For entrepreneurs who are looking to raise capital, finding the right investors to pitch is only half the battle. Once you know who you’re going to reach out to, you must successfully pique their interest in your project, as well as keep them interested once they’re engaged.
This is easier said than done. You want to provide an investor with enough information to excite them, but you don’t want to bog them down with every little fact and figure about your business: Too much information, after all, can be as bad as too little contact. To help you get it right, a panel of Young Entrepreneur Council members offer their best advice for attracting—and keeping—investors. Here’s what they advise you consider:
1. Break Your Project Into Clear Milestones
Break down your complete project into visually appealing deliverables. These could be design prototypes, wire frames, marketing analytics or functional deliverables. Keep your documents and project workings as supporting information, but make sure to present visual, easily digestible, customer-focused milestones to get your investors up to speed and keep them excited about your project. – Abeer Raza, TEKREVOL, LLC
2. Cut Down The Word Count
Keep it simple. Make the information concise, short and digestible with the least amount of words possible. You are more likely to succeed if you make your business simpler to understand with shorter updates, while still hitting the key points. – Colum Donahue, NuLodgic, LLC d/b/a Genuity
3. Show Your Results
The best way to attract investors is to solve real customer problems, show results and try to continually get new customers. If you are a new entrepreneur, this will make it significantly easier to get and retain the attention of investors. – Susan Rebner, Cyleron Inc.
4. Build Human Connections And Strong Interpersonal Relationships
Investors are human, so they are vulnerable and fickle. They are persuaded by others and tend to follow the herd. Like any other job, they are concerned about their performance and future. It is very important that you nurture your contacts. They don’t like being overwhelmed with information and tend to like relatable people and businesses. Try to connect with them on a personal and human level. – Mathew Sposta, The Crown League
5. Put Your Updates In Chart Form
A chart is worth a million words. Every business has some quantifiable milestones and entrepreneurs often forget to share those milestones with investors. We believe in monthly updates with a chart containing key metrics and only a few words. This keeps investors engaged and excited to receive the next update. – Flaviu Simihaian, Troy Medicare
Manufacturers have seized discussion forums. Corporations are buying reviews
About three years ago, Costco hired a fellow named Chris Wheatley to pick up a faulty hot tub being returned by one of its customers in Nova Scotia. Costco would come to regret having done that.
Wheatley, who runs a small business in Halifax selling and servicing tubs, had, out of disgust at what he calls the confidence game of the hot tub industry, established a website meant to educate consumers.
When the tub’s exterior panels began falling off during the ride back to the Costco warehouse, Wheatley abruptly pulled into a parking lot, took out his smartphone, and launched into an impromptu technical review.
It was savage. Wheatley took the viewer into the guts of the $10,000 tub, pointing out its skimpy insulation, a design defect that caused its pumps to overheat, the inferior quality of its fiberglass shell, which appeared to be propped up internally by Styrofoam, and the cheap plumbing of its hoses and connections. He then posted the video on his website, hottubuniversity.com, where it remains to this day.
“It went viral. I got, like, 200,000 hits in a very short period.”
Costco, says Wheatley, was in touch pronto.
“They told me to take the video down or they’d take legal action. I told them every message from them, every statement, would be put up on my website for public inspection. After that, they went away.”
Wheatley didn’t know it at the time, but he was on his way to becoming probably the North American hot tub industry’s most influential influencer. He says his website now attracts nearly 100,000 unique hits a year, mostly from people about to spend somewhere between $7,000 and $20,000.
Influencers are the big thing in marketing nowadays. Some are celebrities, some are Instagram stars who make big money promoting makeup, but most are just independent operators who found a niche. What they all seem to have in common is the ability to engender trust. Wheatley is a perfect example. His reviews are blunt, his language sometimes rough, and he answers all his emails – 4,500 last year – personally.
Manufacturing reviews
He reckons he influences, directly or indirectly, hundreds of millions worth of purchases from consumers who want to buy, but are gasping in the fog of the internet, most of it put there by the marketing departments of the unregulated hot tub industry.
“The online discussion forums are all controlled by the manufacturers,” he says. “People are getting lied to. This is a crappy world where companies trick customers with marketing for their crappy products.”
They do it because it works, of course. Research in the U.S. indicates that more than 80 per cent of buyers sometimes check a review before purchasing, and 40 per cent read them every time they buy. Younger buyers are especially reliant on reviews.
The hot tub game, says Wheatley, is being taken over by private equity firms that buy up manufacturers, cheapen the product by using cut-rate components (for which replacements can only be purchased from them), then package it with glossy, misleading marketing.
“You’re buying a product that’s designed to fail.”
So Wheatley doggedly plugs a small group of manufacturers that still use standard parts you can buy anywhere. He endorses brands that produce strong hand-rolled shells, glued-and-clamped plumbing, and proper insulation. He refuses advertising.
But he also lives in the world, and has to make a living. The website costs money. He has employees. He has to procure tubs to dissect and review. So, like most influencers, he’s begun taking money from manufacturers he recommends. Enough to break even, he says. He will disclose, if asked, which ones they are.
And he turns down all offers from manufacturers that don’t meet his standards.
Does taking the money make Wheatley less credible? Maybe, a bit. But where, nowadays, does a consumer turn? As Ira Rheingold at the National Association of Consumer Advocates in Washington puts it, never has more information been available, and never has so much of it been fake.
Now, a disclosure here: When a physiotherapist prescribed a hot tub after some surgeries two years ago, I found myself poking around the internet, seeking some reliable advice, and finally found Wheatley. I am certain the information on his site prevented me from making some awfully costly mistakes.
Controlling consumer information
But the more I researched, the more I realized how completely corporate interests, open or veiled, control consumer information online.
A Google search for almost any consumer item will turn up a raft of review sites, most of which are clearly for-profit operations offering to rank companies’ products in return for payment, or want to solicit customer complaints as a profitable means of developing leads for lawyers.
Sales and review sites routinely offer sellers more visible billing in exchange for a premium. It’s the online equivalent of fees companies pay to ensure their products are placed prominently in store aisles.
Consumer review sites, where individuals testify about the quality of a purchase or sales experience, are equally sketchy. Reports abound of shills driving up five-star rankings.
In fact, says Rheingold, companies are taking steps to stifle negative reviews.
“When you buy something online you might be unknowingly agreeing to a non-disparagement clause buried in the fine print. We’ve seen a number of companies turn around and sue over a bad review on a site like Yelp. The idea is to scare people.”
Enabling consumers, says Rheingold, is not a priority in the United States nowadays. Quite the opposite, where the Trump administration is concerned. In Canada, we just seem indifferent. We’ve never had much of a consumer movement here. We certainly could use one.
Feature Image: We’ve never had much of a consumer movement here. We certainly could use one. (Atsushi Tomura/Getty Images)
Neil Macdonald is an opinion columnist for CBC News, based in Ottawa. Prior to that he was the CBC’s Washington correspondent for 12 years, and before that he spent five years reporting from the Middle East. He also had a previous career in newspapers, and speaks English and French fluently, and some Arabic.
About a year ago, I made the transition from marketing to UX. I studied psychology and marketing in school and launched into a marketing career after graduating. I enjoyed what I was doing, but I wasn’t sure it was the right career path for me. By lucky happenstance, I discovered user experience and immediately fell in love.
Although we use metrics and other bits of data in marketing to influence people, I often felt like I was playing a guessing game. Would this LinkedIn campaign perform well? Would this particular email resonate? I felt like my target audience was behind some sort of wall. I could occasionally glean something from past successes or recommended approaches, but I didn’t truly understand them. The idea of pursuing a career that was focused on the users and integrating their needs into a product was very intriguing.
But it was not an easy transition. From the time I discovered UX to finally landing my first role, it took about two and a half years. There were highs and lows, from completing different courses to almost giving up on the job search.
That’s right — I almost gave up. User experience can be a really tough field to break into. Which was especially disheartening because I kept hearing about how much the field was growing and the gap in talent to match that growth. After completing initial research on my own and completing a UX class with General Assembly, I eagerly scoured job boards to see what was available.
But I found two huge issues. The first was the quality of job postings. As I mentioned, and as you probably know, UX is a growing field. And while that means lots of opportunities, it also means companies may not totally understand what they are hiring for. The number of postings I saw that included everything from UI, to UX design, to UX research, to front-end development was terrifying. Sure, there are people that will have skills across the board, but it’s a very rare person who can do it all well.
Another issue was experience. A lot of companies just weren’t willing to take on a junior person. They wanted someone who could jump right in and hit the ground running.
I despaired for a bit, but then I changed my way of thinking and decided to take a slightly different route. At the time, I was working for a small non-profit. It was a great place to begin my career, but I started looking at marketing roles within larger companies that also had UX teams. I thought perhaps I could transition to UX once I proved myself.
So, I landed a job at a much larger company. Shortly after starting, however, my company was acquired and there were a lot of changes to manage. I felt myself pulling away from UX again in order to stay afloat. I lost my way for a bit.
After everything started to settle down (slightly), I felt myself drawn back towards it and I reached out to the UX team within my company. I was able to work on a mini research project, which invigorated me to pick my pursuit back up. I started attending local meetups again and also registered for the Nielsen Norman conference to attain a certification in UX Research.
At this point, I had been studying UX for over two years. There were times I felt like I might never make it and times where I had to solely focus on my marketing career. But even when I shoved it to the back of my mind, I never completely threw the idea away. As luck would have it, I met someone at the NNg conference who recommended me to her company’s hiring team. Her company was just starting to grow a user centered design team and they were more open to junior employees. They cared more about my desire to learn and passion for the field, instead of years of experience.
Everyone takes a different route or turn on their way to UX, but that doesn’t mean it won’t ever happen. Even if you lose the way for a bit, it’s possible to re-orient yourself and find the way there. Keep learning and meeting new people. There will be companies and job postings that aren’t right for you, but that doesn’t mean the job for you doesn’t exist. If or when you lose hope, keep walking.
EnFont Terrible lets you remix your fonts in seconds.
You can never have too many fonts, we’ve found, and just to complicate matters we’ve also found a fantastic new site that makes it absurdly easy to mutilate your existing type, turn it into whole new pieces of typographical joy and even create stunning kinetic typography in a matter of seconds.
It’s called EnFont Terrible, which is by far the best pun you’re going to hear this week, and it’s the work of Spanish designer Javier Arce. He claims that he doesn’t really know about kerning or any of that complicated typography stuff, but decided to make his own type generation site anyway.
If you can’t be bothered with typography tutorials, you’ll be delighted to learn that EnFont Terrible is quite gloriously simple to use; either use the default fonts that come with it or upload your own, and by dragging a few sliders around you can warp and mutate it into something quite weird and wonderful in a matter of seconds, without having to know the first thing about typography.
Once you’re happy with it, just hit the Create Font button in the bottom right-hand corner and you’ll instantly save your mutant creation in OpenType format.
As a serious typographic tool it probably leaves a little to be desired, but as a fun way of mucking about with fonts it’s very hard to beat, and with the right input fonts and a bit of experimentation you could quite easily grow a massively expanded font collection over the course of an afternoon.
Don’t take our word for it, though; you can get to grips with EnFont Terrible’s tools here.
Potentially the most important decision you’ll make in your business’s early days is whether or not to bring in partners to be co-owners alongside you. This could include searching for someone who complements your strengths and weaknesses. It could also include someone who informally brainstormed or created a rough business product or service idea with you. If you choose to go that route, you need to give as much thought to whom you take on as a business partner as you would when you decide to marry your spouse.
Some partners seem to have been made for each other. A man named Irv Robbins grew up working in his father’s ice cream shop. Irv’s brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, also knew ice cream pretty well; he enjoyed making it for the troops while serving as a lieutenant in the navy during World War II.
After the war, Robbins started Snowbird Ice Cream in Glendale, California. Burton Baskin, who had married Robbins’ sister Shirley during the war, ran a menswear shop in Chicago. When he and Shirley moved to Los Angeles, Robbins convinced Baskin that selling ice cream would be more fun than selling clothes. Baskin agreed and decided to open his own ice cream store.
As Robbins once told a newspaper reporter: “I was about to sign a lease on a store in Pasadena, and I said [to Burton], ‘You take it. You go into the ice cream business and do the same thing I’m doing. And as soon as we have enough stores open, we can open up a little ice cream factory together.’”
So they opened two ice cream stores in the same neighbourhood. They decided to compete rather than becoming partners because both felt that if they joined forces, the compromises required of a joint business venture might get in the way of their creative ideas.
Over the next few years, however, as each built a successful business, Baskin and Robbins started to recognize there might be significant benefits in banding together rather than competing against each other. They shared a similar vision and had several “aha” moments along the way. They agreed wholeheartedly to sell nothing but ice cream but make lots of different flavours. They also realized they had complementary skill sets, as one excelled in operations, and the other in sales and marketing. Both had networks that, put together, would enable them to reach out farther and faster when trying to grow.
They decided to become partners in their new ice cream venture and selected the order of the names in their new company, Baskin-Robbins, with a coin toss.
They were also early pioneers of one of the great retail concepts of the past century: franchising. Within five years, they had 40 shops in Southern California; soon after, they trademarked their 31 Flavours concept. Today Baskin-Robbins has more than 2,800 shops in the United States and 5,000 worldwide.
There’s no single model for partnerships, but the Baskin-Robbins story is a great example of how, with a shared vision, similar temperaments, complementary skill sets, nonoverlapping networks, and hard work, a partnership can succeed.
If you’re thinking about seeking a partner to join your business, be sure to consider these factors:
Vision. Your potential partner should share your vision or complement it with their own ideas.
Temperament. Often one partner is a natural leader, while the other is more of a functional expert. Successful enterprises require a balance of both.
Complementary skill sets. Partnerships work better if your skills diverge. Thus, a great salesperson and a great web developer may make a powerful team. Investors don’t like to pay twice for the same position. Expertise in different aspects of business is a plus, and it helps when partners can approach problems from different perspectives.
Nonoverlapping networks. You each have a network, and the less they overlap the better—enabling you to gain access to the widest range of possible investors, partners, and vendors.
Experience. You’d be better at your job if you had twice as much experience, right? Partners can pool their years of experience to create a deep well of knowledge and skill to draw from.
It’s also critical to have a written partnership contract. At the very least, a partnership contract should address the following:
Ownership. Who owns what percentage of the company’s equity? It does not have to be a 50/50 split!
Financial commitment. What will each of you put into the company? If more capital is needed, what’s expected of you? Is the company financially responsible for contracts and accounts, or are you as individuals?
Time commitment. How much time and effort will each side give to the company? If you’re not expected to contribute evenly, then adjustments should be made in terms of ownership and compensation to account for that fact, unless you balance time investment against financial investment.
Cash compensation. How much do you get and when will you get it? Is it based on hitting certain milestones or hours spent? Will compensation be in the form of salary or distributions? Do you have to take cash, or could you exchange it for more shares instead?
Expenses. What’s your policy on expenses? How much entertaining can you do? Who writes the reimbursement checks?
Voting rights. If one person has more shares, do they make all the rules? If you’ve split them 50/50, how do you break a tie? Do all big decisions need to be unanimous?
Vesting schedule. What happens when one partner leaves the business? Make sure you have a vesting schedule in place that outlines how equity is distributed.
Buyout. Under what circumstances can you sell your interest in the company? What will the terms be? You should agree upfront. Make sure you include a provision that one partner can only sell to another partner if the other partner expressly approves.
Email is a great marketing tool, especially in the business-to-business (B2B) world. But professionals may receive hundreds of emails every week, and they simply don’t have the time to read every one of them.
If you want to reach your contacts through email marketing, you’ll have to secure their attention long enough to avoid immediate transfer to the dreaded “trash” folder. We asked a group of Forbes Agency Council members how to stand out among the many emails in a professional’s inbox. Their best answers are below.
1. Hyper-Personalize Your Messages
Only reach out if you are willing to be hyper-targeted and personalize your message to the target recipient. Thereafter, don’t ask for anything up front. Focus on providing value and sharing. This builds trust and credibility. Remember, it’s a mini relationship you are building. – Zamir Javer, Jumpfactor
2. Write Your Subject Line Last
When I write my emails, I always write my subject line last. I work with nonprofits and social enterprises. Because of that, I like to create emails that are very personable and feel more like a letter you would send a friend. I even include a handwritten signature at the end of every email. Once the email is complete, I pull the best line from the text and use it as my subject line. – Genia Stevens, Belwah Media
3. Stay Away From Image Overload
Make them personal. Sometimes a plain text email, addressing the recipient by their first name, will perform much better than a graphics-heavy email with 18 clickable links. In addition to getting noticed and read, it has a better chance of actually making it to their inbox. Too many images or sales-heavy words can land you a spot in the dreaded “Promotions” folder. – Bernard May, National Positions
4. Don’t Templatize Your Personalization
Treat people like real people, not businesses or business contacts. Don’t try to “trick” them into thinking your email is personalized by using templated content and customizing the name of the recipient or company—make it truly personal. Generic personalized emails are today’s mass junk mail. The gig is up. The recipient knows it wasn’t written just for them. – Kelli Corney, Mightily
5. Get Right To The Point
With over 400 emails flooding my inbox each day, I’m quick to delete just about anything that looks like spam—which means that on more than one occasion, I’ve deleted emails that did, in fact, present some kind of lucrative opportunity for collaboration. It’s the emails that get right to the point in the subject line that grab my attention the most—subject lines like “new potential client opportunity.” – Michelle Dempsey, Very Well-Written Marketing
6. Appeal To The Few People Who Need You Now
Email marketing will not work miracles. Don’t expect it to. Write subject lines that will appeal to the few customers who need what you’re offering now. If they open your email and glance at it for a second or two, you’ve earned a brand impression. Be brief and clear about the value proposition and call to action. Have a plan to follow up with those who click the email but don’t “convert.” – Craig Klein, SalesNexus.com
7. Offer Insights And Speak To Tipping Points
Emails that promote products and services are only useful to people who want products or services promoted to them, which is typically a very small segment of any email list. Instead, offer insights that help your audience achieve their most important goals. Identify tipping points when they know they need better ideas to move ahead, and offer great advice. This helps you top the inbox. – Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group
8. Send Something They Want To Read
There are certain emails that I look forward to receiving. I open every single one. Why? Because the information inside is offering real insight that will add value to my life. This applies to seeing a new piece of clothing that I might want, or to the consultant who is sharing their thoughts on our field. In short, you can earn trust by sending quality and keep trust by not sending too often. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai
9. Leverage User-Generated Content
The power of user-generated content extends far beyond social media. Repurposing user-generated content as part of your email marketing strategy can help capture attention and drive sales, as this content tends to be more authentic, personal and engaging. Not to mention, a consistent and streamlined visual marketing approach across all channels can help strengthen consumer relationships. – David Shadpour, Social Native
10. Don’t Lead With Self-Interest
Lead with the news or a subject line that’s relevant (or humorous) to the receiver, not yourself. Emails with subject lines like, “Got time for a call?” are underwhelming because the self-interest is clear. But when you write to a prospect or contact with a compelling subject line that shows you actually care about their problems or interests, the probability of hitting “delete” decreases. – Kathleen Lucente, Red Fan Communications
11. Offer ‘Positive Disruption’
Know your audience and their interests and needs. Be ahead of trends and industry news, and be the first to offer keen insights, opinions and solutions. Positive disruption can spur thinking and charge change. Focus on what your targets need to know and not just what you want to share. No one needs more information, but everyone needs knowledge. Make sure the news you share is worth reading. – Pat Fiore, FIORE
12. Always Frame Your Message From The Customer’s Perspective
Many times, email marketing messages focus too heavily on broad product claims or feature sets. Challenge yourself to look at the communication from the point of view of the customer. What benefit will it bring them? What need will it fulfill? Be specific. You’ll be surprised how this shifts and improves your narrative. – Jenni Smith, EGR International
13. Use A Personalized Video
By using a personalized video with an embedded animation in the email, we are able to break through the noise of the inbox and grab the attention of our prospects. We use BombBomb to create hyper-personalized and relevant content for our prospects and then email them with a few sentences and an embedded GIF preview of the video, which plays directly in their inbox. – Adam Guild, Placepull
14. Say One Thing, Really Well
Your window of engagement is three seconds. Within that time, you must clearly articulate your message and how it will add value to their lives. While you may have a series of new services and helpful tips to share with your customers, push yourself to focus on one core message with one call to action. – Andrew Au, Intercept Group
LinkedSelling is a marketing agency that helps B2B companies generate high-quality leads and appointments through social media, such as LinkedIn, and email. LinkedSelling offers training, custom workshops, and fully outsourced LinkedIn marketing campaigns.
What better place to attract the right clientele for such services than LinkedIn, the leading social network for B2B lead gen?
Challenge
Trouble is, LinkedSelling didn’t immediately achieve stellar results through LinkedIn’s advertising platform by simply mirroring ad campaigns from other platforms. So, when LinkedIn released an array of new marketing products, the LinkedSelling team decided to revamp its approach and restructure campaigns specifically for LinkedIn.
Solution
Seeking to align its LinkedIn marketing strategy with the sales funnel, LinkedSelling started using different products for different stages of the buying cycle. The company had identified that beyond engagement or opt-ins, what really drives their business forward is appointments. So LinkedSelling structured each of its campaigns around a simple process to get more qualified prospects to book a phone call with the sales team.
For colder prospects who were actively seeking out lead gen solutions or were not yet familiar with their brand, LinkedSelling ran LinkedIn Sponsored Content to drive awareness and engagement. With warmer audiences, the team would reach out directly through LinkedIn Sponsored InMail to spark conversations, or with highly targeted follow-up messaging via Text Ads and Dynamic Ads.
“We just want to be in every location,” says Pat Henseler, LinkedSelling’s Director of Products. He adds that collaborating with sales reps to identify their most desirable audiences and building custom follow-up campaigns for new leads have been key to this fruitful approach.
Results
With a focused and dedicated strategy, LinkedSelling began to see tremendous improvements from marketing on LinkedIn. Henseler points to “volume and reliability” as hallmarks of his company’s lead generation results through LinkedIn. In just the past two months, their campaigns have generated over 820 new leads and seen a 7:1 return on ad spend in that same time period.
“LinkedIn typically generates high-value, high-qualified leads for us. The leads we’ve generated through LinkedIn have cut our closing time almost in half,” Pat Henseler, Director of Product, LinkedSelling, said.
Henseler added that he might be most impressed by the vast reduction in closing time he sees when marketing on the platform. “On average, our agency clients sign in 27-to-36 days through other avenues. On LinkedIn, we see 16-to-18 days.” One particularly effective practice he calls out is having the sales team reach out to prospects who have taken some steps to indicate interest (i.e. they downloaded a report) but have not yet connected directly (i.e. they have not booked a call); these kinds of proactive steps make a big difference in helping LinkedSelling get their money’s worth from ad spend.
Building an audience is an old strategy in marketing. Did you know that Proctor & Gamble created soap operas so they could build an audience to buy their soap?
That’s right. In the 1930s, P&G sponsored daytime serial dramas on the radioto advertise their products to housewives. Why? Because research suggested that women wanted to be entertained while doing housework. And so, literal “soap operas” were born.
In the early to mid 20th century, Edward Bernays — long considered the “father of public relations” — also built audiences on behalf of his clientele, which coincidentally included P&G. The Conversation reports that “to counteract President Coolidge’s stiff image, Bernays organized ‘pancake breakfasts’ and White House concerts with Al Jolson and other Broadway performers.” Knowing that such events would garner significant media attention and ingratiate Coolidge with new social circles, Bernays provided an opportunity to “control and regiment the masses” in Coolidge’s favor. Who can say no to a pancake breakfast?
Building an audience is as important now as it was then. We just have more tools at our disposal: From YouTube videos to blog posts and social media campaigns, there are more ways than ever to reach millions of people with your own content.
Podcasting is one of the most powerful ways to reach people. According to one study, more than half of Americans over age 12 (144 million Americans) have listened to a podcast — up from 44% in 2018. It’s estimated that 60 million Americans listen to podcasts weekly. That’s a lot of potential listeners.
Because of that avid listenership and the popularity of home voice assistant devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, podcasting is now an important part of the marketing mix for a modern brand strategy. Home voice assistant devices are making it easier than ever to listen to music, podcasts, news, flash briefings and other types of audio content while you’re doing other things in your home, whether it’s getting dressed in the morning, cooking meals, cleaning or even relaxing on the couch.
Marketers can create podcasts to build an audience based on a brand or a specific area of expertise. If they trust you, then people are likely to start trusting what your business can bring to the table — and they’ll show their trust with their pocketbooks.
Whether it’s for your personal or organizational brand, building an audience of listeners who know, like and trust you — and are comfortable giving you their money — is a smart business strategy. In fact, 41% of monthly podcast listenershave household incomes of $75,000 or more. Reaching them makes sense financially.
So how do you reach them? As always, content is king. Make your content interesting. Make it informative. A podcast helps you tell your story, so more people will know, like and trust you. It also allows you to position yourself as a credible expert from a listener’s perspective. With my podcast, I’m able to do just that as an expert on public relations.
When you invite a guest to be interviewed on your podcast, it becomes an in-depth, even intimate conversation. You can dig deep into your guest’s background — what makes them tick, what they’ve accomplished and what their plans are. Once you dig deep, you get to know your guest better, so you can help them solve their greatest problems. I call it the “white knight” strategy because you’re perfectly positioned to swoop in and save the day by helping them solve those problems.
With that in mind, your guests are often your best brand ambassadors. They’re likely to have a sense of ownership in your podcast and to help promote it through word of mouth and their social media channels. That helps you expand your sphere of influence and strengthen your personal brand — and you’re not even doing the work.
As word spreads, you may even receive media coverage — the cherry on the podcasting sundae. When media members hear you describe your area of expertise, they’re more likely to call on you the next time they have to report on a relevant topic. Your quote can become the closing quote of the story.
Even if it doesn’t lead to media coverage, a podcast is valuable in itself. All of the content that you create can be repurposed as blog posts, infographics, social media posts, e-books and even print books. In my experience, there’s no better cornerstone content for your area of expertise. Plus, all of that content can boost your search engine optimization profile — on Google Search and beyond.
So what are you waiting for? Start podcasting, and build your audience.
How can marketers better connect with people we hope will become our customers?
Over the few years, I’ve been researching why there’s such a disconnect between marketing and customers so I can understand how to bridge that gap.
Why? Because right now, the trust gap between marketers and customers has never been more significant.
For example, this recent Gallup Poll showed that public confidence in the honesty and ethics of marketers and sellers is at the bottom of the list.
And this survey by Hubspot showed that only 3 percent of people surveyed consider marketers and salespeople trustworthy. I’ve asked myself: how can things get better?
Quick Takeaways:
Focus constantly on improving the customer experience.
Make your communication people-centered, not product-centered.
Do not objectify people when following your standard sales or marketing processes.
Don’t Forget the Customer Experience
This is a problem we face in marketing. And as you’ll see much of problem is self-inflicted.
Here’s what I mean:
I think we marketers can be cynical and even snarky at times. We know good marketing. And we have well-tuned B.S. meters. We’re customers who know a great experience too.
For example, I talked with a VP of Marketing yesterday about these ideas, and he shared a recent negative marketing experience he had as a customer.
He said, “It sucks, but here’s the thing: I’m guilty of doing the same thing too.”
I asked him why marketers struggle with connecting with customers, and he replied:
I think it’s easier for us in marketing to talk about what we’re comfortable with which is the product/service we sell. And we LOVE to talk them. But what I’m not very good at is understanding what motivates our customer and how to best talk to them.
Listen to Your Own Words
The significant part of the problem is the words and jargon we choose in marketing and sales to describe what we do and the people we’re doing it for. Namely, customers and potential customers.
Why? Because our words affect how we think.
It’s something linguists call the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which suggests that the words and the language we choose influences our thinking. I understood this intuitively, but I don’t know that I’ve helped much.
A decade ago, I wrote the book Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, and it succeeded beyond my hopes. Back then, I wrote that marketing and sales come down to one thing: starting and growing relationships. And I still believe that’s true.
To help, I’ve written about things like
Be human. Use empathy. Remember leads are people.
But I realize that didn’t articulate the problem which is the words we use in the sales and marketing are object-centered, not people-centered.
Let me explain.
Understand How Jargon Influences Thinking and Perception
In my experience, our words express more than our thoughts and feelings. They reflect our motivations and values. And our customers feel them. This is why customer empathy is essential.
But more than that, our words influence brain function, i.e., how we think.
Case in point, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman the authors of Words Can Change Your Brain confirm this through their extensive research. In sum, their research shows that our words actually change brain function and we are astonishingly unskilled when it comes to our understanding and communicating with others.
According to Newberg and Waldman, “We communicate in so many different ways and in so many situations, but if we don’t bring self-reflective consciousness into the equation by reflecting on what we say before we say it, we’ll fail to reach the depths of intimacy and cooperation that we are capable of.”
For example, the minute I call someone a “lead” or “prospect,” I turn them into an object in my mind. And when I see someone as an object, I treat my marketing as something I DO to people rather than something I do FOR them.
We objectify people when we use jargon like leads, prospects, suspects, conversions, opportunities, pipeline, MQLs, SQLs and more. We also use phrases like, “crush your quota,” “lead magnets, “wins,” ”closes,” “deals,” and more.
When we put ourselves in our customers’ shoes and use empathy, we can begin to see how we unwittingly talk in a way that dehumanizes people and treats them as objects.
Nobody wants to be treated as an object to convert. Instead, we need to address others as thinking and feeling people with individual needs. So how can we identify with others and connect on a human level?
Close the Trust Gap
It’s no wonder the perception of marketers and sellers is negative, and we have a trust gap. And we’re due for a change.
It starts with the words we use which ultimately affects how we think and act towards others. We need to think about how we can connect more humanly and engagingly.
We have this incredible capacity to influence people positively or negatively.
That’s why we need to find congruency in the words we use and the ultimate purpose of marketing which is to help start and grow customer relationships.
To do this, immerse yourself in your customer’s world and think from their experience. Begin by looking at what you see and hear. And then consider the words you use from your client’s perspective. This will help inspire new language.
Also, the use of words that people-centered. For example, instead of leads, you can talk about change makers, potential customers, future customers, future advocates instead. See what I mean?
Next Steps
How will you change the words that you use to describe customers and future customers?
How might you change the way you talk about what you do inside (an outside) your companies to treat people like humans rather than objects to convert?
Based on the words and jargon we use, it’s no wonder the perception of marketers and sellers is negative, and we have a trust gap. It’s time for a change.
Brian Carroll knows what drives B2B buyers. As the founder of the B2B Lead Blog, a researcher and lecturer on marketing best practices, and leader in empathy marketing, he’s at the epicenter of the shifting B2B marketing landscape. Brian is the author of the bestseller, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale (McGraw-Hill). He is also the founder of the B2B Lead Roundtable LinkedIn Group with 19,533+ members. Brian recently finished a stint as Chief Evangelist at MECLABS (parent company of MarketingSherpa) and is now back to helping B2B understand and execute modern lead generation and empathetic marketing with his speaking, consulting, and training workshops. www.b2bleadblog.com @brianjcarroll
Eventually somebody will write something unpleasant about your business. You better have a plan.
Reputation management in the age of the internet is essential to business like water is to humans.
Well, maybe not that extreme. But you get the idea.
You’ve probably stumbled across a statistic or two about how impactful online reviews and feedback are on purchasing decisions. The bottom line is that public brand sentiment is a game changer in how people shop these days. This is a reality that all entrepreneurs must come to terms with.
The task of managing an online reputation is not an easy one, nor is it a one-size-fits-all process. The goal is to make sure you don’t have to learn the biggest lessons the hard way. That said, here are four things that many entrepreneurs get wrong about managing their online reputation.
1. Underestimating the value of consistency.
As many entrepreneurs quickly learn, managing an online reputation isn’t something that can be done in an afternoon or over the weekend. If there is one overarching buzzword attached to this process, it’s consistency.
For as long as your business is operating, shaping and maintaining an online reputation is a job that never ends. In the beginning, the steps involved in getting the ball rolling can likely be done single-handedly. These initial steps typically include:
Setting up Google Alerts for anything brand-related.
Claiming your business on the major platforms like Yelp, Google My Business, and niche review sites.
In the startup stage, consistently interacting with people online, responding to reviews, and creating thought leadership content won’t require a momentous time commitment. However, once business picks up, maintaining consistency will start to become harder and harder. As a general rule, if you are spending between one and two hours per day staying on top of your online reputation, it’s probably time to consider bringing on a specialist – at least on a part-time basis.
2. Assuming star ratings are all that matter.
To reiterate, customer reviews are an essential ingredient to an online reputation. A big part of the process is simply getting customers to review your product, service, and overall experience. Truth be told, most people won’t leave a review on their own. The good news is about 70% will if they are asked to, according to a study by BrightLocal.
Over the years, the very concept of online reviews has seen an interesting evolution. The era of online reviews started back in the late 1990’s during the Clinton presidency. Gradually, websites like RateMD.com started popping up in which people could review doctors.
Fast forward to today and there are niche review platforms designed for restaurants all the way to software solutions. In terms of the reviews themselves, a good or bad online reputation goes far beyond just the number of star ratings.
Consumers these days have more options than ever before. People can now be extremely picky in terms of how and where they spend their money. They look to online reviews to get an unbiased third-party opinion of a brand, product, or service. As you develop a strategy to gather reviews, you need to design prompts that give people the whole picture of what it’s like to do business with you.
Now, this can be tricky. You want to get substantial feedback, yet you don’t want to make it too time-consuming for the customer. When you send out follow up emails asking people to review, keep the prompt simple. Ask them what the pros were, the cons, the general overview, and advice to the company. This works to give people a 360-degree view of your business from a customer’s perspective.
Keep in mind, in the world of online reviews, honesty reigns supreme.
3. Negative sentiment should be left alone.
No one likes getting negative reviews. You put your heart and soul into your business; seeing unhappy customers rip it to shreds in a public arena is tough to watch.
However, negative reviews are not the grim reaper – believe it or not.
The way you react to bad sentiment says WAY more about your business than the review itself. To reference the BrightLocal study again, nearly 90 percent of consumers read business’ responses to reviews. Moreover, Google has confirmed that responding to reviews improves SEO value.
So, regardless of how painful it is to read bad reviews, you need to bite the bullet and make an effort to respond. If you play your cards right, you can turn this into a positive and gain a loyal customer. Zappos is famous for going above and beyond to turn bad customer experiences into extremely memorable positives.
Responding to negative reviews requires a certain touch. First and foremost, you don’t want to respond right away. Let the bad sentiment marinate for a day or so. The last thing you want is to respond while emotions are high. Second, and this should go without saying, try your best to empathize. Ultimately, your brand reputation depends on your ability to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and meet their needs.
Lastly, do your best to try and take the conversation offline – whether it’s on a review platform or social media. The initial public response should be cordial, but then encourage the bulk of the interaction with the nitty-gritty details to take place in private. This is for both your protection and that of the customer.
4. Thinking there is a ‘quick-fix’ for reputation issues.
An online reputation can always take a bad turn. There is a common saying that goes, “A reputation is something that can take 30 years to build, yet be completely destroyed in 30 seconds.”
In the age of social media and constant connectedness, we see crises happen all the time. United Airlines, Uber, and Wells Fargo are just a few examples of a reputation falling apart in an instant. If this unfortunate event happens to you, the key is to not let panic set in, as this leads to rash decisions.
In the old days of the internet, many companies assumed they could combat poor sentiment by forging their own positive reviews or paying professional writers to write long, detailed praises on major review platforms. While this certainly worked for a hot second, review sites wised up to these devious tactics. Trying to sidestep the process of gaining authentic reviews can get you into serious trouble.
Additionally, the simple fact that people nowadays are bombarded with insane amounts of brand messaging every day, most consumers have gotten pretty good at spotting BS. Resorting to sketchiness to try and mend a damaged reputation can often times put you even deeper in the hole.
When you are in a pickle, you need to accept that there is no quick solution. Getting people back on your side is a long process that often times requires deep-seated change. Take Uber for example. When they were in hot water from poor practices behind the scenes, they essentially cleaned house and rebuilt their company culture from the ground up. While they still have a long way to go, the new CEO is doing the right things to turn Uber’s image around.
The most important thing you can do is critically listen to what people are saying and make a conscious effort to usher in a fundamental transformation.
Over to You
The task of managing your online reputation will be around as long as your business’s doors are open. Not everything is going to be peaches & cream. You are going to hit bumps in the road and need to know how to handle it.
Hopefully, this post has given you a good idea of what you should do, and more importantly, what you should not do.
