While watching Luke Bryan, the headliner closing act on Saturday night, at the 2014 Bayou Country Fest I was struck by two things. First, his pandering techniques (to get the crowd into the show) and second, the number of folks heading for the doors during his encore. This was the headline act, the keynote speaker …
There is a scary trend rolling through the digital domain. A trend that if left unchecked, will lead to failed content marketing and lead generation programs. Yet, as you read posts penned by content marketing agencies and lead generation thought leaders, listen to popular podcasts or attend conference session lead by the leading digital minds, …
Over the last couple of years, a few hundred members of the diabetic community came together for the world’s first, and only, virtual diabetes conference. Registration was completely free and attendees could join from a computer, smartphone or tablet. And this ability to create virtual events is what I firmly believe is the future of social …
Great design, stellar content and loads of traffic don’t mean anything without sales. And even before that goal is achieved, a step-by-step process of conversion is occurring as prospects move closer to customer or client. And if you want to achieve success, you need to understand and stay abreast of the latest thinking in landing …
Content marketing is a widely recognized driver for effective, inbound sales lead generation programs. While largely heralded as a way to drive inbound leads there is another, even more powerful reason that ad agencies should develop a consistent content marketing program. The Traditional Benefit of Content Marketing Content drives all digital marketing lead generation programs. …
This Thursday, March 27th, I’ll be talking about the 7 keys to successfully leverage your social media strategy to drive lead generation and sales prospecting efforts. If you’ll be at Social Media Marketing World in San Diego and free at 2:15pm on Thursday, please join me in Seaport C for a great social selling session. …
Last week I showed you a nifty trick to turn any presentation into an instant B2B lead generation tool to help power your social selling efforts. But that trick only generates as may sales prospect leads as people in the audience. So today I’m going to show you how to use that same file to generate …
Do you give presentations for living? Do you make sales calls, deliver conference presentations, or even just make internal presentations to your boss or peers. What do you do with these presentation decks after you deliver the presentation? If you’re like 95% of the people I know, you file them away on a hard drive …
So today I want to talk to you about the lies, but I also want to talk to you about the truths of Big Data. I’m giving you my recent big data presentation as a downloadable webinar. My goal is that when you finish the downloadable webinar, you’re going to feel really confident having a conversation …
The biggest hurdle to an effective B2B content marketing program is convincing the sales force to utilize the content in their lead nurturing process. Most B2B marketing departments incorrectly diagnose the situation as a lack of willingness, support, or desire to engage in social selling on the part of the sales team. But I would …
I miss all the conversations I used to have on Twitter. So a few weeks ago I created a Twitter Chat called #DayChat as a virtual social media water cooler where my friends and I could hang out and chat about marketing vs just sharing links with each other. I also did it as a …
Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed a handful of articles discussing the devaluation of brands in a world of near perfect information. It has me thinking about the effect such a change would have on traditional marketing approaches. And, more importantly, the implications on brand loyalty programs, product launches, and small businesses vs big …
I’m convinced that 2014-15 will be the year we’ll finally see companies looking seriously at social media as a B2B sales tool. I’m seeing increased interest in and requests for our social sales training and I’m seeing a lot more social selling questions posted in my social media streams. So today, let’s start with the …
I’ve always been a big fan of Twitter and specifically Twitter Chats as a way to engage in smart, interesting conversations around topics like marketing, social media, digital marketing and other professional interests. But alas, if you look around Twitter lately, it’s kind of broken (more on that in a later post). It seems like …
Back in 2008, when I first made a serious foray into social media, I was just some a guy in New Orleans with a computer, a blog and a few ideas. I’m still just a guy with a computer, a blog, and a few ideas. But thanks to social media, I also picked up a …
Today I read a piece in Ad Age where the CMO of a major restaurant chain said, “In the past, over 80% of the marketing plan would be executed the way you originally planned. Now, it’s like 20%,” so you better be agile.” I have to say – I completely disagree with this point-of-view and …
Inbound Marketing is overly focused on winning page one SERP (Search Engine Results Page) on Google and to a lesser extent Bing. Inbound Marketers preach that if your company can rank your website for your keywords, then leads, conversions and sales will follow. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t really want you to rank organically and that creates …
Today I want to introduce you to the secrets of making more powerful video content marketing. In my book, The Invisible Sale, I interviewed professional video creators to uncover their secrets for making more effective marketing videos. Videos that grows businesses, increases sales and moves buyers to action. They gave me tons of incredible insight …
At a minimum, social media is the new phone. It’s both an inbound and outbound way to contact and communicate with sales prospects. Is it the best phone for all your prospects? Certainly not, but it does allow you to do more sales prospecting in a single day than you’d likely complete in a week …
Last week at #SoMeT13US, I had the opportunity to share my take on a key tourism sales and marketing strategy that I think all destinations should be deploying immediately. I talked about how DMOs and CVBs could find and win the invisible sales lead by leveraging proven social selling techniques. I thought you might find it …
That was the tagline of the last campaign I ever created at my former firm, Brandmarken, right before Hurricane Katrina destroyed a good bit of New Orleans and the entire company. It was fitting, because it was that attitude, that failure simply isn’t an option that kept me going and helped me put together the …
Normally we’d publish a helpful post about sales & marketing, digital insight or maybe a rant today. Instead, we’re interrupting our blogging for 10 days so that I can traipse across the country raising money for charity and creating awareness of my new book, The Invisible Sale. Along the way, I’m live blogging all the lessons …
Today is a special, Sunday Edition of the Converse Digital blog to celebrate my next big experiment — The #ivs4charity Book Tour. Sure it’s a book tour to announce my new book, The Invisible Sale and raise $10,000 for 10 deserving charities… but it’s more… it’s an experiment in the power of Propinquity to build …
If you’ve never heard the word Propinquity, then this is the book is for you. Why? Because that word, Propinquity, and the scientific research behind, it is the secret to creating more effective sales and marketing programs that turn conversations into customers. What You’ll Learn In The Book I wrote the book as a tool …
Every day I hear companies involved in B2B sales prospecting lament the shrinking sales cycle. Sales cycles that used to take six months, a year or even more — now routinely cut in half. These companies come asking for B2B sales tips to apply in a world where sales prospecting has to work in half …
But will you join me? That is the question I ask of you today. To celebrate my new book, The Invisible Sale, I’m planning a barnstorming tour across the central, eastern and southern United States. Over the course of 10 days, I’ll visit and co-host 10 #ivs4charity cocktail, networking events to raise awareness of the book …
To find and acquire self-educating, invisible buyers your company needs to set aside your traditional funnel based sales mentality and sales prospecting tools and augment your current approach with social selling. Instead of seeing your selling process as a funnel to be filled at the top with unqualified prospects, picture it instead as a radar …
The talking head interview video is a staple in any B2B video content marketing campaign. But far too many B2B Marketers incorrectly believe that this all important content marketing service needs to be outsourced to achieve great quality. That’s simply not true and today, I want to show you how you can create beautifully shot …
Everywhere you look marketers, digital marketing consultants and thought leaders are chiming off about big data. Just yesterday I read this post extolling the virtues of data-based marketing in place of empathy-based marketing. In it the author says, and I quote, “And if you are not using data as the primary source of strategy development… you …
It seems like not a week goes by that someone doesn’t post this question or an organization publishes research answering this question. It’s a smart email marketing question but please don’t believe the answers you see. Here’s why. There is no single, best day, best week, best month, best hour or best minute to send …