Mediastreet
Author

editor

Browsing
In News

Pay Attention to Attention Analytics

No Comments

By Lisa Bradne.

Featuring: Lisa Bradner, general manager of analytics at Yieldmo

Forbes Business Council member Lisa Bradner, general manager of analytics at Yieldmo, explains how attention analytics goes beyond impressions and click-through rates to provide even more details on the reach and effectiveness of online and mobile advertising.

Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Inside Forbes Councils!

Key Takeaways

  • Attention analytics refers to the practice of using attention signal to understand the quality of an ad experience, which includes baseline ad and page signals as well as gestural data. Gestural data includes phone tilts, scrolls back on an ad, touches inside the ad, and other signals that may indicate interest in the ad.
  • A good ad experience is one that doesn’t simply interrupt, but also provides the viewer with some value and invites them to participate further.
  • Attention analytics is one metric that can be employed to measure the effectiveness of an ad, in addition to viewability and click-through. Many combinations of attention signals can be used to improve different advertiser KPIs.
  • Yieldmo’s clients have seen more than a 45% cost-adjusted lift from implementing insights from attention analytics.

Additional Resources

Five PR and Social Media Strategies To Boost Your Sales, Leads and Likes by Adrian Folk, Believe Advertising & PR

Five Strategies To Supercharge Your Google Ads Campaigns by Todd Maxwell, eMaximize

Tweetable Insights

“Attention analytics is the practice of using attention signals to understand the quality of an ad experience… Are they touching it? Are they scrolling through it? Are they scrolling back? How much attention are they paying to that ad?” — @lisabradner of @Yieldmo

“When something is of interest to you, you tilt your phone up in the vertical plane to look at it. You’ll notice now that you do that a lot; that’s our definition of a scroll that is a very strong sign that something has gotten someone’s attention.” — @lisabradner of @Yieldmo

Featured Member

Lisa Bradner is a seasoned strategic media and marketing leader with more than 20 years experience leading organizational change. Having worked as a client, as an analyst, as an agency leader and now as general manager of Yieldmo‘s analytics business, she has seen from all sides the opportunities and challenges of integrating technology and data into marketing to create better more holistic experiences for consumers.

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

Sinch announces Conversation API to bring together multiple messaging tools

No Comments

By Ron Miller.

As communicating with customers across the world grows ever more challenging due to multiple channels, tools and networking providers, companies are looking for a way to simplify it all. Sinch, a company that makes communications APIs, announced a new tool this morning called the Conversation API designed to make it easier to interact with customers across the planet using multiple messaging products.

Sinch chief product officer Vikram Khandpur says that business is being conducted in different messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp or Viber depending on location, and businesses have to be able to communicate with their customers wherever they happen to be from a technology and geographic standpoint. What’s more, this need has become even more pronounced during a pandemic when online communication has become paramount.

Khandpur says that up until now, Sinch has concentrated on optimizing the SMS experience for actions like customer acquisition, customer engagement, delivery notifications and customer support. Now the company wants to take that next step into richer omni-channel messaging.

The idea is to provide a set of tools to help marketing teams communicate across these multiple channels by walking them through the processes required by each player. “By writing to our API, what we can provide is that we can get our customers on all these platforms if they are not already on these platforms,” he said.

He uses WhatsApp as an example because it has a very defined process for brands to work with it. “On WhatsApp, there is this concept of creating these pre-approved templates, and they need to be reviewed, curated and finally approved by the WhatsApp team. We help them with that process, and then do the same with other channels and platforms, so we take that complexity away from the brand,” Khandpur explained.

He adds, “By giving us that message once, we take care of all of [the different tools] behind the scenes transcoding when needed. So if you give us a very rich message with images and videos, WhatsApp may want to render it in a certain way, but then Viber renders that in a different way, and we take care of that.

Sinch Conv API Transcoding

Examples of transcoding across messaging channels. Image Credits: Sinch

Marketers can use the Conversation API to define parameters like using WhatsApp first in India, but if the targeted customer doesn’t open WhatsApp, then fall back to SMS.

The company has made four acquisitions in the last year, including ACL Mobile in India and SAP’s Interconnect Messaging business, to enhance its presence across the world.

Sinch, which competes with Twilio in the communications API space, may be one of the most successful companies you never heard of, generating more than $500 million in revenue last year while processing over 110 billion messages.

The company launched in Sweden in 2008 and has never taken a dime of venture capital, yet has been profitable since the early days. In fact, it’s publicly traded on the NASDAQ Exchange in Stockholm and will be reporting earnings.

Feature Image Credits: valentinrussanov / Getty Images

By Ron Miller

Sourced from TC TechCrunch

Read More
By
In News

11 Best YouTube Marketing Hacks To Create Viral YouTube Channel

No Comments

Sourced from FINCYTE

In this article, we will discuss the best YouTube marketing strategies to make your channel go viral. Every YouTuber wants to improve their channel like more views, comments on your YouTube videos.

First thing, YouTube is the second-largest platform in the world. There are millions of channels that have been created on YouTube. It has more than 2 billion active users, and 50+ content creators are present on the YouTube channel.

In case you forget to follow any strategies, you have failed to improve YouTube marketing. In this article, we are going to learn some fantastic tips to help you.

Let us get started!

11 Best YouTube Marketing Hacks To Create Viral YouTube Channel

1. Build Amazing Content

Making content is a common thing for all YouTuber. But what is different between you & your niche. Before creating a video, you should analyse your competitor’s content like what they do, what keywords they used, length of the content and audience support, etc. Now, you have a clear idea about how to make video content.

Also, make sure that your content will be loved and easily grasp the audience. This is the ultimate strategy to improve your content.

YouTube provides several kinds of video content that can help you get more views are-

  • Vlog
  • Interviews
  • Product Review
  • Q & A Videos
  • How to videos etc.

2. Add a Watermark

If you want to get more subscribers for your channel and get the views, you have to use the best method – watermark.

Now, everyone thinks about what a watermark is?

Watermark is just an image that would display in your YouTube videos. So many brands use their logos in the place of the watermark. Whenever it’s displayed on the screen, the non- subscriber audience turns into subscribing to your videos.

Once you can follow the strategies, the next metric should be effective in getting more YouTube comments on YouTube.

3. Optimizing the YouTube Channel

Many YouTube stars thought that just optimizing the videos is enough to get popular. But, the actual answer is no.

You should optimize your entire channel with the help of keywords. Using keywords is the best quality method to improve your ranking and get more and more YouTube views too.

i. Video Title

The title should be creative, informative, and descriptive. The title characters are less than 65 characters and make strong content.

Placing keywords at the beginning of the title helps to increase the visibility and ranking of your videos.

ii. Video Description

This section helps to increase brand awareness among peoples. It should be 5000 characters. Add 2-3 keywords in the section, which helps to improve visibility.

4. Compelling Thumbnail Images

Thumbnail is the heart of the video content. Because most content will be popular based on the thumbnail. YouTube thumbnail is the first impression to get the audience into your videos.

You are creating a thumbnail to use high-quality images. Also, you need to ensure that you use an appealing image to grab the audience’s attention.

There are several rules to making a thumbnail:

  • It should less than 2 MB
  • The images format are .JPG, .PNG, .JPEG
  • Thumbnail ratio – 16:9
  • You can change the background, font, border, graphics, etc.

5. Collaborate with YouTube Influencers

Having a YouTuber and working with them is the most successful way to get more subscribers and become popular. Because those influencers already have tons of followers for their channel.

Once you have decided to work with any influencers, you should choose the perfect influencers who will improve the subscribers count on your videos and then create some amazing collaborations with them.

One or more than video, you both can work. Also, this is a way to impress the audience. After, the audience can easily find your face and get your idea in your video content. In this way, you could connect the audience and also get some fantastic love.

6. Build a Community

Many people think that YouTube is just a video searching and sharing platform. No, it’s completely wrong.

YouTube has a vast community basis like viewers, subscribers, and users, etc. Hence, you want to make more views and likes for your videos; you need to make a community for yourself.

In the community, you can post your engaging content that can be loved by the audience. Make a community for your business, and spread your content.

7. Increase the Watch Time

YouTube is one of the incoming platforms for YouTube influencers. It is the specific method of making which the videos would be present anywhere.

Many viewers come into your video present on the homepage, and most audiences enter your video based on the subscriptions or the suggested videos.

You can get more views when your video is presented on the homepage of YouTube. Increasing the watch time for your videos, you can earn money from YouTube.

Here are some tips to increase watch time on your YouTube channel:

  • You should be using cards throughout your videos
  • Use long-tail YouTube keywords in your content
  • Always focus on audience retention
  • Titles and thumbnails should be appropriately reflected in your content

8. Promote Your videos on Other Social Media

People spend their time on YouTube, and also they are spending most of the social media channels as well.

Sharing your videos are the top most strategies. Whether your subscribers or followers forget to see your video on YouTube, there are chances to see your video clips on other media channels.

Hence, after posting your video on YouTube, you will share the link on social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Better, you will create an individual account for your videos and include links or clips on the account. With this, you can get more viewers to your channel. Don’t forget to add the CTA options.

9. Create Playlists

You noticed many top brands that perform well on YouTube because they have some playlists in their channels.

Now, your question is, really are playlists performing well?

The honest is that the playlist will ensure that you can get more attention from the audience in the first place, which specifically takes a lot of effort. Categorizing your videos are most convenient whenever your audience searches for the video they can easily find.

This job is a little bit tough because you can first find the same categorized video and make it into the playlist.

10. Use Cards and End Screens

Use cards and end screens are essential tools that you can use for business promotion videos on your YouTube channel.

First, you should verify the YouTube account to have these same features.

The second thing is that you can use the fantastic features on your YouTube videos to ensure that the audience likes it.

Include CTAs options that you can use for the YouTube video and get the best results.

11. Transcribe the Videos

It is all good to make a great video, but sometimes that the audience needs a proper transcription.

The worldwide audience can see your video due to some language constraints. There are closed captions provided by YouTube, or else you can add it as subtitles when making the video.

These strategies will help you get more views because most audiences who don’t speak your language can understand your content.

Sourced from FINCYTE

Read More
By
In News

The evolving consumer: How COVID-19 is changing the way we shop

No Comments

Sourced from McKinsey & Company

Consumer shopping and spending habits look different today. Which changes will persist? What trends should retailers bear in mind heading into the holidays?

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has altered how, when, and where we shop and what we buy. Digital has become more important than ever, brand loyalty has been shaken, and spending levels and are still below precrisis levels. During a McKinsey Live webinar, partner Kelsey Robinson and senior expert Tamara Charm discussed today’s trends in US consumer spending—and which ones are most likely to stick.

Flight to digital: Digital adoption across sectors has increased dramatically in the past few months. Over the course of just 15 days, virtual appointments multiplied by ten. In five months, Disney+ built a subscription base that had taken Netflix seven years to achieve. Remote working, learning, and shopping likewise have surged. Reliance on digital was growing before the pandemic began, and a meaningful amount of this online penetration is expected to persist after the pandemic is over.

Shift to value: The increase in digital shopping hasn’t compensated for the decrease in consumer spending overall. One-third of Americans have reported a decrease in their household income during the crisis, and 40 percent say they are spending more carefully. Indeed, consumers expect to spend less in discretionary categories, such as apparel, vehicles, and travel, while more on essentials such as groceries and household supplies.

Shock to loyalty: Since the crisis began, three-quarters of US consumers have changed something about the way they shop, including one-third who have tried a new shopping method such as delivery or curbside pickup and nearly one-third who have tried a different retailer. Value—which might entail lower prices, promotions, larger package sizes, or less expensive shipping—is the primary reason for this unexpected shift to different brands. There has been a move to products that are less expensive.

Homebody economy: Only about a third of US consumers are engaging in normal out-of-home activities, and 80 percent say they’re concerned when they leave home. Spending reflects this shift, with more consumers spending money on at-home activities such as gardening as well as software and electronics for working—or learning—from home. When consumers do venture out, it’s most often to shop for groceries and other necessities.

New holiday outlook: Only 19 percent of Americans are optimistic about the prospect of a fast economic rebound in the United States. It’s therefore not surprising that 42 percent of US consumers intend to spend less on holiday shopping this year than last year, and roughly half, across multiple generations, expect to do more shopping online. In keeping with the renewed focus on value, it’s also likely that more consumers will pursue blockbuster holiday sales this year.

Questions and answers from the webinar

  1. What are your thoughts about how global markets compare with the US data?
    Across many countries, including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and much of Europe, our five themes—flight to digital, shift to value, shock to loyalty, homebody economy, and new holiday outlook—hold to varying degrees. Asia looks notably different. In China, consumers are no longer ensconced in a homebody economy, as they regularly venture out for day-to-day activities. In Japan, the shock to loyalty was notably smaller: while in all other countries, more than half of consumers made a change, in Japan only about a third of consumers did. In India, there is positive spend momentum among the consumer class as consumers prepare for the holidays.
  2. Do you see a bifurcation with consumer perception of value? Are some consumers buying less but buying better, while other consumers are price shopping more often?
    While consumers across the board are looking for value in what they buy, lower-income consumers are trading down more than higher-income consumers are. In the higher-income bands, we’re also seeing consumers more likely to prioritize quality of goods and purpose-driven brands as reasons to try new brands or new places to shop, although the search for value is dominant.
  3. How do you think firms can create value during holiday season, especially for online shopping?
    For the holiday season, firms should think about the following:

    • Provide consumers with multiple options to fulfill orders (e.g., buying online, in-store pickup, and curbside pickup). Consumers have shown us that they will change retailers during COVID-19 as they adapt to a redefined sense of convenience. It will be important to provide consumers the products they want, when and where they want to buy them.
    • Motivate holiday shopping now. Given the rush to online shopping and anticipated fulfillment challenges, retailers have already begun to “pull demand forward”—through early product availability, surgical promotions or offers, and direct communications to shoppers.
    • Invest in digital infrastructure and operation logistics. Given the expected heightened traffic on websites and mobile apps, retailers should ensure that their digital/mobile storefronts and operational backbone can support the increase in volume. This also means upping warehousing and customer support (e.g., chat functions).
    • Build the basket. With less opportunity for consumers to explore and touch and feel products in stores, retailers will need to focus on personalizing the best assortment for each shopper, building baskets based on known customer characteristics, preferences, and categories, and SKUs with tailwinds this holiday season.

For more on this topic, please watch the webinar recording and read the article “Consumer sentiment and behavior continue to reflect the uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis.”

Sourced from McKinsey & Company

s

Read More
By
In News

Gartner Says 80% of B2B Sales Interactions Between Suppliers and Buyers Will Occur in Digital Channels by 2025

No Comments

By Tim Hughes.

Interesting article by Gartner, here are some of the highlights

“Over the next five years, an even greater rise in digital interactions between buyers and suppliers will break traditional sales models.”

“The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Chief sales officers (CSOs) and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers.”

 “Sales organizations must be able to sell to customers everywhere the customer expects to engage, interact and transact with suppliers”

“Gartner defines the future of sales as the permanent transformation of organizations’ sales strategies, processes and allocation of resources, moving from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation and shifting from analog sales processes to ….  digital-first engagement with customers.”

“Gartner research shows buyers typically only spend 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers when considering a purchase. With less and less customer face time, virtual selling via digital channels will predominate.”

“B2B sales reps need to embrace … a new manner of engaging customers, matching their sales activity to their customers’ buying practices and information-collecting needs.”

Pipeline – What can we do to maximize pipeline?

This requires us all to do what we can across the business to be in the pipeline building business.

We also have to be totally honest with ourselves here.  “What got us here, won’t get us there”.  We all know that business has changed due to the Pandemic and we have to change our sales and marketing models or run out of cash, without the right pipeline.  Research from Hubspot shows that “the number of deals created dropped 11% the week of April 6.”  I’m writing this in October 2020, do we really think that the deals created has picked up?

This diagram is of the deal drop in the US up to the 4th June 2020.

Let’s look at two of the most traditional ways of marketing before the pandemic, digital advertising and email marketing.

Digital Advertising

Yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with a Martin Lucas for an up and coming #TimTalk (my podcast) and the following figures are engagement rates for digital advertising.

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (this is where ads follow you around when you browse)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate and based on the amount of money that is spent on digital advertising, that means that $265 Billion is wasted on advertising every year.  This is an example of one area where before the pandemic it was seen as Ok to make spend like this, now it’s flushing dollars down the toilet.  Another example is email marketing.

Email Marketing

According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April 2020. Said differently, 98% of our efforts to reach new prospects failed.

Hubspot say in the report “Sales teams are sending about 50% more email to prospects than they were pre-COVID, but responses continue to drop. Last week, sales response rates hit an all-time low for 2020 at 2.1%, a lower response rate than Christmas week 2019.”

Diagram from Hubspot showing the number of emails being sent going up and the response reducing.

Hubspot also said “These trends tell an important story. Email prospecting, to put it bluntly, is out of control. It’s easy to send thousands of emails with just a few clicks, and in a chaotic time, we understand why sales teams are sending so many. But volume and quality is a tradeoff — the time a team saves by sending out email blasts is wasted if that outreach isn’t personalized, relevant, and helpful. These gaps are clear in the data.”

High Performing Businesses Use Social Strategically 

In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.

What Is A High Performance Business in The Post Pandemic World?

If you are a modern high performing business where social media is strategic to your business, or you hope it will be strategic to the business read on.

How Social Media Has Been used in the Past

Social media has been used tactically in the past within the business.  Often it will be in digital marketing, which sits in marketing and this involves tweeting a broadcast message along the lines of “buy our product, because it’s great”.  There maybe differences on platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but the message is the same.  This is often called omnichannel.  You use all the channels, including email and cold calling and you push out the same message.

This is fundamentally broken, see statistics above.

Adverting, email marketing and cold calling are based on interruption and broadcast and social is based on permission and relationship.  This is a mistake that most companies make.

Social / Digital Virtual / Remote Selling Comes of Age

I wrote the book “Social Selling – techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers”, which is available on Amazon worldwide.  I also wrote the blog “How to get 10 C-Level meetings a week using Twitter”.  These are stepping stones in the evolvement of social.  Both showing to the world that there was (and is) a business reason why you should have a social project in your business and the fact there is a return on investment (ROI).

The Social Business is Born

Back in 2018 we found that our social selling programs were “repeatable and predictable”.  Whenever we ran them it would create 30% more revenue and reduce the sales cycle by 40%.  This is pretty cool and something we are very proud of.

Where Do We Go From Here?

For those unsure of what to do, DLA Ignite will complete a review of your current social / digital / virtual / remote selling capability.  For free.

We will take your team (up top 10) and perform a complete root and branch Social Media Performance Assessment.

Sales, Marketing, Management, Technical, HR. Procurement ….whoever you want to include.

This will include: Profiles, connections, followers, inbound and outbound activity, content, engagement, follow up, results.

(Happy to provide the list of deliverables).

We will map your business against the DLA Ignite baseline and present back to you our findings. We will show you where improvements can be made and what results should be expected.  No hard sell, just present back to you a road map.

You entered lock down analogue, this is your chance to leave this pandemic, digital.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.

The Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Chief sales officers (CSOs) and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers.

https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/future-of-sales-2025-why-b2b-sales-needs-a-digital-first-approach/

 

By Tim Hughes.

Sourced from dla Digital Leadership Associates

Read More
By
In News

The 3 Mistakes That Are Killing Your Authority Marketing

No Comments

By .

Position yourself as an authority and have you’ll prospects knocking on your door.

What if prospects came to you? That’s the point of authority marketing.

Authority marketing is a multifaceted approach that includes content marketing, public relations, speaking, and for many, authorship. Some call it “attraction marketing” or “doing thought leadership.” But whatever you choose to call it, the goal is to position yourself as an authority and have prospects knocking on your door.

This approach is particularly valuable in this era of information availability. Most sales conversations don’t start with a prospect actually reaching out to you or your sales team. The sales process often starts with a web search.

People who decide to market their authority take control of what appears in that web search. When the results of a web search position you and your company as experts in your field, your credibility rises.

Consultants, coaches, and professional service providers struggle with credibility when the bar to entry for their respective fields is so low. Marketing their authority helps them get higher-paying clients. Not to mention, making a point to incorporate speaking engagements, interviews, and written contributions builds marketing momentum pretty quickly.

If authority marketing is such a rock-solid strategy, how are people “killing” it? Well, there are a few key steps that are consistently neglected by almost everyone who engages in authority marketing.

Related: What Is ‘Authority Marketing’ and How Do You Achieve It?

1. Waiting for opportunities to come to you

People work hard to build their email and social media audiences. They believe that if they “get big enough,” opportunities will come to them. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It is true that when the environment aligns with your expertise, people may reach out to you.

For example, more diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consultants are being asked for their expertise for a variety of marketing opportunities. But what about when the news cycle moves on? It’s not that DEI isn’t a topic that people are talking about consistently. But what do you do when people aren’t reaching out anymore?

Public relations pro Jennifer McGinley recommends consistently reaching out and building your web of connections.

“It’s so important to be proactive and consistently connecting and serving others in order to be seen as an expert or authority in your field,” she says. “The more visible you are, the more credible you can become. Essentially you are building a community. Clear, consistent content and communication build a community.”

Even when you get momentum, you should always be on the hunt for better opportunities. Once you’ve built up your speaker’s resume or Expert’s Portfolio, you’ll be able to secure opportunities that dramatically increase your credibility.

Some of the largest conferences have an application process for speakers. So even when you start getting invitations, be sure to actively seek out new opportunities to showcase your expertise.

2. Not creating authentic content

Take note of the adjective before “content” in this subheading. Authenticity is your unique marketability factor. What will people find when they click through to your website? If you’re hoping they’ll hire you or invite you to speak, your site had better be good.

In many cases, people find a website and blog devoid of any personality. Your site may be described as “professional, approachable, and competent.” What’s wrong with that? Well, ask yourself, how many other business websites can be described in this manner? A professional, approachable, and competent website won’t keep you from getting some clients. But it’s lukewarm at best, which means your website isn’t providing the highest ROI possible.

This is where authentic content comes in. When someone lands on your site, they should experience your unique brand. If your personal brand drives a lot of your business, as it does for a lot of service professionals, then your site visitor should feel as if perusing your site helps them get to know you.

Don’t view it as “just your website” or “just your blog.” Think of all of your content efforts as contributing to your content library. You may create unique content for a particular social media platform. But if it performs well with your audience, then you need to invest in growing your content library and creating content on your site.

Sarah Noel Block, founder of marketing consultancy Tiny Marketing, often counsels her clients to invest in what they own. “Too often, businesses get wrapped up in focusing on quick-win marketing like social media or paid ads. Instead, focus on what you own, not what you rent. You rent social media. TikTok can go down tomorrow,” she advises. “Rather, focus on what you own — your website and your email list. Building a content library increases your SEO, your Know, Like, and Trust factor, your email list, and gives you something to say in email and social media marketing. It’s the marketing that keeps on giving.”

If you approach your content authentically, then your prospects (marketing opportunities or new business) will already feel as if they know you. This is one of the ways they convince themselves that you’re a good fit before they even speak with you.

Not that even rote topics can use your fresh take. Many professionals take the time to create content surrounding common topics related to their expertise for search engine optimization (SEO) purposes. There’s nothing wrong with this as long as you remember one thing: your unique experiences are what make this content special.

Explaining why it’s important to create header tags in blog posts and website content is a good topic for a content professional. But when you add in the story about having to edit 50+ blog posts for a client to better optimize their content, you do two things:

  • You show that you go all out for your clients.
  • You give them a story to remember your tip with.

Anyone can give a tip. But that story belongs exclusively to you.

3. Not marketing your expertise-showcasing opportunities

Have you been a guest on a professional webinar or podcast? Much to the dismay of many event organizers and show hosts, guests often don’t market their appearances. This is a missed opportunity to support your host and also to market yourself.

Marketing an expertise-showcasing opportunity allows you to get in front of your host’s audience outside of the opportunity itself. More important, it gives you a chance to interact with that audience.

Bill Sherman, the co-host of the Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast, offers a few great recommendations. At a minimum, guests should comment and like any post where the event organizer, article author, or podcast host mentions them. A thoughtful comment on social media, especially LinkedIn, can really push up engagement — engagement that’s great for you and the organizer, author, or host.

Next, he said that podcast guests should “rate and review the episode on whatever podcast player they use. It will help the episode (and the podcast as a whole) show up more frequently in searches.”

He also shared that when guests engage with audience members who leave comments on social media, he’s thrilled. It doesn’t happen often for most podcast hosts and community builders, but when it does, it creates conversations that lead to all sorts of beneficial connections.

These engagement opportunities are critical for expanding your network and building your authority. Because most people don’t engage this way after an expertise-showcasing opportunity, you’ll stand out even more when you do. Not to mention, the people who take the time to comment warrant a response from you. They could be your people, but not if you ignore them.

Fix these three mistakes and your authority marketing will take off

If you’re making one or all three of these mistakes, there’s good news. You can work to fix them right now. Go back to your most recent interviews and engage with the audience in the comments. Get started on your content plan so you can build up your content library at any time. Actively seek out the opportunities you need to grow your authority and your business.

Being aware of a problem is half the battle. Now you have the knowledge to fix it.

Feature Image Credit: Getty Images 

By .

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

Read More
By
In News

US Healthcare and Pharma Is Among the Fastest-Growing Digital Ad Spenders

No Comments

By Blake Droesch

The healthcare and pharma industry has been slower to embrace digital marketing compared with other US verticals we track. Heavy regulation makes ad targeting more difficult, which has kept traditional media buys and in-person marketing popular. However, the coronavirus pandemic restricted many of these in-person touchpoints, which caused both the B2B and business-to-consumer (B2C) aspects of the healthcare and pharma industry to further embrace digital advertising.

We expect the US healthcare and pharma industry will spend $9.53 billion on digital advertising this year, up 14.2% from 2019.

With a public health crisis serving as the single biggest factor impacting advertising this year, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that healthcare and pharma will be among the fastest-growing industries in digital ad spending, coming second only to the computing products and consumer electronics vertical (whose spend will grow by 18.0% in 2020).

While healthcare and pharma digital ad spend has grown faster in previous years, its 2020 growth is substantial, as the total US digital ad market is expected to grow by only 1.7%.

By Blake Droesch

Sourced from eMarketer

Read More
By
In News

Top 9 Growth Hacking Strategies Every Start-up Must Try Out

No Comments

Sourced from TECHMAG

Brands are always looking out for new and effective methods and tricks to enhance their growth. These tricks are often referred to as growth hacking strategies, and implementing the right ones can cause phenomenal growth.

With many strategies to choose from, choosing the ones with the highest success ratio and return on investment matters a lot. Before that, if you need to know the exact definition of growth hacking, it is an experiment-driven technique, striving to find the most efficient methods to grow a business.

Growth hacking is especially crucial for start-ups with a little budget to market their offerings. Let us take a look at the nine best, and tested growth hacking strategies start-ups can readily utilize.

Growth Hacking Strategies For New Start-ups

1. Have a Simple, Intuitive Homepage

Your business’s website is the digital version of a storefront. And the website’s homepage can be the doorknob. If the doorknob is too complex to use, customers will have a hard time entering the store.

The same is true for your business website. Remove all clutter and always opt for a simple homepage. Customers must not be even slightly confused while navigating it. Make the CTAs approachable, and the company information clear and concise.

2. Create an Email Waiting List

Even though many refer to email marketing as an old school technique, it still rocks in 2020. For every single dollar invested in email marketing, you can expect a return on investment of $42. Collecting email addresses and creating an email list is an effective strategy, even if you’re months before launch.

Read more: Why Business Plan is Important for New Startups

Along with creating pre-launch hype, email marketing can be used to deliver critical information regarding your product. You can also utilize an email list to maintain a consistent relationship with your customers. The key is to utilize email marketing to add more value to the user journey.

3. Learn From Your Competitors

You have a lot to learn from your competitors, especially those who made it into the industry a long time ago. Look at how they market their products. Check out their levels of interactions with customers.

Since they made it into the industry before you, they will probably have tried, failed, and succeeded in many strategies. This will allow you to avoid strategies with lower success rates and focus only on those that guarantee remarkable results.

4. Offer Discounts for Shares

Word of mouth is still a useful marketing tool. The more customers you satisfy, the more number of friends they will bring along. You can also offer specialized discounts to users who are keen to refer to your products.

For instance, Dropbox increased its sign-ups by 60% by offering users extra storage space for each referred friend. If you succeed in gaining social desirability for your product and your brand, you will soon experience more inquiries and sales. Even something as nominal as a 5% discount will do the trick.

5. Collaborate With Influencers

Irrespective of your products or services, there will always be an influencer who rule your industry. Finding those individuals is as easy as searching for your products on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Connect with such influencers and allow them to creatively introduce your company. You can include influencer marketing as a top priority marketing strategy and experiment with multiple influencers.

You can also collaborate with influencers to co-create content that can be published on your channels or profiles. For branding, you can start your videos with a memorable intro. You can use free into makers like VideoCreek, for that matter. Visit VideoCreek for more information.

6. Try the Path of Exclusivity

People love acquiring exclusive products. You can use this as a marketing strategy and restrict access to your products. If yours is a product company, you can release only a specific number of units at a time and keep the customers waiting for the next release.

You can even follow an “invite-only” strategy to build the hype. Gmail used this strategy in their initial days, and only users who received an invitation could sign up. Even Pinterest benefited a lot from exclusivity.

7. Build a Cheerful Social Media Community

The majority of customers will be spending most of their time scrolling through the endless feeds of social media networks. So it makes more sense to connect with your prospects on such platforms.

Along with paid social media campaigns, there are numerous organic strategies you can utilize. With consistency in publishing content, responding to customer reviews, and actively keeping up with the latest trends, you can organically grow your follower base.

You can use witty social media copywriting and graphics to entice and convert people. You can also utilize social media networks to advertise your products. With the help of an online ad maker, you can craft convincing ad creatives for your campaigns and serve it to potential customers using paid advertising. Have a peek here guys for more info.

8. Use Third-Party Platforms to Pre-Launch Your Products

You can utilize third-party websites like Product Hunt to launch your products and validate their concepts. In such platforms, people review products and projects and vote for their favorite ones. Doing so will help you gain significant exposure at a nominal cost.

9. Leverage Q&A Sites

Q&A websites like Quora are the go-to sites for internet citizens to get answers to their questions. You can use such websites to generate relevant traffic to your site and improve your brand’s exposure.

Reddit too is a powerful platform for that matter. If you are a SaaS company, you can use professional platforms like Inbound.org, GrowthHackers, and StackOverflow as well. You can also utilize such platforms to converse with prospective customers and understand their take on your product.

In Conclusion

Contrary to popular belief, growing a company doesn’t always have to be challenging, time-consuming, or let alone an expensive process. The key is to follow the growth strategies that have been proven in the past, and the strategies listed in this article will surely be useful.

Sourced from TECHMAG

Read More
By
In News

Work From Home Fallout: Productivity Up, Innovation Down

No Comments

By Joe McKendrick

The mythology of many of society’s greatest scientists, inventors and writers flourishing in splendid isolation makes for great storytelling, but true ongoing innovation is more of a result of close collaboration and teamwork. With working from home now a relatively permanent state in the business world, here’s a growing realization that while productivity has received a boost, the process of innovation needs rethinking.

The now seven-month-long grand work-from-home experiment among knowledge and office workers has shattered many of the pre-conceived notions of managers that it can’t be done in a productive way. However, the ability to foster innovation across solely electronic interactions is still a challenge.

That’s the finding of a recent survey of 9,000 managers and employees across Europe, conducted by Boston Consulting Group and KRC Research, commissioned by Microsoft. Executives say their remote teams have been highly productive, with 82% saying they saw productivity levels either hold steady or increase as people shifted to remote work. More than half also see it as a powerful way to retain top talent.

At the same time, companies’ spirit of innovation has declined precipitously as their workforces got dispersed this year. In a similar survey conducted last year, 56% of executives considered their companies to be innovative with products and services. That percentage dropped to 40% this year.

To some degree, this drop can be attributed to the crisis atmosphere that reigned with the onset of Covid-19 measures. At the same time, managers admit they are not well-versed in handling large swaths of remote workers. A majority, 61%, report they have not learned how to effectively delegate and empower virtual teams.

The lesson learned is that promoting innovation is proving harder than ensuring productivity, the study’s authors point out. The cost of a highly dispersed workforce is “a loss of sense of purpose, which at work, is largely driven through strong and cohesive relationships and seeing how your tasks have impact on others,” reports Dr. Michael Parke, assistant professor at The Wharton School of University of the Pennsylvania and research collaborator. “Both of these are more easily accomplished when people work co-located and are more challenging when working virtually.”

As the Microsoft study bears out, fostering a spirit of innovation online calls for new tools and ways of communicating, and many managers and employees are still on a learning curve. In recent months, I have been going to experts in the fields of management, technology and communications to get their takes on how to approach this new way of working.

For starters, it needs to be said that traditional in-person workplace encounters may often be stifling, and not necessarily supercharging innovative spirits, says Neil Gordon, founder of Neil Gordon Consulting a communications advisory firm. “Getting everyone in the room together holds a certain social order — people are meant to stay in their seats and honor the container set by the leader of the meeting. If someone were to get up and wander around or even leave the meeting outright, it would carry with it enough tension to be disruptive.” In contrast, he continues, “participants in virtual meetings can simply turn off their camera momentarily and do pretty much anything they want in service of their own creative flow – write on their white board, and do push-ups – and then turn their camera back on when they’re done. Thus a savvy manager will give participants agency to turn off their camera if they feel like they need to work something out on their own.”

There are ways to replicate the “serendipity” that helps foster workplace innovation, says Aviv Ben-Yosef, consultant to technology industry executives. “No longer can you overhear a conversation or easily have water cooler conversations,” he says. Open communication is the key starting point. “Create opportunities for serendipity to take place that are adjusted to this situation,” he advises. “Have open communication — no private Slack messages on work-related stuff — so others might notice and chime in. Encourage peer reviews and sessions of working together to prevent people from becoming lost or going off on the wrong track for too long. The key here is communication.”

Secondly, Ben-Yosef advises, “make a conscious effort to use the advantages of this situation to your benefit. Remote environments lend themselves, if used correctly, to uninterrupted work sessions that allow people to achieve and remain in a state of ‘flow’ for longer. Leverage written communication—in an asynchronous environment, a well written paragraph can save a day of back and forth in email or a make a 90-minute meeting take only 15.”

Communication is one critical element of remote work innovation, and leadership is the other. “The question facing companies today is not whether innovation is better done in-person or via remote teams,” says Ravi Gajendran, associate professor of global leadership and management at Florida International University. “The real question now is how can leaders organize remote teams to be innovative. Almost every innovation project leader is likely to have to innovate with team members working remotely. In that sense, most teams today are virtual teams.”

Those organizations with at least some prior experience working together will be able to find ways of getting their work done even when working remotely, Gajendran points out. “Prior trust and goodwill will keep the team processes going even as they transition to remote work.”

Over time, Gajendran cautions, maintaining the “teaminess” of teams is going to be difficult when working remotely. “This is especially true as team members are working under stressful circumstances out of their homes and having to connect electronically over email and Zoom. The team can come unglued pretty fast as members begin to feel psychologically disconnected from one another.” To counteract this, Gajendran advises recognizing that leaders are the glue that can keep teams together. “Leaders can foster member inclusion in remote teams through personalized leadership by reaching out to each member. Frequent communication and a personal connection are critical for members feeling part of the team. When members feel included, they are more likely to contribute their ideas and solutions, which is critical for team innovation.”

Feature Image Credit: Can innovation flourish in remote work? GETTY

By Joe McKendrick

I am an author, independent researcher and speaker exploring innovation, information technology trends and markets. I am also a co-author of the SOA Manifesto, which outlines the values and guiding principles of service orientation in business and IT. I served on the organizing committee for the recent IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing, and was active on the program committee of the International SOA and Cloud Symposium series. Much of my research work is in conjunction with Forbes Insights and Unisphere Research/ Information Today, Inc., covering topics such as cloud computing, digital transformation, enterprise mobility, and big data analytics. I am also a contributor to CBS interactive, authoring the ZDNet “Service Oriented” site. In a previous life, I served as communications and research manager of the Administrative Management Society (AMS), an international professional association dedicated to advancing knowledge within the IT and business management fields. I am a graduate of Temple University

Sourced from Forbes

Read More
By
In News

How COVID-19 has pushed companies over the Technology Tipping Point—and Transformed Business Forever

No Comments

By Tim Hughes

For organisations there is now a rush to digital.

I’m not talking about systems change, I’m talking about, looking at the business “as is” and working out how to get your people and processes to be more digital “to be”.

I’m saying “more digital” as this is a journey.

Talking with James Stirk who is one of the experts on the team here at DLA Ignite.  He has always used the 4 Ps in his leadership positions.

Let’s not forget we are in the middle of a Pandemic, cash is tight, so what can we do to be more digital, strip out cost and increase our output?

In this blog, I take you through a number of factors you need to look at.

Pipeline – What can we do to maximize pipeline?

This requires us all to do what we can across the business to be in the pipeline building business.

We also have to be totally honest with ourselves here.  “What got us here, won’t get us there”.  We all know that business has changed due to the Pandemic and we have to change our sales and marketing models or run out of cash, without the right pipeline.  Research from Hubspot shows that “the number of deals created dropped 11% the week of April 6.”  I’m writing this in October 2020, do we really think that the deals created has picked up?

This diagram is of the deal drop in the US up to the 4th June 2020.  (The research also had figures for Europe and Asia.)

Let’s look at two of the most traditional ways of marketing before the pandemic, digital advertising and email marketing.

Digital Advertising

Yesterday I had a fascinating conversation with a Martin Lucas for an up and coming #TimTalk(my podcast) and the following figures are engagement rates for digital advertising.

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (this is where ads follow you around when you browse)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate and based on the amount of money that is spent on digital advertising, that means that $265 Billion is wasted on digital advertising every year.  This is an example of one area where before the pandemic it was seen as Ok to make spend like this, now it’s flushing dollars down the toilet.  It’s time to stop the spend, here is an article on whyCoca Cola stopped their advertising spend.

Another example is email marketing.

Email Marketing

According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April 2020. Said differently, 98% of our efforts to reach new prospects failed.

Hubspot say in the report “Sales teams are sending about 50% more email to prospects than they were pre-COVID, but responses continue to drop. Last week, sales response rates hit an all-time low for 2020 at 2.1%, a lower response rate than Christmas week 2019.”

Diagram from Hubspot showing the number of emails being sent going up and the response reducing.

Hubspot also said “These trends tell an important story. Email prospecting, to put it bluntly, is out of control. It’s easy to send thousands of emails with just a few clicks, and in a chaotic time, we understand why sales teams are sending so many. But volume and quality is a tradeoff — the time a team saves by sending out email blasts is wasted if that outreach isn’t personalized, relevant, and helpful. These gaps are clear in the data.”

What This Means for Businesses

Targeted prospecting matters more than ever.

Advertising and Email Marketing are just not fit for purpose in the Covid19 world, and you need to switch spending in these areas to create pipeline.

To quote Hubspot “As buyers have moved their purchasing online out of necessity, businesses with an established digital presence have reaped the rewards.”

The next P in James’s model is

People

This is about making sure you have a real hard honest look at the people you have and work out, “are they the people that will get us to the next phase of our business?”

It’s time for some hard choices.

A friend of mine recently advertised for a role, before the pandemic it would have been difficult to get a candidate and they would have employed search and advertised the role.  My friend, put a post on Linkedin and got 300 applications.

Obviously, you need to take into account ramp up times if you take on new teams.

One Venture Capital (VC) company I know, whenever they buy a company they fire the whole of the marketing department.  Why?  They tell me it’s very simple, if the team they buy hasn’t implemented digital and social by now, they never will.  They bring in interim people and build out a new team.

The third position in James’s 4 Ps is

 Partner or Channel

James’s argument is that each business needs to activate and support its channel and partners.

To use a roads metaphor, the direct sales channel is like the autoroutes or motorways, where the channel is the more minor roads.  Either way with a direct sales model and an indirect / partner / channel model you should have the greatest amount of coverage.

The more coverage the better the pipeline.

And finally the 4 P is

Process Improvement

This is where the business needs to look at all the processes in the business to

– Maximise pipeline

– To make it easier to close business

– To increase the win rate

What can you do to hit all of the 4Ps?

Pipeline?

People?

Partner?

Process?

The Number One Thing You Can Do As a Leader Is to Invest in Your Employees to be Digital

Your business went into lockdown analogue, but you as a leader have a duty of care to make sure your team come out as digital.

This is backed up by research from MIT and Korn Ferry.

“Groundbreaking international research by MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) reveals that enterprises that invest in building the digital skills of their internal workforce significantly outperform those who cut back”

“That conclusion is supported by conducted similar analysis from management and recruitment consultancy Korn Ferry which arrived at much the same conclusions – the most successful business are those who take a longer-term view on building a workforce capable of navigating and thriving through the challenges of the future.“

High Performing Businesses Use Social Strategically 

In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.

What Is A High Performance Business in The Post Pandemic World?

If you are a modern high performing business where social media is strategic to your business, or you hope it will be strategic to the business read on.

How Social Media Has Been used in the Past

Social media has been used tactically in the past within the business.  Often it will be in digital marketing, which sits in marketing and this involves tweeting a broadcast message along the lines of “buy our product, because it’s great”.  There maybe differences on platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, but the message is the same.  This is often called omnichannel.  You use all the channels, including email and cold calling and you push out the same message.

This is fundamentally broken, see statistics above.

Adverting, email marketing and cold calling are based on interruption and broadcast and social is based on permission and relationship.  This is a mistake that most companies make.

The Next Step In Social Media Maturity 

Back in 2015, I was involved in a very rudimentary social selling roll out across 4,000 people, across Europe.  It was basic as it was pretty much a way of connecting with prospects and clients that wasn’t spammy.  For example, connecting to people from the same University as you using a references that only a person who went there would know.  For example, somebody once connected to me on Linkedin with the message “Remember the “Silver Sword””.  Of course I did, I was the first pub off the campus of my University.  That meant I connected as we immediately had something in common.

Social / Digital Virtual / Remote Selling Comes of Age

Off the back of that I wrote the book “Social Selling – techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers”, which is available on Amazon worldwide.  I also wrote the blog “How to get 10 C-Level meetings a week using Twitter”.  These are stepping stones in the evolvement of social.  Both showing to the world that there was (and is) a business reason why you should have a social project in your business and the fact there is a return on investment (ROI).

The Social Business is Born

Back in 2018 we found that our social selling programs were “repeatable and predictable”.  Whenever we ran them it would create 30% more revenue and reduce the sales cycle by 40%.  This is pretty cool and something we are very proud of.

It was at this point that I tasked my Co-Founder, Adam Gray with executing the second part of our strategy, which was to create a “social business”.  We talked to our global resellers / partners and our global Associates and asked them which module do you want to come next, and the feedback was Human Resources.

Social Human Resources (HR) – Redefining HR in The Social Age

Now, if you talk to anybody in Human Resources (HR) they will say they use social media already in the department.  They probably (tactically) put out job ads on Twitter and when you ask them what return they get, the answer will be, little or zero.

Adam found a guy who is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personal Development (CIPD) and is also very social.  He was tasked with “reinventing the Human Resources department for the social age”.  He did this and we launched this in September 2019.  We also signed a contract for Social Marketing in December 2019.

Social Marketing – Redefining Marketing in the Social Age

Again, this wasn’t about having Marketing and layering on social media, which is the way Marketing works today, this is about redesigning Marketing for the social age.

To quote, Michael Brenner “Marketing’s job is finding people in your organisation, who want to share what they know or what they love”  how very true.  The same is for technical people.

Digital Supply Chain – Redefining Procurement and Supply Chain in the Social Age

I’ve just (August 2020) launched Social Procurement, but we are calling it Digital Supply Chain as that fits better with the nomenclature and sentiment of the procurement and supply chain market.

Business Transformation in the Social Age

It was back in 2019 that we stopped being just a social selling company and we became a business transformation company, using social media to impact the transformation.  Like the social selling programs, we are able to increase efficiency and effectiveness of a business and strip out cost.  An idea value proposition in the Covid19 pandemic.

The Social Age is Here

We are currently doing an implementation covering Sales, Marketing, Human Resources (HR) and Technical.

The company is a high-tech business so they have technical consultants and technical people in pre-sales.

Traditionally, these company work in silos or have distinctive roles and clear areas of demarcation.  Social has enabled businesses to strip out cost and increase output, ven during the pandemic.  Which right now is the “holy grail”

Where Do We Go From Here?

For those unsure of what to do, DLA Ignite will complete a review of your current social / digital / virtual / remote selling capability.  For free.

We will take your team (up top 10) and perform a complete root and branch Social Media Performance Assessment.

Sales, Marketing, Management, Technical, HR. Procurement ….whoever you want to include.

This will include: Profiles, connections, followers, inbound and outbound activity, content, engagement, follow up, results.

(Happy to provide the list of deliverables).

We will map your business against the DLA Ignite baseline and present back to you our findings. We will show you where improvements can be made and what results should be expected.  No hard sell, just present back to you a road map.

You entered lock down analogue, this is your chance to leave this pandemic, digital.

Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality.  Our website is here.

n just a few months’ time, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. According to a new McKinsey Global Survey of executives, 1 1. The online survey was in the field from July 7 to July 31, 2020, and garnered responses from 899 C-level executives and senior managers representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, and functional specialties. their companies have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and of their internal operations by three to four years.

By Tim Hughes

Sourced from DLA Digital Leadership Associates

Read More
By
Load More