Video looks set to be Twitter's next big focus.
* This article was originally published here
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
Twitter Adds New Video Playback Speed Controls, Flags Coming Video Updates
* This article was originally published here
Monday, May 15, 2023
Looking for Better Applicants? Focus on Candidate Education
You live and die by your hiring
Every business' success depends on finding and hiring the right people.
Unfortunately, businesses get this wrong every day — and the effects are damaging. In a famous study done in 2018, Jobvite found that a third of employees don’t even make it through an entire quarter.
That's right: 33% of new employees quit their job in the first 90 days.
Whenever someone leaves an organization, whether it’s after 90 days or 900 days, it leaves a gaping hole that drags down production and erodes morale.
However, when companies hire the right people and retain them, those teams are much stronger and more profitable.
To hire the right people, focus on education
When a candidate is applying for a job, the more information they have the better.
The company that can educate, build trust, and answer any questions up front is the company that will end up with happier, well-informed, and well-qualified employees.
When it comes to educating, building trust, and clearing up questions, you can apply the principles of good content marketing to your hiring and recruiting process.
Below, we’ll dive into the details:
- Why candidates are a lot like customers
- How to get started with content for job seekers
- Exactly what content your applicants are looking for
3 reasons candidates are like customers
The start of any relationship — whether we’re talking about a first date or initial job application — is full of evaluation by both sides.
Each side is looking for alignment (does this person or company believe what I believe?) and red flags (I’m seeing a lot of turnover/first dates without second dates — I wonder what that’s about?).
Just like a buyer making a purchase, job seekers are looking to do their research before they move forward.
When it comes to recruiting and hiring, you should treat candidates like you treat customers: Be honest; be trustworthy.
1. You need to vet each other
At the start of a sales process, each party vets the other. Buyers want to make sure a company is a good fit.
- Can they really deliver the service or product they offer?
- Is the quality as good as it appears?
At the same time, the company vets a prospect.
- Are they a serious buyer, or are they just looking?
- Can they afford us?
Candidates and businesses do the same thing. Businesses look at recommendation letters, resumes, and employment history. Candidates look at online reviews and LinkedIn profiles.
Trust and authenticity matter.
2. They move down a funnel
The “sales funnel” is a widely known representation of how customers buy from a company. It’s usually depicted like this:
Customers move from the awareness stage to the consideration stage to the evaluation stage to the decision stage, getting closer and closer to a purchase.
At each stage, some drop out and some move forward.
Recruitment and hiring has its own version of a funnel.
Many prospects will see the job posting, some of those will apply, some of those that apply will be interviewed, and one will get the job.
In marketing, we’re taught that getting more and more people into the “awareness” stage of the funnel means more customers will come out the other end.
For businesses looking to hire, there’s a similar belief: The more people who are aware of your listing, the more will apply.
The more who apply, the stronger the applicant pool — or so goes the conventional wisdom. The stronger the applicant pool, the better the employee you hire will be.
“Imagine if you were constantly getting people interested in working for you? You were always adding to a database of potential candidates? Imagine how much better prepared you’d be when you needed to fill a role?” - Chris Marr
If you keep the funnel full, better candidates come out the other end.
3. They’re asking the same questions
When we guide businesses to marketing success, we teach them to start their content marketing efforts by focusing on The Big 5 — five content topics that are guaranteed to drive traffic, leads, and sales.
These five topics are so powerful because they speak to core concerns that every buyer has regardless of product or industry.
The Big 5 topics, listed below, all speak to the pressing questions that are on buyers’ minds:
- First among those is price. Customers everywhere, no matter what they’re buying, want to know what it will cost — and they want to understand the factors that can make that cost go up or down.
- Buyers want to hear from other buyers about their experience with a product or service. So, they seek out reviews.
- Buyers will search for “best of” lists that allow them to compare several top solutions for their problem as they narrow the list of what they want.
- Just like with reviews, buyers want to know about the potential problems of whatever they’re considering so they know they won’t be making a purchase they regret.
- When making a final decision, it’s likely that a buyer will put several similar options side by side to compare relative strengths and weaknesses.
Marketing materials that address these topics help educate your audience and build trust.
With slight tweaks, these same topics apply just as well to the hiring process.
First on every applicant’s mind? Salary (Cost in The Big 5). They want to know what they can expect to make — as well as what could make that number go up or down (like years of experience, degrees, certifications, etc.). Reviews? Well, reviews of past or current employees.
In fact, it doesn’t take a great stretch of the imagination to transpose all of The Big 5 into recruitment resources, which we’ll dive into below.
Where to get started with content recruiting
Just like content for marketing, content for hiring requires you to do two things at once:
- Write broad, search-optimized content to get found by potential applicants.
- Write specific, question-based content to use in the hiring process.
Which you do first will depend on your circumstances. If you’re growing rapidly and need to build awareness around your company and your open positions, you might focus more on number 1.
If you’re flooded with candidates and need to weed out the bad fits, number 2 is probably more important.
But both are critical.
The Big 5 for hiring
Start with The Big 5. Think about the questions your applicants (and potential applicants) might want to know.
Below I've listed some sample content topics that could help you recruit and select the right candidate.
Cost (think: salary and benefits)
- How much does an insurance agent make per year?
- How does a salesperson’s bonus structure work?
- How quickly will an MBA pay for itself in the manufacturing industry?
- What’s a good starting salary for a preschool teacher?
Reviews (think: an honest look from the inside)
- An honest look at being a market researcher
- Company culture checklist: What to look for to know a company is a good fit
- What it’s really like to be a copywriter
‘Best of’ lists (think: how people rank their choices)
- Best office perks that help productivity and culture
- Top companies to work for in the Orlando area
- 10 signs your company runs great meetings
Problems (think: job seekers don’t want to be in the 33% that quits)
- Reasons why being an investment banker is harder than it looks
- The biggest drawback to a career in software design
- 3 problems with working from home as a service manager
Comparisons (think: putting different options head to head)
- A day in the life: Comparing daily responsibilities of a sales rep and a sales manager
- 401(k) vs. 403(b): Which employer-sponsored retirement account is better for you?
- Should you choose a salary or commission pay structure?
These are just ideas, but you see where I’m going. You could use AI to generate dozens more.
Some of these articles would be great search plays. Someone Googles “How much does an insurance agent make per year?” and they end up on your site.
They’re clearly interested in starting a new career. They read your content, get to know your company, and see that you’ve got job postings. They become an applicant in just the same way that an inbound lead becomes a customer.
But once they enter the applicant pool, you have another opportunity to educate them. That's the 80% video.
80% videos
Remember the statistic from the beginning about how many employees quit within 90 days? An 80% video sent out to the final pool of candidates is a great way to address this problem.
In the sales process, an 80% video covers the basic questions that every prospect asks. If these questions are cleared up ahead of time, you can have a more productive discussion tailored to an individual prospect’s needs.
In the hiring process, you can use the same tactic. Imagine if everyone in your applicant pool received a video that shared:
- The structure of the team they’d be joining
- What their day-to-day would look like
- How their work would be evaluated
- Compensation details (including salary range, benefits, and bonus structure)
- Potential future advancement opportunities
- Company health and upcoming initiatives
If all candidates had every question above out of the way, they’d know a lot more about what to expect if they get the job.
Furthermore, subsequent interviews could be more productive because the hiring manager wouldn’t have to spend as much time fielding the same questions.
Be the company that values education
Embracing education brings with it a culture shift for most organizations. When you put your buyers first, the way you go about marketing and selling changes.
When you apply that same principle to your hiring process, you’re saying the same thing: An educated applicant is a better applicant — and more likely to become a happy employee, too.
Who should own your content recruiting initiative?
Hiring content should be folded into your overall content marketing strategy.
Companies that are looking to recruit and grow should start to write content specifically for this process — much like we've outlined above.
Going forward, about 80% of your new content should be aimed at attracting new customers and 20% should be aimed at attracting new employees.
Both marketing and hiring content should be the responsibility of your marketing team.
Hiring content at your company
If you commit to answering applicant questions with transparency and candor, you’re letting them know more about your company than any “about us” page ever could. You’re showing that honesty and education matter.
As a result, you’ll bring in more people who value the same things that you do.
Using content in the recruiting and hiring process allows you to build trust with your applicants just as you do with your visitors and customers.
If you’re looking to grow — or you find attracting and retaining top talent is a real challenge — divert some of your content marketing efforts accordingly.
Author: jbecker@impactbnd.com (John Becker)
* This article was originally published here
Sunday, May 14, 2023
Meta Outlines its Evolving AI Ad Targeting Process, Which is Improving Ad Performance
Meta's ad systems are improving through the use of more advanced automated targeting.
* This article was originally published here
Saturday, May 13, 2023
10 Social Media Trends to Follow in 2023 [Infographic]
Some key trends of note for this year.
* This article was originally published here
Friday, May 12, 2023
How Will Twitter Change Under a New CEO?
Twitter's incoming CEO could spark a shift in strategic focus for the app.
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, May 11, 2023
CEOs: Your Sales Reps are Damaging Your Brand With Lazy Prospecting Emails
As a CEO, I’ve got a prized inbox. And so every day I get dozens of emails from salespeople hoping to prospect me and gain my business.
And I get it. I know that prospecting is part of the job of sales reps — and I know that many of them are going to go straight to the top and shoot their shot.
I understand that I’m a target, but what I’ve seen lately has left me more and more dismayed.
Sales reps are getting lazy. They’re blasting out prospecting emails without doing the slightest bit of research.
These emails are so bad that I’m not just ignoring them, I’m getting irritated by them. Not only are these emails not going to get my business, they’re doing real damage to the image of the companies these reps work for.
This kind of lazy email outreach is disruptive and damaging — and when I see the company they come from, I mentally cross them off the list of companies I would ever do business with.
If you’re a CEO who’s not paying close attention to the work your sales team is doing, your brand could get tarnished without you even knowing it.
Stop thinking of sales as ‘just a numbers game’
We’ve all heard the same thing over and over in our professional lives: “Sales is a numbers game.”
I want to unpack what that actually means: that we think more about aggregate data than individual prospects.
Everything we track is about the aggregate: Conversion rate, close rate, sales velocity. Every KPI is a generalization that lets us zoom out and focus on averages.
This makes us think that sales is just a numbers game. We just have to apply those numbers to the future and we can predict how many deals we’ll close.
But I’ve come to see that this is the wrong approach.
With every lost deal, with every abysmal open rate we shrug and say “sales is a numbers game.” And we ignore the collateral damage that comes with that mindset.
Think about it.
A “sales is a numbers game” approach means that if 5% of your cold email targets get back to you and you close 10% of those, all you have to do is reach out to enough people to make the numbers work.
Need to close 10 deals this quarter? Well, 10 is 10% of 100, so you need 100 people to respond to your emails.
If you know you get 5% reply rate on your prospecting emails, that means you need to send 2000 emails this quarter.
But this ignores the staggering numbers on the other side of this equation: if 5% respond to your emails, 95% are annoyed by them — and many will write you off because of your sloppy approach.
Yes, you close 10% of those who respond, but what about the other 90% who chose not to buy?
This is the damage done by the spray-and-pray approach.
Think about the effect on the vast majority of people you’re targeting. Not only will they not buy from you — they’ll be left with an unfavorable impression of your brand. They’ll think you’re too lazy to put in the effort to research who you’re going after.
They’ll think your brand is desperate and disorganized…. if they think of your brand at all.
Bad prospecting is more widespread than you think
A few weeks ago I got so frustrated with these lazy sales emails I posted about it on LinkedIn. I took a screenshot of a particularly bad email (one that didn’t even take the time to fill in where the template said “[company name]”.
What I said hit a nerve, and professionals of all kinds rallied around what I had said.
But here’s the worst part.
This whole experience made me want to go check out the emails my own sales team was sending out to prospects. I was taken aback.
Even though we work hard to base our selling on relationships, my own team was sending out the same templated nonsense to other businesses.
And I immediately saw that just as I was criticizing other businesses, lazy sales emails were hurting the IMPACT brand — something I’ve built with years of dedication.
Email after email, each doing more damage to my business’ brand.
Change needs to start at the top
It’s easy to fault the sales reps. They’re phoning it in by not doing any real research before they reach out. But the blame doesn’t stop there.
Every sales manager who gives an arbitrary quota for prospecting is incentivizing quantity over quality. When a sales rep hears they need to send 50 prospecting emails this week, corners are going to get cut to reach that quota.
Let’s raise our standards and try a different approach.
Think about the numbers I shared above. Let’s say each sales rep needs to close 10 deals this quarter. Imagine instead of 2,000 boilerplate, stocky emails they sent out 100 carefully crafted, fully researched emails that spoke directly to the pain that prospect is experiencing.
I guarantee their response rate will be way higher. I guarantee their close rate will be higher, too.
I think they’d probably still get your 10 deals — all without alienating 1,990 people in the process.
This way, they don’t look lazy or desperate. They look well-informed and caring — exactly how you, as CEO, want your business to be perceived.
Author: rruffolo@impactbnd.com (Bob Ruffolo)
* This article was originally published here
Wednesday, May 10, 2023
Word-of-Mouth is Fragile; Here's How to Build Market Durability
Years ago, I worked as a salesman for my small pool company I ran with a few friends. Back then, we always loved doing a job in a subdivision.
While we were installing a pool, neighbors would stop by and check the progress. They’d take a card and ask about our company. More often than not, we’d sell at least a few more pools in the neighborhood.
It became predictable: If we sold a pool in a neighborhood, we knew we’d be selling a few more. If we sold a pool to a rural home, we knew that that pool would be one and done.
That’s how powerful word of mouth is. In fact, many service businesses rely solely on word of mouth or referrals. They get all the business they need this way and don’t see any reason to change.
But here’s the thing: Whenever I hear a business say “We’re a word-of-mouth business,” I think the same thought: They’ve never been through a recession.
I’ve seen this happen way too many times.
When the economy turns south, there simply are fewer buyers. People watch their budgets and push off or scale down purchases. Even the most robust word-of-mouth businesses are left scrambling. And when they are, they all say the same thing: I wish I had a marketing foundation I could rely on now that my referral leads have dried up.
Why being a word-of-mouth business is not as good as it sounds
Being a word-of-mouth business can be great. It’s a reflection of the good work and attentive customer service that are hallmarks of your company.
However, it’s not as good as it sounds because it might not be durable.
Word-of-mouth is fragile
If a recession hits, cost suddenly becomes the biggest differentiator buyers use, and quality and service are less of a factor.
Or it might not be a recession. Maybe a few bad reviews on Yelp or Angi start to make customers go elsewhere. Or new competitors enter your marketplace and do an advertising blitz with promotions that rattle your customer base.
Whatever the reason, you could have a few bad months and suddenly the phone is not ringing like it used to.
Therefore, it helps to have a backup plan that can supplement your referral network so you can weather any storm and scale your business even if word-of-mouth becomes less reliable.
Investing now in inbound marketing can help you shore up for the challenges that may lie ahead.
Inbound marketing: An overview
Inbound marketing works like this:
- You produce written and video content for your website and for social media to attracts buyers who are using the internet to search for answers.
- These potential customers learn about what you do and choose your solution for their needs.
While it’s not quite as easy as that makes it sound, inbound marketing is a cost-effective investment in your business’ growth that can pay dividends for many years to come.
In some ways, inbound marketing overlaps with word-of-mouth: Both are built on a foundation of trust, and both allow customers to get to know your business on their own terms so that when they’re ready to reach out, they can do so with confidence.
Inbound marketing and word-of-mouth: Both depend on trust
When my pool company faced a bleak future during The Great Recession, I turned to inbound marketing to make up the difference. My plan was simple: Answer customer questions on our website. By openly and honestly answering these customer questions, I was able to build trust with prospects who never saw our work or our trucks drive into their neighborhood.
That experience led me to develop a business strategy I called They Ask, You Answer. If your customer asks a question, you should answer it.
Now, more than a dozen years later, it is those answers I wrote that truly allow my pool business to continue to prosper — and they do so more effectively than word-of-mouth referrals ever could.
Inbound marketing in practice
The truth is, the way people buy has changed.
Today, when people are getting ready to make a purchase, they start with a search engine. If they type in “How much does a new roof cost?” “Problems with driveway seal coating” or “Latex vs. oil paint — which is better for me?” and they end up on your content, they begin to build a relationship with your brand.
For me, many of my sales started with people Googling a basic question: “How much do fiberglass pools cost?”
Because I had written an honest, straightforward article that explained cost — something many of my competitors were unwilling to address on their websites — customers found me and my business. They read my content and appreciated my honesty.
Next, they might click to read Fiberglass vs. concrete pools: An honest comparison. In this article, I openly talked about the drawbacks of fiberglass pools (mind you, fiberglass pools were the only types of pools we sold).
The people reading these few pieces of content were already serious about buying a pool, and they started building a relationship with my company. Our honest content was able to build trust. Those articles won us more business than any subdivision job ever did because they kept working long after we left a given neighborhood.
Today, they still rank at the top of Google. That’s prime real estate I don’t have to pay for. That’s the beauty of inbound marketing when it’s done well.
But people don't just use Google to learn. Here's the same question typed into YouTube:
We rank first there, too. Pulling in more than 140K views.
Thousands and thousands of buyers right now are asking that same question: How much do fiberglass pools cost?
When the results pop up, at the top of the list is my article, clearly laying out project costs. Linked from there are many relevant topics that are also covered in depth. People click through and keep learning, getting ever close to a purchase.
Scaling up from word-of-mouth: The first 2 steps to take
If you’re a word-of-mouth business looking to grow, I suggest you take two steps to diversify the way you bring in business.
1. Choose an ad platform to get leads in the short term
If you need leads today, you have your choice between traditional “outbound” advertising such as mailers, radio spots, billboards, print ads, etc., and paid digital advertising such as Google Search Ads or Facebook Ads. Between the two, I’d vote for digital.
Digital has the advantage over traditional advertising because it’s much easier to target and measure — assuming you’re using the right tools.
With pay-per-click (PPC) ads like the ones that appear in Google search results, you know that you’re only getting charged if people actually make it to your website. So, if somone Googles “foundation repair in upstate New York,” you can pay to be at the top of that result. The more search traffic, the higher the cost, but you only pay if people actually click.
This can be pretty effective, but I’d advise you to not fall into the trap of paying for every new lead that comes into your company.
Therefore, while you’re paying for leads from PPC, be sure to invest in inbound marketing as well.
2. Invest in inbound marketing for long-term growth
Here's how to get started: Hire a content writer to address the biggest questions your buyers have. With today's AI innovations, the writer should be able to get a lot of content produced pretty quickly.
Your potential customers are typing their questions into Google right now — even as you read this. Having PPC traffic is great, but when you stop paying, those results go away.
If you can write an article that ranks high on its own, you’ll drive tremendous traffic to your site. That’s more and more eyeballs on your homepage, on your offerings, on your thought leadership.
Remember, those articles I wrote back in 2008 are still at the top of Google (granted, with updates along the way) because they’ve been helpful to what is now millions of people — some of whom have become customers and many of whom have not.
Just like word-of-mouth, these pieces of content build trust and keep people coming to my business to ask about our services. They cost me nothing, and have delivered millions of dollars in revenue, year after year, during good times and during recessions.
Customers buy from businesses they trust. I’ve found that candid content is the most effective way to build trust with prospects who haven’t even heard of your business yet.
Today, although I’m still a silent partner, I no longer sell pools. Instead, I help lead IMPACT, a sales and marketing training firm that helps businesses grow by applying the principles of They Ask, You Answer.
If you're interested in how you can grow your word-of-mouth business so your lead flow is more sturdy and predictable, come and see how we can help you! Click here to speak to an advisor.
Author: msheridan@impactbnd.com (Marcus Sheridan)
* This article was originally published here
Tuesday, May 9, 2023
LinkedIn Posting Best Practices for 2023 [Infographic]
Some data-backed pointers for your LinkedIn strategy.
* This article was originally published here
Monday, May 8, 2023
7 Must-have Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategies [Infographic]
Word-of-mouth (WOM) is a powerful asset in marketing.
It not only gets people talking, but offers a sincerity and trustworthiness other marketing methods don't.
It is also one of the oldest and most effective methods of marketing — because it comes from fellow consumers.
Unlike brands that are of course going to talk about how great they are, other consumers don't have anything at stake with sharing what they really think about a purchase or company. It's not their sales or reputations on the line so they seem more reliable.
This is likely why a whopping 95% of consumers search online for reviews and information before purchasing a product and 88% believe brand recommendations from peers more than any form of marketing.
With game-changing numbers like those, it’s important not to neglect the importance of reviews, ratings, and recommendations when it comes to planning your organization’s marketing strategy.
How do you do that exactly?
I put together this detailed infographic sharing seven actionable tips you can use to add word-of-mouth marketing into your strategy.
Long before social media, word-of-mouth was our go-to for sharing and learning valuable information. That’s why word-of-mouth marketing is one of the oldest and most effective forms of marketing.
- 88% of consumers said that they trusted recommendations from people they know, above all other forms of marketing messaging. (Nielsen)
- 81% of consumers reporting that social media posts from influencers, friends or family members drove interest in an item or service within the past year (Matter Communications)
- Marketers rated the quality of word-of-mouth leads a 4.28/5. (Referral Rock)
Luckily, WOM is easier than ever thanks to the internet!
7 ways to add word-of-mouth marketing to your strategy
1. Encourage authentic user-generated content (UGC)
UGC is content created and shared by consumers about brands or products.
In recent years, many brands have started paying creators to make this content for them (or recruiting “ambassadors”), but true authentic UGC is created by consumers voluntarily and it’s still possible to get.
Authentic UGC is candid, relatable, and shows users what a real-life experience with your product looks like.
- 73% of online shoppers agreed that user-generated content made them more confident when purchasing. (TurnTo Networks)
How can you get users to create content?
- Have a unique hashtag to identify content created by customers
- Incentivize creating content using your hashtag or tagging your brand. Offer a free gift, discount, or feature on your profile.
- Create a sense of community. Showcase your user-generated content prominently on your website or main profile
Brands that do it well:
- Sephora: Insider Beauty Board http://www.sephora.com/gallery/
- Warby Parker: #warbyhometryon https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/warbyhometryon/
- Lulu Lemon: #thesweatlife https://www.instagram.com/lululemon/
2. Share customer testimonials/reviews
According to Global Newswire, 95% of customers read product reviews before making a purchase. In fact, even just one review can increase internet users clicking the “buy” button by 65%.
Reviews help reassure the performance, quality, and/or value of your claims and make consumers feel more comfortable doing business with you. There’s a reason they call it social proof after all.
Testimonials can be written or video and can be hosted on your website or pulled from others. Depending on your industry, some popular review sites include:
- Yelp
- Angie's
- TripAdvisor
- TrustRadius
Once you have your testimonials or reviews, repurpose them into your marketing:
- Dedicated site page
- Homepage & landing pages
- Relevant product/service pages
- Lead generation content
3. Get product ratings on your site
Depending on your business model, you may want to give people the ability to rate or review specific products, services, etc. directly on your site.
- 84% of consumers care most about your star rating (Bright Local)
This is especially useful for eCommerce or if you’re a tech company that sells several products.
Brands that do it well:
- Amazon
- Etsy
- NewEgg
Popular rating tools:
4. Offer an incentive:
Giving your customers a reason to share with others can skyrocket your word-of-mouth marketing as well.
Big or small, people are always more willing and likely to do something if they receive some sort of value in return. So, consider giving your consumers a discount or free gift in exchange for referrals.
Brands that do it well:
Uber: Free Rides
DropBox: Free Storage Space
HelloFresh: Credit towards your next box
5. Create a referral program
You can take this a step further by creating a formal referral program. A good referral program:
- Makes spreading the word easy and quick
- Makes it worthwhile for both parties (with an incentive or other benefit)
- Measures the results of your campaigns
Popular referral tools:
6. Connect with influencers and thought leaders
Influencers are exactly what their name suggests; individuals with a strong following and power to influence the beliefs and behavior of those in it.
Because of their already established reputation, word-of-mouth marketing from an influencer or thought leader is undoubtedly the most valuable.
- 69% of consumers trust influencers, friends and family over information coming directly from a brand (Matter Communications)
- Influencer Marketing Industry is set to grow to approximately $21.1 Billion in 2023 (Influencer Marketing Hub)
How to appeal to influencers and thought leaders
- Quote them in your content
- Feature them or their products/services prominently
- Let them try your product/services for free
7. Offer a unique, shareworthy experience
At the end of the day, the easiest way to generate word-of-mouth marketing in this digital age is to offer a unique, share-worthy experience.
If you give your consumers something memorable they cannot get anywhere else, they’ll want to share it with their friends and loved ones whether or not you ask them to.
Brands that do it well:
- Goodr
- LuLuLemon
- IKEA
Quick word-of-mouth wins:
- Identify and nurture your top customers
- Ask for reviews/ratings when things are going well; don’t wait!
- Use social media as a referral channel
- Go above and beyond with unexpected customer service gestures
- Use tools to automate the process
- Make sure you have amazing service, staff, and support
- Crowdsource feedback to make staff and support improvements
Word-of-mouth is just a piece of the puzzle
Before you try any of these, you have to set marketing goals that are aligned with your business's goals.
Additionally, you should consider how word of mouth can augment channels like your content marketing and larger inbound marketing efforts.
Want to more about how to grow your business and keep your customers happy with sales and marketing training from IMPACT? Talk to us.
Author: gsukhraj@impactbnd.com (Ramona Sukhraj)
* This article was originally published here
Sunday, May 7, 2023
LinkedIn Experiments with Generative AI Prompts for Posts
LinkedIn's parent company Microsoft is working to bring generative AI to all its apps and functions.
* This article was originally published here
Saturday, May 6, 2023
Scammers are Using Verified Accounts on Facebook and Instagram to Dupe Users
Be wary of a new wave of Facebook and IG scammers posting from verified accounts.
* This article was originally published here
Friday, May 5, 2023
TikTok Shares New Insights into the Effectiveness of Marketing Mix Modeling in Ad Measurement
TikTok's looking to help marketers evolve their performance measurement processes.
* This article was originally published here
Thursday, May 4, 2023
Twitter’s Bot-Battling Claims Don’t Add Up Based on Relative User Growth
Twitter's either added a record amount of new users, or it's not tackling bots as aggressively as it claims.
* This article was originally published here
Wednesday, May 3, 2023
What You Need to Learn From Customers Who Didn’t Buy From You
What do you do with a prospect who ultimately doesn’t buy from you?
If you’re like most companies I work with, you go one of two routes.
- One, you do nothing. You mark the deal closed/lost in your CRM and move on to the next prospect.
- Or, two, you enroll them in an email nurture sequence hoping they consider you again in the future.
In either case, the process is pretty rote — and results in an enormous missed opportunity to learn where your sales and marketing practices could improve.
After all, who can better illuminate the flaws of your processes than someone who went through every stage of your buyer’s journey except the last one?
Businesses need to stop ignoring this golden opportunity.
They must build a formal process for following up with closed-lost deals and gleaning the information they can — all while not being pushy or overbearing.
Here’s how I teach my clients to go about this.
Create 2 closed/lost buckets: ‘Competition’ and ‘Inaction’
The first step is to differentiate your closed/lost prospects into two separate buckets:
- Buyers who chose to go with a competitor
- Buyers who chose not to buy from anyone
What you can learn from each is different, so let’s break down each one.
1. What you can learn from prospects who chose a competitor
Every time you see someone choose another business, it should teach you more about your own value proposition. (We will cover exactly how to conduct an exit interview with a close/lost lead in another article.)
Think about it like this: if a customer ultimately chooses to buy from someone else, it’s because that other option made more sense to them. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s a point worth focusing on.
In any given industry, I like to think that there are not better and worse providers — there are just better and worse fits for customers.
Option A might make sense for people who need flexibility. Option B is best for people with a tight budget. Option C is for people who want more hands-on service.
You get the idea.
If someone chose a different business, it was likely because their value prop better aligned with the buyer’s perceived needs.
Every time you’re selling to someone, you should get an even clearer idea of who you best serve. And every time you lose a deal, you should get an even clearer idea of who your competitors serve.
So, what do you do with this information?
Again, you have two options — and they’re not mutually exclusive.
- Niche down. Your first option is to get comfortable in your niche so you can win every deal that fits that demographic.
Let’s say you’re a boat manufacturer. If you know your option works best for novice weekenders, focus on winning every novice weekender you can.
Make sure your messaging speaks to their needs, make sure your content answers their questions, make sure your sales process moves at their pace. - Shoulder your way into the margins. Your second option is to try and carve out a little more room in the margins so you can win some deals adjacent to your niche.
If you specialize in flood insurance, you might begin to offer package deals to customers who need other kinds of insurance, too.
This way, you can strategically start to expand — as long as you don’t lose your core niche.
In either case, getting the information is the important part.
If you can learn more about why customers chose not to do business with you, you can develop an ever-evolving portrait of how you’re seen in the marketplace.
Then, it’s up to you whether you want to lean into the way the market already sees you or expand and try to increase your market share.
2. What you can learn from prospects who chose not to buy from anyone
I’ll admit, this one’s trickier. No one likes to lose a deal, but when a prospect chooses and competitor, I usually get it. Something about that competitor felt better.
But what about inaction?
What about when someone gets to the very end of your sales process and chooses to walk away?
You can only learn as much as the prospect is willing to tell you, and sometimes that’s not much. Sometimes, buyers can’t really articulate why they said no. Sometimes, they don’t want to.
The truth is, sometimes it’s your fault, and sometimes it’s not.
5 reasons you lost a deal to inaction
I find that most of the time when you lose a deal to inaction, it’s because of one of five reasons. I’ll break down each and explain proactive tactics that allow you to get ahead of similar situations in the future.
1. The buyer might just be indecisive
When we have a close/lost deal at IMPACT that’s made it through the entire sales process — only to balk at the last minute — I find myself thinking: Are you able to make decisions as a company?
And sure, there’s a little bit of frustration in there, but the sentiment is honest.
Some organizations struggle with making decisions.
They might not have the processes in place, or they might get bogged down in discussion, unable to reach a consensus. So, it might not be anything about your solution. It might be all about misalignment or dysfunction within their leadership team.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t counteract it.
How to solve it:
Build steps into your sales process that 1) bring in all stakeholders and decision-makers and 2) set clear outcomes for any given meeting.
If you get everyone into a room and make it clear that the meeting should end with a decision about whether or not you’ll be moving forward, you’ll eliminate the gray area.
2. The buyer isn’t a good ‘internal salesperson’
This is often related to decision making, too. If your buyer seems to be all-systems-go but then stalls on the final deal, it might be a communication problem.
In a B2B setting, your point of contact at the company becomes your internal salesperson for the other stakeholders. Maybe they were just a sub-par salesperson when it came to pitching the idea internally.
If you’re B2C, maybe the buyer did a bad job justifying the purchase to other involved family members.
How to solve it:
Don’t let the prospect sell it on their own! Provide videos, case studies, and buyer’s guides that they can share with other decision-makers so nothing gets lost in translation. The easier you can make the internal sales process, the more likely you are to close the deal.
3. Outside factors led to cold feet
Look, I get it. We live in a complex world and every buying decision is interlinked with a dozen others.
Often, indecision is due to outside factors beyond your control. If you’re B2B, maybe your buyer’s Q3 numbers just came back and they’re not as profitable as they thought. As a result, they’re going to limit spending. If you’re B2B, anything from inflation to a college tuition increase could cause a buyer to tighten their belt and not move forward.
How to solve it:
Keep these closed/lost prospects in your rotation. Ask if you can reach out again in six months. Be sure that your cancellation and refund policies help soothe anxieties about buying from you.
4. Your sales process went too fast (or too slow)
As my colleague Chris Duprey puts it, many businesses don’t actually understand the decisions a customer needs to make to buy from them.
As a result, organizations have an arbitrary sales process that either rushes prospects ahead before they’re ready or holds them back with unnecessary extra steps. Either extreme could alienate a buyer and kill a sale.
How to solve it:
Orient your sales process around buyer decision points so that you’re aligned with the buyer’s needs. Check in with your prospects to be sure you’re on the same page and addressing all of their questions.
5. The buyer doesn’t trust you
Trust is the common currency with which all businesses operate.
If your sales process didn’t build trust by addressing the fears, worries, and concerns your buyer had, then in the end, it might have been a gut feeling that held them back from going ahead and signing on the dotted line.
How to solve it:
Commit to utter transparency and honesty in your entire sales process.
Be clear about who is (and is not) a good fit to buy from you. Offer unbiased reviews of your products or services — and answer every single buyer question on your website so you make it clear you have nothing to hide. Be helpful at every turn.
The golden opportunity to improve your sales process
Many prospects who enter your sales process won’t buy from you. That’s just the way it is. Some will be disqualified, some will choose a competitor, some will just atrophy and choose to not move forward at all.
In any case, their experience can be invaluable for you to improve your sales process. Because ultimately, you want fewer people like them to enter in the future.
When you reach a point where it becomes clear that the prospect is not moving forward, don’t just ghost them and move on to the next deal.
Reach out and simply say, “Hey, we now both agree that you're not gonna be working with us. Can I ask a couple of questions to make sure that you are on the same page?”
You may hear, “We’re going to go with Company X, but it was a really hard decision.” Or you may hear, “We’re just not ready to move forward right now.”
Make no mistake, these will be frustrating to hear. But it’s better than not knowing and just having to guess.
Every piece of data makes your business stronger.
Author: wschultz@impactbnd.com (Will Schultz)
* This article was originally published here
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