Archive for the 'Sales' Category

Top Digital Trends for 2012

Published on December 30, 2011 in Internet, Mobile Website, Sales, Social Media and Statistic Data. 0 Comments

Marketers, retailers, content owners and technology firms are more focused than ever on obtaining results from investments in digital marketing. If past years were about amassing data from the touchpoints between companies and consumers, 2012 will be about curating, filtering and measuring that information to drive outcomes.

To that end, retailers are synthesizing increasingly vast and complex data streams to inform decisions about inventories, pricing and merchandising. Marketers are taking a similar approach with the data they gather from the ever-expanding social web. Content owners are also using data-centric methods to analyze how people are consuming and sharing media. No longer satisfied with collecting “likes,” fans, followers and viral hits, companies are now asking harder questions about the real value of these social network interactions.

More and more, marketers are realizing that traditional notions of interruptive advertising need to be rethought. Many are experimenting with branded videos, games, apps and online contests that blur the line between advertising and content. In some cases, these forms of “magnetic content” do a better job of brand projection than more conventional online video or display ads.

One of the keys to the success of magnetic content is that audiences are primed to consume media in increasingly diverse and fluid ways. People use smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, ereaders, game consoles, connected TVs and set-top boxes to access video and other content, and they expect that content to flow seamlessly across devices and media platforms. This presents opportunities for brand marketers and content owners that understand how to deliver to increasingly demanding customers. But it also challenges these companies to strike difficult balances between unfettered access and revenue generation, between intelligent targeting and privacy concerns, and between new and old content licensing models.

The collision of content and advertising will accelerate in the coming year as the political establishment gears up for the 2012 US presidential election. The upcoming contest promises to push the digital envelope as candidates make novel uses of viral videos, social networks, blogs and other sharing sites.

Using Google+ to build your business

Published on November 11, 2011 in Sales, Social Media, Website Online Marketing and Website Search Engine Optimization. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Google+ is the new player in the block. It has quickly become the place to be in social media.

The last thing entrepreneurs need is another social network to join, right? Weren’t you just getting the hang of Twitter? Didn’t you just start putting that Facebook business page together? So why is this important to get into Google+ now?

What I’ve seen so far is that the new social network from Google has a lot of advantages that are worth thinking about, and entrepreneurial types should take a look-see.

THE NEXT BIG THING
Google+ is a social networking platform, but you can look at it a lot of different ways. You can say it’s like Facebook, only cleaner. It’s like Twitter, only more engaging. It has the potential to be a great collaboration and communication platform (you can isolate who sees information by sharing it with specific Circles, or groupings of people).

Also, realize that Google+ is indexed by the biggest search engine in the world, also known as Google. Other search engines like it, too. And it has a lot of integration points, such as Google Places (which shows you location information), and an incredible potential for integrating even more of Google’s services over time.

HOW IT WILL HELP YOUR BUSINESS
Social networks are built to try and emulate real-world connectivity and information-sharing. On one hand, they’re like a more interesting telephone. On the other hand, they’re built to augment (not replace) cocktail parties, chamber of commerce meetings and other places where people get to know each other (or at least used to). Google+ does this surprisingly well, for a few reasons.
Google+ lets you share photos, videos, links and location data with everyone, or with your select Circles. Thus, when you find the good stuff that applies to your real estate friends, if you’ve grouped them into a Circle, you can send that information only to them. Other times, you can share with the general public to try and grow your audience.

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT
First (and important) Facebook is not indexed by Google for search results, meaning that everything you do inside there stays inside there. Second, Facebook and LinkedIn both are set up for more of an “exclusive” model, which means that you have to know someone to know something. That’s why you see companies pushing so hard for “likes,” and why you see people spam the LinkedIn Groups.
Google+ is slowly rolling out their “for business” parts of the platform.

GET IN EARLY
Simply put, it’s important to take action on Google+ right now. I saw the benefits of this when I joined Twitter a while ago. If you get in, get familiar, start growing connections and learn how to curate and share, you’ll be ahead of the game.

How to Optimize Your Press Release

Published on November 7, 2011 in Sales and Website Search Engine Optimization. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Why Submit Your Press Release to Distribution Services?

Think about Google News and Yahoo! News as different search engines. In order to get your content to be indexed in these places, you need to submit your press release to one of the recognized press release distribution services.

Where to Submit Your Press Release?
The five big ones are: PRWeb, PR Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwire and PrimeNewswire. There are other less popular ones, plus free services you may be able to use. While we encourage you to experiment, make sure you know what you are getting. You should have access to the main search engines and the capability to hyperlink from the press release to your site.

The # 1 Critical Element in Press Releases
Including hyperlinks in your press releases is critical. Make sure to hyperlink relevant words directing to targeted pages. For instance, if your press release is about a new product launch, you should hyperlink the most important phrases and send people to your website pages corresponding to these phrases. This is essential for search engine optimization.

Don’t Forget to Publish on Your Site
In addition to sending the press release to reputable distribution services, you should also publish it on your own website. Put it up on the Media page, on your blog or wherever you think is appropriate. If you put it on your site, it is going to get indexed by the main part of Google.

How Do You Use Your Email List Effectively?

Published on November 4, 2011 in Sales and Website Online Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Do you remember the sweet anticipation of receiving new email messages? If you are like most people today, you hardly think of your inbox fondly.

Here are the two things you need to consider when using your email for marketing. It is great to see people opening and enjoying your emails. Here is how you can achieve more of this:
Don’t Use Email to Only Sell
“The biggest problem that I see is that companies use them [emails] exclusively to try to sell things,” says David Meerman Scott in his book “Real-Time Marketing.”

The messages they send revolve around product offers, discounts and free shipping. Emails from B2B companies, on the other hand, are always trying to push the recipients toward engaging with sales people. While this approach is okay every now and then, it should occur only after a company has earned the attention of its email subscribers.

Earn the Attention of Email Subscribers
Every email you send to people needs to lead with something valuable. You might want to share a link to a video, a new webinar or some type of industry report or an infographic. In this way, your recipients will be excited to open your messages because they will expect to see real value there. So, before sending your next email, ask yourself: “Why is this going to be valuable to the person I am sending it?”

Five Social Media Models

Published on February 16, 2011 in Branding, Customer Relationship, Internet Sales, Sales, Social Media, Website Online Marketing and Website Search Engine Optimization. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

It’s a good idea to know how others are using social media so you can incorporate those models into your own campaigns.

Here are five common social media models that are being used by most people (some of whom are our own clients):

Branding. Some companies use social media strictly as a branding tool. Typically, this means running a YouTube campaign that (hopefully) gets a lot of buzz around the water cooler. In our opinion, using social media simply as a branding tool is a twentieth century mindset. If you really want to supercharge your social media campaigns, you’ll incorporate one or all of the next four highly measurable approaches.

eCommerce. If you can sell your product or service online, then you’ll want to drive people to a landing page on your website where they can buy your goods. How can you accomplish this? Just do what Dell does—they Tweet about special promotions available only to the people who follow them on Twitter. The promotional links are easily tracked so they can see how many people went to the landing page and how many converted from a prospect to a customer. They generate millions of dollars in revenue each quarter by using this method.

Research. Many companies are using social media as a tool to do research. Sometimes, this involves building a website to track the results. Starbucks has done this famously with their MyStarbucksIdea.com website. Other times, using social media as a research tool can be as simple as doing a poll on LinkedIn, SurveyMonkey, or via email.

Customer Retention. A good rule of thumb is that it costs three to five times as much to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Given that, wouldn’t it be smart to use social media as a tool to keep customers loyal and engaged? That’s what Comcast and Southwest Airlines do—they communicate via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms to help solve customer service issues.

Lead Generation. What do you do if you can’t sell your product or service online? Then you’ll want to do what many B2B companies do—that is, to use social media to drive prospects to a website where they can download a whitepaper, listen to a Podcast, or watch a video. Once you’ve captured the prospect’s contact information, you can re-market to them via email, direct mail, or any number of other methods.

What Word-of-mouth marketing will do for your business?

Published on January 28, 2011 in Sales, Social Media, Website, Website Online Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM) is the process of information exchange, especially recommendations about products and services, between two people in an informal way. In the past, word of mouth has been a spoken phenomenon, but other types of dialogue (such as email and Web postings) are now included in the definition. It differs from other types of communication in that the source credibility is very high. That is, the person giving the information is generally seen as a much more credible source by the person receiving the information. This is especially true when someone knows the person that is giving him or her the information.

Continue reading ‘What Word-of-mouth marketing will do for your business?’

Getting People To ‘Like’ Your Facebook Page

Published on January 14, 2011 in facebook, Sales, Website Online Marketing, Website Search Engine Optimization and Word of Mouth Marketing. 17 Comments Tags: , , .

With Facebook attracting more than 400 million users, the question is no longer if you need to create a Facebook brand presence, it’s how you’re going to use one. If people are talking about your brand, you want them to be doing it on your official page so that you can leverage Facebook’s open social graph and drive users back to your site. But you can only do that after you jump one very important (and large) hurdle.

You have to make people want to join your Facebook page.

It’s simple: You can’t market to or build brand awareness with someone who’s not opted in. What’s not simple is getting a user to hit that ‘like’ button. Users are a lot more discerning on Facebook than on other social sites. For them to opt into your page, they need a compelling reason. It’s a big step from passively liking a brand to publicly ‘liking’ them in full view of friends and colleagues. You have to make it worth their while.

How do you get something to like you enough to make it Facebook official?

Continue reading ‘Getting People To ‘Like’ Your Facebook Page’

How to Get your staff involve in your company’s blog

Published on December 17, 2010 in Blogging, Sales and Website Design. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

A corporate blog provides a forum for your company’s leaders and employees to discuss topics of interest with your prospects, customers and the people who influence them. A corporate blog can consist of several individual blogs, each written by different employees (“specialists”). It can also have a summary company blog that incorporates all of the individual blogs.

Organizing a blog in this fashion creates many more opportunities for your company to be found online and to generate new business. So how do you get everyone in your organization on board?

1. Get commitment from the person in charge

Require key employees to write a weekly post. As you can imagine, this announcement may receive some objection from certain members of the team. There may be doubt that another blog could bring value to the market or target audience but everyone should still be encouraged to blog. Over time, more employees will become excited about blogging. In order for the entire firm to be committed to blogging, the leader of the company must also demonstrate his or her commitment.

2. Appoint a blogging administrator

Dedicate a specific resource to manage the blog. This person’s top responsibilities include:

  • Monitoring that everyone submits his/her blog posts on the assigned day.
  • Keeping everyone excited about blogging,
  • Educating on blogging best practices.
  • Sending out a weekly report to keep bloggers motivated and aware of the value blogging brings to the business.
  • Making sure that subject matter experts are involved to review posts in their areas of expertise.
  • Everyone should be enthusiastic about blogging but you can’t assume that everyone will communicate in a way that the readers will easily understand. Enlist the aid of an editor to build consistent logic and structure.

3. Share the results

People get discouraged if you don’t show them the fruits of their labor. If you get 25 new leads as the result of a blog post, let everyone know! If a thought leader re-tweeted one of your employee’s posts, let everyone know!

4. Write for your target

Before you start blogging you need to determine and personalize your target audience. Think in terms of a specific persona or multiple personas that identify segments within your market. Personas can help companies develop effective marketing messages and useful products. Think: Who are you writing to? Who do you want to read your blogs? Visualize the answers.

How to talk about what you do

Published on May 8, 2010 in Branding, Motivation and Sales. 3 Comments Tags: , , .

I learned a lot from Michael Port’s book – Book Yourself Solid. I really recommend it if you want to increase your sales.

Below is a clip on how to talk about what you do by Michael Port.

How customer buys

Published on May 26, 2008 in Internet Sales and Sales. 0 Comments

Customer groups gather information in certain ways leading to the point at which they buy a product.

An effective marketing campaign concentrates on how potential customers search for information, so the marketing information is available when and where customers are looking for it.

For example, golfers can be divided into three groups of buyers: pioneers, early followers and late followers.

Pioneers like to be the first to buy and experiment with a new product. They enjoy the intrigue of being on the cutting edge of golf innovation. They look for information on new products in golf magazines, watch what various pros are using, and even search the Internet for tips on new equipment.

A manufacturer of golf equipment usually starts out by giving their clubs to a few pros try to and by running publicity stories using the pros for endorsements.

Increasingly those manufactures are also taking their clubs to driving ranges for customers to try and using the internet as a way of finding their pioneering buyers.

There is not much point in advertising a brand new golf product to the general public. Most golfers won’t use the product until the pioneers at their favorite course have endorsed it.

The most effective marketing tactics coordinate marketing communication and promotions with the actual process the target customers goes through when deciding to buy a product.

You want to be sure to place your marketing messages in the places where customers look for information on your type of product or services.