RIP Cold CallingSurvived by Social Networking

Cold calling has been served notice, a new era beckons and with it an altogether different way of working. Social networking has arrived and will soon replace cold calling as the predominant method of prospecting in business.

I know many people will think that there is no replacement for activity, specifically picking up the phone. Yet, no matter how intelligent you are about cold calling, it is what it is – speculative, scatter gun selling, not to mention costly and increasingly ineffective.

Consider the following data I found online...

In a test which spent an equal amount of time cold calling and using social media (9 AM - 5:30 PM; M - F).

Cold Calling Results

• Outbound calls made 325
• Meaningful conversations (pitches) and brand touches 80
• Meetings made 4
• Sales made (as a direct result of cold calling) 0

These are average conversion ratios for time spent but it comes with much overhead.

Social Media Results

• Inbound calls generated 8
• Meetings as result of inbound calls 3
• Sales as a result of inbound calls 2
• Brand touches (from site statistics unique views of content) 422
• Visitors to sales associate's blog Subscribers (RSS) to sales associate's content 27
• People following sales associate's Twitter 12
• New contacts 71 (on LinkedIn, Facebook, WeCanDo.BIZ, etc)
• Listeners to sales associate's Podcast 83
• Opportunities to sell found 21
• Online conversations had 39
• Warm call list (names generated expecting a call) 11

The cost of the social networking blitz to find new business opportunities, other than time and internet connection are small, if anything at all. Most importantly 2 sales were closed, covering any cost associated with the activity and generating a very healthy return.

The central question, however, is do modern-day sales people have the level of skill required to conduct a social media campaign individually? The simple answer is no. Not all salespeople will have the necessary skills, but having a skills gap is nothing new on the sales floor otherwise we wouldn’t have the multi-million pound training industry!

Can the skills be taught quickly and cost effectively? Yes. I have always taught people that sales is a process: follow steps one through five to achieve your aims. Social media networking can be processed as well, giving salespeople clear guidelines on the ‘how to’ and ‘how not to’. We spend millions every year teaching salespeople to cold call better, use the latest CRM (customer relationship management) system, be better team players and so on; and so it must come to pass that companies will need to train all staff to be ‘social media savvy’ as it extends far beyond just sales – marketing and service need to be in on the picture as well. 

Naysayers?... Agreed, updating your Facebook page with pictures of the weekend, playing silly games, nudging or poking other people is not the best use of your company’s time. But creating engaging, thought-provoking, discussion-opening content, centred around your products or services is. 

Social media networking will reduce dependence on cold calling. I am not saying it will eradicate the need for the telephone – that perhaps is to bold an idea. But I am certain it will become the first step in prospecting for new business.

What kind of results are you seeing when you pin Cold Calling vs. Social Networking?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

Become A RAINMAKER!

Here is a FUN exercise that I have found successful in getting new business.

There are FOUR graduating steps that are part of every sale:

1. Get a lead, referral or introduction to a decision maker
2. Get an appointment with a decision maker
3. Complete a CNA with a decision maker
4. Get a comitment to a close or to an action that leads to a close (proposal/estimate)

Assign one point to Step 1, two to Step 2 and so on...

Work toward getting TWENTY POINTS a week in ANY combination.

 

On the top of your daily to-do list put GET 4 POINTS... don't wait until Friday to try and get 20.

 

If you tally 4 POINTS PER DAY you will never run out of prospects, your pipeline will always be full and you will become a RAINMAKER!

 

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/  

Why Is It Important to Evaluate Your Competition?

As simple as it sounds, competition is the key to short-term success, while innovation is the key to long-term success.

To succeed in today's marketplace, you must differentiate from the status quo by offering products or services that are more innovative or competitive in terms of quality, image or price.

It is important to seek information about your competitors and use to innovate. By doing so you will be able to:

• Evaluate your own performance against others
• Identify and exploit competitors weaknesses
• Address competitor strengths
• Get new ideas
• Identify new prospects
• Improve sales forecasting
• Stay strategic

There are also other benefits, which are arguably more important, but difficult to measure.

Competitor intelligence helps you to:

• Reduce complacency and improve discipline within your own business
• Foster an acceptance of continuous change
• Respect that other suppliers have satisfied customers and reasons for it
• Create a recognition that the business must continually seek to improve

Here are some key questions you may want to begin with when analyzing your competition:

Who are your competitors? There’s a little more to this question than meets the eye. You may find that you compete with different suppliers in the different product/service areas or markets in which you operate.

What do they offer? Find out what makes up their entire product range or service portfolio. Of course you are more interested in the products and services that you compete with, but remember that they are making decisions about resource allocations to their entire portfolio.

What is their pricing policy? Customers will usually consider carefully the price of your products or services in relation to your competitors. It isn’t always good to have a lower price. For example, if your price is lower, is your quality or are your costs also lower? If the price of your products and services is higher than other suppliers, are you providing additional customer benefits? Do customers recognize and value these benefits?

Who are their customers? Consider the different types of customer groups that your competitors are supplying.

How do they promote themselves? How are they attracting new customers? How active is their marketing activity? What does their marketing mix consist of?

How financially secure are they? Company accounts can provide much useful information, and enable you to make direct comparisons.

What are their strengths and weaknesses? You have potentially collected a lot of information about your competitors. Listing their strengths and weaknesses is a good way to summarize this information in a meaningful and usable form. Perform a SWOT analysis on yourself and your competitors. See: How to Conduct a SWOT Analysis

What is their business strategy? If you understand your competitors, you will be able to predict what decision they are likely to make in a given set of circumstances. This insight is extremely valuable to you.

From all the information you have obtained, you can build a picture of the key characteristics of your main competitors that will enable you to make intelligent deductions about their overall business strategy. From their you can enhance your own offerings that are more innovative or competitive in terms of quality, image or price ultimately gaining marketshare.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design

www.phantompower.co  

Are You A Band Or Are You A Brand?Get Over Your Fear of Selling Out & Start Marketing

Like any other profitable endeavor, music is a business. And as a musician, it's important to understand the basics of musician marketing if you want to be successful in this highly competitive industry. Start by developing a branded image, one that immediately tells your fans who you are and what you do. The following lays out the details on how you can develop a branded image that will help you take your music to the next level.

Importance of a branded image

In business, a branded image is your logo, tagline, colors, fonts/typesets and other attributes that visually represent one's company. In music, the same is true: Every band should develop at least a band logo to instantly gain recognition and set a mood for your audience. The more your audience sees your branded image, the more likely you are to gain credibility and earn fans... paying fans.

A branded image establishes you as a legitimate musician and makes it easier for your fans - or "customers" - to identify with you, and it presents upsell opportunities such as apparel, hats and other merchandise. Without a branded image, all you have is a name. With a branded image, you have a unique style that sets you apart from all other musicians.

How to identify your branded image

To identify your branded image, think about what genre of music you represent. Consider your fans, their likes and dislikes, their passions, and what they respond to. Research competitors to see what how they represent themselves - your most successful competition can lend great insight, indeed. Identify how you are different from your competition.

Next, list the results of all your research: Write down everything you know about who you are in a few words and phrases. Now, consider your own passions - what unique aspects you bring to the music world - and jot those down as well. Put everything together and come up with a preliminary tagline to describe yourself as a musician.

Finally, take your musician definition and consider creative ways to represent that in a word or two. Synonyms and rhyming dictionaries, historical texts, and other resources might be extremely beneficial. Come up with three potential concepts and choose the best - the one that resonates with you - as the name for your band or as a tagline for yourself as a solo artist.

Branding through design

Skilled graphic design can transform your musician's branded identity from a written concept to a visual motivator. This image is what the world will see, and the public will perceive the ideals and emotions that your image expresses.

Your logo doesn't have to be complicated - a simple text style or a few shapes will do. Consider Metallica's first logo (with the lightning bolt "M" and "A") or the Stone Temple Pilots' "STP" logos - they're both simple brand images for exceedingly popular bands. Though simple, when you see these logos you instantly know who they represent, what style of music they play, and whether you're a fan. When you achieve this, you've developed a powerful musician brand identity.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

Online Audience Development for Content Owners

It is true when they say content is king. But "relevant" content is key to success. All publishers need to make sure they have the right content for the right people in their audience.

How is the online content consumed?

A pull strategy (bringing people to your online content) requires SEO/SEM or display advertising to acquire the audience. This can be expensive.

A push strategy (delivering content to the people) is likely going to be key in getting cost-effective results and ROI. The best way to do this is delivering relevant content in a timely manner via email. In this case content is targeted to individuals based on their preferences and behavior.

Here are some more on some /pull techniques:

• Search engine optimization and search engine marketing Seems obvious, but how many publishers do this? If you publish media in a given space, the huge number of topics that your publication or Web site covers makes SEO/SEM a totally different challenge.
• Co-registration This is easier said than done for publishers that sell advertising, but basically the idea is that anytime someone signs up for an e-newsletter subscription on another Web site that's topically related to your Web site, you negotiate a relationship whereby your newsletter subscription is offered as another checkbox on that other Web site's e-newsletter sign-up form. Not surprisingly, Marketing Sherpa uses this tactic on a lot of marketing vendor sites. One advantage: They have a paid content model, so there's no conflict of interest. I'd like to see an example of an ad-supported publisher doing this with suppliers in their space.
• Landing page optimization I know most publishers aren't using this technique. The idea is that the very design and layout of the sign-up page (for our purposes, called the landing page, the place where the moment of truth occurs, when readers decide whether or not to opt in to your site, newsletter, magazine, advertiser white paper, etc.) greatly influences the number of readers who "convert" or complete the form. By testing different versions of the page, you can increase conversion by up to several hundred percent.
• Tracking/Analytics This is the adroit use of Web analytics programs to give you feedback on metrics that are meaningful to publishers. How many people subscribed to which e-newsletter products, and which were the most effective sources of traffic, both internally and externally? If you're doing paid search, which keyword groups yielded the best ROI? Which should be scrapped? Anyone doing paid search without tying it to some ROI metric is throwing their money down the drain.

Do you have a system for determining the relevancy of your content?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/  

What Time of Day Are You Most Creative?

One of the first lessons I learned in college was to learn what times of day you are personally most productive. It takes some time and discipline, to monitor one's own efficiency, but in the end, I do not believe there is ONE time of day that is best for everyone, I believe it is up to YOU to decide.  

Unfortunately, professionally speaking, we often don't have the luxury to CHOOSE what time of day we want to brainstorm. As a marketer, I find "mind mapping" an extremely effective exercise to spark creativity.

Mind Mapping is a technique used to enhance thinking processes. Whether while taking notes during class, brainstorming a process or creatively collaborating on a project, it allows the user to record raw facts and pieces of information that fit together but that might not be noticed otherwise.

• Starting a Mind Map is easy. Simply write the name of the subject you are interested in the center of a blank piece of paper and draw a circle around it. All further levels will work from this starting point.
• Important facts or questions make up the second level. These are connected directly to the center point. For example, if using “Tell a Story” as the central idea, the second level could be the standard “Who, What , Where, When, How” questions.
• Delve deeper for more information. From this second level, all additional levels are connected. For example, under the “Who” heading, there could be sub-levels of “Who are the characters” and “Who is the audience.” Additional levels and ideas are placed on the Mind Map making sure they connect somewhere to the diagram. Using colors coded to the levels you are working on can also assist with the visual information. If one part of your map connects to another, link them.

To get more information on Mind Mapping, there is a video on YouTube of Tony Buzan explaining the concept.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/  

Twitter... Are You Missing The Boat?

If you tuned into The Apprentice Sunday, March 8, you would have watched the "boys and girls" come up with a new slogan for Zappos. The CEO of www.zappos.com was the judge and selected the "gals" proposal. 

What stunned me, while watching the show, I happened to Tweet @zappos, and got a reply within 3 minutes. What I didn't realize at the time, that it was the CEO Tony Hsieh, sending me a message. 

Whats remarkable, here is a CEO of a $1B company, watching with the rest of us, probably his biggest marketing exposure (and expense) on national TV and he is on Twitter, tweeting to anyone that sends a message. 

How many CEO's of $1B companies do you know, that even know what a Tweet is, actually use it and are using it to their corporate advantage?

So are you missing the boat?

I became a fan of The Apprentice early on in the series. As a marketer I found it interesting to see so many promising young professional spread their marketing wings at the many tasks surrounding such high-end brands.

I saw the Zappos.com Celebrity Apprentice episode. I am struggling as a fan of the show with the Celebrity episodes as these individuals are not marketers and it is so painful to watch them fumble through fundamental marketing challenges.

I’ve seen Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, featured many times before and find his business plan completely refreshing. It is no doubt that his emphasis on customer service and corporate culture is responsible for his huge success as a brand and, ultimately, their sales growth of 1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008. I did find, however, that the show was either edited poorly or the part he played in the “RFP” process was below par. He did not discuss the target consumer at all, rather, broad stroking it; and, although he did mention customer service, I do not feel he placed appropriate emphasis on this core competency given its direct relationship to their success. (Note: I am a loyal Zappos consumer because of their customer service.)

Many companies are looking for guidance with branding on Twitter. To begin with, they need to know how to use Twitter, what it’s all about, who should handle Twitter (marketing sales, PR,) who to follow, etc.

Then to the question: Should the CEO or business owner also have a Twitter profile? This is a great question and one that takes some time and thought. Good social media consultants will tell you that social media marketing requires a strategy – and it’s not necessarily the type of “boiler plate” marketing strategy companies may be used to.

This key question – should the CEO (and other key management) have a Twitter profile to be part of the social media strategy?

Tony Hsieh is a highly visible CEO on Twitter right now (his profile is Zappos.com CEO.) This strategy blends the brand. This is definitely a trend we’ll be seeing more of. Tony even posted a Beginner’s Guide that can be helpful to business owners and entrepreneurs:

http://twitter.zappos.com/start 

It is important to know that while good personal branding involves self-promotion, there’s more to it. The social media world is all about “Give to Get” and engaging in two-way conversations. The value comes from not what you are doing; rather it comes from what you are thinking and sharing. It is about conversations and building relationships; not hard sell marketing, broadcasting or ego-driven tweets.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

What is The Social Funnel?...

And Why You Need to Build One.

Social media channels increasing the venues of choice for consumers to collect information and connect with brands, presents a strategic opportunity for companies to create a “Social Funnel” above the traditional marketing and sales funnel – where consumers take the lead in finding information and content that ultimately drives brand preference and sales.
 
In Winning the Consumer Decision Journey, McKinsey & Company’s David Court shares that, in the new social and digital age, “the path to purchase and loyalty is now complex, iterative, and dynamic.” In this new environment, creating a Social Funnel allows brands to identify and have access to buyers long before the buying process begins.

The Social Funnel Defined

The Social Funnel is a dynamic collection of consumer activity across social media channels, which sits on top of the traditional marketing and sales funnel. Developing a Social Funnel requires a systematic process of identifying and capturing consumer interactions across a variety of social media channels, aggregating this activity in a social customer relationship management (SCRM) infrastructure, and continually mining this insight to deliver relevant content to the right social profile at the right time. The chart below describes the Social Funnel and its tie to the traditional marketing and sales funnel:

To be effective, Social Funnels need to be tightly integrated with traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems to create a 360-degree view of a prospect to allow marketers to nurture this relationship over time using a combination of social and traditional, experts agree that this integration holds a lot of potential. “Integrating social deeper into existing CRMs is going to be very popular in 2011 – we expect to see a growing number of brands tying customer records to public social profiles and bread crumbs”, says Nathaniel Perez, head of social experience at SapientNitro.

The integration of social media with the traditional funnel is one of the key priorities for brands in 2011. Although only 6% of companies today report that they fully integrate social with traditional marketing funnels

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation for digital marketing agency 360i, agrees but tempers things by saying that “we are still early in the process but tying social profiles to CRM systems will be big.”

We see a growing number of companies starting to tie social profiles to their CRM systems. As this process continues to evolve, we expect to see social media becoming more of a critical component throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Systems that support the integration of social with CRM will increase in adoption over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, giving organizations the ability to seamlessly combine data from multiple systems easily and efficiently.

 

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/


Source: MarketingSherpa Benchmark Report: 2011 Social Media Marketing

The Loyalists Shall Take You To The Promised Land

Members pay an annual fee to belong to a retailer's loyalty program and they receive discounts on the retailer's most popular products, invitations to member-only events, and reward vouchers for reaching certain spending levels.

What other creative ways can this retailer reward its loyal customers?

Your customers are swimming in messages. And they’re being pursued by countless brands. How can you keep their attention, their time, and their dollar?

Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all loyalty program. Building a creative campaign that your customers will respond to can only begin once you have a clear understanding of their buying motivations. By using real insights you can cultivate stronger relationships customers so your brand stands out. Ultimately your message motivates action… then your bottom line.

Depending on what inspires your customers craft programs which also meet your internal objectives along with actionable metrics for program refinement. More common loyalty program objectives include:

• Stimulate sales and improve gross margins

• Encourage purchase of new and better/best products
• Establish competitive differentiation
• Motivate employee performance
• Boost retention of high-value customers
• Build stronger long-term relationships
• Drive key behaviors

To understand what your customers truly value, conduct focus groups, one-on-one interviews and quantitative research. From this, determine the core elements needed to create a lasting relationship with your customers.

The mandatory requirements for an effective loyalty program are – Creative Conceptualization, Feasible Program Development, Systematic and Time Bound Program Execution and Measurement. 

Here are some proven loyalty concepts which can be customized to your customers buying motives:

• Club Cards (pay for membership for regular discounts, points programs, reward vouchers)

• Email Only Promotions
• Premium Shipping Clubs (for ecommerce)
• Subscriptions (asking customers to go steady and purchase product to be fulfilled at regular intervals)
• Service Extensions
• Recycling Programs
• Loyalty Affiliates
• Gift Reminder Service
• Value Propositions (Not loyalty per se, but extremely successful in customer retainment; think Zappos.com and their exceptional customer service)

Marketers are racing to keep up with customer expectations for personalized services and wnhancements, and well-designed loyalty programs are a tremendous opportunity to communicate directly with enticing offers that will keep customers coming back.

"The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land"

- Bruce Springsteen

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

1 in 5 Smartphone Owners Are “Checking-In”What This Means for Real Estate

Did you check-in today on Foursquare? How about Facebook Places? Gowalla?

For me, “checking in” is a part of pretty much my daily routine. I love seeing where my friends and colleagues are checking into, I love all the “badges” and gaming aspect of it, and of course I love the specials that may places are now (finally) offering for those of us who check-in.

Checking in is becoming more and more popular. The latest ComScore report, released a few days ago revealed that nearly 1 in 5 smartphone owners access check-in services via their mobile device.

I was pretty amazed by that statistic. I remember just a little over a year ago – January 2010, sitting backstage at Real Estate Connect NYC and hearing Dennis Crowley explain Foursquare. At the time I had heard of it, had even downloaded the app onto my phone, but really didn’t “get it.” Fast-forward 14 months later, and now I’m a bit “check-in obsessed!”

Here are a few interesting facts from the report:

• 70 percent of mobile users are “checking-in” from an Android or Apple phone
• 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based “check-in” services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the entire mobile population. 1
• 2.7 million check-in users did so on a smartphone, representing 17.6 percent of the smartphone population.

“Although still in their relative infancy, location-based mobile check-in services are seeing rather impressive adoption among smartphone users,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “The ability to interact with consumers on this micro-local level through special offers, deals and other incentives provides brands with the real-time opportunity to engage consumers through their mobile device.”

So who exactly is checking in? I sadly do not fall into this demographic anymore , but according to the report, 18-34 year-olds account for nearly 60% of check-in service user.

So how exactly does this affect real estate? Well, we are starting to see brokerages adopting creative social media strategies, like the ‘Race for the Home’ event that Prudential Georgia Realty is doing. They are a real estate brokerage based in metro Atlanta, and have teamed up with property search site HomeFinder.com and mobile gaming platform SCVNGR to offer some 500 prospective homebuyers the chance to compete for a $15,000 down payment on a home purchase. We’ve also see The Corcoran Group embrace Foursquare and is now a major brand on Foursquare. Foursquare fits beautifully into Corcoran’s core brand ideas in that the process of searching for a home is just as much about what’s outside of the 4 walls than it is inside.

Beyond checking in – I think there is a greater lesson here: mobile check-in service users display strong propensity for mobile media usage.

According to the report, more than 95 percent of check-in service users used their mobile browser or applications. Nearly 62 percent accessed news. Check-in user behavior was also consistent with that of traditional early adopters, with 40.3 percent of users accessing tech news and 28.2 percent owning a media tablet, both significantly higher than average.

Still wondering where I am going with this? Here’s my point – if 1 in 5 people who have a smartphone are “checking in” around town AND 60% of 18-34 year olds are checking in – then that means a huge portion of your clientele (or perhaps your clientele’s adult children who are also potential clients) are using mobile devices when searching for property.

Contrary to popular belief, a mobile version of your site is not just a smaller version of your site on a tiny screen! A mobile optimized version of your site is a site that displays information accurately and in an easy to read format on a smartphone. If your website is not mobile optimized – you are missing a HUGE portion of your audience. Do you get clients who talk to you about listings they saw on Realtor.com, Zillow or Trulia instead of your site or your broker site? Why do you think that is? This could be a whole other blog post in and of itself – but a possible reason is all of those sites are mobile optimized AND they all have awesome apps that make searching for homes for sale super easy.

What is really exciting is that optimizing your site for mobile is probably easier than most people would think. There are tons of qualified web designers out there that can do this for you and/or create an app for your site. Not sure where to start? Ask your colleagues? Post a note on Facebook that you are looking for local recomendations.

Creating a real estate app with MLS data is also easier than you think. Boopsie and Smarter Agent are two excellent real estate choices I would recommend.

What do you think is the future of the check-in and location based marketing? Is your site mobile optimized or do you have an app your clients can use to search for homes? I would really like to have a discussion about this and get your thoughts – please leave me a comment below!

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

Source: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News