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Five Minute Profits
Jan 28th
Learn To Milk The Betfair Markets With Just 5 Minutes Of Your Time.
Five Minute Profits
Join us in Atlanta for “Getting Down to Social Business”
Jan 28th
Join me, Anita Campbell, and an impressive list of the CRM industry’s leading experts and solution providers a free 1-day information packed seminar on February 3, 2012 , in Atlanta, Georgia!
The day will focus on the need for companies to transition their approach to “social” away from a narrow, reactionary set of disconnected activities … to a full-fledged corporate culture strategically aligned to build long-lasting relationships with today’s empowered customer.
Sessions Include:
- Keynote presentation by Paul Greenberg, author of the best-selling “CRM At the Speed of Light”
- The Consumerization of IT (by Michael Thomas, Customer Success Manager, Microsoft)
- Journey to the Middle of the Funnel – Connecting Inbound Marketing to Sales Conversion (Jeanne Hopkins, HubSpot VP of Marketing)
- The Role of Community in Today’s Business Environment (panel discussion featuring Anita Campbell, Publisher of Small Business Trends and Robin Carey, CEO of Social Media Today – Moderated by Adrienne Graham, Founder of Empower Me)
- The Velocity of Customer Service in the Social Age (Matt Trifiro, Assistly VP of Marketing)
- Connecting the Dots Between PR and Customer Service (Jeff Nolan, Get Satisfaction VP of Product Marketing)
- Next-Level Listening (by Cory Hartlen, Radian6 Product Marketing Manager)
- The Realities of Becoming A Social Business (panel discussion featuring Adam Naide, Executive Director of Social Media Marketing for Cox Communications, Bert DuMars, VP of Interactive Marketing & Ecommerce for Newell Rubbermaid, and Larry Ritter, SVP & GM of Sage CRM Solutions – Moderated by Art Hall, President of the Atlanta Chapter of the CRM Association)
- Closing the Deal – The Impact of Social on Selling, the Sales Organization and the Customer Relationship (panel discussion featuring Graham Clark , Partner of Customer Results and TAG CRM Board Member, and Judy Mod, founder of the Social Executive Council).
Event Title: Getting Down to Social Business – The New Business As Usual in the Age of the Collaborative Relationship
Description: There’s no doubting the impact social and mobile technologies are having on all facets of human interaction. But what impact is it having on the sales process, and on the expectations customers have on sales professionals as they move through their buying cycle? And how are sales organizations leveraging new tools to help sales professionals close deals and grow strong relationships with social customers?
These topics and others will be addressed by a panel of experts as they take on the important question of how to leverage social tools and strategies
Date: Friday February 3, 2012, 8:30-4 pm
Place: Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center
250 14th Street NW, Atlanta GA, 30318
Cost: FREE, with online registration
Registration Link: http://gettingdowntosocialbusiness.eventbrite.com/
Contact: Brent Leary, brent@socialbizatlanta.com
A Production of Social Biz Atlanta, organized by Brent Leary, partner of CRM Essentials (who is also our Host of the One on One interview series here at Small Business Trends, sponsored by BlackBerry).
Join us in Atlanta for “Getting Down to Social Business”
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
If Your Product is Really Good, It Should Sell Itself
Jan 28th
How true is this? In response to an article on how to promote your business without being pushy, David Morgan threw the statement, “If your product or service is really good, it should sell itself” out there. So is it true?
If your product or service is really good, will it sell itself? And if so, when?
We want passive income, passive work and pay checks that come like clockwork—I know I do. But how passive can we be in the sales process?
Do products or services really sell themselves?
I see it like this: marketing is exposure. But the sales part of the process is closure. It’s the point that we decide to act on this “thing” that we now want, need and can no longer live without. And ultimately, in order for us to make the most of our customer’s experience we do have to be extremely active in both the marketing and the sales—or at least active in the plan behind the sales and marketing.
But David brings up an interesting point:
“If you produce a product or service which exceeds your customers expectations while fulfilling their needs and wants, it will basically sell itself (within reason).”
While I don’t believe that anything ever sells itself, I agree with the idea that a quality product or service can be much easier to sell. But every part of the process needs the best that we have to give.
As Gregory Berns, Psychiatrist and Author of Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How To Think Differently says:
“A person can have the greatest idea in the world…but if that person can’t convince enough other people, it doesn’t matter.’’
It’s also true of products because convincing “enough other people” is the marketing process. We just need to consider product development as the first part of the marketing process. Better products, better marketing, a better sales process leads to a better business.
So what do you think? I would love to know what you’ve learned from your own business. In the meantime, here is a quick “2-part,-I-almost-don’t-need-to-say-it,-but-I-will” marketing process/summary (and thanks, David, for your comments).
A Simple “2-Part,-I-Almost-Don’t-Need-to-Say-it,-But-I-Will” Marketing Process
Your marketing budget may be slashed, forcing you to use non-traditional but more cost effective mediums. That’s ok, you can still get your name out there. You just have to:
- understand your options;
- learn how to effectively use what you have;
- design a plan and implement it with everything that you got.
Simple Website Strategy
You need a website home that is more than just a brochure online. Have an about page that sounds like there are real people behind the business. Use a blog to have personal engagement with some of your visitors.
You can also use social media to connect and have a conversation. Act like you are talking to real people—because you are. And then give them some place to go when they finish talking to you on social media. That “some place” should be your information filled website that completely relates to your product or service and your audience.
Simple Product Strategy
Create one heck of a product or service that solves a real problem. And make it simple, or as simple as possible. When developing or upgrading the product, think like the client. Feel their frustration and work to alleviate it.
If you have a hard time role playing, then talk to real clients and find out what they really hate. In this economy money is spent daily, but only when necessary. And oftentimes necessary just means irresistible. So design an irresistible product for your target audience and then market it like it matters.
Sales Photo via Shutterstock
If Your Product is Really Good, It Should Sell Itself
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Get Online In A Tremendous Hurry – Goliath
Jan 28th
In 2011, More Than 35% Of Small Businesses In The U. S. Do Not Have A Website! Small Business Owners Desiring To Quickly And Inexpensively Create An Effective Internet Presence Will Find The 24 Video Tutorials Of Goliath To Be Exactly What They Need.
Get Online In A Tremendous Hurry – Goliath
How To Make Hair Bows
Jan 27th
Buyer Rich Micro Niche Gives Great Conversion With Organic And Paid Traffic. Check It Out Today. We’ll Be Testing The Sales Page To Ensure The Highest Conversion Rates.
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100th Year Anniversary of the BBB
Jan 27th
Believe it or not, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has been around for 100 years. Their latest infographic provides a highlight of their biggest events from the first BBB in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1912 to the release of their app in 2011.
In 1930, BBBs developed Truth in Advertising Standards, something most consumers can appreciate. According to the inforgraphic, Harry S. Truman said of BBBs, “They have gone to work to clean out the shady areas in the commercial world.”
Eleanor Roosevelt said in 1951, “it’s a service I think we’ve all taken for granted.” In 2010 they helped resolve one million consumer complaints and provided four million reviews of businesses. With over 88 million instances of service in 2010, that statement may no longer hold true.
![BBB 100th Anniversary [Infographic]](http://www.bbb.org/100-year/bbb-100-year-infographic.png)
BBB 100th Anniversary [Infographic] compliments of Better Business Bureau
View full post on Business Pundit
How to Drive Sales Offline With Local Online Calls to Action
Jan 27th
How to Drive Sales Offline With Local Online Calls to Action
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
One of the real underutilized opportunities these days is to use your online presence to drive local offline sales.
In order to do this you must think beyond the content aspects of your website and start to think about ways to tap local buying behavior and enable local buying tools.
The heart and soul of this kind of thinking is the tried and true call to action. Marketers have been using the simple act now, buy now, call now language to get prospects to take all manner of action since the dawn of advertising.
As Internet use has become the primary way that even local shoppers find information and make buying decisions, it’s become essential for local businesses to integrate local calls to action into their websites.
It’s easy to think this is something that only restaurants and salons can take advantage of, but with mobile and search use so high almost any type of business, even professional services, can benefit from this idea.
Example calls to action
Free pass
Let’s say you have a membership type of offer like a gym. Put a “get a free pass” button and form on your site so that you can put a free trial offer in their hands before they come to your door.
A financial planner could use this same approach for a upcoming seminar on investment advice. Or you could allow customers to grab a “bring a friend” pass for an early bird sale.
The easiest way to handle this would be a button that linked to a print friendly web page, but you could also use a form so you could capture a little info and send the pass to their mobile device.
Coupons
People love coupons and coupons certainly drive sales. This is an approach you can update and rotate with all kinds of new products, sales and sample offers.
A restaurant could place a coupon for a free appetizer on Tuesday night, but an insurance sales person could also place a coupon for a free iTunes card with every rate quote.
You can create your own trackable coupons through services such as Coupontank and don’t forget to use the coupon feature on your Google Places page as well as locally focused networks such as Local.com and Craigslist.
Click to call or chat
Many times people that come to your website either don’t immediately find what they are looking for or wonder whether you have that cute little dress on your homepage in their size.
By adding services like LivePerson, BoldChat or Olark you can make it very easy for people to call or chat with your business and get that one piece of information they needed so that they jump in the car and come into your business.
Schedule now
Businesses that run primarily by appointment must start making it easier for today’s mobile enabled customers to book a time on the fly. This means adding appointment booking functionality to your website so that prospects can schedule when it’s convenient for them and see that you have that perfect spot open in two hours when they are free.
There are a number of click to schedule tools like ClickBook, GenBook and Schedulicity. Or use the tool set from a service like Agendize that allows you to add call, chat and schedule options all from one tool.
Driving call to action
In addition to you creating compelling offers and tools you’ll want to promote the fact that you have openings, coupons and special.
Pay per click – Using locally focused Google AdWords in conjunction with your call to action is a tremendous way to get terrific offline bang for your online spend.
Social – Facebook has a very robust local targeting mechanism that offline businesses have been using along with strong offers to act. You can also use tools like the Wildfire app to create calls to action right on your Facebook page.
Don’t forget to Tweet your Tuesday offer and drive customers to your site to get their coupon.
View full post on Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
Jeanne Hopkins of HubSpot: All Leads Are Not Created Equal
Jan 27th
Time is very valuable and this is especially true when it comes to small business. In a small business, time is worth its weight in gold. Using your time wisely on matters that will make a difference and aligning business goals is crucial to a small businesses success. Here, Brent Leary joins Jeanne Hopkins of HubSpot to discuss the concept of inbound marketing and wise time management.
* * * * *
Small Business Trends: Why don’t you give us a little bit of your personal background.
Jeanne Hopkins: My background is pretty normal for a marketing person. I started working in the toy business for Milton Bradley company. Then I went to Lego Systems, and then I moved into the technology space and worked for a couple of big B2B companies. I came to Hub Spot about two and a half years ago.
Small Business Trends: What is inbound marketing?
Jeanne Hopkins: The concept of inbound marketing is based on three principles. The first one is getting found on the Internet using those search terms that people are looking for when they are trying to solve a problem they have.
The middle of the funnel is what we would call conversion, or getting information from people that visit your site. When they fill out a form we consider that a conversion, or if they give you some information, “Here is my email address and I am looking forward to getting an email newsletter from you.” That is a conversion.
The third component is what we call analyze. How many people visited that particular landing page or offer page? How many people converted to a lead, and more importantly, how many people actually became a customer?
Small Business Trends: How successful are small businesses with inbound marketing?
Jeanne Hopkins: I think the biggest challenge for small business is time. But know that companies that blog, even just once a month, have 50% more visitors to their website than companies that don’t.
So that is the fundamental reason why we encourage people to create content that allows you to get found on the Internet.
Small Business Trends: What skill sets are required to be good at the middle of the funnel portion and turn those leads into sales opportunities?
Jeanne Hopkins: First of all you want to think about how you are following up on those leads. All leads are not created equal. For example, at HubSpot a demo lead is probably worth 10 or 20 times as much in terms of value to a sales person than a lead for somebody that downloaded a Facebook eBook.
What ends up happening is those Facebook eBook leads might have a high volume, but the sales person does not want to follow up on those particular leads because there is less of a likelihood of success with them. And sales people want to be successful, right?
Mac MacIntosh, a fantastic B2B speaker, says only 23% of those people searching for solutions actually buy within six months. But two thirds of the people looking for solutions will still buy. That is what the whole concept of the middle of the funnel is – to keep those people warmed up. You want your brand, your company, your service to be available to them when they are ready to buy.
Small Business Trends: How do you go about implementing a good foundation for that middle part?
Jeanne Hopkins: I would put together a mind map or a spreadsheet which would have a series of offers to warm people up. For example, when you ask somebody for a demo, it is like asking somebody to get married before you ask them out for a cup of coffee. The cup of coffee is get my email newsletters, the cup of coffee is to get my Facebook eBook. Getting married is the demo because every person who says, “I want a demo” - they know they will be called by a sales person.
Small Business Trends: What mix do you have to have in place in order to make sure you are successful with your funnel operations?
Jeanne Hopkins: I think the very first step is to talk to the sales organization to be able to get them aligned. You are not in it on your own, and they are not in it on their own. You are hooked together.
The second step is to figure out what works. How did you get to that particular demo phase? How do you get them to that point? Once you have actually mapped it out, you can realize that for every 100 visitors to the website – five actually fill out a form. Of those five that fill out a form, these three people fill out this form, and these two people fill out this form, but the two people that fill out the second form - one of them actually becomes a demo. And of every other five demos, we get two customers.
That is the kind of data that you want. You really want to be able to see the flow because you want to make sure that those three people that fill out the form, you see, they never become customers. So you want to be sure that you are not doing more of that - because you are essentially wasting the sales persons time in terms of closing the deal.
Small Business Trends: Where can people find out more?
Jeanne Hopkins: You can go to HubSpot.com. We have a lot of free marketing resources. The next place I would say to visit is TheMarketingGrader.com. It is a free tool that HubSpot offers. We have 65 different metrics there to see how you work against other companies, how you stack up, it is pretty awesome.
This interview is part of our One on One series of conversations with some of the most thought-provoking entrepreneurs, authors and experts in business today. This interview has been edited for publication. To hear audio of the full interview, click the right arrow on the gray player below. You can also see more interviews in our interview series.
Jeanne Hopkins of HubSpot: All Leads Are Not Created Equal
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Reconsidering Gartner’s Cycle of Hype
Jan 27th
One theory of technology marketing and acceptance goes like this: A technology causes a media hypestorm and rising expectations. Then it crashes to Earth as the popular press and the public discovers that it’s not all the hypesters said it would be–through no fault of the technologists who brought it to the world in the first place. Then, gradually, the truth about the technology seeps out until finally it reaches its use case–and then becomes that status quo, just waiting to be disrupted as it previously disrupted what came before.
While the violent vicissitudes of this chart make for good TV movies, in reality very few innovations follow this path. That’s because it ignores ‘being ignored.’
90% of the time, new technology triggers are widely and aggressively ignored. While we’re more eager than ever for a savior that will change everything, the number of technologies, pundits, prophets and entrepreneurs is so large that there’s now a line out the door. As a result, most of the things we now take for granted (cell phones, tweeting, insulated windows, email) didn’t follow this curve at all.
In fact, just about every innovation I know of has to make it through the wilderness before it gets anywhere close to a hype cycle. The wilderness is the term for the years (or decades) that a founder/entrepreneur/artist/technology must spend being ignored and unfunded before the breakthrough of overnight success occurs.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
Niche Site For Beginners
Jan 27th
New Niche Site Video Course Specifically Aimed For Beginners! Professional Sales Page And Awesome Product! 75% Commission!!!
Niche Site For Beginners
