Over the last 10 years, content marketing has emerged as a powerful driver for effective social selling and inbound sales lead generation programs. And while largely heralded as a way to drive inbound leads there is another, even more powerful reason that ad and PR agencies should develop a consistent content marketing program. Let’s talk about …
In November 2016, CNN plunked down a reported 20 millions dollars to purchase Beme, the video-sharing app started by YouTube star Casey Neistat. CNN hoped to fashion it into an independently operated daily online news program that would appeal to today’s digital centric consumer. By January 2018, Neistat was out and the effort became a glaring …
Recently I participated in an interesting discussion on the #Digital360Chat Twitter Chat hosted by Bernie Fussenegger around the idea of sales & marketing automation, specifically about automating the connection process on social media. It’s hard to really go deep on a subtopic in a Twitter Chat, so today I thought we could explore this key …
Whenever you read about Social Selling, everyone spends a lot of time talking about creating content. It makes sense, because content is at the core of a successful social selling program. But you shouldn’t be paying your salespeople to create content. Instead, teach them how to properly curate content (maybe even give them the proper …
Have you ever received a LinkedIn Cold or Warm Message like the one above? You know, where someone makes a sales ask via LinkedIn’s Messaging system either as a first or second touch? Arggg. I hate those. Folks just don’t realize that you only get one chance to make a LinkedIn impression. But beyond that, …
So what do you do for a living? We’ve all heard it. The question. The simplest question that every one of us should be able to quickly, easily and succinctly answer. But how many times have you been asked and then recited back some long-winded, mumbo jumbo answer that really didn’t answer the question asked? …
Companies today live and die by the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) metric of their choosing. They become slaves to the data based sales & marketing approach. And there is nothing wrong with that until there is, especially with consumer engagement KPI’s. Because what at first, seems to be a positive, could actually hide a huge …
I read Gary’s missive this week and to be fair, I love the tactic he suggests but hate everything else about his recommendation because if you blindly follow it, you’ll fail. Let me explain. Conversations Become Customers I couldn’t agree more with Gary’s recommendation to create proximity with your sales prospects using events as a tool …
Everyone loves digital advertising for its tracking capability vs traditional advertising. It’s easier to prove digital marketing ROI vs traditional advertising because digital makes the invisible buyer visible. But is this focus on clicks causing you to miss conversions? Let’s talk about that today. You Can’t Sell To Invisible Buyers In our zeal to prove …
Are you asking yourself, WTH is he talking about with that headline? Well today’s post is all about making a point that in my not so humble opinion needs making – success today is more about conversations than content. This post is an effort to provide a bit of context so that you can evaluate …
A few weeks ago Tom had a chance to sit down with Luke over at Toucan Advertising to talk about how ad agencies, pr agencies and frankly anyone in the consulting world, can turn conversations into customers. The podcast, Briefly, is about 30 minutes long and they covered a number of topics including:How the worst day …
Every day you find another article about some new Social Selling tip, trick or tactic to improve your sales prospecting success. So you read, follow and try. But that’s a recipe for sales prospecting failure. Everyone is asking themselves the same question – “What’s going to change in social selling or sales prospecting?” “What’s going …
Do you remember the story of The Trojan Horse? In the story, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse and hid a select force of men inside. The Greeks pretended to sail away and the Trojans pulled the horse into their city as a victory trophy. That night the Greek force crept out of the …
This morning I read an interesting research study indicating that 57% of B2B Marketers felt “Getting targeted prospects to engage” was their #1 challenge in generating new leads. Following closely on the heels was “Finding leads that convert” at 55%. “Finding Qualified Names,” usually considered one of the biggest challenges was a distant third at …
The Facebook Like, is often dismissed as little more than a Facebook Marketing vanity metric by many in the social media marketing world. I get it, it’s so easy to Like something. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, so how valuable is a Facebook Like really in terms of brand building, lead generation and …
Happy Anniversary to me. Yep, eight years ago this week (May 1, 2010) I re-entered the world of entrepreneurship by starting Converse Digital with a mere two weeks notice, no money in the bank, no investors, no credit line, a wife, four kids, a big mortgage payment and lots of private school tuitions. I’ve learned a …
Social Selling, like most things in life, is a marathon, not a sprint and you should act accordingly. Social Selling Techniques are about making an investment today that will generate sales in the next month, quarter or year. But for companies or people just starting out, let’s talk about how to begin and where should …
I don’t have time to play on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook—I have sales calls to make. Ever heard that one before? It’s been the most common thing social selling trainers and social selling agencies have heard from salespeople for as long as social media has been around. And this belief is the key reason that most sales …
How do you track social selling and content marketing success in a world where 65% of all content sharing is invisible to your data analytics software? What does sales prospecting success look like? What social selling KPIs do you track and report? Here is a simple solution. Dark Social Is Growing The chart from GetSocial …
As I sit in a hotel at the foot of the University of Texas campus for a day and a half of reliving my youth while simultaneously brainwashing my child, 413 email marketing newsletters await my attention this morning. Deleted them all. Today’s email marketers’ problem is that technology has made it too easy to …
Let me show you an example of how this might work, using Chapter 14, of my book, The Invisible Sale, “Creating Text-Based Content.” Chapter 14 easily deconstructs into multiple individual blog posts. One blog post idea is to repurpose the “Talking vs Typing” section into a blog post titled “How to Use Voice-to-Text Transcription Software …
Most influencer campaigns today are really thinly veiled awareness ad campaigns. Companies are simply renting access to an influencer’s audience on the misguided belief that this access will generate sales by association. But this is a short-sighted and increasingly unsuccessful viewpoint because fame doesn’t equal influence. So, how do you leverage conversations to create a …
Facebook’s announcement that “The new algorithm will emphasize posts from friends and family over viral videos and clickbait headlines from Pages.” doesn’t mean you need a new social media strategy. It means you’ll need to execute better against the same social media strategy you should have been deploying all along. Let me show you why.This …
Companies spend millions on brand activations and Netflix’s recent CES activation was no different. The super weird booth from fake company Psychasec promoting their “sleeve” product, a spare body you can transfer your consciousness into seems to be designed to specifically create Word-of-Mouth. So did it? Let’s look at the numbers. Online Social Media Discussions Generated …
Have you ever woken up one day with zero sales prospects in your sales funnel? I have. It was a pretty horrific day. Thankfully, I was able to fix the problem in under 48 hours because I focused on connecting vs converting. Today, let’s talk about what you can learn from my experience.A Day With …
We all want the Google Juice. We’ve been told it’s the silver bullet to inbound marketing success. But we’re wrong. The only way to truly Google Proof your website, and your online marketing efforts, is Propinquity. Today we’ll talk about why propinquity marketing is a better long-term strategy vs the classic Google/Inbound strategy for most …
According to a 2017 Baymard Institute, an e-commerce consultancy, based in Copenhagen, report “more than 69% of online shopping carts that contain at least one item are later abandoned”. The report analyzed 37 different studies to arrive at the 69% average. Baymard has been analyzing US and EU combined online cart abandonment for seven years. …
Do you struggle with connecting your sponsorship sales leads and attendee leads lists? Leveraging people on each to help you create qualified sales prospects for the other? If so, this post is for you. A friend of mine produces large conferences and she struggles with leveraging the folks on each list, whose colleagues present sales …
Last week Skift posted an article, Business of Loyalty: What the Travel Industry Could Learn From Amazon Prime, suggesting travel brands could learn a lot from Amazon’s famous Prime Service. Nothing could be further from the truth… here’s why. Amazon Prime Isn’t a Loyalty Program According to Webster’s Dictionary, loyalty is an act of “faith” …
Yesterday I received an email from Oculus that really pissed me off. The email invited me (an early adopter of the technology) to share the gift of VR. It went on to inform me that for a “limited time” Oculus was selling a package of one Rift + two Touch Controllers for only $399… almost …