Social Media Lessons and Strategies for Sales

Social networks are re-writing the rules of what best practices in sales and marketing are.

• Listening is in, shouting is out.
• Targeting is in; carpet bombing via e-mail is out.

Responsiveness is the new black and trust is the new currency.

Brands are laid bare in front of millions daily. It doesn’t take long for just one customer to make a major statement about how they feel about a brand and make a major impact on sales too.  Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn,  blogs or YouTube, customers can make their voice heard immediately.  United Airlines’ wake-up call last year is a case in point as is the recent controversy Southwest Airlines faced.

So Many Social Networks and So Little Time

With so many powerful social networking platforms, applications and tools available why are marketers still not getting to their lead generation and sales goals?

Why do companies who have such a strong passion for their customers lose their way to delivering exceptional experiences?

Why does their sales collateral promise so much and at times fail to deliver?

Because product marketing, product management and marketing teams fall into the trap of believing you have to inundate the prospect with features, in-depth data and tons of documents to prove you know what you’re doing.  Carpet bombing prospect’s in-boxes with e-mails to send the message you know what you are doing is ironically proving fatal.

Why?

Because you and I respect people so much more when they listen to us and talk with us instead of talking at us. Too much technology marketing, specifically in software, talks at the prospect, instead of with them.  That is the heart of the potential of social networks – to engage and talk with prospects instead of at them.  And it takes hard work to make relationships count. You can’t earn sales through a deluge of content; it has to come from being genuinely interested in helping a prospect over a major problem.

Find the Passion of your Company

There are dozens of excellent software applications out there for managing lead generation and follow-up but unless it reflects the soul – the passion of a company – it is meaningless. What makes all these lead generation apps really work?  It amplifies, projects, makes more visible the passion a company has for owning a problem prospects and customers have.

No software application can compensate for a company that has not decided what it is passionate about.

But for those companies who have chosen a mission – a vision of what problem they will own for any prospect or customer – then lead generation becomes real for them.  Companies struggling to produce leads may not have a software problem; they may have a passion problem.  Defining that passion for service will go a long way to finding good leads, not those captured through attrition from lists. How much more powerful passion is for solving a problem over just endlessly listing off features and data.  Passion puts all that intelligence into motion and makes it relevant.

Lessons & Strategies

Social networks and the customer immediacy they provide make it imperative that marketing focus on what they have a passion for and what a company can deliver in terms of products and services.  From that vantage point consider these lessons learned:

Sales communications, both in-print and online, must have a very clear customer it is aimed at.

Surprisingly so much is produced aimed at the “enterprise buyer of IT solutions”.  I have never met anyone who called themselves that.  Get real and if you can’t define the customer, consider canceling the collateral.

Urgency to own the customer’s pain now and provide a proven solution.

Marketers who are making social networks generate leads get this and get their company’s passion for owning the problem out loud and clear.  Features matrices don’t come close; re-think that strategy and go own a problem to gain leads and sales.

What is the collateral’s goal and how does it fit into the marketing strategy?

An excellent question to ask when there are many, many open projects in a marketing department and there seems to be little shared messaging.  Collateral, both online and offline needs to resonate the passion a company has to serve.  It has to be so strong that there is no doubt your company intends to be the global leader in solving the problems and pains you target.

Answer the question of how your products and services are different and proven.

Differentiating at the benefits level, not at the speeds and feeds or features level is critical. What odes your company’s passion make it especially good at?  That is the most powerful differentiator there is.

Does your collateral teach or preach?

Go after teaching, and share your insight and intelligence freely as a company to gain thought leadership over time.  Your company will get what it gives when it comes to sharing insight, intelligence and knowledge.  Blog regularly. Give away insights from studies free.  Be open.  All of these tie back to a passion to own a customers’ problem.

Are your sales material evangelist-compatible?

Consider that if you are selling a complex system or service that your sales cycles often involve dozens of people in a variety of roles.  Is your collateral designed to make it easy for those championing you inside a company to carry forward what makes you unique?  Can the online collateral move quickly through social networks?  These are all relevant questions to this point and to evaluate your collateral on.

Design to Inspire and Educate.

The simplicity and clean layouts of social networks are the result of years of usability testing in some cases.  Make sure your offline and online collateral reflects these design criteria.

Bottom line:

Social networks are making companies confront what they really stand for and what they are the most passionate about. It’s best to start thinking about these issues and make your collateral all coordinate to what your company truly stands for.  Owning a problem and being passionate about it will generate far more leads than any other strategy.

Courtesy  - Louis Columbus

Seven Principles of Steve Jobs

Venturing with a new book - “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Carmine Gallo. The book so far is a great read and based on the initial few chapters a recommended read too. Found some great insight and needs to applaud the way of articulation of Carmine. It interesting to know how few people do things “little differently” those results in different outcome(s). Steve Job – A classic case of a person who wanted and more importantly believed into doing things differently than what norms suggested or implied.

The book in the first chapters itself highlights the seven principles that forces to think “differently” about career, company, customers and products. They appear in this order:-

· Principle 1: “Do what you Love” Steve Jobs has followed his heart his entire life, and that, he says, has made all the difference.

· Principle 2: “Put a Dent in the Universe”. Jobs attract like-minded people who share his vision and who help turn his ideas into world changing innovation. Passion fuels Apple’s rocket, and Job’s vision creates the destination.

· Principle 3: “Kick-Start Your Brain”. Innovation does not exist without creativity, and for Steve Jobs, creativity is the act of connecting things. Jobs believe that a broad set of experiences broadens our understanding of human experiences.

· Principle 4: “Sell Dreams, Not Products”. To Jobs, people who buy Apple products are not “consumers”. They are people with dreams, hopes and ambitions. Jobs build products to help them fulfill their dreams. (My Personal Favorite)

· Principle 5: “Say No to 1000 Thing”. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, according to jobs. From the design of the iPod to the iPhone, from the packaging of Apple’s product to the functionality of the Apple website, innovation means eliminating the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

· Principle 6: “Create Insanely Great Experience”. Jobs has made Apple Stores the gold standard in customer services. The Apple Store has become the world's best retailer by introducing simple innovations any business adopt to make deep, lasting emotional connections with its customers.

· Principle 7: “Master the Message”. Jobs is the world’s preeminent corporate storyteller, turning product launched into an art form. You can have the most innovative idea in the world, but if you cannot get people excited about it, your innovation doesn’t matter.

Some great principles to imbibe no matter what role, designation, position, influence, etc. And of course to know more about the principle and how Steve Job lead to these…..A recommended read - “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” by Carmine Gallo.

Have a Happy week!

The concept of Mashable

From a modest start in mid 2005 from a small town in the north of Scotland, Mashable, a social media news website, has become one of the top 10 blogs in the world as per the blog ranking service Technorati. The portal is popular among a wide range of audience and excels in providing exclusive up-to-the-minute news on social networks and new websites. And Mind-it this is no advertisement :) 

With social media and web 2.0 becoming extensively used marketing tools for internet promotion, everyone from small entrepreneurs to large firms wants to join the social media party. This is where Mashable.com comes into picture. Founded by Pete Cashmore in mid 2005, Mashable works to provide up to date news on social networks and new websites. Popular with a wide range of audience, people use news and views extensively from here for their business promotion.

Boasting of more than 15 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is well known among social media enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, influencers, brands and corporations, marketing, PR and advertising agencies, Web 2.0 aficionados and technology journalists. Not only this, Mashable is equally popular with bloggers, Twitter and Facebook users. We can’t ignore the fact that this section of internet users have become an increasingly influential demographic in recent years.

The upcoming domain of social media is still without any hard and fast rules or curriculum. In such a scenario, Mashable acts as an area of exchange for all the information currently floating on the web. In just a matter of five years, Mashable has become one of the most prolific blog reviewing new websites and services. One can find the most recent breaking news on the web apart from social media resources and guides here.

What sets Mashable apart from others is that their writers are prolific social media enthusiasts and good communicators. These are the people who have heavily engulfed themselves in this sphere. They have been quoted in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other well known technology publications many a times. Mashable’s success can be seen from the fact that it was chosen as a must-read site by both Fast Company and PC Magazine. No wonder, Mashable has been recognised as a top influencer on Twitter!

Mashable is a complete social media guide. It covers a wide range of fields including technology, mobile, entertainment, business, Apple and even job scenario in these fields. A one stop shop for all social media related needs, the portal gives all the information related to these areas. From latest products in the market to their reviews and from expected deals to latest trends, you will find everything that you need here!

One can even use a variety of advertising zones and RSS In Feed advertising offered by the portal to promote their product or service to over 280,000 members of Mashable’s audience! It is estimated that Mashable has over 300,000 feed subscribers. A range of online and event sponsorship options from mashable further add to its range of services offered to the wide array of customers.

Real-Time Marketing & PR

This article is an excerpt from David Meerman Scott’s “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.”

“My God, they’re throwing guitars out there,” said a woman in a window seat as passengers on a United Airlines flight waited to deplane in Chicago on March 31, 2008.

Singer-songwriter Dave Carroll and fellow members of Sons of Maxwell, a Canadian pop-folk band, knew instantly whose guitars. Flying from home in Halifax, Nova Scotia for a one-week tour of Nebraska, their four guitars were in the airplane’s hold. Sure enough, when the bass player looked out the window he witnessed United baggage handlers tossing his bass.

The band did not have to wait to retrieve their luggage in Omaha, their final destination, to start complaining, because they had actually observed this abuse of their equipment. As they made their way out of the plane, they told the flight attendants what they had seen. “Talk to the ground staff,” they were told. But the O’Hare ground staff said, “Talk to the ground staff in Omaha.”

Sure enough, when Dave opened his hard-shell case in Omaha he discovered his $3,500 Taylor guitar had been smashed. And United Airlines staff in Omaha refused to accept his claim.

So Dave spent months phoning and emailing United in pursuit of $1,200 to cover the cost of repairs. At each step, United staff refused to accept responsibility and shuffled him off: from telephone reps in India, to the central baggage office in New York, to the Chicago baggage office.

Finally, after nine futile months, Dave got a flat “no.” No, he was told, he would not receive any form of compensation from United.

“At that moment, it occurred to me I’d been fighting a losing battle all this time,” Dave told me. “I got sucked into their cycle of insanity. I called and emailed and jumped through hoops, just as they told me to do. The system is designed to frustrate customers into giving up their claims, and United is very good at it. However, as a musician, I wasn’t without options. So when I finally got the ‘no,’ I said, ‘I urge you to reconsider, because I’m a singer-songwriter and I’m going to write three songs about United Airlines and post them on YouTube.’ ”

Making good on his promise on July 6, 2009, Dave posted on YouTube “United Breaks Guitars,” a catchy tune with memorable lyrics that tells the saga of his broken guitar:

United, United, you broke my Taylor Guitar

United, United, some big help you are

You broke it, you should fix it

You’re liable, just admit it

I should have flown with someone else

Or gone by car

‘Cause United breaks guitars

Yeah, United breaks guitars

Within just four days, the video reached 1 million views on YouTube. And then another million. And another.

Momentum built from July 8 to 11 as up to 100 bloggers a day alerted their readers to the video. Incidentally … the number of blog posts per day followed a bell-shaped curve — starting slowly (because Dave Carroll wasn’t well known), building to a peak, then trailing off. We come back to this in Chapter 3 when I discuss the importance of what I call the Real-Time Law of Normal Distribution.

This is a story about speed in media relations.

“United Breaks Guitars” soon became a real-time phenomenon that propelled Dave into the spotlight. It continued to grow in the spotlight because Dave was ready and able to speak with the media in real time, conducting dozens of interviews in a few days while the story was hot.

This is a story about real-time market engagement.

The maker of Dave’s instrument, Taylor Guitars, seized the real-time opportunity to build goodwill among customers. Within days of Dave’s initial YouTube post, Bob Taylor, the company’s president, had his own video up on YouTube, advising traveling musicians how to pack equipment and use airline rules to best advantage.

There’s more: This is a story of real-time product creation, too.

Carlton Cases, a specialist maker of highly durable instrument cases for professional musicians, likewise seized the momentum. Within mere days, Carlton had a new product on the market: the Dave Carroll Traveler’s Edition Guitar Case.

Finally, this is about a company that chose not to connect with customers.

As millions of potential customers saw a video that persuasively cast its brand in the worst possible light, negating the value of tens of millions of dollars in media advertising, United Airlines chose to make absolutely no response. This from the largest player in one of the most consumer-facing of industries, an industry that over decades has spent billions on advertising, public relations, and “scientific” customer service methodology.

As a YouTube phenomenon, “United Breaks Guitars” has drawn attention from thousands of media commentators. But two aspects have been overlooked: the reason why Dave’s video gained so much so much momentum, and the way agile players on the periphery were able to surf that momentum.

This article is an excerpt from David Meerman Scott’s “Real-Time Marketing & PR: How to Instantly Engage Your Market, Connect with Customers, and Create Products that Grow Your Business Now.” To read more about the positive and negative effects of “United Breaks Guitars,” download the PDF.

Courtesy – Steve Kayser

Top 10 SEO tools available on the internet for free

Importance of search engine optimisation (SEO) for any online content has been given much attention lately. Although everyone is aware of how SEO can guarantee maximum traffic to any website yet how to make a content search engine friendly is a task left to few experienced writers. Though many are not aware, internet offers a wide range of SEO tools for free. Listed here top ten of those tools that can hep you bring your SEO target well within reach.

1. Ranking Checker by SEOmoz.com

Just sign up for a free SEOmoz account to use this cool SEO tool. With ranking checker you can check your rankings for up to 5 keywords per day for free, which means approximately 150 keywords monthly. It also allows you to maintain and download your archived rankings as CSV.

2. Keyword Density Analysis Tool

This SEO tool can be used to find out the keyword density of all the phrases on the page. One is only required to enter in a page URL to get that solid balance of keywords within your content, and to match the right keywords to the right pages.

3. MultiRank Checker by iWebtool.com

This is a cool SEO tool that allows you to check the Google Page Rank and the Alexa Ranking for 10 of your competitors at one go! As it checks in bulk you can save a lot of time with it.

4. SEO Analyzer by Sitening.com

The SEO Analyzer can go a long way in meeting your optimization goals. This tool gives you a detailed report on the list of SEO components that needs to be given more attention for a web site. It also gives a score that can be used to quickly assess the amount of work a site might need. It’s an easy to use tool with very user friendly interface. The reports are all saved and can be downloaded as PDF anytime.

5. Fiddler Web Debugging Tool by Fiddlertool.com

Although this tool is at present only available for Windows and it needs the .NET framework that you can download from their web site as well but it makes it possible for user to analyze all the background communication that goes on between the browser and the servers. The fact that it won't freeze your browser makes it a better option than similar debugging tools like Tamper Data.

6. Spider Viewer

SEO is all about keeping the spider happy by being in their good books. Through this SEO tool you can see your site the way spider sees it. This is helpful in getting an insight into the changes that can be made in the content. The tool can be used to evaluate your internal links, meta information and page content to achieve maximum potential from a website.

7. Strongest Subpages Tool by WeBuildPages.com

With strongest subpages tool, you can get an organized list of the strongest pages on any web site. This list can help you decide what pages are carrying the maximum amount of inbound links. This tool is especially useful for webmasters looking at competitor's strongest pages.

8. Backlink Checker by WeBuildPages.com

WeBuildPages.com offers this smart backlink checker tool for free. With this tool you can get your linking campaigns well in place. You can also analyze competitor backlinks along with your own with it.

9. SEO for Firefox by SEOBook.com

This is one of the most powerful SEO tools available on net for free. It can give you information from the visited page as well as the search engine to get that quick competitive overview. It provides a long list of information including PageRank, cache date, domain age, backlinks in Yahoo, number of .edu links and the number of cached pages with just a right click.

10. Google Analytics / Google Webmaster Console by Google.com

Based on Urchin, Google Analytics is a top analytics tool that can give detailed reports about traffic behavior, content visitation, funnel information and much, much more. The Webmaster Console tool gives information about crawling rate, crawling speed, backlinks, highest PageRank of your site that Google looks for.

10 Brilliant marketing ideas

An idea can change everything. This is an apt description of the way the advertising industry works. With its foundation built on the genius of ideas, advertising is known to draw inspiration from unimaginable sources. But sometimes an idea gives birth to a trend changing campaign, which generates huge and instantaneous buzz. What makes them brilliant marketing ideas is the effect they have on their competitors and the way they create a lasting impact on the consumer’s psychology for years to come!

From selling something as precious as diamonds during the Great Depression to specially made Zoozoo ads for IPL seasons, here are ten brilliant marketing ideas that made customers lossen their wallets.

1. 'A diamond is forever'

Masterpiece of N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency, the "diamond is forever" campaign created sentimental meaning for diamonds, which were fast losing their price in 1938. De Beers worked to reverse the trend and promoted the idea that any marriage is incomplete without diamonds as a gift. Even today, the phrase is known to most of the people without any idea about its commercial origins.

2. Marlboro Man

The Marlboro Man campaign was such a powerful one that it turned marlboro’s image from a being a premium filtered cigarette for women to bestselling cigarette in the world! Considered as first example of "image" advertising, Leo Burnett's advertising firm used an American cowboy - the most masculine of icons to change the image. Men immediately connected with ruggedness and masculinity of a cowboy.

3. 'Think Small'

Selling small Volkswagen Beetle in an era of major chrome and fins was no mean task! To do the unthinkable Doyle Dane Bernbach agency used a team of copywriter and an art director to work on this difficult campaign. The revolutionary "Think Small" ad, which showed a tiny image of the car surrounded by acres of white space and a few words about "our little car", went on to change the norm. The guts to be different paid off and rest as they say is history.

4. 'Does she . . . or doesn't she?'

Back in 1957, when "shockvertising" was unheard of, Foote, Cone & Belding came up with this shock ad campaign. The ads featured a beautiful healthy girl next door with a shocking secret, whether her hair colour is real or fake? The campaign consisted of a series of ads for tints and dyes posing the question- "Does she … or doesn't she?" The secret was known only to her hairdresser.

Leading to the rise of hair colour by more than $160 million in just ten years, the campaign generated buzz by tapping into the sexual revolution.

5. Absolut Vodka

This clever ad campaign turned a clear, flavourless and a drink with no distinguishable taste into first breakout premium vodka. TBWA's agency used a different bottle's shape and name, which made millions of Americans to pay more for a product they couldn't identify in a taste test!

Even after 30 years, Absolut Vodka is one of the longest-running campaigns in history, and still going strong. This shows the sheer power of advertising.

6. Beauty Mist pantyhose

This ad campaign showed the power of using the right celebrity. This 1974 TV commercial used Hall of Fame quarterback (and playboy) Joe Namath to sell Hanes pantyhose! The ad featured a pair of smooth, nylon-clad legs of Joe: "Now, I don't wear pantyhose, but if Beauty Mist can make my legs look good, imagine what they'll do for yours." Thanks to this creative ad campaign, for the first time in the U.S. sales of pantyhose outran sales of stockings!

7. The Coke geyser

Viral marketing at its best! The ad which showed a demo by physics teacher drop Mentos mints into a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke resulting in the thing blowing was followed by unbelievable number of page views and copycat videos. This Internet phenomenon of 2005 rocketed the sale of mentos and coke at almost no marketing cost.

8. 'Change we can believe in'

Social marketing was never used the way Barack Obama used it to win US presidential elections. The campaign used the web and social media and rightly heralded the new era of social marketing. Obama was voted as "2008 Marketer of the Year" by AdAge readers even before he won the White House.

9. Zoozoo ads

The white, cute, little round shaped cartoon faces became the talk of the town and immediately connected with the masses during the first IPL season of 2008. Vodafone Zoozoo ads are considered among the most creative ads in the world till date. The Zoozoo ads campaign is an apt example of ‘think out of the box’ concept. The message was delivered beautifully and the audience kept waiting for more. Kudos to Vodafone developers!!!

10. Dancing in the Tube

It’s an accepted fact now that commercializing flash mobs works!

T-Mobile's "Life's for Sharing" campaign launched by Saatchi & Saatchi in January 2009 became a YouTube phenomenon. The video shows a choreographed dance routine in the middle of a London Tube station.

Main Hoon Na!

Main Hoon Na…I am There (in English)…just few words put together but bring the power of the entire universe to you when someone says “don’t worry..I am there”..

The words that provides you with the warmth of mother’s hug, a twinkle in the eyes…just like the one when you see the special one in the crowd of ‘000,…a smile of a child the one you see when the child see’s a small gift in his dad’s hand…, the happiness that you see in the tear’s of a father when he see his disabled child finishing the race…

Recently I lost someone who use to say to me that main hoon na…. Loss seems to be an integral part of our lives and yet it seems so indifferent once its occurs. For most of us a stage comes in the life where life stops giving and start taking back…Well it all depends at what stage of the life this stage comes….but as said it does comes.

And yet we manage to discover or manufacture time for dispute(s) and ego(s)….I love it…..We humans have perfected the art of being imperfections. While driven by our wants rather than needs…..we expect to get it all…even at the cost of others….rather mostly at cost of others only…

We tend to take things and more importantly people for granted as I did. I imagined that people who where there for me will always be there for me….till I lost them…Of course loss is no a good feeling when it happens….But any cost of a lost is not justifiable….especially once its based on one’s ego or to justify self proficiency.

We tend to jump to conclusions and are the best experts to comment on situations….no matter what it is…we humans love doing so….

Well before I get stuck into my whelm of thoughts…I would suggest that do or be the one to say Main Hoon Na….to someone… Hope I can say that to someone….

“Main Hoon Na”!