7 Tips for a Highly Effective Elevator Pitch

If you’re a business owner, you should be ready to deliver your company’s elevator pitch at a moment’s notice but can it ever be counter-productive? The problem is that too often, an elevator pitch feels more like a windup into a long monolog with detailed descriptions of every product and service your company provides and why each is amazing. We’ve all been at the other end of this kind of pitch and as a result, we’ve developed personal exit strategies. The most effective one I’ve found is looking off in the distance and identifying someone I need to say hello to and quickly moving on.

Elevator Pitch Tips

The following seven habits will help you avoid elevator pitch overload:

Remember your vision. Why did you start your company and what are you really excited about? If you don’t know your “why” it’s going to be very difficult to motivate anyone else to get excited about your company. And if money is your key driver, your pitch will come across as a sales pitch. Think about the last time you were on the receiving end of this type of pitch. How receptive were you?

Get familiar with your ideal client. Instead of thinking of your elevator pitch as a one size fits all, try and imagine the one person who would be a great fit for what you offer. Who are they?  What do they care about? What is their pain point? When you understand your ideal client and what motivates them, you will gain insight and empathy for them which will make it easier to identify them. So when you find yourself speaking to that ideal client, your pitch will feel like the very thing they’ve been looking for.

Understand your value proposition. What makes your company unique? Are you the Uber of cookie dough? The Martha Stewart of auto parts? Once you understand your value proposition, embrace it and own it.

Get comfortable with rejection. The goal of a great elevator pitch to is identity your ideal client so when your pitch doesn’t connect with the listener, consider it a gift. You’ve just saved yourself weeks or maybe even months, chasing after the wrong client who is too polite to tell you that they don’t want what you have to offer.

Keep it short and keep it real. In our 24/7 social media culture, one minute is too long for an elevator pitch so keep it to 30 seconds and leave out any industry jargon or acronyms. Use real language that tells someone what you do in a way that piques their curiosity so they’ll want to know more. If you get a blank stare, go back to #4.

Think of your pitch as the start of a conversation. When you’ve connected with a potential customer, they will visibly nod and start asking questions. This is a really good thing!

Practice! It’s natural for a new pitch to feel awkward at first so the key is to practice it until it feels natural and meaningful to you. Then breathe and smile. Your elevator pitch will come across much better when you’re relaxed.

I’ve spent a decade crafting my elevator pitch which is why it now seems like second nature to answer the question, what do you do? with: “I align vision with relevant messaging that cuts through the noise.” If I don’t have you at hello, I smile and ask what you do. After all, someone I know could be looking for the very thing your company offers.

Source: http://bit.ly/2cW1Ah2

The 10 Most Destructive Lies Business Owners Tell Themselves

We talk to ourselves constantly. Okay, maybe not literally, but the psychological phenomenon of self-talk is real and it can have a major bearing on your life, moods and even your professional performance. Self-talk can manifest as reactions to certain events and situations. For example, you might think “that was a dumb mistake” or “this is going to be awesome,” and these thoughts generally have an effect on how you perceive the event in question. They can also manifest as assumptions, in the short-term or long-term, about different aspects of your life and business.

There’s no question that business owners lie to themselves, often knowingly, but some lies are innocuous. Others, like these 10, are destructive and should be avoided at all costs.

Lies Business Owners Tell

My Customers are Going to Love This

This lie stems from your own personal biases. You came up with the idea for your business (or product), so, of course, you’re going to love it! That doesn’t mean everyone else in your target audience is going to, and assuming that’s the case may set you up for failure. If you don’t have any objective data backing this statement, you’re lying to yourself.

Everything Will Work Out

It won’t. Not if you allow things to continue as they are. There’s this persistent myth that businesses succeed because they had a good idea and a good system. Then they just waited for everything else to fall in place. This isn’t true. Successful businesses have to experiment, tinker, and evolve constantly. You have to put in the effort if you want to succeed.

I Can Always Change This Later

This can be true, depending on the context, but it’s not a line of thinking you want to apply to many areas of your business. Assuming you’ll be able to change something later gives you a lower threshold for quality, meaning you’ll start off with a weaker strategy. And thanks to procrastination, you’ll probably end up never changing it anyway. Start strong if you want to finish strong.

I Don’t Have to Worry About This Yet

There are many reasons for procrastination, and some of them are actually pretty good. However, when you delay a task, the indefiniteness of “I’ll worry about that later” can set you up for a perpetual cycle of delay. Instead, if you don’t have time to do something, either schedule a concrete time to do it in the future or delegate it to someone else.

I Have to Do This Myself

Entrepreneurs love to get their hands dirty, and many take it as a point of pride. You might convince yourself that you’re the only one with the skill set or experience to handle a certain task, or that if you don’t do this yourself, you’ll lose control of your business. However, it’s unlikely that these things are true. Learn to let go, and trust your teammates to help you out.

I Don’t Have Time

Entrepreneurship is demanding. It takes a heavy investment of time and effort to see any progress, so many business owners end up putting off or ignoring other aspects of their life — like family, friends and leisure time. Trust me, you need to make time for these things, or you’ll regret it later.

I Just Have to Work Harder

Working harder isn’t always the best approach, just like hitting your head against a brick wall with more force isn’t going to help you tear it down. Instead, opt for smarter, more innovative solutions to your problems. Putting in more hours with a “brute force” style will leave you burned out and frustrated.

This Could Never Work

This lie often stems from preconceived notions about different strategies. You might hear an idea for the first time and immediately write it off as impractical or useless, or you might be presented with a strategy that didn’t work out well for you in the past and assume it could never work out. It’s important to be open to new ideas, especially since many strategies can be feasible as long as you use the right approach.

All I Need Is . . . . . 

Businesses are ridiculously complicated, and even to the most seasoned, successful entrepreneurs in the world, they’re somewhat unpredictable. There are too many variables for you to definitively boil down any problem to a single factor. If you give yourself this problem-solving tunnel vision, you could wind up ignoring the factors that are actually responsible for your predicament. Know that every problem is complex, and no one fix will solve everything.

No One Understands

Entrepreneurship can be painfully lonely. Because you’re working long hours, you’re in an isolated position, and you have to put on a “brave” face for your employees and clients, you might find yourself thinking that nobody understands the stresses you’re dealing with. This weighs heavily on the mind. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re alone. Connect with other entrepreneurs and open up about your experiences.

Don’t feel ashamed if you lie to yourself. In fact, if you don’t, you’re in the minority. Some lies are important to reframe your expectations, help you think more positively and direct your line of thought to something more productive. However, don’t let yourself get caught in a trap of unproductive self-deception. Keep your thoughts and assumptions in check by remaining as objective as possible in your business.

  Source: http://bit.ly/1XY9dVM

28 great tactics for promoting online content

Content distribution has been a big topic all around social media.

As Mark Schaefer’s book “The Content Code” explains, “Great content isn’t the finish line; it’s the starting line.”

We spend so much time and inspiration on creating our content, and then once we hit publish we forget that we must work to share that content.

Here are 28 tips on how to extend the reach of what you publish online:

Promote your content on social media

This is probably the first place we all go. You hit publish, and your automation tools push your post out on social media.

Then you forget about it and run off to the next piece.

Nope. There has to be more planning. The folks at CoShedule say having a social media sharing schedule will double your traffic.

Here’s what they suggest:

1. Upon publishing —Social media message is sent when blog post goes live.
2. Same day —Initial social media messages trickle out to your accounts over the next two or three hours.
3. Next day —Messages are shared again on the appropriate social media channels.
4. Next week —Another series of messages are pre-scheduled and sent.
5. Next month —Even more social media messages are pre-scheduled for the following month.
6. Next _____ —Additional messages can be scheduled for the three-month mark or beyond.

Here’s what I do:

1. Upon publishing —Twitter: I schedule this through IFTTT to go out with #new, the title and the featured image once the blog is live. It’s also pushed to Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Google Plus the day it publishes.
2. Same day —Twitter: I’ll use the Click To Tweet quotes to send out a few times later the same day, but by using the quotes versus the title these have different ledes (opening or enticing paragraphs) and don’t seem like I’m pushing the same content over and over. (I try to have at least one quote in each post.)
3. Next week —I’ll pre-schedule reoccurring tweets over the next few days, and over the next two months from my personal handle (if it’s evergreen).
4. Next two months —Again, using prescheduled tweets with different ledes and different images (if there are any), my posts are hitting my personal feed for a good two months.
5. Ongoing —From here I let Revive Old Post take over, which helps our evergreen content to “live forever.”

RELATED: Free download: 11 Essentials for a Stellar Online Newsroom

Other tips:

• Changing your lede helps the content stay fresh; try to come up with three different ways to pose one title.
• Ask questions. For instance, for this post, I could change my lede or pose a question (depending on the platform and the space it affords) to say, “Are you doubling your content distribution efforts with a promo schedule?”
• Add hashtags to help searchers find your content.
• Tag people, and ask them to weigh in, but only if you have a good relationship; don’t spam people.
• Use pithy quotes or stats from the article as a new lede.
• As mentioned, use Click To Tweet to create snackable, shareable bites.
• Reference your article—when relevant— in online conversations. Again, don’t be spammy.

Promote your content to your list(s)

If you have a marketing list (and you should), use it.

Many people share weekly newsletters or several times a month. Use this as a vehicle to share your latest post(s).

Here’s what I do:

1. We have a monthly newsletter with themes, so I share a post from the prior month only if it fits with the theme we’re working with.
2. We have a subscriber-only blog email that delivers our blog to straight to inboxes. This is a highly segmented and highly engaged list. How? We give subscriber-only gifts— templates, workflows, tricks and tips—to those on our list as a bonus for the blog post’s theme. In this email we have two places with ready-to-tweet links.

Other tips:

• Have an RSS feed set up on your blog so subscribers can add it to their aggregators.
• If you decide to take it a step further, as we did with our subscriber-only list, make sure those links tag your brand, use any branded/relevant hashtags and are trackable. We use Bitly and Click To Tweet’s link generator to make this happen.

Promote your content through syndication

Our posts are syndicated through a few platforms, including B2Community and SteamFeed.

This means nearly all our posts are republished on these sites with permission.

Many sites do this for free; some do it as a paid service, such as Outbrain.

Here’s what I do:

• I research well-trafficked sites offering syndication (B2Community) and ask to be a part of the program.
• I vet offers from sites asking to syndicate my content (SteamFeed and a few others that are on a post-by-post basis). In some cases, I get paid to let other sites use my content.

Promote your content through advertising

As we ramp up with advertising efforts for our clients, this is an area I have to beef up in 2016.

There are so many ways to promote your content. Here are some of the easiest/most common:

• Facebook ads
• Facebook custom audiences (show ads to your lists)
• Facebook lookalike audiences (show ads to people similar to those people on your lists)
• Remarketing ads (Facebook or Google—ads that “follow” users with cookies)
• Twitter ads
• Google AdWords

There you have it! These 28 tips are only a starting place, but a solid one.

Did I leave anything out? Let me know in the comments section.

Source : http://bit.ly/1KTJL1V

Five Things You Should Know About Marketing to Millennials

Here are five things you need to know about marketing to millennials:

We Are Confident

As the children of Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers, we millennials spent our formative years being patted on the back and praised for just about everything we did. You colored inside the lines? That’s great. You want to play all the sports? Awesome. You burped? Bravo!

This is because our parents were the products of darker times, and hyper aware of all the ways in which our childhoods could go wrong. In our school and home environments, the adults in our lives made sure we were set up for success.

In this way, millennials respond well to getting our ego stroked. Remember that our self-worth is high, so we don’t necessarily need brands or brand messages to feed us that extra boost. We also like to hear messages that add value to our lives. Help us, and we will help you by supporting your business.

It’s like Demi Lovato, international pop star and fellow millennial says, “What’s wrong with being confident?”

We Are Optimistic

Doom and gloom is not the M.O. of the average millennial. And September 11^th, one of the darkest events of the last half century, is ironically what cemented our sense of optimism.

Losing our sense of security not just as a nation but as a generation created a juxtaposition between the new world order and how it had been before. Or, as optimistic millennials decided, how it could be again. Millennials have largely been fighting to regain that sense of security ever since and believe that in fact we can get there.

As marketers, there’s an opportunity to feed this optimism. In keeping with the “help me help you” sense of confidence I mentioned earlier, help millennials make the world better, and your messages will not only resonate, but become action.

We Are Creative

Jamie’s creativity point—which also stems from a strong confidence base—really stuck with me. Our parents told us that if we did well in school and went to college, we would get jobs, and everything would be champagne wishes and caviar dreams (ok, small exaggeration, but you get the idea).

But then the economy tanked, and millennials collectively had a quarter life crisis: Why don’t I have a job? Why am I not happy? Why hasn’t anyone given me my own reality show? The transition to adulthood was rough—and no one gave us a heads up!

Luckily, we’re a resilient bunch. When I was 23, I looked around at my group of close friends from college and realized that all but one of us had changed career paths within two years of graduating. We were nimble, we were creative, and while none of my friends were the founders of Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, or any other new-age service company, it was our millennial peers who created the sharing economy. How’s that for creativity? “Oh, the classic economy isn’t giving us what we need? Let’s shake it up.”

It’s the millennial generation that has helped to reshape the American Dream into something that involves a creative idea, some seed funding, and an IPO. While this paradigm is likely to shift again soon (i.e. if and when the startup bubble bursts—and history tells us it will burst), marketing messages that speak to this creativity, this one-size-does-not-fit-all approach, is crucial in reaching this audience.

The key is about keeping the message personal, and with today’s technology, you have the capability to tailor messages in a way that speaks to this generation.

We Are More Than Our Devices

And speaking of technology, something I love about my generation is that while we are technology experts, we are not technology dependents. We can still remember a time when there was no wifi, not everyone owned a cellphone, when computers were slow, and when the whole world didn’t speak in hashtags. I like to refer to this time as B.E.–Before Emoji.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate what sets us apart is to delve a little deeper into our Gen Z successors. These kids were essentially born with an iPad in their hand. They have PayPal accounts instead of credit cards. They make purchases via their phones. They know their credit score at age 17.

This is the stuff my nightmares are made of.

Taking this point of reference into account, there’s a nuance in the way we should be spoken to. We see value in “unplugging” and in the balance between online and offline interaction. There needs to be a full, omni-channel approach to how we’re marketed to, because we move between our online and offline worlds seamlessly.

 This incriminating photo (of me) shows that while millennials may not have been born with iPads in their hands, some were given access to 80s-era desktop computers at a very early age.

We Are Going to Have Babies

To close, I’m going to share my own personal theory with you, marketer to marketer. As more and more millennials start families, I predict that there will be a shift in the way in which our Gen Z (or whatever generation comes after Gen Z…do we start at A again?) kids approach technology. This is because millennials remember what it’s like to play outside—without technology. We remember what it’s like to read a book—without technology. And we remember what it’s like to be bored—without technology.

The adage of our grandparents may have been that they had to walk to school eight miles in three-feet of snow and it was uphill both ways. We will tell our kids—and our kids’ kids—how our parents sent us out in the yard with nothing to play with but a flat tennis ball and our imagination.

The ability to take something—anything—and transform it into something incredible—isn’t that what marketing is all about?

Source : http://bit.ly/20r2nu3

4 Content-Marketing Methods to Stay Above Your Competition

Promoting irrelevant content to your customer base is as useless as bringing a knife to a gunfight. The question is no longer whether targeted content is a competition worth entering, but how to bring home the gold.

With 86 percent of buyers “frequently” using mobile phones to access business-related content, it’s no wonder marketers and publishers are leaving their pay-per-click and display tactics in the closet and opting for the gold medal of all advertising methods: content marketing.

Here are some of the methods being used by winning companies:

1. Leveraging influencers

Influencer marketing is the force of nature shaking the online marketing world. There are two things to know when utilizing influencer-based marketing: it's expensive and it works. With that said, choosing the right influencer takes much more than a bit of YouTube browsing. Successful influencer marketing doesn’t end once a video goes live. It is important to follow up with comments and viewer queries across your channels, as well as the influencer’s.

2. Making it move

Digital storytelling should be as engaging and fluid as your content. Having a compelling user experience is exactly what your brand needs to draw your customer in and retain them. Content should be moving with your customer and enhancing their online customer journey. 

Interactive content is also a highly useful way for testing audiences’ online preferences, allowing for brands to elevate the content they curate. 

Recommended app: Apester allows brands to engage using personalized experiences such as quizzes and interactive content.

3. Creating for your customer

A surprising 61 percent of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that delivers personal content that is specific to their wants and needs, according to Custom Content Council. Being that content has such an impact on conversion and retention, having an awareness of trending topics and industry keywords is a great way of understanding what your customer is searching for online.

It’s crucial to remember that content should be targeted to your customer’s needs, not your own. While self promotion and PR are huge forces in marketing, giving information to your clients with no strings attached is the best way to organically reach your customer base and keep them for good. By knowing your customers' personas and breaking down their pain points, you can adapt your content to your target customer and create deeper connections.

At the same time, if you are truly creating content for your customer, it should never be a one-way street. Instead, your content should be a catalyst for a dialogue. To make your content genuinely useful, encourage your users to add their own insights. This not only enriches the content itself, but it also empowers them to become loyal users.

Recommended app: Popular sites such as EW.com use Spot.IM’s social sidebar to make such conversations easy and simple.

4. Letting the journey drive content

The competition for outstanding content begins with a keen understanding of the customer journey, so that your brand can improve it. By creating a road map for this epic, you can position your content to tell a consistent story -- one that individually addresses each action and motivation of your customer base. Much of the content story can be boiled down to smart planning and a well-devised content calendar.

Recommended app: This one I haven't tried yet, but searching through many blogs I've found DivvyHQ to be highly recommended. With it, you are able to plan and manage your calendar on one dashboard, allowing you to be ready for your customers' journeys. Remember that the customer journey isn't necessarily linear, but is constantly in flux.

Source : http://entm.ag/1Swsy0T

10 Stupid Mistakes Small Businesses Make With Social Media

It’s hard to find a person or a company that doesn’t have a Facebook, Twitter, and/or LinkedIn account—but small companies beware! Just because everybody uses social media doesn’t make it a useful marketing tool. In fact, without a smart strategy, committing human and financial resources to a social media campaign could cost you big, draining resources and generating negative ROI.

Here are 10 mistakes to avoid:

1. Spreading Yourself Too Thin

Building a social media presence takes a lot of time and effort. You have to engage with people continually, and communicate highly informative and/or provocative messages to stand out from the crowd. It’s hard enough to do this on one social platform, let alone two, three, or twenty. Smart small businesses, knowing their internal resources are limited, take on one platform at a time.

2. Having an Undifferentiated Strategy

When companies make mistake No. 1, they begin taking shortcuts, usually in the form of mechanically sharing the same content on each of their platforms. Big mistake. Social media users use multiple platforms; once they read your company’s same message everywhere, they will lose interest. Have a unique strategy for each platform. For instance, use Twitter to announce sales promotions and Facebook to share action shots of your products in use. This gives users a clear reason to follow you on the applicable platform(s).

3. Not Responding to Comments

It’s amazing how many companies forget social media is social. When someone reaches out to your company with a comment, you must respond—quickly and thoughtfully. Once the perception takes hold that your company is above engaging with the audience, you are dead. You will be labeled as a company that is interested only in self-promotion, a cardinal sin of social media marketing.

4. Controlling the Message

Similar to No. 3, companies err by viewing their social media accounts as advertising platforms. On social media, authenticity is valued highly. It’s OK to admit a mistake, ask for help, and respond frankly to criticism. Many small companies are unwilling to do this, and if you are one of them, either change your attitude or look for another method of Internet marketing.

5. Not Giving to Get

“Giving to get” is the path to success in social media. This strategy requires a generous spirit. Small companies succeed in social media when they go out of their way to help people by providing useful content, sharing other people’s content, jumping into conversations where they can lend a hand, and making it easy for people to try their products and services.

6. Selling Too Much

Social media users don’t like the hard sell. As a matter of fact, many use social media to escape commercialism. Don’t try too hard to sell your products and services; there will be a backlash. Again, social media is social. The best path to generating sales is to build relationships with your social media community, and then introduce the idea of doing business together.

7. Not Selling Enough

The flip side of No. 6 is also a big mistake—not attempting to sell through your social media campaign. This amounts to not having a strategy at all. If you view social media as a way to build credibility and brand awareness, that’s fine, but at some point you have to turn that credibility and brand awareness into sales. Smart small businesses gradually ramp up lead and revenue generation activities on their social media accounts; not doing it prematurely, but when the time is right to convert the “soft” asset of brand affinity into hard dollars.

8. Failing to Leverage Your Knowledge

Small companies know a lot about their products, services, markets and audiences. This knowledge, when communicated on social media, attracts the interest of potential customers. When a small business delegates its social media campaigning to a junior staffer with limited business knowledge, these potential customers will not be attracted, and may additionally conclude your entire firm is inexperienced and incompetent. By overdelegating, such companies turn their biggest potential advantage into a crippling disadvantage.

9. Failing to Establish Metrics

Many small businesses that have been on social media for a few years have absolutely no idea how well their campaign is working. Obviously, not having a way to evaluate a social media campaign leads to wasted investment and an inability to improve campaign effectiveness. Popular and useful metrics include tracking brand mentions; social shares of your company’s content; referred traffic from social media sites to your company website; and the number of engaged community members as measured by comments, direct messages. and other measurable actions. These metrics are not perfect, but provide a reliable sense of whether your campaign is stagnant, improving, or worsening.

10. Putting Too Many Eggs in the Social Basket

Social media marketing is really, really tempting for small companies because the financial barriers to entry are basically zero—signing up is free and the main investment is time. However, for revenue generation, brand awareness, and credibility building, other Internet marketing options may produce far better and quicker results—pay-per-click advertising and email marketing, to name two of the more obvious. Companies are smart to test various options. Social media could be the path of most resistance, but you won’t know unless you test. Budget accordingly and prosper!

Source : http://bit.ly/1QatO8u

8 Web Design Hacks for Entrepreneurs

That Want to Attract More Traffic, Conversions and Revenue

Having a website in today’s market is no longer an option, but different businesses utilize their websites differently. Some use their website for instant revenue generation e.g. ecommerce sites, while others simply rely on their website for lead generation through phone calls or email subscriptions. However, one thing is common for all website owners: you want to use your site to grow your business.

There are a number of strategies business owners can leverage to attract more traffic and build that traffic into leads and eventually conversions through sales. This article provides eight seemingly simple but critical web design strategies that have the potential to improve your traffic, leads and conversions.

#1. Find out what elements visitors are clicking and scrolling to

Knowing which areas of the site visitors are clicking and scrolling to will help you to position your offers and CTAs in places where they are likely to attract the highest number of clicks. You can use heat map tools such as CrazyEgg which will show you not only which areas are being clicked on, but also the origins/sources of those clicks. CrazyEgg can also show you how far down your webpages visitors scroll.

Using this tool, you can carry out split testing to identify which locations are most lucrative for your CTA buttons i.e. areas where conversions are most likely to happen. Conversions don’t just come by having CTAs somewhere on the page, gaining insight into what places actually attracts your visitors and leveraging that is what brings conversions.

#2. Site conversion audits

Is your current web design structure optimized for traffic conversion? In reality, many web designers know how to create great-looking sites, but few understand what elements are required to maximize conversions. As a site owner, engaging a user experience (UX) expert to perform a comprehensive conversion audit is worth the investment.

Such experts will help you pinpoint conversion hurdles and recommend design changes that will maximize conversions prior to launching your marketing campaigns. In turn, you can deliver optimized targeted messages and minimize the amounts wasted on ineffective strategies and elements. You can learn how to split test different elements of your campaign to determine which are more effective for campaigns. With a strong foundation on your website, all future campaigns will be more effective.

#3. Trust signals and testimonials

Visitors are more likely to make purchase or submit opt-in information to businesses that they trust. You can contribute to development of trust by including real testimonials from previous customers and/or noteworthy industry partners. Showcase any accreditations, recognition and awards prominently, communicating to consumers that you can be trusted. Stay away from giving fake testimonials, which can be spotted easily and will immediately cause customers to distrust your brand.

#4. Split testing

The importance of split testing cannot be overemphasized. Very often in website design, small changes, like tweaking the color or wording of CTA buttons can lead to significant changes in conversion. There are a number of simple tools which allow you to create multiple versions of your landing pages with slight variations to determine which ones lead to better conversions. You can do this even if you don’t have advanced coding or development skills.

#5. Call tracking

Where you rely on multiple sources for lead generation especially relating to phone calls, it’s advisable to have unique phone numbers and dedicated landing pages for the different sources, this will enable you to track which source was most effective in phone call generation. However, given that the call track numbers are all routed back to the main lines, there will be no disruption to the handling of your phone leads.

Almost all call traffic service providers can give you a record of calls made, and you can then use this information to determine which aspects of your campaign are effective in lead generation and which need improvement.

#6. Google Analytics metrics and data

Google analytics provides valuable information on which sources of traffic are effective in giving conversions and what your traffic engages in prior to conversion. This insight can help you to make significant changes to your layout and strategy e.g. you would know which of your social media traffic is converting and hence be able to direct more resources towards the channels that are leading to more conversions.

Suppose for instance you could tell that most of your successful converts interacted with you on the blog before converting. You would know to focus on generating more high quality content and utilize available distribution outlets like Taboola and Outbrain to lead even more traffic to the blog.

Your Google Analytics data is a gold mine that can help you get rid of traffic sources that convert poorly and scale up efforts on those sources which have higher conversion percentages.

#7. Exit popup offers

Getting traffic from any source to your site is no small investment, even if you’re not running pay-per-click campaigns. The time, resources and effort directed towards social media marketing and SEO essentially means that there’s a monetary value attached to each website visitor.

Most of the time, visitors who leave are unlikely to return; it makes sense to try and convert them through any way possible. Setting up a popup exit offer can actually improve conversion rates, which over time contributes to a significant boost in your ROI.

#8. Live chat

Live chats are not the preserve of e-commerce websites. True, they’re important for providing clarifications that can save sales as well as opening up another avenue for your employees to guide consumers to make a purchase and perhaps cap it with related purchases. However, live chat facilities is useful for other sites as well.

For instance, a restaurant site can use their live chat to iron out details of reservations as well as provide directions on locations for customers. Ensure that your live chat is accessible on mobile devices, given most of such customers may need this information while on-the-go. Cheap to implement, live chat can significantly improve conversions for businesses across the board.

Source : http://bit.ly/1PUVaxi

The more you already know, the greater you know you don't know

7 Marketing Trends You Need to Know for 2016

Here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

Mobile, video, and other marketing tactics that have been on the rise for years aren't really "trends" anymore. So, how many more trend articles do marketers have to read through that really just tell us what we already know?

Now, just because they're not current trends doesn't make them unimportant. Optimizing for mobile and including high-quality visual content and video in your strategy are still good practices. But to keep yourself and your company ahead of the competition, you need to analyze what's happening now, review your strategy from different perspectives, and prepare for what's to come.

To help, here are seven marketing trends to budget for in 2016 and to set up your team for success.

1. Writing skills and experience will be critical.

When the industry started shifting from print to digital, there was fear among English and journalism students that their craft was dying and no one with a degree in those fields would have jobs. And now with the rise in content, these research, writing, and editing skills are becoming increasingly important, especially when high-quality content is becoming the new SEO.

However, in its 2016 B2B Content Marketing report, the Content Marketing Institute found that only 19 percent of marketers would prioritize becoming stronger writers in the coming year. To keep up with other top content creators and publishers in your industry, encourage your HR team to recruit employees with these game-changing skill sets to build a successful content team, or start investing in education to help your existing team strengthen its writing.

2. Content marketing will enhance other areas of business.

Many people view marketing as the department that works solely to promote your company to your external audience, and while this is one of its key functions, it's not the only one. Content the marketing team produces will become an increasingly necessary asset to many other departments at modern companies, because those resources the team creates for external audiences are just as helpful for internal audiences.

For example, marketing team publishes a piece of content, our entire team is alerted. Because the content is created for your audience, including clients and prospective customers, your client-facing and production team members can use it to fuel their efforts, our sales team can send it to address common objections or questions, and your HR team can use it to train new team members about your processes. 

3. Personalization will prevail.

One of my favorite keynote speakers at this year's BOLO digital marketing conference was my friend and marketing trend expert Rohit Bhargava. During his speech, he talked about the growing importance of personalization and providing opportunities for clients and customers to feel like VIPs, and he used Disney's MagicBands as an example.

Instead of every visitor receiving the same band, each Disney MagicBand is personalized to that visitor's vacation experience. These simple gestures of personalization show that your brand cares about individual customers, and they're effective. In fact, my daughter didn't want to take off her band when we left Disney because it made her feel so special. Avoid generic templates and find ways-from simply targeting your messaging to sending personalized emails and gifts-to make each individual customer feel that special.

4. Industry authority positioning will become a must.

 Companies without thought leaders who provide voices and contribute to industry conversations are taking harder hits to their credibility than ever before. Executive branding and leadership positioning are no longer just nice to execute-they're becoming increasingly necessary. People want a connection to your brand, and they want to trust your leadership. The best way to establish this connection and trust is to create content that showcases your authority.

To effectively position your company, start taking advantage of your team's unique insights and expertise, and craft your messages into thought leadership content that establishes your company as the industry leader.

5. Add value for your audience and stop selling to them all the time.

Stop focusing only on making the sale, and start focusing also on delivering true value to your customers and potential clients. Whether this value is found in the quality of your content or in the experiences you provide, it's becoming more and more important for marketers to ensure that value is delivered to those who interact with their brands.

For example, on a recent call with Mura Experience Platform, a member of its team mentioned to me that a custom Cards Against Humanity deck designed for attendees of the Content Marketing World event with the Mura Experience Platform brand was one of their most successful marketing campaigns. This campaign was successful because it was original and delivered direct value to Mura Experience Platform's target audience. To keep up with competition, it will be important for marketers to take advantage of the rise in content to create and deliver value to customers.

6. Thought leadership is a new SEO driver.

Traditional SEO-using link building and keyword optimization to increase your pages' search results-is no longer your ticket to high rankings on Google. After Google's continued algorithm updates throughout the year, the search giant has begun rewarding higher-quality content with higher search rankings. Despite efforts by some companies and content creators to cheat their ways to the top of results pages, high-quality content prevails over the old keyword-stuffing tactics of the past.

For example, in my own writing during the past year or so, I've seen a dramatic difference in traffic to my own articles because my team and I have continued to perfect our content-creation processes to align with exactly what our target audience is searching for. Now when you search terms like "thought leadership speakers," you can easily find the article I published to my Forbes column. Because Google's updated algorithm recognizes that this piece of content was created to provide specific value to my individual readership, it rewards the article with a higher ranking to make it easier for readers to find.

As a marketer moving into 2016, your priority should be to provide the best possible content to your audience, not to publish junk content in hopes that it'll land you on page one. Trust me, when you create truly engaging, valuable, and relevant content crafted to serve members of your audience and what they're looking for, you'll earn that sweet spot at the top of the results page.

7. Full-service won't solve all your problems.

The best thing you can say to make someone lose faith in your company's credibility is "My company is great at everything." No single company is great at everything, and that's why full-service firms are becoming a thing of the past.

As the industry becomes more specialized, we'll see fewer full-service, best-at-everything marketing companies in 2016. Instead, focus your efforts on the one thing your company is truly great at and what your customers need and want most from you, and become the absolute best at whatever that is. You'll need to live and breathe that area, develop technology to support your efforts, and consistently innovate your products and services, but you'll ultimately serve your team and your customers better if you focus your efforts on the one thing that separates you from your competitors.

As this year draws to a close and your marketing team starts determining what initiatives will be valuable investments in 2016, a variety of content resources,marketing speakers, and other thought leadership resources will help point you in the right direction. Take the time over the holiday season to do the research and plan where your focus should be in 2016.

Source : http://bit.ly/21olt5h