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 …
I’m super excited to announce we’ve launched a special keynote speaker offer to support my new book, The Invisible Sale. My goal in writing the book was to deliver at least one great idea, tip or trick in each chapter (that’s a $1/idea by the way) to create a tool that readers would keep and …
What do you do when you’re not getting as many leads from your website as you think you should? Should you advertise more? Should you activate PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) or should you focus on creating outstanding content marketing to drive inbound marketing leads? It’s a classic chicken and egg discussion — one that I just …
How do you prove the ROI of your social media efforts? For most people, social ROI is proved by measuring likes, follows, tweets, retweets and clicks because they don’t think they can link social media activity to sales conversions. And truth be told, for most of the inexpensive social media management platform options available click/follow/tweet …
For now, let me just say that a strategic inflection point is a time in the life of the business when its fundamentals are about to change. They are full-scale changes in the way business is conducted, so that simply adopting new technology or fighting the competition as you used to may be insufficient. – …
The first step in developing a Propinquity Marketing Strategy is defining your key Propinquity Points. The technique varies by category, industry and prospect but here is a repeatable four-step process that can serve as your starting point. It’s the same process I use with my clients and we find it to be an excellent jumping off point. …
I spend Chapter 5 of my new book, The Invisible Sale, discussing the strategic shift content marketing oriented sales & marketing teams must accept to find and win the invisible buyer. Today’s buyers are looking for advice not advertising and the brands that figure that out and successfully deploy that strategy first will enjoy enormous first mover …
According to a 2012 Edison Research Study on the Podcast Listener awareness of podcasting has grown 105% since 2006 and the percentage of people indicating they have listened to an audio podcast has grown 163%. But access to a growing audience isn’t the only reason to consider adding podcasting to your social selling toolkit. Here are three key …
You know what’s wrong with experts? They don’t know what they don’t know…. and they’re scared to find out. Experts abhor failure. They can’t help themselves. If you or I fail at something, it’s a setback. But if an expert fails, it’s a massive chink in their expert armor. And with each and every failure, they …
I love how my funnel optimized website helps invisible buyers become visible sales leads. This site, which was created by Copyblogger Media is built on the Genesis WordPress platform using a customized Streamline child theme. To enhance the site’s ability to power my social selling efforts, and serve as a never need a vacation painless …
The one thing almost all successful blogs have in common is a commitment to publishing regularly. But as anyone who creates content marketing will tell you, sometimes the words are there and others, well they just don’t come to you. Instead, you get the dreaded, writer’s block. But the schedule demands that you publish something, …
Every day I talk to sales and marketing executives that lament their inability to convince their company to adopt social selling, inbound marketing and content marketing strategies and tactics. In fact I’ve gotten this question so many times that today I want to share with you the advice I give each of them. It’s a …