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Social Media Shopping Is Expected To Reach $1.2 Trillion USD by 2025, According to Report

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Accounting for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

With the ever-growing digitization of retail, social media shopping is expected to reach $1.2 trillion USD by 2025, according to a new report from Irish consulting firm Accenture. The figure will account for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

According to the report, the global social commerce industry sits at $492 million USD in value and is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%. The increasing figures are due to Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, who will account for 62 percent of global social commerce spending by 2025.

“The pandemic showed how much people use social platforms as the entry point for everything they do online — news, entertainment and communication,” said Robin Murdoch, global Software & Platforms industry lead at Accenture in a release. “The steady rise in time spent on social media reflects how essential these platforms are in our daily life. They’re reshaping how people buy and sell, which provides platforms and brands with new opportunities for user experiences and revenue streams.”

Digital shopping refers to product discovery and the check-out process occurring all within a social media application. Accenture’s report surveyed just over 10,000 individuals, with 64% of respondents indicating that they made a social commerce purchase within the past year. Although this represents a great opportunity for big companies, it represents substantial growth opportunities for small business owners as well. To illustrate, 59% of the respondents indicated they are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses via social commerce. Additionally, 63% said that they are more likely to purchase from the same business in the future.

Check out the full report from Accenture for a comprehensive breakdown of social media spending growth.

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Sourced from Hypebeast

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3 Powerful Internal Communications Tips to Become a Better Business

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Every mistake in business stems from a failure of communication. Fortunately, communication skills are easy to acquire with some intention. Here’s where you might start.

When I tell people that I work in communications, there’s often an assumption that my discipline is a soft skill. Look no further than every Hallmark holiday movie plot to prove my point. A disproportionate amount of female protagonists in these Christmas-themed love stories have roles in communications: There’s the journalist who’s sent to cover a holiday at a foreign castle; the dating blogger who takes a chance on love; the high-powered marketing executive who gets stranded in small-town Ohio; the TV anchor who admits she hates Christmas on-air (gasp!); and the two rival broadcasters who (spoiler alert) realize they’re soulmates.

Culturally, we don’t exactly portray a cunning profile of communications professionals.

But this portrayal of communications as a discipline is a disservice to business leaders, particularly when it comes to internal communications. In fact, every mistake in business stems from a failure of communication. We use communication to structure productive meetings, build the culture that informs our brands, bolster organizational efficiency, foster inclusion and belonging, increase employee engagement, inspire teams, move projects forward, sell our products and services, build trust, work through problems, make informed decisions, develop our teams and to teach important skills.

With so much on the line, it’s a wonder that organizations don’t spend more time and resources fostering these crucial competencies. 60% of organizations don’t have a long-term internal communications strategy, and upwards of 70% of employees are realizing the pitfalls – they fear they’re missing organizational news, and lack understanding of the company strategy. This makes it hard for employees to realize their organizational impact or otherwise participate in the strategy meaningfully.

Fortunately, communication skills are easy to acquire with some intention. Here’s where you might start.

Build a thoughtful communications infrastructure

When business leaders think about defining how teams communicate, the typical approach is to assess the available digital communications platforms. For example, should your business adopt Microsoft Teams or Slack? Will you use Mailchimp for email communications, or Dotdigital? Often, a decision about our internal communications infrastructure comes down to features and cost with little attention to how communications channels will function for your business in practice.

A better approach is to first align with HR and department heads to understand the various channels of communication needed to accommodate your particular employee makeup and culture and the intended purpose of each of the respective channels. Do you intend for project collaboration to happen over chat? On video? Via email? What formats will you use for sensitive topics? When you’re intentional about channels and their purposes, you define communications processes at your company that facilitate clarity, consistency and organizational efficiency which has the added benefit of fostering trust.

Be intentional about your communications processes and norms

Having an explicit communications policy is a great way to establish clear expectations. The communications policy should cover everything from social media best practices to running outcome-oriented presentations and meetings.

It’s also important to consider the communications norms you want to set in your company. Is it okay for team members to be off camera on video chat? Are there certain acceptable formats and communications templates for communicating with clients? Are there things that are absolutely not said, such as having zero tolerance for communicating prejudice? It might seem like common sense, but drawing clear lines around what’s tolerated and what’s not will communicate that you value equity and inclusion while establishing boundaries that will keep everyone safe.

Adopt powerful conversations

When you approach every communication with intention, each conversation becomes an opportunity to drive an intended outcome. In Powerful Conversations by Phil Harkins, Harkins suggests a model that I’ve found imminently effective in getting buy-in for new projects, avoiding costly communications errors, problem-solving, fostering trust and moving important assignments forward.

Harkins suggests a 4-step process for positive conversational outcomes: “what’s up, what’s so, what’s possible, and let’s go.” In short, his steps allow leaders to establish an emotional common ground around an agenda, foster situational understanding through fact-finding, discuss possibilities, and assign tasks and accountability.

That last step, assigning deliverables, might sound obvious but it’s crucial in moving projects forward and it’s often missing from the traditional meeting structure.

When it comes to fostering a healthy and productive company culture, there’s no more powerful means than effective communication. Establishing a mindful infrastructure and clear expectations will set a precedent for results-oriented conversations that build trust, solve problems and invite innovation.

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Tina Mulqueen writes and speaks about sustainable entrepreneurship, highlighting the increasing need for brand accountability to consumers, commitment to social justice, the platforming of marginalized voices and dedication to environmental sustainability.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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The 10 Tech Trends That Will Transform Our World

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By Bernard Marr

What makes the fourth industrial revolution so different from previous industrial revolutions is the convergence and interaction between multiple technology trends at once. In this article, I list the ten major technology trends that are driving the fourth industrial revolution – trends that I believe will forever alter how we do business and live our lives.

Trend 1: Ubiquitous computing

These days, computers are all around us: in our pockets, on our wrists, in our cars, even in our household appliances…

As processing power has increased and the size of computer microchips has shrunk, we’ve quickly become used to computers and devices getting smaller, lighter, cheaper, more powerful, and more ubiquitous. (As an example, the average smartphone today is more powerful than the supercomputers of 10 years ago.) Looking ahead, probably the next big leap in computing power will come from quantum computers – computers that are so fast and powerful, they could be used to complete new, previously impossible tasks that traditional computers aren’t capable of.

Trend 2: Connected and smart everything

No doubt you’re familiar with the Internet of Things (IoT) from devices like smart TVs, smartwatches, and smart thermostats. The IoT refers to the increasing number of intelligent, connected devices and objects that are capable of gathering and transmitting data.

In the future, anything that can be connected, will be. Not just in terms of devices and products – although that is obviously a key consideration for businesses – but also the spaces in which we live and work. From smart, connected factories and offices to entire smart cities, the spaces around us will increasingly be equipped with the ability to monitor what’s going on and act accordingly.

Trend 3: The datafication of our world

Ubiquitous computing and the IoT are both huge contributors to the sheer volume of data that’s being generated on a daily basis. But alongside this machine-generated data, we humans are also generating masses of data through our daily activities, and this shows no signs of slowing down.

The good news is businesses can use this data to design better products and services, improve business processes, enhance decision making and even create new revenue sources. But businesses must also be aware of the risks posed by data, particularly around data privacy and security.

Trend 4: Artificial intelligence (AI)

All that data being generated is a core enabler for AI, which has made incredible leaps in the last few years, particularly when it comes to “conversational AI.” In 2020 alone, smart speakers answered 100 billion voice commands – 75 percent more than in 2019 – all thanks to AI.

The takeaway for businesses is that, as our interactions with machines become increasingly intelligent, customers will expect all manner of products and services to feature some sort of AI capability.

Trend 5: Extended Reality (XR)

XR is an umbrella term representing the spectrum of immersive technologies: virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality.

XR was primarily known for immersive gaming, but nowadays, it is deployed across a wide range of industries, where it is being used to create more immersive, personalized experiences for customers and employees. For example, customers can now try out products virtually – such as digitally placing a new sofa in their living room to see how it looks – and employees can learn in immersive, interesting new ways.

In the future, I believe our experience of the world will increasingly take place in this blurred space between the real world and the digital one, and XR is only going to accelerate this shift. Companies must therefore begin to consider how they will accommodate this, and create immersive experiences for their customers and employees.

Trend 6: Digital trust

Digital trust is essentially the confidence users place in organizations to build a secure digital world, where transactions and interactions can take place safely, securely, and easily.

Many – myself included – believe blockchain and distributed ledger technology will play a central role in raising digital trust and making interactions more secure. That said, the technology has some way to go before it’s truly accessible for all types of organizations. For many businesses, the answer may lie in partnering with the many new innovators and entrepreneurs who are making real headway in the blockchain space.

Trend 7: 3D printing

These days, the materials used for 3D printing can be pretty much anything: plastic, metal, powder, concrete, liquid, even chocolate. Entire houses can now be 3D printed.

This has the potential to transform manufacturing. In short, 3D printing gives manufacturers the ability to make things that can’t easily be produced with traditional methods, to streamline the manufacturing process, and create highly personalized products (even completely unique one-offs), all while eliminating waste and reducing costs.

Trend 8: Gene-editing and synthetic biology

Gene editing can have particular advantages when “bad” genes are detected – genes that could endanger the health of an organism or its descendants. Thanks to new gene-editing technology, these harmful characteristics can, in theory, be altered. In this way, gene editing could deliver some drastic leaps forward in the fight against disease – in humans, animals, and crops.

While gene-editing tools can be used to make small changes to DNA, synthetic biology can involve stitching together long strands of DNA and inserting them into an organism. As a result, the organism may behave differently or have entirely new abilities.

What’s this got to do with businesses? I believe synthetic biology and gene editing may drastically alter the way we produce products. Think of exciting new products such as cultured meat, and it’s easy to see how transformative these technologies could be.

Trend 9: Nanotechnology and materials science

Materials science (the discipline of studying and manipulating materials) and nanotechnology (the science of controlling matter on a tiny scale, at the atomic and molecular level) have already given us some incredible advances, from tiny computer chips, smartphone displays, and lithium-ion batteries, to stain-resistant fabrics.

Looking ahead, this trend could deliver major breakthroughs in electric car batteries, make solar energy more affordable, and deliver other advances that will make the world a better place.

Trend 10: New energy solutions

Nuclear fusion is often touted as the clean and potentially inexhaustible energy solution for the future, but there’s a problem – maintaining a fusion reaction takes more energy than it produces! But now, thanks to advances in magnet technology, we may see a nuclear fusion reactor deliver a net power output by 2035.

Another exciting zero-carbon energy solution is green hydrogen (which is different from traditional “grey hydrogen” production). With green hydrogen, water is split into hydrogen and water, without creating any by-products, through a process of electrolysis. Historically, this process took so much electricity; green hydrogen was basically unfeasible. But renewable electricity sources may change this. For example, as excess renewable electricity is becoming available on the grid, that excess energy could, in theory, be used to drive the electrolysis of water.

The key lesson from all these trends is we’re entering an era of continual and rapid evolution, where multiple tech trends combine and feed into each other to deliver huge changes. For businesses, this means the days of incremental tech upgrades are gone forever. Continual change is the way of the future.

 

Read more about these and other future trends in my new book, Business Trends in Practice: The 25+ Trends That are Redefining Organizations. Packed with real-world examples, it cuts through the hype to present the key trends that will shape the businesses of the future.

Feature Image Credit: Adobe Stock

By Bernard Marr

Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, blockchains, and the Internet of Things. Why don’t you connect with Bernard on Twitter (@bernardmarr), LinkedIn (https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bernardmarr) or instagram (bernard.marr)?

Sourced from Forbes

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8 Ways to Market Your Business on TikTok

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By Faith Walls

From Dunkin’ Donuts to the NBA, countless brands have hitched a ride on TikTok, the latest social media bandwagon. Since its launch in 2018, the user-generated, video-based app quickly grew from its China origin to an international sensation. With nods to its predecessor, Vine (RIP), TikTok turns nearly every content creator into a top-tier video editor and storyteller. The platform delights millions of users with its endless stream of FYP (For You Page) content, that is specifically geared towards your searches, interests, and frequently viewed subject matter.

This firehose of varietal media serves as sort of a time vortex. New users should be warned, your innocent “five-minute scroll” before bedtime can quickly turn into a three-hour content binge before you can say “lights out.” The average user spends at least 45 minutes on the app each day. Naturally, this rapid-fire of content consumption makes TikTok an alluring marketing tool for brands. If you can get your business name simply in the feed stream, you’re doing okay. But with a little creativity, you can take it a step further and generate content geared towards keeping viewers engaged.

 8 Best Ways to Market Your Business on TikTok

1. Don’t Aim For Perfection

Contrary to the polished and pristine standards of Instagram, TikTok won’t need you to be editing out blemishes or cropping out that mess on the floor. The app thrives on seemingly authentic content. You will likely find the most engagement when your content is true to your brand personality and intentionally crafted.

2. Paid Ads

If the user-friendly algorithm isn’t enough, the platform is also delving into the realm of paid ads. If you have experience using Facebook Business Suite, you are already prepared to tackle TikTok ad campaigns. Curiously, the platform’s paid ads are designed quite similar to Facebook or Google.

You essentially have two options when it comes to TikTok ads: interest targeting and behavioural targeting. Interest targeting works the most equivalently to Facebook Ads. Through this method, you can structure your ad placement to target a specific audience.

Behavioural targeting works a bit differently, allowing you to generate your ads based on user behaviour on the app within the past seven or fifteen days. This unique method ensures your content is geared towards individuals who are active on the platform.

3. Use Hashtags Liberally

While hashtags may be considered a bit archaic on Instagram, the metadata geo tracker is receiving a much-needed reboot on TikTok. As you plug your videos into the platform, be sure to use niche hashtags and plenty of them. This is an optimal method to grow your page organically.

Joining or creating a hashtag challenge is another way you can add your content to the Discover page. This starts with creating a catchy video often with a specific sound and adding a corresponding hashtag. These campaigns easily go viral as the engaging trend of choice catches on.

4. Join In On Trends

Much like the hashtag challenge, following other trends on TikTok is an ideal way to stay up to date with popular content on the platform. Users enjoy seeing different brands take part in funny and engaging content, as popular dances, challenges, songs, and video effects surge in viewership.

5. Be Bold With Your Original Content

The platform allows users to create 15 to 60 second videos using numerous filters, voiceovers, and virtually any song snippet. This limited-time window means you have less than a minute to optimize the “elevator pitch” of your brand. Keep in mind that TikTok is built on consumer engagement; the more user-friendly your content is, the higher views and comments you can expect. Keep your videos concise and attention-grabbing. Always prioritize quality over quantity.

6. Utilize Influencer Marketing

Influencers are an optimal way to gain viewers and to expand your reach to a brand new audience. Though one normally associates influencer content with the visual aesthetics of Instagram, influencers are taking to TikTok in order to gain new sponsorships. The process works similarly to Instagram, where there is an exchange of incentives – either monetary or product – for the promotion of your business. Influencers already have a loyal following, so placing your brand in front of a wider audience is an effective way to increase awareness.

7. Partner With Other Creators

TikTok is famous for its “duet” feature, where users can record videos that build upon another video. This popularized trend has resulted in a vast expanse of creative efforts – from barbershop quartet ditties to personal story prompts. Partnering with like-minded creators and utilizing TikTok live videos opens up the conversation with the audience and helps your brand feel personable.

8. Track Your Analytics Data

As you launch your promotional content and experiment with different trends, be sure to track your engagement through TikTok Analytics. These statistics provide valuable insights regarding your audience demographics and viewership. Don’t be afraid to try out different approaches as you go.

By Faith Walls

Sourced from HEYSocal

 

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The future of marketing is building a privacy-safe world

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By Benjamin Poole

“Privacy regulations, e-commerce integration, customer data platforms, and better ROI optimization enabled by smarter marketing analytics” will be some of the leading trends going forward, according to Ben Poole, head of office of Singapore-based data company Fifty-Five.

Brands are finding themselves in very uncertain business environments, as there is a move towards the post-pandemic new normal. As already experienced, the decisions being made today will chart the journey to the future of digital marketing, and impact long-term successes. Here are some trends that will impact the digital marketing landscape of the present and the future.

Consumer data privacy will reshape digital marketing

Cookies and other available trackers will continue to be compromised by the ‘triple cookie restriction’: legal (GDPR, PDPA); technical (browsers and operating systems); and behavioural (ad blockers and cookie notice blockers). Consumer data privacy is a key concern for regulators and consumers alike, as more turn to online services and platforms to fulfil day-to-day functions. Data privacy regulations are fast evolving in Southeast Asia. For example, Singapore and Thailand have already implemented PDPA (personal data protection act) regulations that comprise requirements governing the collection, use, and care of personal data which protects consumer data privacy.

In 2022 and beyond, countries in Southeast Asia are expected to seek tougher approaches to data regulations. These data privacy enhancements are already leading to a major shift across advertising platforms to develop consent-based solutions. Meanwhile, the ‘walled gardens’ such as social platforms like Google, Facebook, and e-commerce like Lazada will seek to strengthen their hand with first-party data, while the rest of the open web will come to rely more and more on contextually driven targeting solutions.

With the increasing shift to first-party data and modelization, media measurement and activation teams will increasingly employ data compliance experts and data scientists to ensure data safety, data quality, and data actionability. The securing of data, renewal of measurement and targeting approaches, and deployment of a ‘watch-and-innovate’ mindset will become ever more important in 2022.

Ecommerce will change how brands organize themselves and their data

The pandemic has accelerated Southeast Asia’s digital commerce transformation. By the end of 2021, there will be 350 million digital consumers in this region, of which almost 80% of consumers will have gone digital, according to Facebook’s Annual Digital Consumer Report.

In 2022 and beyond, many digital habits learned in the last few months will persist, including e-commerce and grocery shopping – which have seen the most profound change with almost half of all digital consumers in Southeast Asia now shopping online for daily necessities.

The divergence of media investments across digital platforms (Google, Facebook, TikTok) and marketplaces (Lazada, Shopee, Amazon, Tokopedia), has led to increased data and organizational silos, creating challenges around accurately measuring and optimizing digital marketing budgets.

Brands will reorganize to integrate digital media and e-commerce teams while rethinking their data architecture to take into account this increased investment into new e-retail platforms.

The future will be about a unified customer view

As Southeast Asia continues to see a transformation in online user behaviour and digital commerce, marketing investments have diversified across various platforms, leading to data silos that prevent digital marketers from seeing a complete view of customers and their buying journeys.

The customer data platform (CDP) promises to reconcile all channels’ first-party data in a privacy-compliant manner. The CDP creates a more complete view of each customer by capturing data from multiple systems, linking information related to the same customer, and storing the information to track behaviour over time. It contains personal identifiers used to target marketing messages and track individual-level marketing results.

The real question then would be: will all marketers need a CDP? Not necessarily, as there are currently more than 10 technologies such as Google Cloud Platform, that have features that overlap with a CDP existing in the market today that can achieve similar results.

Therefore, when choosing to acquire a CDP, the marketer must first determine if they have access to a large amount of individual-level data to learn how to achieve a higher level of data granularity. Marketers should also consider whether they have the in-house skills necessary to deploy a CDP, whether that be an IT team or knowledgeable marketing technologist.

Evolving shape of brand engagement backed by digital analytics

The future of digital marketing analytics technology is bright. New and improved tech such as Google Analytics 4 will represent a new paradigm in digital analytics. Digital marketers will look forward to more in-depth marketing analytics and e-commerce reports, which will provide the opportunity to create enriched customer journeys that are multi-screen and multi-device.

Expect to see cross-platform material benefits (consistent metrics and dimensions, for integrated reporting across web and app); flexible and efficient (faster event modelling for more granular and flexible analysis); more visual (ad-hoc analysis and improved data visualization for a deeper understanding of your users); more intelligent (machine learning capabilities that automatically surface insights, anomalies and predictions).

A new era in digital marketing beckons, driven by evolving data privacy, emerging consumer behaviours, and technology solutions that will help the modern marketer craft privacy safe, superior customer experiences – all driven by data. The securing of compliant data, the design of new media measurement and activation methods, and keeping a ‘watch-and-innovate’ mindset towards regulatory and platform privacy changes, will be key to succeeding in 2022 and beyond.

The future would be about unlocking the potential of these advanced analytics to give digital marketers more user-centric insights, with a much deeper understanding of individual customer journeys, and how to improve them for better business results.

By Benjamin Poole

Ben Poole is head of office of Singapore-based data company Fifty-Five.

Sourced from The Drum

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Is Your Sales Team Struggling to Sell Solutions?

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By Scott Edinger

It seems after four decades of talk about the “consultative” or “solution” sales approach, companies would be adept at selling this way by now. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: Many sales professionals struggle to move beyond pitching their products or services to providing solutions that are connected to customer business outcomes. This is one of the most common concerns I hear from CEOs about their sales organization.

Traditional selling tends to focus on a pitch or capabilities presentation to communicate the value of a company’s products or services, then closing on a commitment to purchase.

In contrast, the consultative approach requires sellers to create value by helping customers identify issues and opportunities they haven’t recognized and provide solutions they hadn’t anticipated. In this way, the sales process is more about understanding the customer’s circumstances, needs, and objectives and positioning products and services to meet them. That connection to the customers’ goals is what turns products and services into solutions.

Solution selling has become a critical skill set as markets evolve. Global spending in the IoT market is projected to surpass $1 trillion by 2024, and the research think tank Gartner highlights that a critical factor for success in this market will be a “well-trained consultative sales organization.” Using a consultative sales approach is a key recommendation for being able to “effectively sell complete IoT solutions, not just parts and pieces,” according to Gartner. Here is a trillion-dollar market with no single market leader, and a primary key to success is having a team that can sell business value and outcomes by understanding customer pain points.

So why hasn’t the shift to selling solutions happened already? There are three primary reasons:

Consultative selling is far more difficult to do well than most realize.

When I speak at conferences, many leaders still suggest that sales success is largely about personality and drive. In fact The Wall Street Journal reported in July of this year that a primary barrier to filling sales jobs, which are plentiful and high paying, is the stigma of “Mad Men”-style representatives and used car salesman that won’t seem to go away. This isn’t a new realization: the WSJ published an article making the same point in 2015.

For the most part, sales effectiveness is not taught in school. At the few colleges that have sales curricula in the business school, courses are largely centred on operationalizing sales — things like territory sizing, quota setting, analytics and so forth — not mastering the behaviours for effective consultative selling.

What’s more, unlike old-school tips and tactics training that focuses on pitching and closing techniques, from the Ben Franklin to the Puppy Dog (yes these still exist), executing a strategic sales process requires a lot of practice to gain mastery. It requires strategic thinking while simultaneously conducting a disciplined process of interaction with one or more people. It’s unlikely that anyone could reach the level of mastery, let alone competence, after attending a few training sessions, any more than one could become good at playing golf or the piano with a similar amount of instruction.

Understanding the skills for consultative selling is easy and can be learned in about an hour. But knowing doesn’t equal doing. While training is necessary when tackling a challenging skill set, it is insufficient without what K. Anders Ericsson’s research calls Deliberate Practice. Deliberate practice — having a clear model of success, the opportunity to practice in a safe environment (e.g. not with top prospects and customers), and receiving precise coaching and feedback on where to improve — is the key. And practicing just a few times isn’t enough. It requires a commitment on the part of executives to coaching and developing sales talent. Without any disrespect to Human Resources, where I started my career, it can’t be led by HR. Creating a culture of coaching and building sales capability must be a strategic imperative. It’s the only way you’ll develop the kind of consultative sales organization that enables you to win big chunks of a trillion-dollar market.

It’s not central to business strategy and doesn’t get proper focus.

While it’s one of the primary factors in winning or losing in your chosen markets, the sales experience is conspicuously absent within corporate strategy. Most corporate strategy decks focus on which markets to pursue and which competitive advantages you’ll employ to win. This is important information at the heart of most strategy models. But how you sell a product or service can be nearly as vital as what you are selling.

When competing alternatives are similar, or even perceived as the same, delivering a sales experience focused on value, insight, and expertise can be the differentiation that enables you to win. In my work with clients on growth strategy, I always advise they pay the same kind of strategic attention to how they are selling as they do to what they are selling. I suggest answering the question, “How will our sales experience create value?”

The answers to this question can change the role of your sales organization. It moves sellers beyond simply communicating your competitive advantages and makes them an important part of the competitive advantage. By helping customers to think differently about how to address issues they are facing or how to capitalize on opportunities they haven’t considered, the sales process itself becomes a point of value. This will not happen by simply telling the sales team that they need to go sell more, sell better, or sell differently. It starts with making the sales process a central ingredient in the go-to-market strategy. Then the role of sales becomes integral in the execution of that strategy.

Sales management and leadership practices don’t support the consultative sale.

After every consultative sales training program, I hear this from participants: “I’m not managed this way.” The issue isn’t just the lack of effective coaching and development. It’s about fundamental management practices associated with everything from revenue forecasting and metrics for progress reporting to product and service education.

Too often, management spends most of their time on late-stage opportunities in the pipeline, while the real action for a consultative sales process is in the early stages. That’s where customer opportunities expand and the scope of deals are determined. Leaders should prepare reps to create value in the early sales process by doing joint call planning, account strategy and identifying issues customers may be missing or opportunities they haven’t considered.

Most importantly, management should not pressure reps to close a deal within the month or quarter. I worked with a services division of a Fortune 100 company where 83% of their revenue was coming in the last two weeks of every quarter. That revenue also had 30% lower margins than the other 17%. Why? Management put intense pressure on driving a quarterly close number, which led reps to behave with desperation, offering significant discounts to make any sale happen. Over time, customers got wise to this and knew they could wait for the fire sale. No amount of training or strategy could overcome this behaviour if management practices for revenue forecasting and managing the numbers didn’t change. Consultative selling is a long game, and pressure to close something — anything — to make a quota runs counter to the principles you need your salespeople to embrace.

It’s easy to point your efforts at the sales team to get them to sell differently. There is no shortage of good sales training in the market, and it’s existed for decades. The primary reasons sellers struggle to be more consultative and effectively sell solutions have more to do with leadership than sales. Focus on addressing these three issues to build a high-performance sales organization that is a part of your competitive advantage.

Feature Image Credit: Westend61/Getty Images

By Scott Edinger

Sourced from Harvard Business Review

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The 4 Biggest Misconceptions About Selling On Amazon

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Like it or not, it’s the king of ecommerce. Here’s how to win selling on Amazon.

Selling and advertising successfully on Amazon takes time, energy and specific knowledge of Amazon’s SEO and keyword system. Because of the complicated nature of selling on Amazon, there are plenty of misconceptions out there that can derail your sales strategy and leave you far behind your competitors. We’ll dispel four of the most common misconceptions about selling on Amazon to help you get and stay on the right track.

1. Amazon is a passive “set it and forget it” sales channel

The biggest misconception about selling on Amazon is that you don’t need an active and dynamic sales strategy. The reality is that the Amazon marketplace is constantly changing. With a sea of other sellers all competing to sell similar products to the same customer base, you’ll need to remain competitive in order to stand out. This requires a thoughtful strategy that is precisely executed over a long period of time.

It’s critical to continuously monitor the different category and marketplace trends as well as the trends of your competitors and respond accordingly. Make sure you’re monitoring the effectiveness of your advertising strategy, as you’ll just be burning cash otherwise. Keep an eye on your operational KPIs to keep your account performance from declining. If you sit back and take your eye off the ball, don’t be surprised if you’re left in the dust.

2. Success on Amazon happens fast

Employing any sales and advertising strategy takes time and continuous effort. If you expect the orders to start pouring in as soon as you set up Brand Registry or begin your first PPC campaign, then you’ll be sorely disappointed. Success on Amazon takes time. The most successful brands on Amazon are the ones that execute a precise sales and advertising strategy over a long period of time.

Building reviews, ranking for keywords and fine-tuning your advertising strategy are all vital to boosting sales and growing your brand. But these things all take a long time. None of them happen right off the bat. However, if you’re willing to be patient and to play an active role in managing these factors over a sustained period, you will see meaningful results. Your brand awareness will skyrocket, you’ll earn customer trust, and you’ll soar through the search results.

3. My brand doesn’t need to advertise on Amazon

For better or for worse, Amazon is the king of ecommerce. It’s the most competitive marketplace in the world, so succeeding without advertising on Amazon isn’t really feasible. Advertising on Amazon was a luxury only a few years ago, but it has now become a necessity. The good news is that if you can navigate advertising on Amazon, then you’ll be able to make this ecommerce giant work for you.

The most successful brands on Amazon give their brand a paid competitive advantage by using sophisticated PPC strategies that are constantly evolving with the marketplace. This means gathering information on the marketplace by running ads for sustained periods of time with specific bids, budgets and targeting options. Once you’ve let the ads run for long enough, you’ll be able to determine the best bid for each keyword and create an optimal advertising strategy.

4. Amazon’s search algorithm is the same as Google’s

It’s common to think of Google when optimizing SEO for your brand, as the company has established itself as a giant among search engines. But Google’s search algorithm is not the same as Amazon’s. That means your SEO strategy is going to be entirely different. To master SEO for Amazon, you need to understand what shoppers are searching for. This means doing research on category and competitor keywords, which are specific to searches on Amazon. This will help you reach more customers as they type in their searches to Amazon’s search bar.

You’ll also need to optimize your Amazon copywriting to be indexed for Amazon’s algorithm. Your Amazon copywriting is the foundation of your listings, and when you invest in good copywriting, you can help your listing organically rank and index in Amazon’s algorithm.

At the same time, you want copywriting that is going to be more than just a jumble of keywords. The best Amazon copywriting contains the right keywords while simultaneously appealing to shoppers and compelling them to purchase your product.

Successfully growing and scaling your brand on Amazon is achievable if you have the proper knowledge of how to operate in the marketplace. If you maintain an active sales strategy and don’t fall prey to these misconceptions, you should be on track to sustainably grow your brand into a marketplace powerhouse.

By

Nick Heethuis is an Amazon consultant, thought leader in marketplace ecommerce and the founder of TripleShot Marketing. He has helped established brands scale to new levels of sales and profitability on Amazon.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

 

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How to Build a Career-Boosting Online Presence

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By Maxwell Timothy

Have you been job hunting? Check out these tips that can help you build a job-ready online presence.

If you’re serious about building a successful career in tech, your online persona is one of your most valuable assets. Key decision-makers, potential employers, and business partners that matter to you are all online. Which better place to sell yourself than where they can see you right away?

A well-crafted online presence will provide recruiters and relevant professionals within your industry with a glimpse of your skills and personality. It builds your brand, promotes you, and makes you much more attractive to the people that matter in your career.

Here’s how to build an online presence that can supercharge your tech career.

1. Set Up a Personal/Portfolio Website

You don’t have to own a tech business before setting up a website for yourself. If you’ve lived with such misconceptions, it’s time to rethink. A personal website is an indispensable asset for tech professionals who want visibility for their skills and tech career.

It’s one of your most significant assets for self-promotion. With a personal website, you can outline your skills and vision, prove your experience by showcasing work you’ve done in the past, and share projects you’re currently working on with the public.

Whenever people search for solutions to a problem your tech skills can solve, a personal website can serve as a channel to connect them to you. That’s not all; setting up a portfolio website for yourself ensures:

  • You look professional.
  • Increased credibility and authority within your tech niche.
  • Clients and recruiters will be able to find you, rather than you trying to find them.
  • A chance to show off your soft skills and personality.

With a few hundred dollars, you can hire someone to build a website for you. Or, you can do it by yourself. Thanks to free and easy-to-use website builders, you can set up a professional portfolio website through simple drag and drop operations—no coding required. Wix is an excellent website builder for building a portfolio website. Weebly is another popular option.

A personal website for a tech career should ideally include:

  • Your skills: help visitors understand what exactly you can do for them
  • A photo of you: clients and recruiters would prefer to see the face behind the words you share.
  • Current projects: Show clients that you’re still active and passionate about your technology field.
  • Videos and images: capture your potential employer’s attention much faster. It can also send clearer messages.
  • Testimonials, downloadable resume, contact information (email and phone number), social media handles, educational qualification, and relevant industry certifications.

2. Create a Personal Brand

personal branding

You’re not the only professional within your tech field. You’ll need a personal identity that separates you from the others to stand out. Your brand will help you stand out. Your brand is the first thing people think of when they talk about you in a professional setting.

To create your brand, you’ll need to:

  • Pick a niche: you can’t tie your identity to everything. To stand out in tech, you’ll need to pick a niche and stick to it. Get clear on what you want in your career and build your online presence around it. When people associate you with a niche, you amass trust and authority within that niche. If you mention the name “Neil Patel” to bloggers, the first thing that comes to their minds is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s because Patel has built his personal brand around SEO. This has helped him amass so much authority and trust that most of what he says is taken as an unquestionable fact.
  • Be laser-focused on your key message, and be sure to make a lot of noise about it. Once people start thinking of you as the “SEO guy” or maybe the “iOS guy,” you’ll know your identity is beginning to stick.
  • Increase your online presence: a strong personal brand does not end with your portfolio website and a Facebook page. You need to be where the action is. Join forums and social networks that have your ideal audience. Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and even Reddit, and Quora can help supercharge your visibility in tech.
  • Stay active online: constantly interact with relevant Reddit groups, answer questions about your tech niche on Quora, post regularly about your projects on LinkedIn, and share your knowledge in YouTube videos. The more relevant audience you reach, the more awareness you create about your brand.
  • Ensure to use the same name on all your social media accounts. This is very important. This makes it easier for people to find you across different social networks, while also reinforcing your identity and niche authority.
  • Start networking: networking gets you the visibility you need to grow your professional identity. Attend tech meetups, virtual conferences, and seminars. Interact with relevant industry professionals and spread the word.

3. Power-Up Your Social Media

Illustration of social media profiles and their managament

Social media is where most of the heavy lifting for your personal identity happens in today’s digital world. It provides potential clients and employers with an up-close view of your personal and professional persona. This is why you need to be intentional about your social media presence.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn are all important. However, if you have time for only two, it should preferably be LinkedIn and Facebook. If you are building a career in tech but don’t have a LinkedIn account, stop reading right away and create an account now. You’ll find LinkedIn to be a rich resource for job seekers.

According to Kinsta, 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn. In other words, 87% of people that might matter to your career are on LinkedIn. Being active on the platform brings you closer to them.

Similarly, with more than a billion people on Facebook, the social network represents a goldmine for visibility.

Below are some tips to optimize your social media for career enhancement and visibility:

  • Clean up your social media. Go through your timeline and delete post items—articles, pictures and videos—that might hurt your personal identity.
  • Follow as many relevant accounts as possible, and keep non-relevant ones to below 30%. Remember, what you do with social media is influenced to a great extent by the accounts you follow.
  • Jump on trending issues within your tech niche and share your thoughts and ideas.
  • Learn to use hashtags. They can help you keep track of trends and contribute to relevant topics.
  • Keep your followers engaged. Reply to messages and comments as soon as you can. Create polls, host mini-contests, and do giveaways if possible.
  • Initiate conversations about your tech niche and share relevant resources with your friends and followers. Giving out books, sharing important tips and how-to guides is a good way to start.
  • Avoid politically or religiously heated topics, and stay away from insults.
  • Not all social media are the same. Go online and search for courses on how to use specific social networks. Learn what works and what doesn’t.

4. Create Targeted Contents

Create targeted contents to grow on social media

The internet is powered by content. To get the visibility you crave, you’ll need to provide contents that appeal to your target audience. Therefore, it would be best to be intentional and targeted with your content strategy.

The best way to put yourself out there with your content strategy is to think about your audience before yourself. You need to make yourself a useful part of your community by being on the helping end. Share insights, ideas, and help. Research what your audience needs and serve them. However, whatever content you share must align with your end game.

  • Do you want a job in the food industry as a techie? You could design and share food-related icon sets and infographics.
  • Want opportunities in tech education? You could be noticed by running a tutorial blog.
  • Want to break into the fintech industry? You could write and share fintech articles or create free resources like cheat sheets for your followers.

The key is to be targeted in your approach to content creation. Even if your audience is limited, they’ll undoubtedly be those that matter to your career and goals.

Be Consistent and Create Value

Whatever your career direction may be, there is one sure way to get visibility online: build a brand, be consistent and provide value.

Create and share valuable content, and your audience will naturally spread the word. As long as you stay consistent, people, that matter will eventually reach out to connect with you.

By Maxwell Timothy

Sourced from MUO

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Branding’s Perfect 10 – The PR Afterthought

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By Glenn Matchett

When considering the future of branding and brands, it is important to properly understand that Communications is now a fractured, complex, and diverse discipline. The challenge for a PR and brand team – and, indeed, for an entire business – is to get everyone working as one. The overarching task is to impart and nurture genuine empathy and understanding for what a brand stands for, along with the overall business goals. The next step is to plan on how that gets communicated effectively to the outside world.

In Communications, working in silos doesn’t cut it anymore. It requires complex, interwoven, and often co-dependent messaging played across advertising, branding, packaging, PR, digital, customer service, and more. Symbiotic, interlocked, and constantly evolving, there is no solitary lens for PR. Instead, there is a brand kaleidoscope that acts as an ever-changing window into how a brand is perceived through the entirety of its communications.

Social media perfectly illustrates how interlocked communications channels can be for brands. A misplaced tweet or a tone-deaf post can quickly catch fire as a PR disaster that can lose customers or have a negative commercial impact on a business. When Dulux became the sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club this year, one of the first things the paint brand’s social media manager did was engage in some Twitter banter about the club’s lack of trophies. This quite quickly whipped up into a PR storm about how a new commercial partner was making a major faux pax by denigrating its new partner. There were questions asked about the suitability of the partnership and it has resulted in the commercial relationship getting off to an unsteady start.

With an improved lens on PR, the brand would have anticipated the potential problem here. In a future, more perfect world, PR fails can be mitigated by ensuring those who are in charge of social media are adequately briefed and aware of the power of social as a communications channel.

In a future world, this sort of mistakes would be stopped at the source because companies would understand how interlocked all their messaging is with the perception of their brand. A misjudged post on social media has the potential to be just as damaging as Gerald Ratner’s quip in 1991, that the jewellery he sold was “total crap”. His tongue-in-cheek remark in front of the Institute of Directors promptly wiped £500 million from the jeweller’s valuation and nearly took the company to the wall. Reflecting on the incident in 2021, Ratner tweeted, “It is 30 years today when I made ‘that’ speech. It seems like yesterday. I wish it was tomorrow. I would cancel it.” A PR blunder can have a lasting impact. Lessons for the future are often gleaned from what has happened in the past.

In a perfect future vision, PR would always have a board-level seat at any business – helping inform and shape decisions as they are made. PR is not an afterthought. PR is not the red phone to ring in a panic when the shit is about to hit the fan further down the line. Nor is it a cherry to stick on top of a cake with a positive business announcement or new launch. It is not enough to position PR and marketing at the end of a business process. That does not work anymore and brands who do it will often come unstuck or fail to properly connect with their customers.

Another great example from the world of football this year is the abortive launch of ‘The Super League’. As the breakaway scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the organizers only decided to appoint an agency to look after PR on the day of the announcement. What they fundamentally misunderstood is that PR cannot be an afterthought. It’s not about managing a few negative headlines with the belief that today’s newspapers will be tomorrow’s chip papers. PR is vital to monitor the pulse of a brand or an idea. It is about fully understanding and communicating effectively with your customers.

PR is a pre-emptive tool that is as much about anticipation as it is about activation. Like the tip of an iceberg, with PR there is much more to it beneath the surface than you end up seeing in public. As soon as the tsunami of negative responses hit, The Super League brand was dead in the water. If the clubs had effectively engaged PR earlier in their process they would have realized the whole shebang was a bad idea a lot sooner. This whole episode serves as a lesson on why engaging with PR early is a necessity for any brand.

In recent years, technology has seen brands become more and more efficient in how they target their audience. Data-driven intelligence hoovered up from our online activities means that advertisers often seem to know us better than we know ourselves. In the early days of this tracking technology, this was hailed as new nirvana. We’d be served better because we’d get shown what we want rather than things that weren’t relevant and of interest to us. We were heading to a perfect world of branding and advertising. With minimum wastage for advertisers, you would only see the products you’re interested in.

More recently, however, that dream has turned somewhat sour. The dystopian vision in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, of being relentlessly targeted with ads, looms larger like a tangible reality. Documentaries like Coded Bias, The Great Hack, and The Social Dilemma each portray a dark and damaging heart at the center of this technology, purely focused on milking and manipulating consumers for all that they are worth.

From a PR point of view, consumers are waking up to how their data is being used and brands need to be mindful of this. Customers don’t like it and the resulting bad PR for their brands may be commercially damaging. From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications. Privacy controls will be placed back into the hands of the customer and, as a result, the PR wildfire that is burning about privacy and data may start to recede. We’ve already seen this come to light with Apple’s new privacy feature, intended to put the brakes on the sharing of customer data across multiple sites. By preventing the targeting that is the bread and butter of many brands online, its introduction may be a catalyst for a dramatic change in the entire online advertising industry.

From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications.

Brands need to continue to adapt and change in step with the world in which we live. Many cultural commentators believed that, after COVID-19, the consumer’s relationship with brands might change dramatically. Our values would shift away from a disposable, frivolous culture and brands would need to follow. The jury is still out on whether this will, in fact, come to pass. If the queues at the UK’s high-street stores, when the lockdown was lifted in April, is any barometer of a new consumer consciousness, it may not, in fact, be the case at all. The hunger to spend on a wide range of goods still appeared to be firmly intact.

It is fair to say though that brands continue to become more socially aware. As part of a brand strategy, CSR is often now firmly embedded into many companies. However, CSR is only really effective when it is integrated properly and not just used as a PR badge to appease a target market or drive sales.

In the future, unpicking the relationship between CSR and PR will be a great step forward for brands. If you consider a brand like Dove, which has ‘body positivity’ at the heart of its brand purpose, you can see how powerful this can be – not just part of a marketing strategy but an entire business philosophy. It’s not just a PR badge adopted in order to shift their products.

In summary, I feel that it is worth addressing the elephant in the room.

“What is the perfect future version of branding and brands?”

Well, there isn’t one, of course. We live in an imperfect world and nothing ever stays still. When Brandingmag launched, 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Fast forward 10 years from today and I expect, fuelled by technology, that change will be even greater. PR, as a profession, continues to evolve and it is now part of a larger, more integrated, communications ecosystem. The days of fluffy ‘Ab Fab’ PR – with boozy lunches and ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ dynamics of doing your job – are long gone. The future vision for perfect PR and brands is to refine and adapt to the broader, interlinked way in which communications operates. It’s also imperative for PR to be positioned at the heart of every business operation. Perfect? No, it will never be perfect, but that’s what keeps the craft of communications such an engaging challenge.

By Glenn Matchett

Sourced from Brandingmag

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Top 5 Best Digital Analytics Software in 2022: Improve Your Sales and Digital Marketing Strategies!

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By Thea Felicity

Digital analytics process data from various sources to help businesses keep track of their products/services and performance online. Armed with reliable data, companies can improve their sales management through digital marketing analytics as a response to assess which part of their performance is successful and lacking.

With coordinated data comes opened doors for amplified insights and marketing efforts to boost the company’s sales. Digital analytics should include data and influence salespeople and marketers to take a step in magnifying their performance. Consequently, this calls for knowing which digital analytics tools are proficient to use.

LeadLander

(Photo : LeadLander)

#1 LeadLander

Landing on the top of the best digital analytics software is LeadLander. Businesses that utilize this software can identify specific prospect/customer traffic to their website. In other words, LeadLander’s digital marketing analytics creates a manageable pipeline for businesses to boost their sales.

LeadLander offers a product that serves as both a sales tool and a digital & marketing analytics tool.

With a data-driven marketing effort, companies that use LeadLander connect with opportunities that may have been missed otherwise. Essentially, LeadLander helps sales and marketing teams be in the right place at the right time.

What Is a Digital Analytics Software Like LeadLander?

LeadLander is a digital analytics software launched by an established group of lead generation, sales development, and website analytics experts. The software is rooted in the idea of delivering more leads to salespeople.

Specifically, LeadLander augments a business’ inbound and outbound sales through the lens of digital marketing analytics. Equipped with the digital analytics tool, companies get precise details about the visitors to their website.

The competitive advantage LeadLander has over other digital analytics software is that they go beyond traditional web analytics systems by offering precise details about website visitors. LeadLander not only allows you to monitor existing prospects but also identifies brand new opportunities that you are not yet engaged with. This information enables salespeople to focus on leads with the highest value.

LeadLander’s strategy is to keep things simple and to make navigation easy. A variety of customization options complement the value of meeting the needs of each user.

LeadLander provides unrivaled support. The team at LeadLander offers customer service beyond support to help businesses use the information strategically. With that, digital analytics software is not just for data-viewing but also for enhancing sales and marketing efforts.

What Benefits Does Digital Analytics Like LeadLander Include?

LeadLander upstages not only other digital analytics tools with deeper data and IP reconciliation but also the capability to be used as a digital marketing analytics tool.

The system provides metrics about most active website visitors, highest activity pages, geolocation data, and tracking for your advertising activity via networks like Google, LinkedIn, or Facebook. Integrations with outbound email campaigns, web forms, CRM, and other systems easily sync data from inbound and outbound sources.

This data gives their users valuable marketing metrics that can direct retargeting efforts to the highest value prospects and customers.

LeadLander’s platform delivers real-time email reports & alerts to help track whenever high-valued companies visit the website. Supporting data includes tracks of visitors’ entire journey across the website, including a list of all pages visited, timestamps for each page, and any search & referral data.

On top of that, LeadLander also creates a paragon of services with the following benefits:

  • Identifies new leads
  • Provides pipeline accuracy for reliable sales forecasting
  • Validates interests from sales outreach and cold calls
  • Syncs inbound leads with digital marketing campaigns
  • Provides real-time notifications from new and returning spectators on websites
  • Accesses a track of dynamic visitors history on the website, alongside click path activity
  • Identifies a steady flow of warm leads to fill businesses’ sales funnel and marketing campaigns

With these benefits, LeadLander proved to be an ideal tool not just for salespeople looking to find new leads but also in measuring response to any of their outreach efforts. The platform also delivers key marketing metrics to help marketing teams guide their remarketing efforts.

Why LeadLander Is Among the Best Digital Analytics Tools

LeadLander’s strengths come from doing more than a simple IP lookup to identify anonymous visitors. They also source their own proprietary contact database that has been mapping IP data from additional sources over the past 15 years. This delivers the best data on anonymous website visitors even in today’s “Work From Home” and remote work environments. Paired with an easy-to-navigate interface (newly launched in January 2022), dedicated support, and a highly competitive price model, LeadLander delivers a best-in-class product offering to keep a steady flow of leads filling your sales funnel.

Google Analytics

(Photo : Screenshot from Google Analytics Official Website)

#2 Google Analytics

Google Analytics is Google’s own web analytics tool, essential for website and business’s digital performance. Everyone can use this tool long as they have their own Google account.

Getting started with the tool is easy. Most of the time, users can track key metrics in an instant. However, unlike other digital analytics tools, Google’s gets more complex over time. But getting used to it will reward users, especially businesses with more benefits.

Google Analytics tool gives more opportunities for optimization when websites bring relevant data. Users and businesses can also gain ideas on how to improve their business sales at large.

What Is a Digital Analytics Software Like Google Analytics?

Google Analytics, or GA, coordinates with other Google services, making it easy for marketers who use its services for marketing. In this way, GA can track the performance and hand it over to the Google Analytics account.

GA provides web data that would note the performance of a website. This, in return, will amplify the chance of return investment integrated into starting a business or a website.

The tools given by Google analytics is a fast-paced machine that will instantly track a website’s activity, including the factors that could lead to the recent performance of a particular site.

In addition, with data on hand, Google Analytics can help businesses improve their digital presence.

Feature Image Credit: @kmuza / Unsplash

By Thea Felicity

Sourced from TechTimes

 

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