Successebook

An IRCE speaker discusses how to build customer loyalty through social media.

To build on the loyalty of its best customers, fragrance retailer Scentiments.com is finding new and better ways to engage them through social media, CEO Howard Wyner says. Wyner will share tips from his loyalty and social media marketing programs at the Internet Retailer 2012 Conference & Exhibition in a session titled “Marketing Technologies: The engines behind the promotions.”

Wyner will explain how Scentiments.com, No. 481 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, uses web analytics and its loyalty program technology to better interact with customers and to offer incentives for products for which they’ve shown a strong interest through social media. “Besides rewarding our customers for purchases, we are providing incentives based on their social interactions,” he says, adding: “We award points for social actions, such as following and Liking” on Facebook.

Using such incentives to provide unique and engaging customer experience, he adds, enables Scentiments to turn loyal customers into brand advocates that actively promote the retailer’s products and service through online social interactions with other consumers. In turn, that helps Scentiments continue to expand its customer base among the online social communities connected to its loyal customers.

“These incentives that we award our customers for engaging within their social communities leverage their brand advocacy, which taps into new ways of generating qualified traffic,” Wyner says. source: internetretailer.com – Paul Demery

Amazon.com may be moving into uncharted territory in tablet computing.

Nothing like a captive audience for advertising. That’s what Amazon.com Inc. may have in mind if it starts selling full-screen advertisements on its mega-popular Kindle Fire tablet computer.

The e-retailer, No. 1 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, is pitching advertising agencies advertisements that would appear on the tablet’s welcome screen and in Amazon’s Special Offers section—a two-month buy would cost at least $600,000, and $1 million would get additional ad placements and inclusion in Amazon.com public relations efforts, according to a report in Advertising Age, an industry trade publication. Special Offers is a listing of deals and sponsored messages users of select models of the Kindle e-reader can access from the home screen.

Amazon sells two versions of select Kindle e-readers: one does not include ads, the other displays ads and comes at a lower cost. There have been reports that Amazon will release a second Kindle Fire this summer. This could be an ad-supported version of the existing Kindle Fire, which debuted in November and, according to Amazon, is the e-retailer’s top-selling product. Amazon did not respond to a request for comment and has not released figures for the number of Kindles sold to date.

Whether consumers would be up for a tablet, as opposed to an e-reader, that displays advertisements is up in the air. There has yet to be a tablet on the market that displays ads.

“The Kindle Fire buyers who think of it as a pure tablet like an iPad may be more resistant to advertising foisted on them,” says Chris Silva, mobile analyst at Altimeter Group, a technology research and consulting firm. “That said, savvy buyers realize Amazon is not selling a tablet but a media consumption device, really no different than a Kindle e-reader, except that the Fire allows you to buy higher cost items, including easy access to Amazon.com for physical merchandise. These people might be OK with advertising if ads help them find products they like.”

One way or another, Amazon would have to make the cost of a Kindle Fire that displays ads less than the $199 cost of the existing Kindle Fire in order to make the ads more palatable, Silva adds.

The ad program could be an answer to Apple Inc.’s iAd, which sells display ads that run within a spectrum of smartphone and tablet apps. When Apple debuted iAd in 2010, it was asking $1 million for a minimum buy. Today that price has dropped sharply to $100,000. But these ads run within apps, they do not cover the entire screen of an Apple device when the device is turned on or off or goes to sleep, which is what Amazon is proposing. The Amazon full-screen ads could be quite jarring to consumers who have purchased the Kindle Fire to date, as the device was never promoted as including ads. But it is not clear whether Amazon would run its new ad program on all Kindle Fires or only new Kindle Fires.

“The addressable market for an iAd is anyone with a device running Apple’s iOS operating system, which is hundreds of millions of people,” Silva says. “The Kindle Fire network is much smaller. It may be a competitor to mobile ad networks like iAd or AdMob because it is taking some of those online advertising dollars. But I don’t think Kindle Fire ads will be viewed in the same way by users or the marketing execs that make the ad buys. For Kindle Fire ads, marketers would know exactly who their customers are and want to target them with X. An iAd gives you the broadest possible exposure.” source: internetretailer.com – Bill Siwicki

Guys love YouTube, so start-up web retailer Sharpmen is filling its site with YouTube videos to promote its limited-time sales of men’s apparel, tech gadgets, art and more. Think “GQ meets QVC online,” says CEO Yazid Aksas.

Aiming to be “GQ meets QVC online,” flash sale retailer Sharpmen wants to make the men visiting its e-commerce site feel as though they are paging though a glossy fashion magazine. It’s turning to YouTube videos to get the job done.

The members-only site, which launched this week, offers a range of items including apparel, tech gadgets, sports gear and art. So far the e-retailer has signed 120 partner brands and is featuring about 10 of them a week, says CEO Yazid Aksas.

Sharpmen says it is heavily focusing on content, with the goal to keep men coming back regularly for entertainment and information. Its narrative-based videos from YouTube are designed to work like ever-changing magazine features, Aksas says. Sharpmen produces all videos itself and plans to start live-streaming some of them from its New York office for special deals, he says. Members receive weekly e-mails with the latest “issue.”

In the future, Sharpmen plans to display personalized home pages for each consumer based on the preferences profile he fills out when signing up. For example, an outdoorsy type will see camping gear, perhaps, or a wine lover will see wine, Aksas says.

Sharpmen videos are either one-minute-or-less product features, showing, for example, how a gadget works or apparel fits, or two-minute-or-less productions that include interviews with a brand’s founders. “We’re interested in finding brands that are less known but have cool products,” Aksas says. “That’s something else we find with guys, they’re less brand sensitive than women. They’ll buy things if they look good and work well, regardless of the name on the tag,” he explains.

Oliberte, which manufactures specialty shoes entirely in Africa with the goal to help build jobs and infrastructure in the region, worked with Sharpmen to produce a video for the site. “They were as much interested in the product as building the video to tell the story about it,” says Oliberte brand director Steve Trayner of the partnership. “As much as a product is good, it’s the story that garners the loyalty of the audience—true supporters knowing that their shoes are doing a lot more.”

The Sharpmen for Oliberte video features Trayner in the shoe showroom explaining the origins of the brand and the evolution of the products, including the reasons behind particular design features on some shoes, which he picks up and points out while speaking. Upbeat synthesizer music plays in the background throughout.

Trayner predicts the site will quickly be on par with other magazine-style men’s e-commerce sites like that of apparel, shoe and accessories retailer MrPorter.com. What sets Sharpmen apart, in his view, is the breadth of product offerings, which he expects will draw new customers to the Oliberte brand who may not have found it otherwise.

Aksas decided to launch Sharpmen after operating the direct-to-consumer menswear store Akselparis.com for more than a year.

Aksas says he saw potential in using YouTube to connect with male consumers. “Guys spend more time online, guys love YouTube, and there’s no kind of shopping channel for guys,” he says.

Other brands that sell on Sharpmen like the education the videos provide.

“Men need to be educated, they need to feel comfortable about whatever it is that they’re buying … they need to be hand-held a little bit,” says Pamela S. Viglielmo, executive vice president of Mënaji Worldwide LLC., a seller of men’s skincare products which sells on Sharpmen.“Whenever you can have this live face, this live interaction, it helps.” source: internetretailer.com – Amy Dusto

When it comes time to sell your business, there are only three potential scenarios for agreeing on a final price:

The buyer is better informed than the seller and buys the company cheaply

The seller is better informed than the buyer and is able to extract a juicy premium above the true market value

Both sides are equally matched and a fair price for both parties is negotiated

In my experience, it’s usually one of the first two scenarios that play out and seldom is the third one achieved. If a small business is being acquired by a large company then it’s almost a given that the seller will be out-negotiated. Unlike large corporations that can afford to buy the best advice from investment bankers and specialist law firms, many small business transactions are handled directly by the principles, who in some cases may be aided by an accountant or a lawyer that isn’t experienced in acquisitions.

It’s just not the same thing.

Experienced advisors and negotiators have information on recent transactions and deal terms beyond the blurb that might be printed in a local newspaper. After years of negotiating sales, they know the hidden risks, unrecognized opportunities and the “devil in the details” that gives them the advantage. Small-business owners need to be prepared and go into a price negotiation with as much information and understanding of how the process works as possible. One area that requires special attention is the methodology that buyers use to price your company.

The Multiples Method

This is a simple industry standard for determining what the rough price of a company should be, based on its sales or earnings. If you research acquisitions within a given industry you will see a pattern between the sales price and revenues or earnings. It’s best to use recent transactions to develop a multiple, as these tend to shift over time. The most common multiples are revenue multiples and normalized earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). Normalized earnings are adjusted for non-recurring events, like costs associated with the disposition of a long-term asset or restructuring charges.

New York University’s famous finance professor Aswath Damodaran maintains a database of recent acquisitions and multiples by industry, which you can review for free. Keep in mind that for private company transactions, the multiples may be lower given the greater risk associated with owning a smaller company.

Discounted Cash Flow Method

This is the most traditional (and intensive) method, which anyone who studies business in college must learn. This method requires the development of a financial model that projects the free cash flow that your company can expect to generate from now until forever. This projected cash flow is then adjusted to take into account certain factors including the cost of capital, the time value of money and the riskiness of the project to arrive at the net present value of the company.

“Hiraquisition” Method

This isn’t a traditional acquisition method but it is becoming quite common these days, especially as large technology companies seek out talented engineers and executives. Innovative startups tend to attract talented individuals. Large companies know this and they also know that wooing these executives to work for them isn’t easy, particularly if they enjoy what they are doing and have an equity stake in the startup. For companies like Google and Facebook the preferred method of acquiring this talent is to simply acquire the startup.

Don’t Limit Yourself to One Methodology

As a seller, you should develop a price metric that includes the estimated value of your company using all of the methodologies described above. This will give you a good idea of the range of values that your company may have in the hands of the buyer. It can also provide insight into which method the buyer may be using, which in turn can help you determine what he or she really wants: your customers, your assets, intellectual property or maybe you.

Have you gone through a sales process? Did you develop a methodology for estimating your price? source: openforum.com

Even if your summer intern isn’t destined to be your next permanent hire, he or she will likely be someone else’s. Do business owners everywhere a great service and infuse the community with effective employees. Here’s how to prepare your intern for a full-time job.

Do Some Pre-Planning

My first internship was a joke. I was hired by a communications firm to shadow account managers, but ended up stuffing envelopes most days. This was a failure on my boss’s part; she hadn’t planned for my arrival. For three months straight, she ran around the office trying to find something for me to do.

Learn from my experience and plot out your internship program. Meredith Kinsey, co-founder and chief marketing officer at Linda McDougald Design, an interior design firm in Greenville, S.C., recommends asking yourself these questions before your intern comes aboard:

Why do I want an intern?
What do I need an intern to do?
Does my intern need to be full-time or would part-time be better?
How will I structure my intern’s time to accomodate his or her needs?

Give Them Autonomy

Interns at Digital Talent Agents, a public relations firm in Columbia, Mo., are regularly given loose directions and then sent free. “We want them to figure out the best way to do things on their own,” says Kelsey Meyer, co-founder. “It’s interesting to watch what they come up with when we aren’t breathing over their shoulders.”

Autonomous thinking is an excellent skill to have, says Meyer. Equipped with this experience, college graduates can enter the job force without always having to be micromanaged.

Get Them Involved

While trial-and-error learning can be effective, so can observation. Kinsey recommends taking interns to client meetings, strategy brainstorming sessions, trade shows and so on. Show them what your industry is about and “they will have a better sense of whether or not it is a field they want to pursue,” she says.

Check in Regularly

Meyer checks in with her interns every Friday. They chat about what happened during the past week, what’s on par for the following week and how the intern feels about current tasks.

“I want to know if they like or dislike responsibilities,” she says. “If they don’t like something, I will switch things around.”

According to Meyer, interns with a background in open communication will come to permanent jobs with the confidence to speak up and are more acquainted with their individual skill sets.

Task Them With Idea Generation

Every so often, Meyer will ask her interns for ideas that can help the business. And since chances are good that new interns will fall silent, she’s made the process more fun.

“We make it into a contest,” she says. “If we are having a problem with a client, for example, I will task my interns with coming up with at least one solution by 2:00 p.m. The person whose idea we choose to use will receive a gift certificate for a smoothie at a nearby restaurant.”

Why does this practice groom interns into great candidates for permanent jobs?

“When you are looking to hire someone full-time, you want to know how they will add value to your company,” Meyer says. “This exercise teaches them how to think strategically; the more strategically an employee thinks, the less they will think about having to leave at 5:00 p.m. They will instead be thinking about how they can contribute to making your company better.” source: openforum.com

U.S. businesses are big innovators, spending billions of dollars annually to create new technologies, medications and other developments. They are rewarded for their efforts by a federal tax credit. The research tax credit is designed to encourage businesses to increase their R&D activities year after year.

You don’t have to be a big drug manufacturer or a high-tech business to claim the credit, however. You can take it for research engaged in certain internal activities. For example, an appliance repair business in Georgia needed a more efficient way to manage paper invoices, work orders and parts inventory across three locations. The firm hired a local custom software developer to design and build the system. The result was a better way to track key business data, with some of the costs of development eligible for the R&D credit.

The basic research credit is 20 percent of research expenses over a base amount. In the government’s 2009 fiscal year, the credit amounted to an estimated $5.6 billion federal subsidy for research by private companies.

Here’s what you need to know about the research credit.

1. No research credit. Technically, the credit expired at the end of 2011. However, it is likely that the credit will be extended for 2012, even retroactive to the start of this year. The credit was originally created by a 1981 tax act. Since then, it has been allowed to expire eight times and has been extended 13 times.

At the end of April, the House Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures held hearings on “extender” legislation. A proposal was made at the hearings to make the research credit permanent. Both parties and the Administration support the continuation of the research credit.

2. Alternative simplified credit. The regular credit applies to increased expenditures over a base amount covering expenses going as far back as 1984 through 1988, or another period for companies that started more recently.

Some businesses, however, may benefit from another research credit option, called the alternative simplified credit. This is limited to 14 percent of qualified expenditures exceeding 50 percent of the average qualified expenditures during the three preceding taxable years. (Or, 6 percent if there were no qualified research expenses in any of the three preceding taxable years.)

This option helps companies that are just starting up and that engage in research activities. It’s also helpful for companies that don’t have the records for all the prior years that are needed to claim the regular research credit.

3. Credit not limited to products for market. Internal-use software development costs, such as those mentioned with the Georgia company, qualify as research expenses if the following three conditions are met:

The software is innovative. It reduces cost, improves speed or makes other improvement that is substantial and economically significant.

The software development involves significant economic risk. There are substantial resources devoted to development.

The software is for internal use. This means it cannot be commercially available.

4. Part of general business credit. Even though you may be eligible for a research credit, the amount you can claim is limited by the general business credit. This is not a separate credit. It is an annual limitation on the total amount of the research credit along with many other business-related credits.

If the amount of the general business credit (including the research credit) exceeds the annual limit, the unused amount can be carried back one year and forward for up to 20 years to offset tax liability in these years. Thus, a current year’s credit could produce a tax refund for last year.

5. State research credits. The federal income tax credit may not be the only innovation incentive for your business. Check with your state for any research credits that may apply.

Work with your tax advisor to determine whether you have the type of innovation expenditures that may qualify you for a research credit. Find out what records you should keep to figure the credit. Also, monitor the progress in Congress to extend the credit or make it permanent.

To learn more about the credit, its background and how it compares with tax incentives from other countries, see Tax Incentives for Research, Experimentation and Innovation from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

Barbara Weltman is an attorney and a prolific author with such titles as J.K. Lasser’s Small Business Taxes and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Starting a Home-Based Business. She is a professional advocate for small businesses and entrepreneurs and she publishes Idea of the Day and the monthly e-newsletter Big Ideas for Small Business. She is the host of Build Your Business radio. Follow her on Twitter @BarbaraWeltman. source: openforum.com

It’s been three and a half weeks since Google unleashed the wrath of Penguin upon the world, and if like me, you suffered at the wrath of what is usually considered a rather docile and friendly bird, you may be feeling some undue hostility towards Penguins right about now. Fear not I’m here today to give you a plan of action to get your site back on track to page 1!

What Does Google Want!?

Google Penguin was curated and developed to rid its SERPS of spam and low quality sites that may have been engaging in less than kosher strategies. Unfortunately a number of sites who may have been market leaders but engaged in these tactics were also hit.

This has levelled the playing field to a certain degree and means that with the correct approach to off-site optimisation you can give the big brands a run for their money! This does depend on whether you’re a “glass half full / empty” kind of person however as a number of webmasters feel that local SEO and small business SEO is harder than ever.

Is SEO Really Harder For Small Businesses?

To a degree yes, but not because your budget may be smaller than a corporate entity, but rather because you’ll need to invest more TIME on your brand and generating exposure in channels that are relevant to your business.

Sure this process can be outsourced to someone else and I’m sure they’d do a good job, but no-one knows your business as well as YOU! If you’ve got the dedication to make sure your businesses succeeds then carry on reading!

Your Plan of Action

1. Start From the Ground Up

The days of creating content thin, made for AdSense sites are in the past. Google is all about quality and you have to adapt. If you think a backlink campaign consisting of directories, social bookmarking, article marketing, blog networks, web 2.0’s and link wheels will work, then your perception of off-site optimisation is all wrong and your efforts could be causing more harm than good.

2. Follow The Market Leaders

SEO trendsetters are now in high demand and I highly suggest you find / stalk / follow people like Wil Reynolds, Rand Fishkin, Will Critchlow and Mike Essex – these guys are innovators in an industry that is plagued and tainted by copycats and people who do “SEO by the book”. There’s no such thing as SEO by the book, sure there are a few well known optimisation techniques that we should all be engaging in but once you’ve finished your on-page optimisation the real fun begins!

3. So What Do I Have To Do?

Do you remember that scene from Family Guy – “We can rebuild him, we have the technology… but I don’t want to spend a lot of money”. Unfortunately you’re going to have to spend a lot of time and really start investing in your brand.

First you need to re-analyse what it is you want from your website. If your sole goal is to “get position 1 in Google” then I can’t help you. If however you’re looking to build your reputation, engage in the community and set yourself up as an authority in whatever niche it is you work in, you’re ready for my help!

4. Analyse Your Current Situation

You need to start treating your website as if it were a person – I’ve created the following scenario to try and explain the gravity of your current situation.

You’re a criminal who decided to go on a bit of a crime spree (think GTA 4) after hi-jacking a few cars and stealing a few wallets you’ve made a fair bit of cash (positions), got lots of friends (backlinks) and are on-top of the world! As they say though, all good things must come to an end.

The police (Google) decided to talk to your friends (backlinks) and they’ve ratted you out. Now all your cash (positions) are gone and after spending some time in jail you have been released back in to the world with no friends or cash and the police are still on your case.

So What Do I Do Now?

You’ve got to start cleaning up your act! Go out and get rid of all your low-quality backlinks (where possible) if you know the site has been penalised or de-indexed then it’s worth giving that link the chop!

Some people may have made the fatal flaw of outsourcing their backlink strategy to fiverr, or engaged in any number of low quality backlink strategies including mass blog commenting via scrapebox or forum posting via xrumer. This recovery process is going to be a lot harder for you but it’s still possible to recover.

If you know you’ve engaged in low quality linking via an outsource partner then get in touch with them and see if they can remove these links. Most advanced blog networks have the option to remove all created links in bulk.

While you’re trying to clean up your reputation go out and build new ones. There are a number of activities you could be participating in to start rebuilding your organic visibility.

Create Unique Content

Regardless of the industry you’re in, there’s always something you can do to stand out from the crowd. Do a search for “Dollar Shave Club” – if you can make razors interesting then there’s nothing stopping you from creating the next viral video for your company.

Engage In the Community

Find forums and blogs that talk your language. Drop them an e-mail, start a conversation, hell if you’re feeling up to the task pick up the phone and talk shop to a complete stranger. I’ve had people contact me out of the blue on linkedin and twitter from a few guest posts and blog comments. If I can do it, so can you!

Become an Authority in Your Niche

So you’re telling me your competitor currently has all the organic real-estate? Who cares, Google isn’t the only search engine in the world. Go create a few videos and plaster them all over YouTube, start a new forum for your business.

TAKE ACTION

If you were hoping to read this and discover that there’s a magic pill to cure all your SEO woes – I’m sorry to tell you but there isn’t one (although rumour has it 301-ing your penalised domain is a temporary fix). The worst thing you can do right now is to do nothing. Your competitors are all fighting for a piece of organic pie. Get out there and start making a name for yourself.

Conclusion: Recovering From Penguin Isn’t Going To Be Easy – But It Can Be Done!

I’m speaking from experience here, some of my sites have been hit by penguin, others haven’t but I have started to see recovery on those that have been hit. If you’ve built a poor quality site that doesn’t offer the user anything new then I’m afraid that Penguin will probably be the end of the line for you, but for those that are ready to start fighting in the trenches – I salute you! source: business2community.com – By Sebastian Cowie

Lead Nurturing: Turning Prospects into Customers

As a marketer, you understand the importance of generating a steady stream of prospects so your sales funnel doesn’t dry up. Finding resources to generate high quality leads is a never-ending challenge, so it’s important to keep those newly acquired prospects interested and engaged with your product or service, so they don’t leak out of the funnel. For example, it’s easy for trade show leads to leak out of the sales funnel simply because there are too many leads to follow up in a timely manner. Rather than let this happen, import them into a marketing automation solution, assign them to a lead nurturing campaign that was set up prior to the trade show, and they’ll start receiving nurturing emails that re-engage them with your company in a timely manner.

Target Your Marketing Efforts

Email marketing is still one of the most cost effective channels to nurture leads, since it engages the prospect in a two-way dialogue where conversion and interaction can be recorded and measured in real-time. Unfortunately, once companies acquire new leads they rely too heavily on a “batch-and-blast” approach, rather than targeted communications that address the prospects’ challenges and interests. All the effort and expense to generate new leads results too quickly in a non-responsive list, lost deals and potential negative impact for your brand. Rather than “batch-and blast,” create personalized email programs that evolve to match the prospects’ needs and increase the relevance and impact of your emails. By maintaining message relevance, you will see results in increased email deliverability in your marketing campaigns.

Deliverability is one of the most important aspects of email marketing; email recipients complain about email they don’t recognize. So, a confirmed opt-in process can be helpful, since recipients are less likely to forget that they’ve opted in to receive your messages. Once people join your email program and give you permission, you can target these newcomers with timely, relevant, and personalized communications on a scheduled basis.

Plug Leakage in the Middle of the Funnel

Plug the leak in the middle of the funnel by improving your lead nurturing strategy, and create more sales-ready leads.

As prospects progress through the sales funnel and the various stages, from awareness to purchase, sales opportunities can get stuck. The loss of potential sales opportunities in the funnel is referred to as ‘leakage.’ Staying in touch with leads that are not “sales ready” through a ‘marketing funnel’ is a great way to gently push your prospects through the funnel to the purchase cycle. Prospects shouldn’t be counted out because the decision to purchase is taking longer than expected. The current economic climate calls for more research on the part of decision makers and, therefore, longer sales cycles. By nurturing the relationship over the longer term, your company stays in the consideration stage.

You have their email addresses; this is the time to establish personal relationships until they’ve come to a purchasing decision! According to DemandGen Report, nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. These prospects have shown some initial interest, are aware of your company, and most likely are interested in learning more. Touching these
non-sales ready leads on a regular basis with relevant content will help you solidify your company as a trusted source and thought leader, and move these prospects effectively through the funnel from awareness down into the mid-funnel, where engagement and consideration occurs.

Lack of follow up is responsible for funnel leakage. Rather than focusing on initiatives to drive new leads, convert the leads you already have in your database by focusing on the middle of your marketing funnel. It’s not about lead quantity, it’s about lead quality. The longer prospects stay in your funnel, the higher the probability they will not buy. Work to understand your prospects’ pain points—needs, problems, desires, or challenges—then communicate with them in a relevant way. Eliminate barriers or points of friction that keep prospects from moving through the funnel. These include uncertainty about your product or service’s fit and value, budgetary restrictions, or other concerns. The deeper your relationship is with your prospects, the more likely they are to buy from you rather than the competitor they don’t have a relationship with. By focusing on the middle of your funnel, you can often turn prospects with a mild to moderate interest in your products or services into loyal long-term customers.

Drive Engagement – Automate Your Nurture Strategy

When creating your lead nurturing campaign it’s important that you carefully plan the flow of your emails to ensure that your overall campaign guides your leads through the funnel. Implement automatically triggered campaigns (a series of automated emails called a “drip” campaign) that deliver consistent brand messages at specified time intervals and when leads reach certain milestones. In a long sales cycle, messages need to be more informative and not a sales pitch. Offer them something of value (webinars, eBooks, white papers, articles, free reports, blog posts, etc.). Here are five essential elements of an effective lead nurturing campaign:

Compelling. Effective nurturing requires thought leadership. Create compelling and informative content that resonates with your audience and motivates them toward action.

Personalized. It’s important that lead nurturing campaigns are relevant to prospects. Personalize your message based on your recipients’ preferences and past engagement with your content.

Targeted. Keep emails targeted and relevant to where they are in the sales cycle, and feature a prominent call to action, when their interest in purchasing your product or service is peaking.

Concise. Keep your content simple, focused and short enough to stop your recipients from losing interest.

Timely. The timing and frequency of touch points should be linked to the prospect’s purchasing cycle. Prospects appreciate receiving timely information which adds value. Use a marketing automation tool that allows you to segment your database according to behaviors, and send out consistent messages based on behavior or action triggers when a prospect enters a new stage in the buying process.

According to Gleanster Research, only 25% of leads are sales-ready—meaning that they are simply not ready to buy. In addition, 50% of qualified leads will need more convincing before they are ready to buy. Take a look at the email campaigns your leads have clicked through, and catalog the subject matter of those emails. You now have intelligence on their interest(s) based on the information they’re requesting, pages they have viewed on your website, and offers they have clicked on. This information provides invaluable insight into what content a prospect finds interesting, and what offers entice them. You should also check to see if a lead is currently a part of a nurturing campaign to ensure any emails you send don’t overlap with what they’re already receiving (or are due to receive) from your automated marketing campaign.

Track the behavior of your prospects and deliver highly relevant messaging, tailored to your prospects based on how they engage with your content (white paper downloads, webinar registrations, free trial signups, demo requests, etc.). It’s a proven strategy for closing more deals more quickly. Understanding when your prospects are ready to buy means adopting a strategy that looks at both demographic data (data collected from lead or conversion forms) and behavioral attributes (data gathered from a lead management system about the prospect’s behavior).

In summary, one of the most beneficial things you can add to your sales process is an email lead nurturing campaign to engage with prospects through the middle of the funnel. This is the time between when they have shown interest in what you do or the problem you solve and actually converting to a customer. However, this is also the time it is easiest for them to forget about you, or for you to forget about them, because of broken sales and lead nurturing processes. Even high quality leads can go dormant if they are not properly managed and nurtured. Without a formal lead nurturing program, qualified leads that do not result in an immediate sale often leak through the funnel and become lost revenue opportunities. Marketers that nurture leads throughout the sales cycle with relevant and highly personalized messages, based on where they are in the marketing funnel, will prevent prospects from leaking out of the funnel before they are read to speak with a sales representative. It involves time and effort, but it’s a vital part of the purchasing cycle. source: business2community.com – By Marianne Cellucci

B2B companies that use social media correctly can increase awareness, build brand loyalty and attract top talent.

Many B2B companies feel like they should jump on the social media bandwagon more aggressively, but aren’t sure what to do. Alternatively, others don’t know quite what to do but have taken a “ready, fire, aim” approach, sometimes alienating the very groups they want to reach.

Be social. Social media is no place for the hard sell. Think of social media as being at a friend’s cocktail party. If you only talk about yourself, you’ll be labeled a bore and left alone. There’s a place for business talk, but it needs to be weaved into the fabric of a two-way conversation.

Be human. Many companies have trouble coming out from behind their logos and showing some personality. The more human that companies can appear in the digital age, the more they can differentiate themselves.

Engage. Communicate consistently and authentically, and don’t worry so much about the number of followers. You want engaged and loyal followers. And make sure to respond when asked a questions or, more likely, when presented a problem or complaint.

Commit. It is better not to enter the social space than to enter it and then abandon your efforts there. Before launching social media efforts, carefully analyze each site and make a firm commitment to staying engaged.

Make sure there’s adult supervision of your social media efforts. Too many companies delegate their efforts to younger employees, even interns, who are familiar with social media but might not understand corporate strategy.

Be a thought leader. “Information is the coin of the social media realm, and providing great information is exactly what can distinguish your brand on social media.”

Use appropriate caution. Because of the speed with which social media can send a message, it’s important not to be indiscreet. Establish a company social media policy, and be mindful that legal action can result from some inappropriate behavior.

Admit your mistakes. If your company has made a mistake, a sincere apology along with actually fixing the problem will garner more fans.

Convert the “likes” to love. The more you can become critically involved in the lives of your followers, the greater the asset they become.

Leverage your community. Give your followers enough to share so that their legions of followers can be introduced to follow you as well. source: business2community.com – By Douglas Burdett

I had the opportunity to sit and talk with Rohit Bhargava, the author of “Likeonomics,” on what building up a brand was all about. Rohit shared his stories of how to earn trust, influence behavior, and inspire action. “Likeonomics” focuses on the five key principles of the TRUST formula and why some people and companies are more popular and “liked” than others.

During lunch we spoke about three themes – first, on keeping things personal; second, on being transparent about your business; and third, on making sure that your team works well together.

1. Keeping things personal. Many brands make the mistake of simply asking consumers to rank their product or service without asking specific questions about what was good or bad. You can create a greater impact if you encourage the consumer to respond to a targeted query versus an overall experience. Consumers like to read personal stories (as these keep them engaged) and will remember a story much better than your brand’s tag line. So use the story well!

2. Being transparent. If you are honest with your consumers about your company, product mix, and pricing, your customers will appreciate the honesty and in most instances will understand why they should do business with you and at what price. The web has made it much easier for consumers to figure out the true cost of products or services, so by being transparent, you are setting the tone for open communication.

3. Team chemistry. If your team works well together, this chemistry will be visible to your consumers. You can do this by making sure that your employees understand the overall goal of your company and what your marketing or social media program entails. Think of this as a practical, real-time vision statement that continues to generate real customer feedback.

After lunch, I purchased his book and here are two more (among many other) worthy snippets.

Rohit talks about four ways data can become meaningless. First, there is the statistical insignificance of claims that say that a product was recommended by seven out of 10 people. Second, there is the idea of wishful extrapolation by which data can be skewed. Next, there is the idea of inconclusive conclusions where you really cannot draw to a close. Finally, with all the data that we collect – there is a planning paralysis (of there being so much data), so what do you do? This sadly gets people to go back to what was done at the same time last year.

The last tip I would like to leave you with is the whole concept of simplicity. How can you ensure that your message is being understood? The consumer desperately seeks simplicity and expects you to use plain language that they can easily understand.

One of the easiest things you can do is to think about the specific reasons as to why someone should sign up for your social media program. Next, just see that you are meeting their needs.

Rohit has a Masters in English and told me that one of his most enjoyable courses was Irish poetry. He speaks incandescently about visiting Trinity University in Ireland and getting to touch and feel the books that are 400 years old. He is inspired by reading, and I was inspired by the simplicity of his messaging. source: clickz.com – Sundeep Kapur