editor, Author at Mediastreet

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The CEO of the rebranded Russian McDonald’s isn’t happy that some old franchisees are still using McDonald’s branding and selling Big Macs

June 28, 2022 No Comments

Some of McDonald’s former Russian franchisees are still using its branding.
“Of course we’re not happy about this,” Oleg Paroev, the CEO of Vkusno & tochka, told Reuters.
Vkusno & tochka has replaced most of the McDonald’s restaurant, and has a different logo and menu.

Some former franchisees of McDonald’s Russian restaurants are still using its branding – and the CEO of the chain that took over most of the sites isn’t happy about it.

Russian businessman Alexander Govor bought the majority of Russia’s McDonald’s restaurants after the burger giant quit the country following its invasion of Ukraine. The restaurants began reopening on June 12 with a new menu, logo, and name – Vkusno & tochka, which translates as “tasty and that’s it.”

“We don’t have the right to use some colours, we don’t have the right to use the golden arches, we don’t have the right to use any mention of McDonald’s,” new owner Govor told Reuters.

Though Vkusno & tochka still uses the same ingredients and equipment to make dishes, there are some major changes.

The Big Mac has been taken off the menu, branded packaging has been scrapped largely in favour of plain boxes and bigs, and the logo, while still resembling an “M,” has changed dramatically.

McDonald's Russia food on a tray with an arrow pointing to the sauce packet — *Former McDonald’s stores in Russia rebranded so quickly that some resorted to scribbling McDonald’s logo off sauce packets.*

But the same isn’t true of all the former McDonald’s franchise restaurants. Though the vast majority of McDonald’s restaurants in Russia were owned by the company, around 100 were owned by franchisees. Some of these locations are continuing to sell Big Mac burgers under a different name and are using packaging and electronic screens with McDonald’s branding, Reuters reported.

“Of course we’re not happy about this,” Oleg Paroev, the CEO of Vkusno & tochka, told Reuters. But even though continuing to use McDonald’s brand violates Russian law, Vkusno & tochka has no rights to the brand so can’t take legal action, he said.

Paroev said that around 100 of McDonald’s former Russian restaurants hadn’t been bought by Govor. He said that Vkusno & tochka had suggested that the former franchisees join the new brand, and that one had already agreed.

Unlike Vkusno & tochka, the ex-franchisees no longer have access to McDonald’s old suppliers, Paroev said.

“It’s a mystery to me what products are sold there,” he told Reuters, speaking about restaurants in train stations and airports. “But I can say with certainty that it is absolutely not the same products or ingredients that were previously sold at McDonald’s.”

Paroev told Reuters that Vkusno & tochka sold a record 120,000 burgers on its opening day and that the chain planned to open 1,000 restaurants within the next five years.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images

By Grace Dean

Sourced from Insider

In News

LinkedIn launches audio events and new creator tools

June 28, 2022 No Comments

By Danica Lo

The professional social networking platform expands its available suite of content creation and profile customization tools

Over the past year, more than 10 million people have activated LinkedIn’s Creator Mode. The setting, launched last fall, gives users access to content creation and live streaming tools including LinkedIn Live and newsletters. Today, LinkedIn expands its creator tool offerings by debuting audio events and profile enhancements, pivoting the professional networking platform further into the creator economy.

Emerging from six months of beta-testing, LinkedIn’s audio events gives users the ability to schedule and host discussions, interviews, and other conversations—not dissimilar to apps and tools such as Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Later this month, users will also be able to add a hyperlink to the tops of their profiles, create a shareable follow link for promotional use on other platforms, automatically gain followers from incoming connection requests, and experience enhanced discovery via LinkedIn homepage feeds and via search.

“Since first launching Creator Mode last March, we’ve been excited to see the rapid adoption of our suite of creator tools—everything from newsletters to audio events to enhanced analytics,” Keren Baruch, product lead for creator strategy at LinkedIn, tells Fast Company. “What’s most exciting to watch is how creators are leveraging the different content tools to tell their stories in their own unique ways to spark member engagement.”

Along with these new creator tools and products, users may notice their homepage feeds evolving as the LinkedIn team continues to focus on event discoverability, notifications, and scheduling—via enhanced RSVP tools, the ability to add LinkedIn events to personal calendars, and easier-to-find, browsable event listings.

In line with the global creator economy surge—link-in-profile company Linktree estimates there are 200 million monetized digital content creators worldwide—LinkedIn reports its users increasingly self-identify as content-makers.

In December 2021, more than 144,000 LinkedIn members included the word “creator” in their job titles—representing a 48 percent increase from pre-pandemic 2019. The job market has responded in kind—in the first four months of 2022, LinkedIn has seen more than 65,000 job listings with the word “creator” in the title, three times the number of creator job posts over the same period in 2021.

As for demographics, since 2015, women creators have grown 300 percent on LinkedIn—a statistic driven by the growth in Gen Z women creators, which LinkedIn reports has grown more than 1,000 percent in the past seven years.

Feature Image Credit: LinkedIn; GDJ/Pixabay

By Danica Lo

Danica Lo is a Fast Company contributing editor covering marketing, branding, and communications. More

Sourced from Fast Company

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How to easily unsubscribe from marketing emails right in Gmail

June 27, 2022 No Comments

By Andrew Romero

We’ve all been there. Emails are stacking up, and none of them seem important in the least. Fortunately, there’s a feature in Gmail that allows you to unsubscribe from emails with a couple of taps or clicks. This guide will take you through it.

An easier way to unsubscribe

Normally, we tend to answer useless emails by opening them up, scrolling straight to the bottom, and hitting “Unsubscribe.” While this is the tried and true method of unsubscribing from emails, it can sometimes be a little counterintuitive. A major job of a marketing company is to retain prospective clients. The problem they face is if you go to unsubscribe, the company loses out on potential business. This is the reason why a lot of times the unsubscribe page looks jumbled and has material presented in a way to keep you on board.

Google has implemented a way to unsubscribe from certain emails for a few years now. The company has gone through several iterations of this dedicated button – among its many other Gmail experiments – and finally landed on a prompt you can access from specific emails. This button takes away all of the marketing noise you have to crawl through when unsubscribing from some companies and makes it easy to leave the email list with a couple of quick taps. When you hit the unsubscribe button in Gmail, you’ll no longer see emails from that company and you can keep cleaning out your inbox.

How to unsubscribe from emails in Gmail

If you want to make use of this helpful feature, you’ll need to have access to Gmail on a mobile device. Gmail for desktop doesn’t quite utilize the button at this point. On your phone, however, unsubscribing from marketing emails in Gmail is pretty easy. Here’s how to do it:

On your mobile device, head to the Gmail app.
Look through your emails and find marketing or promotional emails you want to unsubscribe from.
- Note: You might have Gmail structured so that there are different inboxes for certain categories. A good place to find these emails is in Promotions.
Open the email.
Find the three-dot menu in the top-right corner of the email and tap it.
A menu will appear. Tap Unsubscribe.
Confirm you want to unsubscribe.

Once you do that, you’re given an option to report the message as spam. Generally, you don’t have to and the emails will halt. This is a great way to easily stop receiving emails from companies and organizations that you didn’t want in the first place.

More on Gmail:

By Andrew Romero

@ChaosRomero

Sourced from 9to5Google

In News

The new rules of digital engagement: what does contextual advertising 3.0 look like?

June 27, 2022 No Comments

By Jenni Baker

Over the past two weeks, The Drum has dedicated coverage to all things digital advertising as part of our Digital Advertising Focus Deep Dive. While we’re only just unlocking the value of Contextual 2.0, we asked experts from GumGum, Havas Media Group, Wavemaker and more, how this tech could evolve to account for the ever-expansive digital space, including the metaverse and beyond.

The digital advertising industry is in a transformational era, with an opportunity for advertisers to re-imagine how they connect with people and deliver ads, without relying on personal data. Contextual advertising is being realized as a futureproof modern solution to help brands win in a cookieless world.

Contextual 1.0 was around text-based keyword targeting; Contextual 2.0 technology understands the full interplay of video, image and text on a page; so, if we look ahead to Contextual 3.0, how could that technology develop to account for diverse and dynamic environments, like the metaverse and beyond?

We put a call out to future gazers across the industry to share their thoughts on how contextual advertising could evolve in the coming years. Here’s what they had to say…

Eric Visser, president, EMEA, GumGum:

Today’s dynamic online environments are calling for a more modern approach to advertising – and the ramifications will be positive for the industry as long as marketers apply the new rules of engagement in these burgeoning virtual worlds. Capturing attention respectfully must be our focus, as opposed to interrupting audiences. What’s more, advertisers need to do so without relying on the use of personal data, and across emerging and previously unimaginable digital environments at scale.

The future of digital advertising lies in dynamically tapping into mindset and context, and, to this end, advertisers must focus on an individual’s frame of mind in moments that matter, rather than relying on outdated behavioural data, which has been proven ineffective. Digital advertising should be able to move with us as we navigate online platforms and worlds and it’s critical that the industry aligns its digital ads with the way audiences operate today, across increasing numbers of virtual worlds and platforms.

Buying and selling media based on contextual intelligence is a more sustainable paradigm in an industry that has been struggling with outdated and short-term methods for too long. And, looking further ahead, contextual doesn’t just support the environments of today, but the environments of the future, too. Whether playing virtual games, whilst using wearables, smart speakers and interacting with other connected technologies, there are new and emerging digital environments presenting themselves almost daily – and far more will follow that we have yet to imagine.

Approached right, modern contextual advertising is a win for consumers and a win for the industry. And while data privacy is of course essential and has made this all the more acute, there’s good reason why we keep hearing about the attention economy, too. Content and ads are proliferating at a rate that far outstrips the audience attention available. With online ad fatigue setting in, in a world awash with digital content, it’s essential for advertisers to shift how they deliver campaigns to break through the noise and capture attention, and to reduce media spend on irrelevant ads.

Paul Bland, head of biddable media, Havas Media Group:

Contextual elements, such as your location, the time of day, a moment in the calendar year or the activity you are currently engaging in (reading about sports, for example) have always been powerful signals, enabling brands to deliver more relevant and impactful marketing messages.

As virtual and physical worlds collide, within a truly virtual environment like the metaverse, technology such as an AR lens on your mobile phone, or another form of augmented reality on the next generation of devices, provides a genuinely exciting opportunity for marketers. Harnessing this technology allows us to better understand those contextual moments, and to better enable brands to engage and connect with people in a relevant and meaningful way.

So, contextual 3.0 offers us the opportunity to de-code virtual and physical contexts (whether that’s location, moment of interaction, virtual and physical space or activity) in new and exciting ways, to make marketing messages more relevant and helpful for people, and more impactful for brands.

Stuart Russell, chief strategy officer, Planning-inc:

Contextual advertisers will continue to develop new techniques for reaching target audiences on emerging channels. To take it a step further, these advertisers will pair these techniques alongside first-party data, AI and predictive modelling to better understand where the most valuable consumers will be (and what they will want) in the future.

Advertisers will become even more impactful by combining contextual signals with augmented first-party data to serve targeted advertising that is specifically designed to convert based on an individuals’ thoughts, opinions, and behaviours. It will ultimately tap into the individual consumer’s subconscious, enabling advertisements to become the proactive solution to their future problems and desires across channels.

Sam Budd, founder and chief executive officer, Buddy Media:

Contextual 2.0 has been all about matching segmented customers with relevant brands when scrolling webpages. In the 3.0 world, contextually relevant opportunities can be taken to a whole new level. The avenues for exploration are manifold. There are many steps in this evolution.

Firstly, we see AI as a stepping-stone to getting granular around multi-sensorial targeting. Secondly, as the Internet of Things continues to impact all areas of our lives, it will unleash ever-increasing touchpoints for brands to interact with customers. It is also about a full funnel approach: using CRM data, engagers, video watchers and historic purchasing behaviours, constantly analysing all contextual data points to maximize ROI. Finally, NFTs represent an unbelievable opportunity for brands and influencers to emotionally connect with their customers in a way that has never been done before.

As with everything, we need to be adaptable and ready for change when it comes to Contextual 3.0. As more privacy laws come in, agencies will need to be more inventive and dynamic (for example with their influencer strategy, where they will need to constantly learn about their audience’s engagement habits to deliver more contextually aligned messaging).

Toby Evans, director of publisher and platform partnerships, SoPost:

One of the key ways in which the metaverse differs from web 2.0 is a strong sense of place. Rather than a bunch of pages with content on them, the metaverse consists of worlds, and as VR and AR evolve, those worlds will become more fully realized. As more are created, so those worlds will become increasingly relevant to – and reflective of – the users in them. In other words, perfect for contextual marketing.

Of course, contextual advertising is also all about place. While the contextual advertising of today is about appearing in the right place, for web3, contextual advertising is just as likely to be the place: being present within a world where brands’ customers are, or even, for large brands, creating a whole world of their own.

At base level, the immersive environments of the metaverse should mean more attention for brands in those places, and technologies will allow messaging to be fully integrated in exciting new ways – no more being pushed to the right rail or buried in a tiny banner. Beyond that, decentralization and blockchain technology will allow the user to control the context of their environment. With their own experience driven by the consumer, the parameters of what ‘contextual’ means is likely to blur, with consumers rather than publishers and platforms controlling what they see and how. The good news is that it can only result in efficiency, and the most relevant consumers seeing the most relevant advertising.

Fran Roberts, creative director, Trollbäck+Company:

The evolution of contextual advertising will in most respects be driven (and improved) by the transformation from web 2.0 to web3. The next generation of contextual ads will be able to set the highly flawed third-party cookie-based model aside, instead of relying on user-validated information through machine learning models to determine context. This form of blockchain-based user management will allow for greater transparency, revising the advertiser-user relationship to a more sustainable one.

The content ecosystem for contextual ads will see reinvention. Via tokenization, creators of all shapes and sizes will be encouraged to create, contribute, and share more readily. This too will help rebalance ads’ economic model in a way that naturally encourages better creators. These evolutions will ladder up to what could be the main event for contextual ads and web3 – the emergence of fully new platforms and touchpoints (especially the metaverse).

The wider use of AR and VR-capable devices and platforms will add the multi-sensory experience into the equation for the first time. Through the introduction of multi-sensory information, contextual ads will be able to increase accuracy and most importantly appropriateness, while preserving privacy through blockchain-based data structures.

Elliott Millard, head of strategic planning, Wavemaker UK:

To slightly butcher Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park: the future of contextual advertising is more about what we should do, rather than whether or not we could do it. Technological advances will unquestionably make it possible for contextual advertising to exist in fully immersive, virtual and dynamic environments but that solution might not always be the best solution for our clients and the brands we work with. The volume of data involved and the challenges of latency (which is a bigger, different challenge for the metaverse) mean that context will have to be AI inferred.

When it comes to context there are some risks associated with delegation of decisions to machines. We think of these as challenges around safety, serendipity and surprise. Brand safety is critical in the online world, but AI makes connections that humans would flag as inappropriate – as I write there are platforms serving cleaning products to people with OCD. Contextually that’s on point but it would be morally indefensible even without the immersive worlds of the metaverse.

Algorithms also optimize to the easiest sources of growth – context delivered in this way would lose the priming, ‘brand’ effects of campaigns. Placements alongside the most obvious content might not be the most powerful. The serendipity of finding new sources of growth and building connections in new ways would be lost. Finally, an AI delivered placement could risk becoming bland – contextual relevance suggests that fitting in is always the best solution which is not always true. The (probably over quoted) party cannon poster and the Von Restorff effect show this in action but standing out and disrupting norms are an established way to deliver disproportionate growth.

There will be extraordinary work done in the virtual worlds of the metaverse but we should always consider how our work is experienced and whether it is the best way to deliver a business outcome rather than tech for the sake of tech.

By Jenni Baker

Sourced from The Drum

In News

To Start Building a Community, Master These Two Concepts

June 27, 2022 No Comments

By Amber Atherton

Increasingly, building a successful start-up involves not only building a product that people can’t get enough of, but also building an engaged, loyal community around that product. Today, most founders are acutely aware of the value of community. In CMX’s 2021 Community Industry Report, 86% of respondents (community managers from 508 different companies) said community was critical to their company’s mission, and more than two-thirds said their company planned to increase their investment in community in the next year.

But while many founders are eager to invest in community, they often don’t know what they’ll need to understand to build one the right way. Between starting and running Zyper, a platform that connected brands with super-fans, and now leading community growth strategy at Discord, I’ve built hundreds of healthy communities for businesses, brands, and creators. Before diving in and hiring a dedicated community team, I’ve learned, founders need to have a strong grasp of two essential concepts: 1) the community quadrant (to understand how community differs from other groups of people who interact with a product), and 2) the community funnel (to understand what makes a community compelling to prospective members).

To that end, I’ve put together a guide that breaks down both concepts. It doesn’t cover everything you need to know to build a successful community. Instead, it’s intended to teach early-stage founders just enough to begin allocating resources.

What a community is (and isn’t)

One common misconception, I’ve noticed, is the idea that “community” and “customers” are synonymous terms. They aren’t. Understanding how they differ is critical, so let’s start there.

The people who interact with your product generally fall into one of four buckets:

Customers/users buy and/or use your product.
Evangelists tell everyone they know to buy or use your product because they genuinely love it.
Community is the group of people who’ve found belonging and utility through your product.
Ambassadors are incentivized, through payments or rewards, to promote your product.

What distinguishes community members from those in other groups is the congregation element: Beyond using, liking, or writing glowing reviews of your product, they spend time forming connections with other people based on a shared affinity for it.

The quadrant, sequenced

Three of these groups reliably emerge in a fixed order: Users/customers come first, followed by evangelists, and then community.

Ambassadors don’t fit neatly into this sequence, so you’ll need to make a decision about their relationship to the other three groups. Even though ambassador endorsements aren’t organic, they still help spread awareness of your product to new segments and markets. Ambassadors range from nano-influencers and affiliates to well-known celebrities, and they can collectively become a community in their own right, with gamified rankings and events. Generally speaking, my advice is to build an ambassador program that functions separately from the other three groups. This article covers the basics.

The ideal time to launch a community varies, but you should wait until you have confirmed evangelists. People who love your product are your proof point. If self-professed evangelists haven’t announced themselves yet, email a group of your earliest customers (50 is enough) to find out if they love your product. Those who respond enthusiastically are your first evangelists; invite them to join your community. Evangelists don’t automatically become community members, but they’re the most obvious cohort to start with because you know that they like your product and want to talk about it.

Next, start a conversation with this founding group in a private space designed for that purpose, such as a Discord server, a Slack channel, a Telegram chat, or even a group DM on Instagram. Some community platforms are designed to be versatile while others are geared toward specific populations. Geneva, for example, is a private group-chat app gaining traction among businesses with female customer bases.

One thing you shouldn’t do is waste engineering resources on building out your own community infrastructure. At this stage, third-party community platforms will meet all your technical needs. Plus, your target community members might already use them. Meeting people where they are never hurts.

The early days of community-building should feel like user research. You’re not trying to build an audience or sustain engagement. Instead, you’re experimenting with different offerings to figure out what your evangelists want. Audio? AMAs? IRL meet-ups? Ask them directly. Not only will you learn what they find valuable, you’ll also give them a sense of belonging.

The specific offerings that appeal to evangelists vary by community. For example, members of Scream Movies on Discord — a community for super-fans of the franchise — get exclusive access to events like director AMAs. That’s a big deal if you’re a Ghostface diehard.

But AMAs might not be such an effective way to generate interest in every community. Take the SBUX Hub on Discord, an unofficial Starbucks community for baristas and fans alike. Perks of membership include behind-the-counter secrets and access to off-menu recipes. Here, learning about seasonal Frappuccino flavors months before they’re announced might drum up more excitement than, say, joining an AMA with Howard Schultz.

Once you have a handle on the quadrant, the second concept to master is the community funnel.

The community funnel: invited —> invested

Communities are primarily valuable to businesses for two reasons:

They create a built-in source of real-time user feedback, which is critical for building a product people really want.
They foster friendships rooted in an affinity for your product, which drives lifetime value and new customer referrals.

When it comes to community-building, it’s your job to spark the fire. But you can’t keep it burning alone. The key to a thriving community is members who care enough to take initiative — they pose thoughtful questions to the group, introduce new topics to explore, and sometimes even plan events, online or off, to help people bond. And they’re invested enough in the community to assume some of the responsibility of steering it forward. Early on, think about identifying folks you’d like to see take on more responsibility.

But new community members don’t magically turn into devotees. You need to set the stage for that to happen — both by letting early members play a role in shaping and growing the community, and also by creating an environment compelling enough to reel in anyone who enters. The community funnel charts a prospective member’s path from receiving an invitation to becoming an invested, active member. It’s important to think about your role in moving members through the funnel.

One priority should be optimizing introductions: A member’s first few interactions with the community can have an outsized influence on whether or not they stick around. Consider those early experiences through the eyes of a new member:

Is the initial invitation compelling? Does it spark excitement or curiosity, or make prospective members feel special? On Geneva, invites are often hard to find, which makes them fun to discover. This also gives new members something to bond over right away.

Do members land in space that’s easy to understand and navigate, and also fun to spend time in? Simply numbering channels and visually laying out the first steps a new member should take is a low-lift way to guide people through the on-boarding experience. Extra points if the space is beautifully designed. User-friendly design makes the Discord server for crypto collective Orange DAO inviting to first-timers:

The ultra-simple layout of Telegram channels, which only have one central chat, makes the platform a low-friction way to get a community going. Here’s what new members see upon joining Poolsuite’s chat:

Are members individually welcomed into the space by a human (rather than a bot) and introduced into the conversation? Stripe’s developer community on Discord exemplifies digital hospitality with an active developer relations team welcoming new members:

Once introduced, do community members feel compelled to participate in the conversation? Participation primes members to become friends, which makes them feel more deeply tied to the community and motivated to contribute to it regularly. Most people who join your community will be evangelists for your product. By the time they reach the end of the funnel, they’ll (also) be evangelists for your community.

Now that you understand these two foundational community-building concepts, it’s time to begin architecting your community strategy. Start by clearly articulating why you’re building the community and what the value exchange will be. In other words, what will community members gain from joining and participating, and how does it help your business (now and down the road) to devote resources to community that could go elsewhere?

The value of community isn’t always easy to quantify financially, but there are benefits beyond the bottom line. If you get the basics down and approach community-building thoughtfully, your company will become a catalyst for strong relationships that grow alongside it.

By Amber Atherton

Amber Atherton is a British entrepreneur and angel investor based in Silicon Valley. A community building expert and life-long founder, Amber is currently the head of strategic communities at Discord. Follow Twitter Website

Sourced from Future

In News

5 New Marketing Books Every B2B Marketer Should Read

June 24, 2022 No Comments

By Lane Ellis

Looking for inspiration and new insight to forge new B2B marketing successes as we drive ahead to 2023?

We’re taking a look at five forthcoming or recently-published books that offer an array of fascinating tactics, tips, case studies, and other insight from some of the industry’s top business marketers and subject matter experts.

A good marketing book will not only help you stay current with the latest B2B marketing industry trends, but also gain inspiration in the process — and we’ve compiled a list of books that fit the bill on both counts.

Let’s turn the page and jump right in with our list of five new marketing books every B2B marketer can learn from.

1 — Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content (2nd Edition)

Ann Handley
MarketingProfs logo
Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

The much-anticipated second edition of Ann’s popular “Everybody Writes,” which is used in college classrooms and by writers the world over, will be released on October 18, 2022, when B2B marketers will be able to read the completely revised and expanded update to this marketing and writing classic.

“Everybody Writes: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content” is slated to include all-new examples, an even-more-detailed writing framework, and new material reflecting the latest changes in content marketing since the original version was published.

2 — Change Masters: How to Actually Make The Changes You Already Know You Need to Make

Barry J. Moltz
Speakers & Author, Shafran Moltz Group, LLC

In “ChangeMasters: How To Actually Make the Changes You Already Know You Need To Make,” Barry shares his small business subject matter expertise, including an examination of just why change is so difficult, and how to focus on and complete the critical changes that will make a difference.

From the brain science behind the mechanisms of change to how various areas of business can create change and more, Barry’s book offers helpful take-aways B2B marketers can apply in multiple areas of their professional and personal lives.

3 — The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Content Marketing, Podcasting, Social Media, AI, Live Video, and Newsjacking to Reach Buyers Directly

David Meerman Scott
Limited Partner and Strategic Advisor, Stage 2 Capital, also Entrepreneur, Advisor, Keynote Speaker and WSJ Bestselling Author, Freshspot Marketing

A new eighth edition of David’s book “The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Content Marketing, Podcasting, Social Media, AI, Live Video, and Newsjacking to Reach Buyers Directly” has recently been released, updated with new techniques and information that will be of interest to B2B marketers.

From details blueprints and strategies for getting your ideas implemented to generating buyer attention, the latest edition of David’s book offers a helpful look at both fundamentals and the current state of marketing.

David has also published the well-received “Fanocracy” book, which our CEO Lee Odden covered in “How to Tap the Most Powerful Marketing Force in the World – Fanocracy.”

4 — The Widest Net: Unlock Untapped Markets and Discover New Customers Right in Front of You

Pamela Slim
Author, Speaker and Small Business Strategist

Pamela’s “The Widest Net: Unlock Untapped Markets and Discover New Customers Right in Front of You” explores an array of dynamic ideas for creating marketing and business customer connections that may be outside your usual field of view.

The Widest Net utilizes case studies and examples to take a deep dive into creating newfound business and marketing success.

5 — CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest

Carolyn Dewar
Global Practice Leader – CEO and Board Excellence, McKinsey & Company
Scott Keller
Global Practice C0-Leader – CEO Excellent, McKinsey & Company
Vikram Malhotra
Senior Partner, McKinsey & Company

New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller “CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest” looks at successful chief executives from global major organizations including Netflix, JPMorgan Chase, General Motors, and Sony, and explores the unique qualities that we can all learn from them.

Carolyn, Scott, and Vikram’s book provides B2B marketers a helpful look at what we can learn from the way that CEOs shape culture, and how they in turn are changed by it.

Learn From B2B Marketing Page-Turners

via GIPHY

We hope that you’ve enjoyed our exploration of five books by these leading marketing and business authors, and that they’ll help inspire you in your own marketing work throughout the years ahead.

Looking for more books to enhance your B2B marketing and related skills? Check out these other articles we’ve published:

Building award-winning digital experiences featuring elements such as those explored in the books we’ve featured here takes significant time, resources, and effort, which is why many of the world’s top B2B brands choose to partner with a leading B2B marketing agency. Contact us today and learn why for more than 20 years brands from LinkedIn and 3M to Dell and Adobe have chosen to work with TopRank Marketing.

By Lane Ellis

Lane R. Ellis (@lanerellis), TopRank Marketing Social Media and Content Marketing Manager, has over 38 years’ experience working with and writing about the Internet. Lane spent more than a decade as Lead Editor for prestigious conference firm Pubcon. When he’s not writing, Lane enjoys distance running (11 marathons including two ultras so far), genealogical research, cross-country skate skiing, vegetarian cooking, and spending time with his wonderful wife Julie Ahasay and their cat Kukla in beautiful Duluth, Minnesota.

Sourced from TopRanking Marketing

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6 Reasons Your Marketing Copy Isn’t Converting — and How to Fix Each One

June 24, 2022 No Comments

By Svetoslav Dimitrov

If your copy isn’t bringing the conversions you desire, you might be making a few common mistakes.

One of the most frustrating things when you’re running a business is not getting the conversions you want.

Now, it’s easy to blame design, authenticity or even load time. And while all these could influence conversions, chances are, the real culprit is your copy. So if you’re hitting a dead-end with new leads, or finding you have a pipeline full of people who look but don’t buy, you’re probably making one of a few killer copy mistakes.

In this article, you’ll find six reasons why your marketing copy isn’t converting, together with a solution to how to fix each one.

Before we dive in, here’s a quick reminder. You don’t need to be an A-list copywriter to craft persuasive sales copy. But the more you know your audience, and what they resonate with, the better.

With that out of the way, let’s dive right into the first reason.

1. You haven’t shown value

As entrepreneurs, we strive to develop a unique product or service. We want to stand out. But more often than not, something that’s unique — meaning totally different from everything else on the market — is a red flag.

Why? Because if no one else is offering what you are, this might also mean no one wants your product or service. See, competition is a good thing as it shows your clients not only need but also want your offer.

“Want” always beats out “need.”

Now, if you have the same issue, there are two things you can do:

Offer your audience something they want more (the easy way).
Create a bridge between something your customers want and something you offer (the hard way). Here, your mission is to translate your audience’s wants into the benefits your product or services will provide to them.

2. You haven’t built enough trust

This might sound painful, but it’s true.

See, your audience might want your product or service. They might understand what it can do for them. They might even know how to buy it. But they don’t because they hesitate.

Why is that? One simple reason. They don’t trust you. They’re afraid your offer won’t bring them the promised outcome, and they’d feel like an idiot.

Don’t take this personally. In today’s era of online lies and rip-offs, it’s a normal reaction.

You have to earn your audience’s trust before they decide to buy from you. That’s not an easy task, but it’s fairly simple. All you need to do is craft value-driven content. The important thing to remember here is to build content around the needs, wants and pains of your readers.

When you share enough value and establish your authority, your customers will start trusting you. Then, sales will start coming in.

The great news is that if your relationship with your audience becomes strong enough, you won’t need to be the best salesperson or copywriter to get good conversions.

3. Your copy is too fancy

Entrepreneurs tend to overcomplicate their copy. We use business “jargon” that nobody understands. And we get trapped by the so-called “curse of knowledge,” which is assuming everyone has the background knowledge to understand what we’re saying. But that’s a sure-fire way to chase your customers away.

See, no one wants to feel dumb. But a customer can feel this way if he/she reads something they don’t understand. When that happens, they quickly close the page and continue with their day.

What if you absolutely must use business terminology? Then, you have to explain what that means immediately after using it.

The rule of thumb is that if a 3rd grader doesn’t understand what you’re saying, there’s a high chance your audience won’t either. Thankfully, there’s a great tool to use to “dumb down” your copy. It’s called the Hemingway app.

4. Your readers are confused

If you’ve done your research well, and you’re certain your audience wants your products or services. That’s a great first step. But if they’re still not buying your offer, this might mean they’re confused.

A confused reader doesn’t buy. In fact, a confused reader doesn’t do anything.

See, when your customers have too many options to choose from, need to make a lot of unnecessary decisions, face an information overload or have to browse through a website that’s too messy, they freeze.

How do you fix this? When it comes to pricing, packages, or products, don’t include more than two or three options. If your audience needs to choose between A, B, C or D, they most often won’t select anything at all.

Don’t forget that the top salespeople and the highest converting sales pages don’t use business jargon or fancy language. They make everything as simple and as clear as possible.

5. Your readers can’t see how your offer will help them

Another reason your copy isn’t converting is the fact that your readers don’t see themselves as customers. Thankfully, there’s a way to fix that.

Paint a picture in their minds of how your offer will help them. To make the narrative more convincing, use concrete details, including smell, colours, sounds, numbers, location, etc.

Strengthen your copy with solid reviews and testimonials that show how previous customers have been getting all the amazing benefits of your offer.

Use simple, conversational language to show how the benefits of your products and services will make your audience’s lives better. The benefits are important, but even more important is the transformation your readers are going to experience, so focus on that.

6. You didn’t ask for the sale

The last conversion-killing reason is the easiest to fix.

When you’re trying to sell something to your audience, you have to ask them for the sale. In other words, you have to tell them or ask them to do something.

If you clearly tell your prospects to click a link, book a call, download a PDF or how many bottles to order, they’re much more likely to do it. Your copy needs to have very clear call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

Bear in mind that the best-performing CTA buttons include the benefits of your offer. A “Click here to get it” link won’t be as effective as a button that says, “Click here to enjoy a life without stress, anxiety and depression.”

The bottom line

Now that you know why your copy isn’t converting readers into buyers, and how to fix each of them, you can go back and improve your sales copy. Don’t forget to be as clear and conversational as possible, and your conversions will go up.

By Svetoslav Dimitrov

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

9 Years Ago, a Simple Marketing Decision Helped Slack Become a $27 Billion Company

June 24, 2022 No Comments

By Jeff Haden

Because the last thing founder Stewart Butterfield wanted to do was sell saddles.

Way back in 2013, the team at Tiny Speck, the developers of Slack, had a marketing problem. Sure, they had built something useful: As a group chat system, Slack worked.

But customers weren’t looking for a group chat system. Marketing the software, and its features? As with most things, people buy software to perform specific tasks or solve a problem or need they already know they have.

Why would I adopt, much less purchase, a “group chat system” for my business if I don’t think — much less know — I need a group chat system, no matter how feature-packed it might be? A solution isn’t a solution when I don’t realize I have a problem.

As Slack founder Stewart Butterfield wrote in a memo to his team:

Our position is different than the one many new companies find themselves in: we are not battling it out in a large, well-defined market with clear incumbents. Despite the fact that there are a handful of direct competitors and a muddled history of superficially similar tools, we are setting out to define a new (my italics) market.

And that means we can’t limit ourselves to tweaking the product; we need to tweak the market too.

How? As Butterfield put it, “We don’t sell saddles here.”

His premise was simple. Say your company makes saddles. You could market in terms of price. Leather quality. Comfort. Adjustability. Size, or fit, or durability.

Or, instead of selling saddles, you could sell horseback riding. The lifestyle. The feeling. The bond with a horse. The sense of adventure. You could market like Harley-Davidson: Freedom, independence, cool, maybe even badass (if being badass is your thing)….

You could sell a vision of the person your customers want to be.

That’s what Butterfield did: He decided Slack should focus — both in marketing and future product development — on what its customers could become:

More relaxed and productive by knowing information is one search away.
Masters of their own information who won’t be overwhelmed by the never-ending flow of communication.
Less frustrated by not knowing what is going on with their team.
Able to communicate purposively, knowing each question they ask can build value for the entire team.

To Butterfield, Slack was selling organizational transformation: Helping people, and teams, be more productive, collaborative, and effective… and with a whole lot less email. Slack was “just” a set of tools to get them to that place.

As Butterfield wrote:

We’re selling a reduction in information overload, relief from stress, and a new ability to extract the enormous value of hitherto useless corporate archives. We’re selling better organizations, better teams. That’s a good thing for people to buy and it is a much better thing for us to sell in the long run.

We will be successful to the extent that we create better teams.

Customers? They don’t care about what you sell.

They care about what they get. How it will solve a problem. Meet a need. Help them feel. Help them work.

Help them live.

If you’ve created something new, or are in a relatively niche market, don’t try to sell saddles.

Sell horseback riding.

The better you do that — the better you share a vision of who you customers can become — the more likely you are to be the one they choose to help them get there.

Feature Image Credit: Slack founder Stewart Butterfield stands outside the New York Stock Exchange in New York City. Photo: Getty Images

By Jeff Haden

Sourced from Inc.

In News

How Much Does it Cost to Start an eCommerce Website from Scratch?

June 23, 2022 No Comments

Sourced from Boss Magazine

Setting up any website has costs to take into account, and this is particularly true if you’re aiming to enter the eCommerce marketplace.

So what can you expect to spend to turn your shopping site from a concept to a tangible, transactional service that’s ready to welcome its first customers?

Considering platform costs

Almost no eCommerce site on the market today runs on its own platform developed in-house. This is because there are tons of robust, affordable and well-established solutions out there already to act as the foundation.

Of course each platform has its perks and pitfalls, as well as targeting different types of business users. For example, there are all-in-one solutions like Shopify which offer several tiers of license suited to everyone from individual sellers to large businesses, with prices starting at $10 to $20 per month and rising to $2,000 or more for enterprise grade setups.

Then there are open source platforms like Magento, which don’t come with licensing costs, but do require that you take charge of every other element involved in building a site around them.

Calculating Magento pricing is therefore a bit more complicated, but does provide more flexibility than the proprietary alternatives.

Handling hosting costs

There are two main aspects of web hosting which cost you cash; the storage of the data that makes up your site, and the domain name which represents it and by which customers can find it in their browser of choice.

Again, the platform you pick can influence this, with the all-encompassing services often coming with a hosting package built in with the other aspects of a bundle. However, you can choose a third party host instead, and it’s usually best to combine hosting and domain name costs together.

What you’ll pay for hosting is not just down to the provider, but the size of your site and the amount of traffic it receives. A basic deal for a small site can come with hosting costs of under $100 annually, while a sprawling site with hundreds of product pages and millions of monthly visitors might require a hosting spend of $10,000 or more each year.

Breaking down site building costs

If you have a shoestring budget and you want to launch an eCommerce site, using a basic site builder and relying on standard templates is sensible, as this could be free at best, or cost you a couple of hundred bucks at worst.

If you want to let a professional handle this, then your choice is between a freelance web designer, or a dedicated agency.

Freelancers will be more affordable, but might have longer lead times to contend with. Agencies will eat into more of your budget, but will have the peoplepower to get a project off the ground quicker.

Outsourcing the design and construction of your site could cost less than $1,000, but it’s better to be more realistic and expect a spend of $3,000+ if you are serious about making this business venture work.

Exploring marketing & more

There are lots of ways to market a shopping site, from SEO tweaks that help it to become organically discoverable on search engines, to social media campaigns which focus on platforms that are right for your brand and audience.

Costs here are just as variable as elsewhere, depending on whether you choose to do the hard work yourself, or pay someone else to tackle it in your place.

All of this means that you need to have a realistic budget to start off with, and cost out every aspect of your eCommerce site before you spend any money, to avoid nasty surprises.

Sourced from Boss Magazine

In News

Presearch Wants to Be the Next Google Search, Minus the Privacy Concerns

June 23, 2022 No Comments

By Mayank Sharma

And it’ll reward you for helping flesh out its network

Most online services, including search engines, put too much control in the hands of one single company, which is one of the ills Web3 alternatives are trying to address.

Presearch, which has just exited the testing phase, is one such option that wants to end the monopoly of traditional search engines by putting people in charge. Its decentralized network replaces company-controlled supercomputers with a network of thousands of user-controlled nodes that work together. The goal? To get you the same meaningful results for your search queries but without the privacy and monopolistic concerns associated with traditional search engines like Google.

“Through decentralized search, we’re establishing a method for anyone online to benefit from and contribute to the search engine they use,” Colin Pape, Presearch’s founder, told Lifewire in an email discussion. “Decentralization allows the user to not only meaningfully benefit from the web, but also have a sense of ownership over their experience.”

Change of Guard

Presearch came online in 2020, and although fully functional, has been in a testing phase ever since. In fact, after the European Commission imposed a fine of €4.3 billion on Google for misusing Android to increase its search engine market share, the company added the ability for people in Europe to replace the default search option with one of several others, including Presearch.

After years of testing, Presearch’s decentralized search network is now live, meaning all search traffic of the service runs over the 65,000 volunteer-run nodes around the world. According to Presearch’s press release, the search engine has 3.8 million registered users and handles 150 million monthly searches, though its network is capable of processing a lot more.

In addition to routing search traffic, Presearch also anonymizes the searches as they’re handed off to individual nodes. It touts its improved anti-abuse system and enhanced search results experience, as some of its benefits over existing centralized search engines like Google and Bing.

“For years, centralized technologies have allowed big-tech and legacy institutions to profit from our search data and build multi-billion-dollar walled gardens,” asserted Pape. “Decentralized technology is a product of the push for web3 to drive innovation around ownership, freedom, and privacy.”

Part of the incentive for running a node is earning PRE tokens, which is the Presearch cryptocurrency based on the Ethereum blockchain. Node operators are rewarded with small amounts of PRE tokens for every query they process.

These tokens are also central to how ads are displayed on Presearch. The network has introduced the concept of keyword staking that enables PRE token holders to commit or lock them against specific words. These are matched against user search queries.

Through decentralized search, we’re establishing a method for anyone online to benefit from and contribute to the search engine they use.

Michael Christen, creator of the open source distributed search engine YaCy, remains unimpressed. Unlike Presearch’s approach, YaCy’s decentralized network relies on the principles of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Each YaCy peer crawls the internet independently to build the index of web pages that’s then shared with other YaCy peers.

“You identify decentralization by the fact that there is not a central place where you search or where the index is generated,” Christen told Lifewire over email. “That is not the case here [with Presearch].”

Acknowledging the differences between the two, Pape said Presearch has taken a similar approach to YaCy by building a search engine powered by a community. However, he opined that despite being an early pioneer in decentralized search, YaCy just never took off because it’s too complicated and offers a relatively poor quality of results.

“We’ve simplified decentralized search by accessing existing data sources while we build our own independent index, allowing a better user experience and fewer complications,” explained Pape. “Nonetheless, competition in the search industry is important and good for the ecosystem, and we welcome YaCy and others to join us in attempting to make a dent in Google’s monopoly on search.”