing message or promotion.

Mobile Banner Ads: Mobile banner ads, are purchased from a third party provider on a ‘cost per million’ basis, are linked to your site and are shown on other sites as a means of generating revenue. The number of times your ad is shown, its ‘impressions,’ affects how much you pay instead of weather your ad is clicked on or not.

The third party provider will allow you to select different filters that affect how, when and to whom your ad is displayed. The number of filters you set will also effect your cost per million (CPM). Mobile banner ads make for good branding.

Integration Tip: Your banner ads need to reinforce your brand without users having to click thru to your site since you are paying by the impression. Keep your banners updated with the same marketing messages that you are using in other marketing channels.

Other mobile channels include: Mobile Apps | Bluetooth Marketing | Geo Location | Augmented Reality and 2-D Codes.

Tip 6 – Evaluate Mobile Success

Test. Test. Test. You should expect to test various campaigns and allow at least 3 mos. before benchmarking. As mobile marketing is new, it will take time to get a good read on its reach and a return. You should do a few different one-time campaigns to give your customers and prospects time to catch on and create the ‘buzz’.

Your mobile marketing efforts will impact the success of your other marketing campaigns. Mobile should be creating indirect benefits to your sales volume both online and in your brick-and-mortar location.

You can use web analytics tools to track the online portions of your mobile campaign.

It’s important to use an integrated marketing strategy that incorporates the mobile channels that make sense for your particular business and to craft proper messaging that coincides with your other marketing messages online and offline.

Share how you are planning, integrating and evaluating mobile marketing strategies with us…

Inbound Marketing is the New Tradeshow

2012-02-11T13:56:00.000-08:00

Inbound Marketing is the New Tradeshow:

Imagine your website as your booth at your industry’s largest international tradeshow. Would yours attract enough interested visitors? Would it be filled with engaging content, such as videos, collateral, guest speakers, demonstrations and graphics. Would your visitors be compelled to leave their business card, or speak to a rep at the show? And after the show, would visitors receive ongoing follow up emails or phone calls to nurture the relationship? And if they become a customer would you be able to tie back that sale to the source of the tradeshow?

Many savvy business people have this process down pat. And they spend a ton of money making those trade shows a big success. But then, moseying on over to their website you may find a completely different story. You’ll find a website that lacks quality design, compelling content, engaging offers, and mechanisms to generate leads. You’ll find a process that fails to connect the dots between visits, leads, and sales.

You’ll find missed opportunities aplenty.

The tradeshow marketing process is one that many companies invest in. Unfortunately, it’s also one that many are abandoning due to high cost and diminishing ROI. That’s because the world’s largest international trade show is actually taking place 24x7x365 on the web. Rather than a one-time shot, this tradeshow is happening around the clock. And companies have figured out that participating in ‘the show’ is the way to compete in today’s online business world. These companies are succeeding at a far better rate.

Inbound marketing is a process designed to help companies compete in today’s online world.

The process involves these key steps:

1. Drive traffic to your website by helping you get found

2. Turn traffic into revenue by converting prospects to leads and leads to sales

3. Measure your results by tracking website traffic, leads, and customers

As more companies recognize that traditional outbound marketing just isn’t delivering the kind of results they’re used to, inbound marketing is gaining steam.

Inbound marketing on the web is a lot like a being at a humongous online tradeshow. And just as you would create an appealing backdrop, provide live demos, engage in conversations, provide relevant collateral material, create compelling offers and devise other interesting ways of attracting and engaging your audience, this is exactly the kind of effort you must put into attracting and converting prospects on the web.

Sound like an approach your business could benefit from? Learn more about inbound marketing by downloading the Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing.

Plus, check out our latest inbound marketing infographic to find out why you should work with an inbound marketing agency.

Sales Training: Sales Role Clarity

2012-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

Sales Training: Sales Role Clarity:

Sales Training Article: Sales Role Clarity Tips to Improve Effectiveness

By Scott Gruher, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI)

Each sales role should have a cadence that defines which activities should be performed on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. The days of "sales as an art" are over. While talent and skill are still major success factors, there is no substitute for doing the right things on the right frequency.

Measuring leading indicators for success is how World Class sales organizations ensure they are making decisions based on what is about to happen vs. looking in the rear view mirror at what already took place. To achieve leading indicators goals, your sales team must understand what activities are expected. A clear role cadence brings clarity to how the day-to-day of the role should be executed.

Example Account Manager Role Cadence:

Sales Role Cadence Components:

Define interactions with direct supervisor - 1-on-1 coaching, training meetings, field time.

Define interactions with account stakeholders (or prospects in hunter role) - who does the Account Manager need to be interacting with and on what frequency?

Outline meeting topics for discussion - what is the purpose of each type of meeting and with which stakeholder should the meeting be held?

Outline role scope - how many accounts, total revenue managed, pipeline size, etc.

The activities captured in the cadence are the recipe that helps the sales professional meet their scorecard metrics. Developing a sales role cadence brings clarity to how each role within the sales force contributes to the sales strategy. This will help alleviate inefficiencies due to duplicative efforts and make your Go to Market Strategy more effective.

Call to Action:

1. Clearly defined the reporting structure and responsibilities for each sales role

2. Define customer and/or prospect touch requirements

3. Outline the desired portfolio or territory size for the role

Read our sales training articles.

12 More Ways to Build the Strongest Client Relationships

2012-02-10T13:20:00.000-08:00

12 More Ways to Build the Strongest Client Relationships:

Recently I ran a post on 23 ways to strengthen your relationship with your client.

Of course, 23 seemed like quite a few to run in one post, so I gave you the first 11 then, and now I’m giving you the remaining 12.

At an rate, read that post and this one.

Then actually put some of it into action! That’s the key — you can’t just read all these great tips and do nothing with them.

High-profit salespeople recognize that a lot of little things go into building great client relationships. Taken individually, those things may seem like no big deal. But taken collectively, they compound into such a difference in your sales.

Here goes with the remaining 12:

12. Communicate to the person’s style.

If they’re passive, then don’t come across as overly aggressive. If they’re ego-centered, then allow them to feel they’re making the decisions. Leverage your own personal style by adapting to theirs. (Never sell out your integrity! In the end, the most valuable asset you have is your integrity.)

13. Respect with professionalism.

People want to be treated with respect and dignity. People will remember you and respect you more if you’re the one who treated them with respect. 14. Each time you’re with them, share with them one piece of information about something significant.

You might share with them the latest economic numbers (only if they’re good) or something pertaining to their industry. Use the opportunity to teach them something that will help them do their job or run their company more effectively.

15. Show concern and interest in the client’s company goals.

Ask about them and, more importantly, provide them with information and methods they can use to help them achieve their goals. Each time you’re with the customer, make it a habit to ask them about their goals and also have something you can share with them that might help them achieve their goals.

16. Know the client’s organization.

Get to know as many people in the company as possible and make sure they know you by name and company.

17. Each time you’re with the customer, make sure you learn one new piece of information about them.

Don’t limit yourself to just learning about what the things that may impact you, but also learn about their entire business.

18. Monitor the company and their competitors via Google Alerts.

Use notifications you receive as a reason to contact the customer either in person, email, phone, etc.

19. Know the timeline the client operates in.

Knowing how they measure themselves both fiscally and personally can help you determine the best time to contact them. Knowing when employees receive their evaluation, review, raises, etc. can be very helpful in giving you a sense as to how you can assist them.

20. Refer the client to others who might benefit from what they sell or do.

Be aggressive in doing this and, most of all, follow-through with both the person you referred and who they were referred to so you can hear the outcome.

21. Respect their culture and rules.

Speak using the same terms and words they use and follow all of the rules they have regarding safety and the workplace.

This includes when you are in your own environment and communicating with them. (Many companies have strict guidelines regarding the use of cell phones, such as “engine on / cell phone off.” If this is the case, then the last thing you want to be doing is having a conversation with them on your cell phone while you’re driving.)

22. Every problem is an opportunity for you to accept.

Do not hide behind things or try to cover up issues. Bring everything to the conversation in a positive, solution-minded manner.

23. For each person with whom you work, make sure you communicate with them via the communication method they prefer.

Examples include: in-person, telephone, voice mail, text messaging, email, etc.

There you have it — between the two posts, you have 23 ways to strengthen your relationships with your clients.

Here’s to great selling!

The House in the Woods

2012-02-10T13:19:00.000-08:00

The House in the Woods:

Value is just a bundle………………!

A true story………

Two executives living next door to each other owned property backing on to a delightful four acre wood.

One, keen to purchase the woodland, obtained a quote from the local council for a purchase price of £3000 an acre. The local estate agent confirmed the price as reasonable. On that basis, he submitted a bid of £12000 for the full four acres.

Unknown to him, however, his next door neighbour had done the same, also offering the council £12,000. Over the next few weeks, each tried to outbid the other and the price finally reached £24,000 per acre. At this point the first executive pulled out, and the other finally purchased the land for a total of £96,000. Relationships between the two were now distinctly frosty.

A few months later, the executive who had pulled out of the purchase received a call from the purchaser offering to sell him two acres. Would he like to make him an offer? The initial temptation was to say, “Get lost”, but on reflection, he decided to make an offer of £3000 per acre. “Get lost!”, was what he was told to do! When asked what the seller would accept, he was told £48,000. ”Forget it! The original valuation was £3000 and, while I am happy to go a bit higher than that, £24,000 an acre is completely out of the question”.

The seller’s response completely amazed him: “Get your house valued again, firstly without the woodland, and then again with the woodland attached. When you’re done that, come back to me and we’ll talk again”.

The executive agreed to do so. The surveyor who had initially valued both the house and the woodland separately now re-valued both. The house, initially valued at £450,000 had barely changed. However, with the woodland added, the surveyor estimated a fair sale price of just over £950,000! Astonished, he paid the seller a cheque for £48,000 the very same day, making an immediate profit on paper of nearly 100%.

This is a true story. Without considering why the two didn’t just talk to each other in a bit more detail about what each really wanted out of the deal (two acres each perhaps?!), the key value issues seem to be:

The elements of the property, when valued separately and offered for sale as individual items, were at the most £450,000 for the house plus £48,000 for all the woodland.
Each part of the package represents a “specification” market value. By linking both house and woodland as part of a “bundle”, the whole nature of the package became different… and (almost) unique. If there were several elements to the bundle, each element when added would change the proposal incrementally, and with it the price.
The winners, finally, in this little scenario were the two executives. The value insight – verified by the surveyor as an independent and objective consultant – led to both parties gaining enormous advantage and a real win-win outcome. However, the win would have been seriously bigger if only they had spoken to each other in the first place. Their lack of communication cost them £42,000 each!
The loser in this scenario should have been the local council. By valuing the woodland on a per acre basis they failed to identify the real commercial value and the whole woodland could have been bought for £12000. By pricing on specification, the council was potentially leaving a lot of money on the table. A little bit of thought around the true value to the purchasers might have resulted in a much better deal for them and a win-win-win situation. As it happens, they got that result by default rather than by adopting a value based pricing approach.

The moral of the story (other than to talk to each other!), is to constantly look at how changes to your offer impact your customers and price on the basis of the value they will enjoy as a result. Bundling is just one of a number of ways of enhancing perceived value – just look at Microsoft Office for an example of bundling in practice, or utility providers bundling gas, electricity, phone packages together. What could you bundle that would make your product or service more attractive – and valuable – to your customers?

The GRAMMY Awards 2012: How social media changed the DNA of the Recording Academy

2012-02-10T13:07:00.001-08:00

The GRAMMY Awards 2012: How social media changed the DNA of the Recording Academy:

In celebration of the 54th GRAMMY Awards, we are debuting a special edition of (R)evolution. Shot on location in Los Angeles, Evan Green, CMO of the Recording Academy discusses the fusion of two worlds, the social explosion and the increasingly sophisticated expectations of consumers.

In this fascinating discussion, we learn how a 54 year old industry body adapted to the change in how people interact with television, music and one another, shifting from watching the conversation to engaging and helping facilitate shared experiences. More importantly, you’ll hear what it took to get management to see the opportunity for the future and how it changed the DNA of the Recording Academy forever.

“For a minute people were starting to move away from television, now people are migrating back to television in pretty large numbers, but they’re migrating with their devices.” – Evan Green, CMO, Recording Academy

Season 3: Special Edition

A note from the Recording Academy on its vision for the 2012 GRAMMY Awards…

Beyond simply promoting an entertainment event, we strive to feed the digital music conversation, establish a deeper cultural connection with our audience, and seamlessly extend this effort to both second and third screens. This year’s effort, titled ‘We Are Music,’ takes a more visceral approach to illustrating how music drives us. Using a dynamic technology called particle art to establish a visual interpretation of music, ‘We Are Music’ focuses on the idea that when we listen to music, we surround ourselves in it…it becomes who we are…part of our DNA…an extension of our personality…inextricably linked with our identity! Our campaign, like music itself, has a driving pulse, and is infused with energy and movement.

Adele: Promo video

Skrillex: Promo video

The GRAMMY YouTube Channel

We Are Music: Destination

We Are Music App: iTunes

Season One and Season Two on YouTube

Now on iTunes!

Before & After: The Optimization of a Flawed Landing Page

2012-02-10T13:07:00.000-08:00

Before & After: The Optimization of a Flawed Landing Page:

Marketers talk a lot about advanced techniques for working with their leads: lead flow, lead management, lead nurturing. But all of that is meaningless without consistent lead generation, and landing pages are the strongest tools in a marketer's arsenal to meet that looming monthly lead goal.

Because landing pages are so important to lead generation, attention to detail is in order to ensure you have the highest conversion rate possible. And as it turns out, landing page visitors are pretty darn fickle about which pages they'll convert on. To show you how to prevent landing page abandonment, we took a HubSpot landing page and broke down what it looks like before optimization, and after. See if you can identify the mistakes and how to fix them!

Subpar Landing Page

Here's an example of a landing page to access HubSpot's ebook that explains how to build your Google+ business page. It's not ugly, it's on brand, and it's professional; so what's wrong with it? It's not optimized, that's what. That means conversion rates will be low, and page abandonment rates will be high. When it comes to landing pages (and almost everything else in marketing, for that matter) pretty is great, but functional is better.

I've identified all of the page elements that are either missing or incorrectly executed in the screenshot below. Take a few moments to try to identify what's wrong with those page elements I've called out, then scroll down to see an improved landing page with explanations for why the new page elements will yield better conversion results.

Optimized Landing Page

Now let's take a look at the second landing page treatment and dissect why each change helps improve the performance of this landing page.

1.) URL Architecture - An optimized URL will help your landing page rank higher in search engines. You probably don't want the ebook PDF itself or the thank-you page it lives on to rank (that's why you have a form in front of it), but if your landing page appears in search, think of how many more leads you have the opportunity to collect. Instead of optimizing for www.hubspot.com/google-plus, the URL structure www.hubspot.com/how-to-use-google-plus-for-business is ideal because the phrase for which this page is trying to rank -- Google+ for business -- is in the URL. And be sure to separate words with dashes instead of underscores; Google's crawlers have an easier time reading dashes.

2.) Navigation - Notice how there is none? Including a navigation on your landing page like we did on the first treatment gives users another place to exit your landing page before they become a lead. The more choices you give site visitors, the more confused they will be about what action they are meant to complete on the page. And confusion among site visitors means lower conversion rates. You can bring back your navigation on the thank-you page where new leads land after they complete and submit your form.

3.) Page Header - First, notice the inclusion of the keyword phrase "Google+ for Business" in the header; remember that this also helps search engines identify the keyword phrase to associate with your page! But this isn't the only reason this header is a drastic improvement from the first landing page treatment. The copy used in your landing page header is one of the most important page elements, because it's what helps your page pass a user's blink test. The blink test refers to the commonly accepted 3 seconds which every web page has to orient users once they land on a new web page. This particular header tells us that this is the page where you can access a new ebook, and what the topic of that ebook is, helping users quickly orient themselves and continue reading to get more information and complete the lead-capture form.

4.) Form Header - Our first landing page didn't even include a form header, a major faux pas but quick fix. Your form header should simply tell the visitor what exactly filling out that form will do. In this case, visitors know if they fill out the form, they can download their ebook. And when can they do it? Right now!

5.) Image Selection - The first landing page included an image of two business people collaborating, but it wasn't as relevant as it could be to the topic of this landing page. The image of the actual ebook visitors will see if they complete the form provides greater relevancy and helps hammer home the benefit of completing the form.

6.) Privacy - Privacy is a real concern for folks nowadays, and the last thing you'd want is for someone to abandon your form because they weren't confident you'd handle their information securely. Including a link to your privacy policy helps alleviate those concerns so more visitors convert.

7.) Keyword Optimization - Just as the keyword phrase "Google+ for Business" is included in the URL and header, the second landing page treatment includes the long-tail keyword phrase to help the page rank well in search engines. Targeting long-tail keyword phrases like these on your landing page will not only drive more relevant search traffic and be easier to rank for than a head term, but it will also help you rank for those short-tail keyword phrases like "Google+" too.

8.) Value Building - While short is good, the extra copy in the second landing page treatment will actually improve conversion rates, because it displays the value of completing the landing page's call-to-action. Sure, the promise of an ebook on Google+ for business is good, but explaining what you'll learn if you download and read the ebook is even more enticing. Make the end benefit of completing the download crystal clear with the copy you include on your landing page, even if it does mean a few more lines of text.

9.) Readable Format - You can make those extra lines of copy more easily digestible by separating the value of the offer into bullet points. The extra copy is needed to convey value and drive conversions, but readers won't absorb the points you're making if they're too visually overwhelming. Using bullet points, numbered lists, dashes, and headers helps make those chunks of text easy to scan through.

10.) On-Page Social Sharing - You might think including social sharing buttons is a distraction just like the navigation in the first treatment, but on-page social sharing buttons don't take a user away from your landing page. Let users share your landing page with their network for more leads, and still let your current visitor easily convert during their visit with on-page social sharing, just like on your blog posts!

11.) Pertinent Form Fields - The fewer form fields you can include on your landing page, the better. However, this is one element of your landing page that should be subject to the most scrutinizing A/B tests! It's important not to overwhelm visitors with so many form fields that they abandon mid-form, but you also must collect the information you need to appropriately qualify your lead. The first landing page treatment's form fields, while admirably low in count, don't sufficiently qualify those who convert.

You'll notice that the second treatment also includes red stars that indicate which fields are required, and which are optional. If there is information that isn't absolutely necessary to qualify leads for your business but helps provide a more personal sales experience, include the fields and simply leave out the red star that indicates the field is a requirement.

12.) Action-Based Button - The last barrier to receiving a brand new lead is clicking the "Submit" button. Or if you're looking at the second (and better performing!) landing page, the "Download Now" button. Your form button should contain active and instructive language that tells the user exactly what to do. "Submitting" a form doesn't mean all that much, but pressing a button that says "Download Now" tells users that by clicking, they will be able to complete their ebook download -- and complete it immediately.

Have you experimented with new structures for your landing pages that flout any of these best practices? Share your experiences building landing pages in the comments!

Image credit: dcysurfer / Dave Young, AGmakonts

Connect with HubSpot:

Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC]

2012-02-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC]:

I bumped into my good friend Chris Baggott from Compendium yesterday at the Online Marketing Summit. Every conference we run into each other at, Chris pulls me aside and says, “Joe, here we are at this INSERT NAME conference and a content marketing conference has broken out”.

The point? Everyone is talking content marketing these days. The practice and integration of the creation and distribution of valuable, compelling and relevant content to attract and retain customers has never been more critical for brands of all sizes (see this Coca-Cola content marketing example if you want some proof).

It didn’t used to be the case. Even though I’ve been trying to get corporate marketers to use the term “content marketing” since 2001, only recently has it caught on (see this Google Trends chart below. If content marketing were a stock, we’d be living the high life.)

To further establish the point, our friends at Blueglass Interactive put together this handy infographic, featuring a number of Content Marketing Institute’s B2B content marketing research statistics. Also thanks for our friends at Mashable for covering this with some additional commentary as well. Enjoy!

The original post is titled Content Marketing Tactics Now Critical to All Businesses [INFOGRAPHIC] , and it came from The Content Marketing Revolution .

Wooing The Promiscuous Chinese Consumer

2012-02-10T13:01:00.000-08:00

Wooing The Promiscuous Chinese Consumer:

Companies doing business in China constantly struggle to convert brand awareness into loyalty. A marketer will invest furiously to ensure that his or her brand is part of consumers' consideration sets — only to see them swayed by a slightly cheaper price, a flashier promotion, or a more aggressive in-store salesperson. Many marketers wonder just how to attract and retain Chinese consumers when they are so promiscuous.

Chinese consumers will only consider buying brands they trust and like. According to a recent study we conducted, 45% of respondents believe that well-known brands stand for better quality and safety — many more than the 31% and 27% of American and French consumers who responded similarly. But, despite their preference for established brands, the Chinese always shop around extensively.

The number of consumers who choose from among a distinct set of brands (whom we call repertoire loyalists), and the number of brands that are in their repertoire, are both rising. The average Chinese consumer now chooses from between three and five brands in each product category compared with two to three brands a couple of years ago.

Still, there are signs that it's possible to build a loyal following around brands in China. One sign is the increasing sophistication of consumer tastes and preferences. At the end of the day, brands appeal to emotions; consumers need to see themselves reflected in the brand in some way. For a long time, penny-pinching Chinese consumers — many buying certain products for the first time — focused only on a brand's functional aspects, such as whether it does what it promises; how safe is it; and what's a good price to pay for it.

That's changing, as consumers in China also seek the emotional benefits that a brand can offer. What's increasingly tipping the scales between brands is which one makes consumers "feel good," "feel special," or "stand out in the crowd." Our survey shows that as opposed to 8% in 2009, 19% of Chinese consumers purchasing chocolate in 2011 chose a brand based on emotional considerations such as it "made me feel good."

Dove chocolate, for instance, has built a successful brand in China by creating a positioning for itself as an indulgence for women. These consumers are looking for more than just chocolate; they want to feel that they're treating themselves to a well-deserved reward. Dove has become the leading chocolate brand in China, with a market share of over 50%.

Rising urban incomes are playing an important role in driving the shift from the purely practical to the emotional. As consumers become wealthier, they care less about the functional attributes of brands, so rising incomes are often correlated with brand loyalty. For example, among consumers who earned more than RMB 8,500 (U.S. $1,300) a month, 26% buy only one brand of mobile phone compared with 21% across all income groups. In fact, across product categories, the proportion of higher-income consumers who are brand loyal is five percentage points above the average proportion.

To be sure, marketers shouldn't overlook the need to get the basic brand promise around features and quality right. Consumers do need the reassurance that if they splurge on chocolate, they can count on the product being safe and healthy. However, with consumers looking for something more, brands will also have to address less tangible desires. Marketers who better understand Chinese consumers' less rational drivers will have a better chance at winning them over tomorrow.

This post originally appeared at Harvard Business Review.

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What Content Gets More Retweets? [STUDY]

2012-02-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

What Content Gets More Retweets? [STUDY]:

Wondering how to get more retweets on Twitter? That’s easy to predict, according to a white paper released by HP Labs.

The study collected information from 40,000 articles posted to Twitter over the course of a week, analyzing who wrote each tweet, who published it, what it was about, and the tweet’s tone.

Every company with access to a lab seems to be publishing a “we can predict social media sharing” report these days, but one interesting point made suggested mentioning a known person, place or organization for the added likelihood of a retweet. This seems logical — the more personalized information regarding content you give, the more trustworthy it feels.

It also helps to source from a reputable source, and tweet about popular topics — bring in the cat photos!

Another Content Strategist retweet trick is a classic — it’s called selective sucking up!

Are Your Marketing Efforts Helping or Harming ROI?

2012-02-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

Are Your Marketing Efforts Helping or Harming ROI?:

First, do no harm. This well-known aphorism is fairly easy to understand as it applies to medicine: Don’t make the patient any worse off than he or she already is. But in marketing this is a little harder to explain. To say that, “communications programs should produce results at least as good as if nothing was done at all” is a start. But most marketers would want to go beyond this to say that for the dollars I invest in marketing efforts, I expect a positive return on that investment, because otherwise I would be better off doing nothing at all. Because ROI is the definitive measure of success in business and the Holy Grail of marketing, all of us had better make sure we can measure it accurately.

A recent study conducted by IBM reports that almost two thirds of CMOs think ROI will be the primary measure of their marketing effectiveness by 2015. But how do we measure this? I’d add to that and say, “With a control group!” Every campaign or program should incorporate a control group into its design. The control group is a randomly selected measurable percentage of customers or prospects who met all of our selection criteria, but we did not market to them because we wanted to benchmark the rate of returns, in the form of purchase dollars, had we not done any communications to them at all. This allows us to determine the incremental revenue created by our communications and marketing efforts.

Another way of saying this is we factor out sales and revenue that would have occurred anyway, enabling us to attribute the increase in sales to our marketing program. The colloquialism that is sometimes used here goes like this: “Even a blind squirrel will find a nut sometimes.” Translation: the number of nuts that a blind squirrel might find equals the number of sales that would have occurred without any marketing effort (i.e. sales that occurred in the control group). The control group is key here and we spend a great deal of effort convincing our clients to incorporate a control group into their programs.

If your organization has adopted a measurement philosophy, then you probably already design control groups into your campaigns or the campaigns you design for your clients. If you do not, you will be faced with changing the culture of your organization toward one of analytics and measurement. Measuring your marketing programs is the only real way of knowing whether your efforts are improving ROI or harming it.

Your Kick-Start Guide to Engaging Content [Free eBook]

2012-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

Your Kick-Start Guide to Engaging Content [Free eBook]:

The practice we know as content marketing has grown so much in scope and complexity in the last few years that even seasoned content experts can be overwhelmed when it comes to mastering the latest strategies for communicating with an audience. And as for the rest of us, well, we can all stand to learn more.

Right now, marketers are coming to terms with the fact that a financial transaction is no longer the end-all, be-all of the customer relationship. Sure, achieving a sale is an undeniable win. But it isn’t always enough to drive the loyalty, evangelism, and repeat business that a durable business thrives on.

That’s what engagement is for.

So how can marketers crack the engagement code in content marketing and determine the role it should play in a campaign? And, more importantly, how can we develop a process that helps us engage with customers and prospects more reliably and successfully, time and time again?

There are no magic formulas — after all, we are talking about connecting with something as unique and unpredictable as the human being. But there are many tips that content professionals have picked up in the marketing trenches, and CMI’s latest eBook is loaded with them.

Take a look at Your Kick-Start Guide to Engaging Content, where author Thomas Clifford, and a host of other experts and CMI bloggers, share their perspective on engagement, including:

What it means and why it is essential to marketing
The four qualities that must exist for content to be engaging
How to use content to pump excitement into even the most common product
Ways the experts engage the mind by appealing to the heart
The five main categories of engagement tools, and great examples of each
Knowing what to measure, and ways to use what you learn to determine your next steps

Your Kickstart Guide to Engaging Content

View more presentations from Content Marketing Institute

Whether you are looking for some guidance to boost your success rates or need to get up to speed with some useful information and easy-to-implement techniques, we found a lot to think about here, and we hope you will, too.

Three Reasons Why Converting Data Into Valuable Business Results is no Picnic!

2012-02-10T12:37:00.000-08:00

Three Reasons Why Converting Data Into Valuable Business Results is no Picnic!:

Nancy Porte knows what she is talking about

I have been reading a PR release on the latest Verint-Vovici voice of the customer survey. The key finding is “organizations hailing from a wide range of industries and company sizes are catching on to the value of the Voice of the Customer”. And the conclusion is “research shows that as long as companies aim to enhance the customer experience, improve customer loyalty and increase profitability, the VoC will always fill a mission-critical role”. It is good to see that an ex-employer, The Peppers & Rogers Group, has been involved in this study. Let’s move on to the part of the press release that did catch my attention:

“People are amazing at collecting data, but they’re often less skilled at creating insights out of it and spreading them throughout the whole organization,” adds Vovici’s Porte. “Data is great, but it rarely means anything unless you’ve figured out exactly what that data is saying and what you’re going to do about it.”

What happens when you give a budding Alexander the Great a fleet of stealth bombers?

Imagine that you turn up at the residence of a budding third world ‘Alexander the Great’ – a dictator with dreams of empire. You offer him a fleet of stealth bombers with all the associated armaments. You are excited, the dictator is excited – you see yourself as rich and the dictators sees the world at his knees. What you have both forgotten is that it takes highly skilled pilots to fly these stealth bombers. And you need to put in place a whole ‘infrastructure’ (hangars, airstrips, fuel, missiles, technicians) to enable highly skilled pilots to make use of these stealth bombers. You might be wondering what this has to do with VoC and Customer Analytics. Everything.

There are plenty of vendors offering analytics stealth bombers (advanced data mining and analytics platforms, packages and ‘solutions’). Before you embrace your dreams of ‘world domination through analytics’ you might want to consider and prepare for the following:

The fuel (data) that powers analytics is typically missing, insufficient and/or ‘dirty’;
The pilots (statisticians) that need to fly the stealth bombers (the analytics packages) are in short supply – there simply are not enough of them to go around to fulfill the dream that is being aggressively communicated;
The infrastructure (leadership, mindset, culture, practices, processes….) that is required to ‘make use of the skills of the pilots’ and ‘exploit the potential of the stealth bombers’ is simply not present in the vast majority of organisation and putting it in place is a BIG ask, which requires patience (think long term) and commitment (to face and overcome the hurdles – big and small).

What is so in the real world?

What is the state of affairs in the real world? I cannot answer that question as I have not sampled the whole world of business. Yet, I can share my lived experience with you when it comes to the analytics front. Allow me to illustrate with two examples.

As a customer based strategist I need and generate insights in order to construct viable strategies. In one consulting engagement I asked a question: how many customers did you sign-up last year over channel X? Sometime later I was handed a report. I got a different answer depending on which page I looked at. There was only a small difference between the numbers and the point is that there should have been no difference! Either the definition of ‘customer’ was not consistent over the enterprise. Or the definition of the ‘channel X’ was not consistent. Or the enterprise systems and/or people were not able to add up properly. Sound bad enough? What if I told you that the managers in this enterprise prided themselves on the quality of their management information?

In another consulting assignment (involving the formulation of a customer strategy) I was in the process of getting to grips with the customer base – specifically, customer profiling and segmentation. I needed to understand who was buying a particular product. So I asked a helpful member of the client organisation to come back with the answer. I was handed a small document and it clearly stated that the buyers were male, in their thirties and living in the larger cities. Having been burned more than once, I asked to see the actual figures. Upon reviewing the figures I found that the buyers (customers) were indeed in their thirties and living in larger cities. However, there was no statistical difference in gender: the buyers was just as likely to be female as male. You might be wondering how someone who is trusted (and whose job it is) to interpret data get it wrong so badly? I can tell you that this is no exception – misinterpretation of data is the norm rather than the exception. Why? Because we are not statistically minded. Thinking statistically is arduous and is a skill that has to be learned and continually practiced.

What Is Mobile? Thinking Beyond Channel

2012-02-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

What Is Mobile? Thinking Beyond Channel:

Recently, I shared my perspective on why mobile is not a channel. That begs the question, “What is it?”

I see mobile as a collection of touchpoints.

Mobile Is an Ecosystem of Touchpoints

Mobile surrounds each of your users with many ways of connecting to digital—or touchpoints. Smartphone touchpoints allow each user to monitor, be alerted, and react in the moment. Tablet touchpoints allow users to immerse themselves for a while—alone or with friends and family. If you plan these touchpoints well, as a system, then you can be ready to meet your users’ needs in diverse mobile situations.

The interesting thing is that the uniquely mobile touchpoints aren’t simply websites or applications. They are SMS (short messaging service) messages, ads, and location-based service campaigns, too. And, those touchpoints are much more integrated in a mobile experience than their counterparts in a traditional web experience.

For example, ads are successful on tablets, partly because they can be deeper and richer than ads for traditional interactive. On tablets, ads are becoming more like content themselves and flow more seamlessly into your tablet-optimized site or application than a normal banner ad.

As another example, an SMS trigger, such as an alert from Target that new coupons are available, will lead me immediately to the coupons on the smartphone-optimized website. A traditional email is likely to cover more topics, have more links, and compete with all the other emails in my in box for attention. In other words, to the user, there’s more distinction between the email and the normal website than there is between the SMS trigger and the mobile website.

Why a Touchpoint View Is More Useful Than a Channel View

I find this view handy because it...

Allows for the right variety among mobile touchpoints. The touchpoints share much in common, but they’re not exactly the same. For example, Zappos decided to create a lifestyle magazine application for tablets but not the smartphone. That was the right decision. Why? Because people are more likely to immerse themselves in a magazine with a tablet than with a smartphone.

Sets the right planning and process expectations with executives and stakeholders. Mobile is multifaceted. Mobile is complex. Mobile is integrated. And, mobile has high potential to boost your reach, reputation, and results. So, you’ll get more value out of mobile if you take time to assess your strategy. Also, it’s not a single channel, so trying to manage it in the same way as your calls or your website, for example, won’t work.

Accommodates future change. One thing we can be sure about mobile? Change. As technology advances and new types of devices proliferate, we don’t know exactly what the future holds. Heck, pretty soon your car will be a mobile touchpoint. So, viewing mobile as a system of touchpoints now will make it easier to include new touchpoints later.

What Mobile Touchpoints Mean for Strategic Planning

To make the most of your mobile ecosystem, you’ll likely need a different approach to planning for it. Over the past several months, we’ve thought about the implications and started a repository of things to consider. To give you a sense of the implications, I’m sharing a few here.

Pay Attention to Your Own Industry and Your Own Metrics

The potential of the smartphone experience for retail is much different than it is for higher education, for example. The potential of tablet experience for media is much different than it is for finance. It’s worth taking time to consider the realistic opportunities for your industry so you don’t overinvest or underinvest in mobile.

In the same way, I see organizations struggling to accommodate mobile as well as social and content into their way of doing interactive. How to prioritize? One way is to look at your metrics to determine whether your users really are seeking you on mobile. If they are, then make a basic mobile presence a priority. If not, then get social and content in order first.

Start Identifying Opportune Moments

To plan a great experience for the smartphone side of mobile, you have to identify the right moments you want to support. And, in many cases, you have to figure out how you’re going to detect those moments. You have to figure out the user context. GigaOm analyst Dr. Phil Hendrix calls this "tuning in" to users' "digital signals." What data about the user or the user’s phone will trigger an alert or a message, for example? Walmart has invested $300 million and counting in WalmartLabs to figure out exactly that and more for their retail business. That investment makes sense for retail and other industries with a lot at stake in mobile. For other industries, location-based services such as foursquare and Facebook Places can help you detect a user’s location and social connections.

Don’t Necessarily COPE (Create Once Publish Everywhere)

You might have heard of COPE. NPR (National Public Radio) helped coin this phrase in describing its API and its overall approach to publishing content their channels and touchpoints. Here’s the thing. NPR is a media property with one core type of content, the story, and one main user scenario, consuming the story. If you are not a media company, you have many more content types and customer scenarios to consider. You don’t necessarily want to publish the same content everywhere. It’s okay to have content in one mobile touchpoint and not another. Instead, you want the capability to create content once and publish to multiple channels and touchpoints—the touchpoints that you decide are appropriate for your users.

Avoid Ownership + Process Headaches

Mobile is so integrated that it wreaks havoc on how large organizations manage channels and even interactive roles. When you pursue mobile, be ready to work through the ownership and process maturation as much as the user experience issues. Who owns mobile search? Who will oversee editorial for your tablet application?

Those considerations are only a few…I could go on and on. My point is that this ecosystem view of mobile will change how you plan for mobile.

Beyond Channel, Beyond Sound Bites

Right now, perhaps the biggest impact of seeing mobile as an ecosystem of touchpoints is this:

Cobbling together industry sound bites about mobile won’t work as your mobile strategy.

So, if you’re given a regurgitation of buzzwords as a strategy, then think twice before accepting it. If you see mobile as an ecosystem of touchpoints, then you or your team can think beyond the cacophony of catchphrases and plan a strategy for your unique mobile situation—a strategy that will really work.

Is Content Marketing the Hot New Trend? – Infographic

2012-02-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

Is Content Marketing the Hot New Trend? – Infographic:

It was in 2008 that I realised the power of creating and marketing unique content to pull people to your website and blog and was one of the primary reasons I started jeffbullas.com.

I discovered this when I stumbled upon Hubspot, a company that was one of the early innovators of content marketing. Their marketing was refreshing change to “old school” marketing and was based upon creating attention through attraction with blog articles and free ebooks.

It was the dawn of “pull marketing” or “inbound marketing” rather than push strategies such as telemarketing and direct mail.

Fast forward to 2012 and it appears that there is a growing groundswell of activity and interest in content marketing is racheting up.

This momentum is not only for B2B but B2C is starting to adopt this marketing philosophy and Coca Cola has created a brand new marketing strategy based upon this emerging trend.

Other companies such as American Express are also embracing this trend.

So Why has Content Marketing become Popular Recently?

More companies and B2B marketers are now recognizing the power of content marketing, and the effect it is having on customer engagement and brand awareness specifically.

The other enabling factor in this mix is social media because having great content is all good but it needs to be made “visible“.

Social media adds leverage and provides the free “distribution technologies” to your content that were not available before, this adds the “X-Factor” and increases visibility and buzz and creates marketing synergy that is hard to stop.

So What makes a Good Content Marketing Strategy?

According to the infographic below, it is quality, shareable content. Content that people actually want to read, engage with and share.

Companies like Coca Cola are becoming early adopters, maximizing their efforts with unique, compelling content development (such as the Content 2020 campaign). BlueGlass Interactive, a leader in the internet marketing space, has recently partnered with Voltier Digital, an innovative digital marketing agency specializing in content marketing and data visualization techniques (ie. infographics).

The Content Marketing Explosion by the Numbers

So what is the current status of content marketing and what are the marketers plans for 2012?

90% of B2B marketers are doing some form of content marketing
60% of B2B marketers plan to spend more on content marketing in 2012
The major content marketing tactic is article posting at 79%
B2B Marketers are investing on average 25% of their budget on content marketing (smaller companies are spending more)

Take a look at how content marketing has become a power source in marketing as a whole, and why it has become one of the fastest growing industries today.

3 Business-Generating Social Media Metrics You’ve Been Ignoring

2012-02-10T12:31:00.001-08:00

3 Business-Generating Social Media Metrics You’ve Been Ignoring:

Two weeks ago, Searchcore pointed out the least useful and most misleading social media metrics for business owners. We identified the mischaracterizations of Klout scores, the number of a Facebook page’s fans (or “likes”), and the total number of followers, fans, or friends.

This week, we’re going to analyze what you should be doing, and tracking, with your social media channels. #1 – Lead Generation via Email Subscribers The number of followers you have represents your maximum reach, and having a solid following on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or any other social media channel helps you stay in touch with people, whether they’re clients, industry influencers, or general people of interest. But they don’t necessarily generate any real revenue for you or your company. The single most profitable channel is still email marketing, and if you’re not doing it, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of profit generation. You should be using your social media profiles to funnel visitors to your email signup list, collecting leads that you can use to directly market your products and keep in touch with via quarterly, monthly, or even weekly newsletter mailers.

Using tools like MailChimp or Constant Contact (our favorites), you can intelligently use customer data and automate newsletter and email marketing efforts, customizing the messages you send to your recipients. What else can you do?

Email your high-value customers with special promotions;
Offer promotions to lapsed customers;
Segment lists based on purchase history or email behavior; and
Identify your most-engaged prospects, and more.

#2 – Conversation and Engagement Like we mentioned before, the number of followers, fans, and friends you have represents your maximum reach, but Facebook’s EdgeRank system will prevent your page from being visible to all of the people who “liked” you unless those users actively engage your page already. This not only means that you really have to make your posts count, but it also means that the number of fans or friends you have is not an effective measurement of who is looking at your content or of what those impressions are worth. A more effective measurement is your conversation rate, or your total engagement. This can be simply defined as the number of comments or replies you receive per post, and the beauty of this metric is that it can be measured on every social channel – your blog, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and so on and so forth.

Paying attention to your conversation and engagement rate helps you stay connected with what resonates with your readership in real time. While it’s not difficult to take a snapshot glance at a post and see the number of replies, you will have to keep a manual total and averages of your replies per post, but this can be easily accomplished in a spreadsheet.

If you know of a measurement tool or dashboard that accomplishes this task, tell us about it in the comments! #3 – Amplification and Shares Finally, instead of focusing on the number of friends you have, why not measure how much those friends are promoting you? This is called your amplification rate, and it takes into account the full potential of your network.

For example, you have a limited number of friends and followers, and the most people you can reach with any given message that you send is limited to that number. So if you have 11k Twitter followers, then the most people you can directly reach is 11k. However, your second level network (meaning the people who follow those that follow you) is exponentially greater, so how much your messages are amplified by your direct followers can expand your reach from several thousand to several hundred thousand.

In Twitter terms, these are the re-tweets; for Facebook and Google+, we’re talking about “shares.” This makes your content visible to entirely new audiences, and is fairly easy to track. It also places an emphasis on creating shareable content, which you should already be doing, so that your second level network will, over time, become part of your first level network.

So, what we really want to pay attention to with our social media efforts are these things:

Lead generations on our email lists;
Conversation rate, or total engagement; and
Amplification, or shares.

Can you think of an important metric that we missed? Let me know in the comments!

This article was originally published at We Do Web Content and is re-posted with permission.

Email Summit: What’s the best lead generation tactic? All of them

2012-02-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

Email Summit: What’s the best lead generation tactic? All of them:

That’s the word from our own Brian Carroll, who made that proclamation in an interview at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit this week.

Paradoxically, this is why it’s critical to be strategic. He explains there’s a lot of ways to acquire leads, but there’s no determining which ones work best without testing. But what compounds the situation is that marketers don’t have the time or resources to test every potential tactic.

This is why Carroll advises looking at marketing like a portfolio manager looks at a mutual fund. They analyze the financial marketplace. They make choices that balance high risk/high reward with the tried and true to achieve the highest return from their investment portfolio.

To get a complete view of what’s performing in the sales marketplace, Carroll turns to data from MarketingSherpa’s Benchmark Reports. He analyzes what’s working – and what’s not – for other marketers and makes informed decision about which tactics would best complete his marketing portfolio.

Beyond that, it’s all about building relationships with people. “That’s what we really need to do instead of expecting to drive conversion from a single event or email,” he explains and throws in another analogy, “You don’t ask someone to get married on the first date…the relationship you’re looking to start with customers is built over time with trust.”

He expands on how to make that happen:

“You need to identify the right people in the right companies. Initiate a memorable dialog that answers ‘yes’ to the questions ‘Is this relevant to me and my needs or my coworker’s or colleagues?’ And then nurture that dialog with a potential customer on an ongoing basis…If you’re doing these three things effectively, you’re doing lead generation well.”

Take five minutes to watch Brian’s interview here:

Related resources

Top Takeaways for Small Business from Email Summit 2012

Email Summit: Mobile marketing panel on the complex sale

Email Summit: Testing, timing and format elements in follow-up email

Email Summit 2012: Meeting email marketing challenges

A Father and Son’s Journey to Stardom Using Google Video Ads

2012-02-10T12:30:00.000-08:00

A Father and Son’s Journey to Stardom Using Google Video Ads:

As a marketing consultant whose primary role is to advise clients on the best mix of marketing solutions to promote their products or services, I decided to hire myself for a project that hits close to home. In fact, the project lives in my home and calls me Dad. Spencer Kane, my 15 year old son, is a teen pop singer/songwriter who is starting to make an impact in the independent music industry.

Social Media’s Role

Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are the cornerstone for teenagers to discover and share all things important to teens. Mobile phones (smart phones) are the currency of social life for my son’s peers. The Facetime or Skype options are all ways these targeted demographics (Spencer’s fans) share their lives with one another. Ok, so nothing revelatory here, just building a foundation for my journey so far.

In the summer of 2011, Spencer’s first single was published on Youtube with an official music video. Justin Bieber posted videos and look where he is, so there must be something to this method of using Youtube to promote a product. . . er, I mean, my son.

Executive after executive stated that every artist (signed or unsigned) MUST build a loyal fan following. The advent of the internet has radically changed how artists can be discovered or followed. Singers like Taylor Swift, Colbie Caillat, Justin Bieber, and Austin Mahone are just a few Internet-based amateurs who were discovered because they focused their music to an online audience.

Online Promotion is Easy Right?

So we have Spencer’s music videos on YouTube and they were getting modest views, hence, a modest fan following. I decided the most important strategy in promoting Spencer would be to maximize the number of views on his YouTube channel. Uploading new videos on a regular basis would feed the appetite of his fans. We’ve done that, but growing the base of fans was still a challenge.

Google’s AdWords for Video

Google has recently introduced (November 2011) a beta tool for video ad campaigns. I was solicited to switch our Promoted YouTube Ads to their new platform. We were seeing approximately one percent view rates (similar to click-throughs, but measured as actual video views instead of just clicking on the ad). After a lengthy training phone call from their support team at Google AdsWords, I was told that Spencer’s music videos would gain considerable increases in views in a short time if I would just try their new platform.

Increase in Video Views

We have nearly tripled the amount of video views for his YouTube channel in just three weeks versus the normal weekly view rates. We’re seeing well over 2.25% view ratio now versus the previous one percent. This may still seem low, but it is ever expanding his fan base because we have targeted several foreign markets versus the U.S. and are seeing a great rise in Twitter and Facebook followers alike.

Google’s newest video ad platform is tremendous. Imagine having the ability to customize the commercials on the Superbowl based on the viewers’ personal interests. Instead of seeing Dorito commercials when you personally don’t care for them, imagine seeing a Lays Potato Chip commercial instead.

AdWords + YouTube = Success

This new platform combines both Google and YouTube search engine technology into one platform that allows video ads to be seen on Google’s advertiser network sites and on YouTube. It drills deep into the heart of user interests because it knows users’ search habits over time and allows ads to appear when certain keyword combinations are queried or specific types of websites are visited.

Expanded Media Exposure

For example, if someone searched Google for Selena Gomez and visited the New York Times article about her, Spencer’s video ad may very well appear on the NY Times website next to the article about Selena. Talk about expanded market exposure. What’s beautiful about this new ad platform is that it didn’t require an increase in ad budget. I still pay the same daily amount as before, and have already seen over two times the traffic. Imagine if I had a real marketing budget to work with instead of the leftover grocery budget each month.

Selfishly, I hope Spencer Kane continues to grow in popularity (www.spencerkanemusic.com) and that his videos are seen worldwide by millions. Until those are reached, I will continue to tweak and adjust the video ads we are using while sharing the lessons learned.

Rocket Readings

Plugging In: The Six Communities with which Your Business Needs to Connect

How to Map Lead Nurturing Content to Each Stage in the Sales Cycle

Understanding the Buying Cycle

How Content Mapping Works

Applying Content Mapping to a Real-Life Scenario

How To Use Social Media Internally To Build Your Brand And Business

The Future of Content Marketing – 6 Differences Between Good and Great [Part 2]

Good to Great Content Marketing

1. The Focused, Educational Content Platform

2. Opening Up New Content/Media Markets

3. The Chief Storyteller

4. Leveraging Employees in Content Creation

5. Removing the Brand from the Story

6. Building a Community by Leveraging Outside Experts

5 Ways to Get Your Entire Company On Board With Social Media

The Time for Complete Buy-In Is Now

5 Ideas for Achieving Complete Social Media Buy-In From All Employees

#1: Someone Must Take the Lead

#2: Educate Via an Event

#3: Encourage Employee Action

#4: Create a Company Social Media Newsletter

#5: Continue Training and Education

Your Turn

Images from iStockPhoto.

Create a World of Marketing Automation Through Good Content—and Imagination

4 Problems Killing Thought Leadership Marketing

1. Thought Leadership Isn’t Created by Marketing

2. Thought Leadership Isn’t a Real Priority

3. Thought Leadership Is Human

4. Thought Leadership Isn’t About You

In Summary

Your Turn

Super Bowl was a Two-Screen Experience

How to Forecast Ad Revenue

Tracking your average RPMUV

Forecasting Future Sales

Benchmarking your forecasts

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers

Defining Bricks & Feathers

Deciding Between Bricks & Feathers

Position / Identity

Content Life Span

SEO Potential

Required Resources

Opportunity Cost

Primary Metrics

Best of Both Worlds?

Does Your B2B Marketing Content Address Cause?

The 17 R's of Savvy Mobile Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

The 17 R's of Mobile Marketing

The 7 Deadly Sins of Social Media Marketing

Sometimes “No Sale” is the Best Deal

How Clorox used content marketing to help me fix a toilet

How to Create Smarter Content Using Semantic Keyword Research

Let’s start at the beginning

How to create “core” keywords

How to create “supporting” keywords

How to create “stemming” keywords

What to do with these keywords

When will the authority and links come?

Don’t forget to write for humans first

How Clinton Managed Tens of Thousands of Contacts

3 Ways to Use Pinterest For Marketing Research

Discover What Are People Pinning from Your Web Site

Understanding Customer Perception

Capturing Descriptions, Comments & Board Names

The Wrap

Related Stories

4 Ways to Win the Deal When You Don’t Have the Lowest Price

1. Demonstrate Value

2. Customer Service

3. Set the Right Price

4. Know Your Customer

Replacing “Authentic” in Social Media

Be Believable

Be Believable

Is Authentic Worth Anything?

Parting Thoughts

Your Turn