10/01/2016 - 11/01/2016 - My Marketing File

“The winners always research, prepare and plan the sale” – Interview by John Smibert In our last discussion with Dylis Guyan – “Sales mistake 1 – Lack of strategy” – we talked about how it is importance to have a strategy to attract customers and gain commitment to meet. Now that we have a commitment what next? Dylis told me that too often, “salespeople will rock up, open their boot, and they’ll rummage through and pull out some dog-eared brochures”, and go to their sales meeting with little more preparation. They wing it. She emphasises that top salespeople carefully plan all sales opportunities. In this discussion she talks in some detail about the need for preparation including research, understanding our customer, their customers and industry, planning your questions, determining the insight we need to use to underpin our questions and more. Dylis uses an excellent case story to emphasise the points. If you want to know the details you are invited to watch or read the full interview below. Dylis Guyan is based in Oxford, England and is an international sales and marketing expert, trainer, coach and speaker. She is also founder of the B2B Sales Academy. Interview John: Hello, I’m with Dylis Guyan again – welcome back, Dylis! Dylis: Hi, John! John: Hey, we had a great discussion about how important it is to plan and build a strategy, and the case study you talked about was about how to build a plan to attract, and I thought they were great. But there’s a lot more to building a sales strategy than just attracting. Dylis: Absolutely, yes. John: Tell me what else we need to focus on. Dylis: Well, once you’ve got that prospective client showing interest and wanting to see you, and bearing in mind what I talked about earlier, it takes multiple contact, that has to be part of your strategy. John: And never give up, yes. Be persistent. Dylis: Yes, exactly. So, let’s say we’ve got to the point where they’re happy to see us, then we have to be prepared for when we go to that face to face meeting. I’m sure that you’ve seen this, John, where sometimes salespeople will rock up and they open their boot, and they’ll rummage through and pull out some dog-eared brochures and so on… John: Brochures and stuff, yes. And all about “My product or my company.” Dylis: Yes, exactly. So, it’s about being prepared. It’s, again, doing research to fully understand your client, where they are now, and looking at what their products and services are. John: So the preparation is all about your client, understanding your client, understanding what they’re about, the challenges they’re facing, what’s happening in their industry, what’s happening with their customers. Dylis: Yes, yes. And of course if you’re experienced in a particular industry, you will have great insights to bring to your clients, you will become a valuable asset. You will get to the position where they can’t do without you, not just your product or service, because you’re such a valuable… John: That’s absolutely right. I’ve seen so many very successful salespeople get their—not because they’ve got the gift of the gab, it’s all about the fact that they get to know their customers, they become an expert in what’s happening in their industry and in their particular organisation, and those customers just want to spend time with them because they’re creating value in the discussions and conversations they’re having. Dylis: That’s right, that’s exactly right. So, as part of your preparation you need to think about the questions you’re going to ask. After all of these years, I’ve been in sales over 30 years, and I still prepare my questions. John: I just talked to Wayne Berry recently, he was saying he still tells everybody to have a script when they’re going to make a phone call with somebody, and I said, “If we’re really experienced salespeople, surely we shouldn’t have a script,” and he was adamant. Be prepared, know what you’re going to talk about, write it all out, and then make the phone call. Dylis: Yes, absolutely. Even if you don’t want to have a script, at least have bullet points so that you cover everything on that telephone call, otherwise you’re just going in… And what happens is, you then fall back to the default position of product dumping. John: Yes, which is going to get you nowhere. Dylis: Yes, exactly. So, you need to prepare, research your client again, prepare your questions, prepare your marketing support material, all of your brochures. John: You’re great on stories. Can you give us a case study where somebody’s done this really well? Dylis: I’ll do better than that, I’ll give you one where they’ve done really badly! [laughs] John: Okay. We learn from mistakes. Dylis: We learn from our mistakes. And this was just this week whilst I was in the hotel, because I’m on holiday here in Sydney at the moment, and I was privy to a discussion between a guy who was selling some advertising to the hotel. It was beyond dreadful. It was the usual, “Really pleased to meet you, this is my company, we’ve been in business, la-la-la-la-la,” and he asked her nothing about what they were doing, what their challenges were, he didn’t bring any insights; he just went straight into a product dump of what he could do. John: And he didn’t demonstrate that he knew anything about them. Dylis: Nothing, nothing. And this lady, her body language… I mean, I was so interested, and I really… It was eavesdropping. I’ll put my hand up, I was eavesdropping. John: [laughs] Dylis: There was nothing at all, there was no interest from her, she was sitting back. And all he had to do was ask, “What are you doing at the moment with your advertising? What results are you getting?” John: But as you say, if he’d done his research… I’m sure in the open market, on Google or whatever, you’d be able to see some of the issues and challenges that hotel were facing, what was happening in terms of their business and so on, and he could’ve brought that insight to the table with ideas and “Have you thought about this?” and “Here’s some ideas for you,” and so on. None of that? Dylis: None of it, none of it – it was just a complete product dump. He didn’t talk about what their challenges were with the current advertising, and even more importantly – and I see this missed so many times – he didn’t bring up the financial impact and that ripple effect across the business. John: That example really shows all the mistakes you talked about. Dylis: Yes. John: The fact that he didn’t plan was one big thing, he didn’t do the research, but he also talked about me, my product and my company. Dylis: Yes. John: And as you said, customer with folded arms. Hey, there’s some great messages there. What’s the bottom line message you want to get across to the audience? Dylis: It’s to be customer-focused, and understand the benefits that you bring your client, by taking them to the position where they want to buy from you and where they’re going to benefit from buying from you. John: Those benefits and the value they’re going to get from that is likely to vary from client to client even in exactly the same industry. Dylis: Yes, it is. John: So actually the research has to be down to the individual client before you have these meetings. Dylis: Yes, yes. And your questions have to be down to the individual client. John: Exactly. Dylis: So, you can have a top line, but then it needs to be very individual as you’re taking it further down and further down, to really get to the… John: Through that sales process. Dylis: Yes, to get to the nub of the issue and that financial cost too then. John: Dylis, thank you very much. I love talking with you, and I look forward to the next time we have a chat – I think we’ll get lot of value! Dylis: Okay, great – thanks, John! *********** More discussions with Dylis: **************** Your Invitation: I invite you to join the Strategic Selling group on LinkedIn where you can experience informative discussions with your peers and sales thought leaders on subjects like the one we have discussed here. Please Share: If you valued this article, please share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions. So feel free to add a comment on this post – I promise to respond. Please follow my LinkedIn post page and follow me here on the Strategic Selling Group. I also recommend you follow my associates in the SMA Sales Masterminds. Your invitation to subscribe to this blog: Please feel free to SUBSCRIBE HERE August 16, 2016 - 7:45 am Panning the sale, Planning and strategy, Strategic Selling, Talking Sales 484 views opportunity strategy, Planning, Sales, Sales preparation, sales research, Sales strategy

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Case studies are persuasive narratives featuring specific, real-world uses for a product or service produced by companies to help demonstrate their value. Case studies are more than a simple testimonial from a customer – they speak to specific needs and customer pain. They are designed to sway purchase decisions and literally make a case for why a buyer should choose a certain solution. Most importantly – they are a critical part of your sales collateral library. When it’s time to create new case studies where do product marketers and sales enablement professionals look for inspiration? Often we download competitor case studies or look at ones that we produced in prior roles. This leads to uninspired, undifferentiated case studies that get forgotten as soon as they’re read. The purpose of a case study is to make your product or service stand out – so why would you want to model yours after a direct competitor? If your collateral doesn’t differentiate your solution and make an impact on the buyer, your case studies aren’t doing their job. That’s why we put together this case study library featuring examples from over 150 enterprise and mid-market companies. Browse through case studies from various industries, see the different formats and styles of case studies marketers are producing for their teams, and get inspired! Jump to case study examples in a specific industry: Marketing, A/B Testing and Personalization A few of our favorite marketing case study examples: BrightEdge has produced a strong and straightforward case study that proves their product’s value with some bold charting. After giving some background, explaining the problem, and detailing the results in one page via text, the second half of this two page case study shows two up-and-to-the-right charts demonstrating how BrightEdge helped their customer achieve SEO success. Sometimes less is more when you have really strong data to stand on. App Annie has published a great example of a case study targeted at small businesses. This text heavy case study starts with a narrative that most small development studios can relate to – having their most important business metrics stored in different apps and disparate spreadsheets. App Annie was able to highlight a real pain point that their ideal small business customers experience on a regular basis – siloed data and manual reporting. Bitly’s ecommerce case study demonstrates their ability to add value by tracking multichannel campaigns in a single dashboard. It’s a visually engaging piece that makes use of large font, bold colors and a lot of negative space to stand out. It doesn’t look like any of the other case studies we came across in the marketing tech category. Sprinklr’s case study with Groupon uses an infographic-like visual style to show off major KPIs and performance metrics. If you are looking to create a more formal, enterprise case study template, take a look at this impressive case study from Adobe detailing the Royal Bank of Scotland’s use of Adobe Marketing Cloud. Advertising Technology A few of our favorite advertising technology case study examples: Ad tech case studies always contain impressive figures, but the ones we find ourselves pouring through also tell great stories. That’s one reason why this LinkedIn Marketing Solutions case study featuring HubSpot is so engrossing, it’s not just about a simple win with a new ad platform, it’s the story of one of the best companies in marketing adopting a new channel that quickly became one of its best sources of leads. Some case studies are more about “who” than “what”. Quantcast’s case study about Buzzfeed’s adoption of their audience segmentation solution is an excellent example of this. A large part of Buzzfeed’s marketing strategy is to target niche audiences with its shareable content. If Buzzfeed trusts Quantcast to segment their audiences for advertisers, why wouldn’t any other large publisher? This case study from Unified detailing how they were able to overcome dark social attribution issues from Linkedin Sponsored Updates using their proprietary technology, is a stand out in terms of its template. A lot of customer success stories in the ad tech space are very heavy on ROI and conversion metrics, but light on design. Unified makes good use of space and large images to create an elegant look and feel. Sales and Sales Enablement A few of our favorite sales and sales enablement case study examples: DocuSign does a great job of explaining their value in simple, digestable terms in their Salesforce.com case study with headlines like “Deal close cycle time cut from 2 days down to 90% in less than 1 day; 71% in less than 1 hour.” This Datanyze case study featuring HubSpot makes use of a great template that features a large logo garden for Enterprise brands. Although Datanyze is a relatively new company (founded in 2012), their customer logos tell buyers, “We are trusted by big brands to provide prospecting data at scale. If they trust us, you can trust us.” LinkedIn’s case studies contain a lot of information, so to drive the point home, they put their most important metrics into a small infographic at the end to inform the reader of the most valuable takeaways. This Five9 Case Study articulately discusses the advantages of moving to the cloud in a way that most non-technical buyers can grasp. Many case studies from tech companies regard cloud-hosted technology as the superior choice, but they don’t state why. This Five9 case study actually makes the case for why it’s better for SMBs to store their business data in the cloud. Five9 knows their buyer and makes the effort to educate them during their purchase journey. Customer Success and Support Software A few of our favorite customer success and support case study examples: Going niche and speaking to very specific industry segments can help customers know that your product is the right fit for their business. UserTesting’s case study featuring Automatic does a great job of appealing to open source software projects. Automattic, the makers of WordPress, needed to understand how users interacted with their CMS product. However, being open source software, Automattic couldn’t just stick analytics inside of the core code. This is a unique industry problem that a lot of open source software providers face. UserTesting does a great job positioning themselves as a solution for evaluating how users engage with open source software when tracking software is not an option. Words like “global” or “enterprise” can become meaningless after reading them enough times. To help illustrate how Conversocial helps their customers succeed on a global scale, they visualize their impact on a map on page 8 of this case study. Infastructre, Hosting and CDNs A few of our favorite infrastructure, CDN, and hosting case study examples: This VMWare case study, covering their partnership with CenturyLink, touches on a very complex aspect of cloud hosted infrastructure – hybridized cloud. VMware’s case study describes hybridized cloud technology eloquently so that both technical and non-technical buyers can get a better understanding of what they are buying. HPE makes good use of narrative to break down a complex story about a cloud hosted rapid app development platform. HPE does an excellent job linking out to more content so readers who want to dive deeper can find additional content and self-educate. This CA Technologies joint ROI case study with YJT is visually stunning. It makes excellent use of imagery and space. Unlike some case studies in our library that try to sandwich everything into as few pages as possible, this CA Technologies case study is deliberately lengthy and dives into a ton of detail. This RedHat case study makes excellent use of narrative. It starts with a mandate from the governor of North Carolina to improve the usability of government websites for taxpayers. RedHat positions themselves as the answer to the government’s big technical challenge. This case study gives you a quick summary on the first page – like a one sheeter or an executive summary– then it dives into the story in the subsequent pages. Security Software and Services A few of our favorite security case study examples: Coalfire’s casino case study has one of the best stories we’ve ever read in a case study. It details a casino hiring Coalfire to test for security vulnerabilities – it’s a real life Ocean’s 11 in case study form. Two big thumbs up. Akamai’s financial services security case study is a great example of a case study for a highly technical product written for a non-technical buyer. Alien Vault’s Bank of New Glarus case study is an interesting example of “versus content”. In the case study, the Bank of New Glarus was originally researching a SolarWinds product. The case study details how the bank stumbled onto Alien Vault during their research and explains why they decided to go with them over the well known industry incumbent. Given it’s nature, versus content often comes across as cheap or mud-slinging – this doesn’t. Big Data Software and Services A few of our favorite big data case study examples: Many case studies featuring technical products are dense and hard to follow. This Cloudera case study does an excellent job of using hyperlinks to drive interested readers into deep dives, while still getting less technical buyers through the meat and potatoes of the case study without a ton of technical jargon or unneeded complexity. For non-technical buyers, it can be hard to to get interested in a case study about a big data platform. That’s why this Datameer’s case study is so interesting, it focuses on something that just about everyone is emotionally invested in – how their product is being used to help cure cancer. This HortonWorks case study has an example of a visually appealing stack architecture diagram. Most of technical architecture visuals look outdated and awkward, but HortonWorks found a way to visualize their stack in a way that’s engaging, and on brand. This VMware case study about Adobe deploying Hadoop is a polished example of a case study designed for technical buyers. Application Performance Monitoring and Log File Analysis A few of our favorite APM and log file analysis case study examples: A visual standout in this category is Riverbed’s Case Study with China Bank, which contains a well thought out overview page and numerous stack architecture diagrams for more technical buyers. This case study from SolarWinds featuring Product Hunt’s use of Liberato and Papertrail has an aesthetically pleasing and well designed template. It makes good use of product dashboard screenshots and it tells an interesting and relatable narrative about Product Hunt and why they needed Liberato to scale. This New Relic case study covering how the Obama for America team used the New Relic platform during the 2012 election gives an interesting technical take on a campaign just about every buyer in the US will be familiar with and experienced firsthand. Business Intelligence and Analytics A few of our favorite business intelligence and analytics case study examples: This Amplitude case study is a great example of versus content and shows the benefits one of their customers experienced after moving off of a direct competitor’s analytics platform. Sometimes you can get halfway through a case study before you realize you have no idea what the benefit is or what they are driving at. AgilOne uses a single sentence on the first page of its 100% Pure case study to act as an executive summary. It reads, “AgilOne helped 100% Pure to identify where to build their brick and mortar stores, what product categories their customers tend to buy in, which products could be marketed for replenishment and to establish successful VIP campaigns.” With this case study, a buyer knows exactly what to expect and the promises being made by AgilOne the moment they start reading. HR Software, ATS, and Recruiting A few of our favorite HR, payroll and recruiting case study examples: If you’re looking for a great example of a case study from an HR software company targeting SMBs across industries, look no further than Zenefits. If you are looking to create an HR software case study template that’s a bit more complex and buttoned up, we recommend checking out case studies from Oracle and SuccessFactors for some inspiration. Want to see a best in class case study example for recruiting services? Check out this excellent case study from Betts Recruiting featuring Greenhouse. Are you using Case Studies to Grow Your Business? Then sign up for a free DocSend account today. By putting your company’s marketing materials and sales collateral (like case studies, white papers and one-sheeters) in DocSend, you’ll finally get data on how your content is being used by Sales and your team will understand how content engages and influences prospects during your company’s sales cycle. Want to submit your case study to our library? email marketing@docsend.com for consideration. (sources)

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If it’s Friday, it must be my day to create some content. Marketers are busy planning, creating, optimizing, and analyzing, and for many of us, creating content is just one of many things on our to-do lists. We’ve all seen the stats that reveal B2B marketers are spending more time, budget, energy, happy hours, hackathons, and puppy time on content. But to what end? It’s great to have that fabulous piece of content to attract readers (or more often than not, downloaders), but what happens next? Those big download numbers you’ve been getting don’t count for much. And if you are being honest, you, your team, and your boss already know that. Most of those people are not ready to have a sales conversation. Many of them are not even interested in your products or solutions. That’s where lead nurturing comes in. The Truth About How Content Converts 68% of B2B marketers say that increasing conversion rate is their leading objective for lead nurturing, according to a December 2015 study by Ascend2. That means marketers want more people who download their content to become marketing qualified leads. For some of those prospects, it is never going to happen. They may love your content, they may read it and even share it, but they just don’t fit your profile of ideal customer. You can segment them as “content advocates” and keep feeding them your content, but don’t expect them to ever convert. But for many of these prospects, it’s just the timing that’s wrong. They could be the right person at the right company, but they are just not ready to have that dreaded conversation with an inside sales person. This is why so much of the buyer’s journey is now digital. Buyers continue to educate themselves with the content you are producing. (highlight to tweet) There are many factors that make up a marketing qualified lead, both explicit (like company, job title, and the need to solve a problem) and implicit ones (visits to your website, blog, and downloadable content). If you have the right marketing automation tools in place to track all of this, you will know not only if they are the right person, but also that is it the right time. How to Create Content That Educates The same study from Ascend2 found that 69% of B2B marketers say that creating relevant content is the most effective tactic for lead nurturing. That makes sense, since lead nurturing is all about staying in contact with those who have reached out to you. The best way to do that is not to send them an email telling them how great your products are, or if their new best friend in sales can have just 15 minutes of their time. (If these kinds of tactics annoy you, you are not alone. I ignore those sales emails, too.) Send them a series of relevant content based on what you know about them. That’s what this marketing technology allows you to do. Provide some value as you are building the relationship with this prospect. You know they are not ready for sales, but you do know they responded to your content. Send them more. Here’s one final stat that is at odds with the one above: 59% of B2B marketers say that creating relevant content is their most challenging obstacle to successful lead nurturing. This is not just a challenge for lead nurturing, but for all your content needs. You need to change your attitude, allotted time, workload, or even your socks to put yourself in a content mode. This is not an optional process. While it is easy to find companies struggling with content, there are plenty that are doing a good job. Emulate the content and tactics you respond to. If you are reading this blog, it is because you understand content marketing is important, and you want to improve your results. The more you understand your prospects, the better your opportunity to resonate with them. This also allows you to experiment with different delivery mechanisms. Here are few recent, personal examples. I tested the gated versus ungated ebook approach by releasing a full ebook for free on Slideshare with no registration required. It pointed to a gated asset. The two of them together were part of our most successful campaign of the year. Now, I am creating a series of short content pieces specifically for a nurture campaign. These are meant to educate our readers about the ideas behind our products. They are not about our products. It is the type of content that prospects might seek out in their journey, but we know about their interests, and we can feed that. These content pieces will not appear on our blog. They won’t be shared on our social channels. They are for this specific nurture. It’s important, so I am finding the time to write them. Create all the content you can, and push it out over every channel you’ve got, but focus on getting some of that content in front of people who have already told you that they are interested. You’ve got the technology—now it’s time to put it into action. Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.

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Marketing automation makes it easier to engage and nurture large numbers of prospects at the same time. This utility has contributed to its rapid rise in the B2B world. According to some sources, as much as 59 percent of Fortune 500 companies now use marketing automation. The problem is, sometimes we get so caught up in automating our marketing efforts, we forget there are actual people on the receiving end. Marketing is less effective when you sound like a robot. If you need help humanizing your marketing automation efforts, try these tips: 1. Start Slowly Marketing automation won’t transform your business overnight. According to a benchmark report by B2B Marketing and Circle Research, only about eight percent of companies see increased revenues within six months of adopting marketing automation. After just one year, 32 percent of businesses see increased revenue, and after two years, that figure climbs to 40 percent. It’s tempting to jump in headfirst and try to reach hundreds of thousands of leads through every channel possible. However, you’ll have better success starting with a smaller audience and learning how your lead conversion flows. Once you learn how to interact with that smaller audience in a way that feels personal, only then should you expand into a larger audience or new channels. 2. Build Your Own List Your messaging is practically guaranteed to be off the mark if you’re running an outreach program with cold, unqualified leads. Emailing a purchased contact who has never heard of your company and wouldn’t fit your product will only yield an awkward conversation. Instead, grow your list organically, and contact leads who have expressed an interest in your products or services. Building a list also gives you insight into the best messaging for your prospects. How did they find you? What are their interests? Why do they need you? Use this information to appeal to each potential buyer as a human being. 3. Segment Your Leads Marketing automation comes with plenty of benefits. It reduces monotonous tasks and makes it easier to reach a large volume of prospects. The problem is, a one-size-fits-all messaging approach rarely works for your entire database. Spend time working up personas and segmenting your leads into specific groups for targeted, personal messaging. Consider this example: a marketing automation plan Whereoware created for PaperStyle.com. First, they set three triggers based on customer and prospect actions: Clicking a link in a PaperStyle email Purchasing wedding or bridal shower products Visiting a wedding page on PaperStyle.com Depending on these actions, PaperStyle sent tailored emails advertising products such as thank you cards, bridal shower party decorations, and other relevant messages. The results were huge: a 244 percent higher open rate, a 300 percent increase in revenue per mailing, and a 161 percent click rate increase. 4. Invest in Good Content Great content will strike the right tone and appeal to different segments of your audience at specific stages of the buyer’s journey. Think about a time you purchased a product or signed up for a list, and you received a follow-up message that made you feel understood. That’s the reaction you want your prospects to have when they see your messages. Even if your content is incredible, keep an eye on engagement. Part of a good strategy is the having the ability to adapt to changing levels of interest and shifting prospect priorities. No one wants an inbox that gets flooded with irrelevant offers multiple times a day. If you don’t want your emails to land in the spam folder, take the time to learn what people want. 5. Connect Through Multiple Channels Don’t expect a single function of marketing automation software to solve all your problems. It’s relatively easy to set up automated marketing emails. But you can reach people and connect personally through other channels, too. Once you’re comfortable with your marketing automation efforts, start connecting with your audience through social media posts, your website, and in-person events. With the right approach, these channels can clarify and reinforce the brand identity you present through marketing automation emails. Remember to keep messages light and avoid pressuring people. It’s great to incorporate calls to action, but your conversations will feel more personal if you strike a casual tone. Automated marketing is a great way to increase your exposure and generate more leads, but it can fall flat if you don’t take the time to make your messages feel human. What other tips do you recommend for humanizing your marketing automation emails? Share your ideas in the comments section! Megan Pacella is a contributor for TechnologyAdvice.com, with specializations in B2B marketing and sales. She has also written for USA Today, Bearings Guide, 10Best Nashville, and other publications.

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I had one of the most energizing client negotiations of my career recently. It wasn’t a Fortune 500 marketing VP wanting to work with us. It wasn’t even a regional brand that I recognized. It was a small time retail company that had almost no online presence and very little track record. After the initial call, I was skeptical. Would they have the budget? Should I spend time on a proposal when, chances are, they would be scared away by price? Instead of expecting the worst, I stuck with it. I entered the next call with an open mind. A second call turned into a third, and third into a fourth. I pulled my strategy team in to look at the competition and market potential. The conversation evolved into something I never expected. Why Was This Conversation So Energizing? The conversation was honest and transparent. Neither party pushed their weight. I wasn’t ever questioned, doubted, or put on the spot. I didn’t have to reiterate the value of working with my marketing agency or convince anyone why we were better than the next agency. I added value without expecting immediate remuneration. For the first time, maybe ever, I felt like the scales were balanced and there was an equal desire, risk, and commitment from both sides. The perfect client relationship starts with equal desire, risk, and commitment on both sides. (highlight to tweet) I Thought, ‘Why Aren’t More of My Conversations Like This?’ Is the traditional agency model broken? Are brands and agencies having the wrong conversations and failing from the start? In the last year, I’ve had clients end their contracts with us when we were driving tangible growth and showing unmistakable progress. With one client, we had completely changed the way their business did sales and marketing; ROI on their marketing was substantially in the positive, and inbound leads had skyrocketed. They decided to go with another, cheaper marketing agency anyway. I admit we weren’t perfect at every turn, but it still baffles me. So what made this new situation different? I was interested in the product and thought there was a bright future for the company, given the right support. This isn’t true of every opportunity. The prospect seemed to respect me and my company from the start and appreciated the line of questioning and consultative approach. This isn’t true of all prospects. The prospect was equally excited to work with us. It rarely feels this way. I brought up performance-based compensation. The Performance Marketing Model In the past, I would push companies away if they asked me about performance compensation. I remember a client prospect asking me about a performance marketing relationship back in 2011 before signing a contract. The risk seemed completely one-sided. Maybe I didn’t have enough knowledge of their business or confidence in our ability to perform at the level they were expecting. We went on to sign a contract, but left performance compensation out of the deal. With our help, that particular “prospect” has achieved 500+ percent revenue growth in some quarters, compared with a few years prior, and the upward trend continues. Naturally, it made me second-guess our approach. What if we had opted for a performance marketing approach back in 2011? This new conversation with the small retail client was different from the start. Unlike my previous experiences, I had complete confidence in our ability to drive growth for this company, and performance compensation intrigued me more than it worried me. I proposed a performance marketing model that included a lower monthly cash outlay for our services in exchange for a revenue share on each product sold that provided attractive upside for us. Risk would be shared by both parties, and both parties would be committed. Thinking about the potential has given me new life. This time around, I’m thinking about how we’re going to sell 100,000 products and imagining what that will do for their business, and ours. Maybe it’s that both the client and agency are focused on the value and the outcome, not the input (hourly rate). Could it be a clue that hourly billing is killing us, and the future lies in more of a hybrid model that includes some performance compensation? With performance and equity models, the agency shares in the risk and reward. In my experience, it completely changes the conversation. My Advice for Marketing Agencies When you see an opportunity and you’ve found a good partner that shares your values, take a chance on yourselves. Shift the conversation away from your rates, and talk about outcomes. Find an opportunity to invest in a product or business with an upside. Don’t force it on every prospect, but begin to diversify the way your agency makes money. Even if you must take an uncomfortable risk to do so, your agency will take on an energy and excitement that you haven’t seen in awhile. It has for me, and it’s bleeding into all facets of my company. Get more content like this, plus the very BEST marketing education, totally free. Get our Definitive email newsletter.

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Google buys small companies all the time, but it only occasionally makes an acquisition large or important enough to merit its own blog post — and it did so last month, when it acquired the enterprise software firm Apigee for about $625 million. In buying Apigee, the search giant highlighted the importance of application programming interfaces to modern business. As a leading provider of API management, Apigee’s services are already used by hundreds of companies, including Walgreens, AT&T, Bechtel, Burberry, First Data and Live Nation. Why are APIs so crucial? They are the software middlemen that connect applications, including mobile apps, to back-end office IT systems. APIs, as the Wall Street Journal observes, “serve as the conduit for automated communication between companies’ digital systems and their partners and customers.” As companies of all sizes, including small to medium-sized businesses, become more digital and incorporate mobile technology, APIs are likely going to grow in importance. “An increasing number of companies are shifting towards communicating programmatically through APIs via the internet, augmenting or even supplanting traditional communications via phones. For example, physicians these days can communicate prescriptions to pharmacies electronically on a dedicated platform, rather than by phone,” analysts at Trefis Research wrote in Forbes. “Apigee’s comprehensive API platform works as an enabler for this sort of communication, offering secure, stable, multi-language, dev, test, publish and analytics capabilities.” The Importance of APIs Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google’s enterprise cloud businesses, noted in a blog post that APIs are “the hubs through which companies, partners and customers interact, whether it’s a small business applying online for a loan or a point of sale system sending your warranty information to the manufacturer.” “It is stunning how almost every customer is bringing up [APIs] when I’m in meetings,” Greene told the Journal, adding that companies see sales increase after they deploy APIs. As Bloomberg notes, API management is a crowded field, with large tech firms such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle playing in the market, as well as startups and smaller firms, including Twilio. APIs make business processes simpler and smoother and help connect firms’ customer-facing digital infrastructure, especially via mobile apps, to their IT systems. As the Journal reports: “For example, when a person buys a pair of jeans on a mobile app, that app typically uses an API to send the sale to the retailer’s computers, which in some cases then use other APIs to connect to suppliers and shippers.” Greene cited Walgreens as a firm that uses APIs from Apigee “that enable an ecosystem of partners and developers building apps using Walgreens APIs, including the Photo Prints API (enabling mobile app developers to include the ability for their app users to print photos at any Walgreens store), and the Prescription API (enabling users to quickly order refills of prescriptions right from their mobile app).” A Growing Market for APIs Last year research firm Forrester predicted that U.S. companies alone will spend nearly $3 billion in total on API management over the next five years, with annual quadrupling by the end of the decade, from $140 million in 2014 to $660 million in 2020. There are now nearly 16,000 different APIs offered by firms today, according to ProgrammableWeb. “APIs allow firms to expand into markets they may never have previously considered,” Bala Iyer and Mohan Subramaniam wrote last year in the Harvard Business Review. They cited the example of IBM’s Watson, the firm’s artificial intelligence platform. “In the old days, IBM may have opted to leverage Watson’s unique potential on its own and used it to reinforce the company’s prevailing position in software and technology,” they said. “But recognizing that the world had changed, IBM opened access to Watson through APIs to the entire world. IBM expects this move will allow it to attract an extraordinary range of ideas and inputs from all kinds of third-party firms and develop an unprecedented range of new services. Through APIs, IBM also hopes to create multiple ecosystems that allow it to access many new markets.” In IBM’s case, that is oncology care, and “IBM’s APIs have connected Elsevier and its expansive archive of studies on oncology care to both the medical expertise of Sloan Kettering and Watson’s cognitive-computing prowess.” The writers conclude: “While many may see APIs as just a technical concept, they clearly overlook the rising strategic significance of APIs. Particularly with the Internet of Things bringing digitization to all kinds of products and services, the influence of APIs is growing far beyond technology firms. All CEOs may soon need to find ways to align APIs with their growth strategies.”

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These days, digital project management tools like Trello and Basecamp are all the rage. They promise project transparency, virtual collaboration, and real-time progress updates. And, for a lot of teams (especially virtual businesses), they’re critical to marketing success. But today, I’d like to defend the good ol’ whiteboard and its value for new-age marketing strategies like inbound marketing. As a wise man once said, “whiteboards are freakin’ amazing…,” and even though that man might have been me, it’s worth considering how investing in what I call “the whiteboard system” might expedite your inbound marketing success. So, in this article, I’ve compiled the 5 situations where whiteboards have proven especially useful (or even critical) for implementing inbound marketing successfully for our team and our clients. Disclaimer: Neither Weidert Group nor this author represent or receive compensation from any whiteboard companies. (But we do indeed prefer Expo.) 1. For Drafting Ideas and Concepts in Team Planning Meetings Whether it’s explaining the inbound marketing methodology, developing new content marketing ideas, or discussing how leads should be generated and managed, whiteboards are incredibly useful for team meetings where you a small group of decision-makers are working together to develop plans for marketing activity. We suggest a big whiteboard, hanging on a wall, where the meeting leader can compile ideas and diagram workflow while others can shout out ideas. Be sure and take a photo of the board to type up later if you don’t have a smart whiteboard. 2. For Posting Your On-going Blogging Calendar In addition to our digital project management platform, we like having a physical, centralized blogging calendar where everybody can see their upcoming articles, and we can reference on the fly. The centralized blogging calendar is updated weekly, and since it’s a whiteboard, topics can updated and changed as needed. If you want to develop a strong culture of blogging and content creation, then using a physical tool like a whiteboard can help keep content top of mind for busy team members. 3. For Workshopping Updates to Your Website or UX We all know that in inbound marketing, user experience really matters. You need to empathize with your prospective buyers and develop a web presence that solves for their needs. Building web improvements and workshopping them as a team is extremely important, and that’s where a whiteboard can really help. If you have a whiteboard, you can diagram navigation pathways, let multiple hands demonstrate their ideas, and use quick drafts to shape better website wireframes for your designers. Whiteboards bring together non-technical marketers and your development team to have a more complete conversation. 4. Forecasting Your Lead Generation Funnel and Sales Pipeline For sales and marketing alignment, your sales team and marketing team need to have honest conversations about how many leads are needed and how much work it will take to generate them online. Understanding the numbers, doing the math, forecasting conversion rates—all of these things are made easier when both parties are working over a whiteboard. Not Convinced? If you’re still not convinced that you should implement a whiteboard system in your inbound marketing program, then clearly you need to get in touch with a whiteboard enthusiast like me. But before you do, perhaps you should start with getting a better handle on your marketing activities in general. Check out our checklist below. Topics: Execution Written by Jamie Cartwright Jamie manages Weidert Group’s marketing and promotional efforts—100% focused on agency growth and business development. With a background in social research and human behavior, Jamie’s charged with testing and implementing new technologies and marketing tactics. Contact Jamie for all media inquires, co-promotional opportunities, and partnership questions. He also handles new relationships with marketing and sales technology vendors.

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Canada’s main stock index gained on Wednesday as rising commodity prices helped energy and gold mining stocks push higher while railway stocks lagged. Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd declined 0.5 per cent to $200.03 after the country’s No. 2 railroad operator reported a 9.1-per-cent drop in quarterly revenue, due mainly to a delayed grain harvest and lower crude oil volumes. Its rival Canadian National declined 0.03 per cent to $87.78, and the industrials fell 0.3 per cent overall. The most influential gainers on the index included Goldcorp Inc, which rose 1.9 per cent to $19.86, and Barrick Gold Corp, up 3.6 per cent to $22.25. Gold prices rose and the U.S. dollar weakened amid uncertainty around the timing of a U.S. interest rate increase. The materials group, which includes precious and base metals miners and fertilizer companies, added 1.5 per cent. At 11:43 a.m. ET, the Toronto Stock Exchange’s S&P/TSX composite index was up 83.09 points, or 0.56 per cent, at 14,835.34. Canada’s central bank is expected to hold interest rates steady in a rate decision due at 10 a.m. that also will include an update to the Bank of Canada’s economic forecasts. The energy group climbed 1.8 per cent, as oil prices were boosted by evidence of declining production in China and falling U.S. inventories, while an upbeat OPEC statement on its planned output cut also supported the market. Suncor Energy Inc rose 1.7 per cent to $38.60 and Encana Corp added 3.4 per cent to $14.83. A rise in energy and financial stocks pushed Wall Street higher on Wednesday, but a drop in consumer staples and Intel limited gains, especially on the Nasdaq. Intel tumbled nearly 6 per cent and was the biggest drag on all three indexes, after the chipmaker’s disappointing current-quarter revenue forecast. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index dipped 0.8 percent. Oil prices surged more than 2 per cent after a report showed an unexpected drop in U.S. crude stockpiles. The energy sector jumped 1.64 per cent, the most in three weeks, also boosted by a 5.2-per-cent rise in Halliburton following its surprise quarterly profit. Morgan Stanley inched up 0.2 per cent after its results rounded off a strong quarter for big U.S. banks. The financial sector has gained 1 per cent since Thursday, a day before the banks started reporting, while the KBW bank index is up 2.1 per cent. Through Tuesday, earnings from S&P 500 companies had largely beaten market expectations, putting them on track to post profit growth for the first time in five quarters. Analysts now estimate earnings increased 0.2 percent in the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. “We would see the third quarter as the bottoming out of the earnings recession that we have been experiencing for the last year or so,” said Tracy Maeter, global investment specialist, J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Philadelphia. “But it’s likely to be a little bit noisy with a lot of dispersion across the sectors.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 76.12 points, or 0.42 per cent, at 18,238.06. The S&P 500 was up 6.62 points, or 0.31 per cent, at 2,146.22 and the Nasdaq Composite was up 3.83 points, or 0.07 per cent, at 5,247.67. Five of the 11 major S&P sectors were lower, with the consumer staples’ 0.6-per-cent drop the steepest. The Federal Reserve is due to release its Beige Book at about 2:00 p.m. ET, giving anecdotal commentary on the health of the U.S. economy. The third and final U.S. presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton starts later in the evening. The stock market had gained on both days after the previous two debates, which were perceived to be won by Clinton. “The noise in the marketplace around politics can drive stocks in the short term, but in terms of the underlying influence … that’s going to be driven more by the economy and the profitability of companies,” Maeter said. Oil prices rose about 2 per cent on Wednesday after the U.S. government reported a surprising drop in domestic crude stockpiles, versus analysts expectations for a build. Brent crude was up $1.12, or 2 per cent, at $52.80 per barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude rose $1.16, or 2.3 per cent, to $51.45. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. crude stocks fell by 5.2 million barrels in the week ended Oct. 14. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 2.7 million-barrel build. Report Typo/Error

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Although business-to-consumer (B2C) content marketers have been more successful with their efforts this year than they were last year, many still need to slow down to give their content marketing more time—to ensure even better results via longer-term planning. That’s a key finding of the just-published B2C Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report from MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute, a UBM company. Sponsored by Hightail, the B2C study is in its fifth year. We released the companion report, on business-to-business (B2B) content marketing, at the end of September. We’ll be talking more about the study findings in the months to come. But, for now, let’s look at some key insights from the B2C content marketing report. B2C Content Marketing Study Highlights Some 63% of B2C marketers consider their organization’s overall approach to content marketing much more or somewhat more successful than one year ago. However, 23% of B2C marketers said their overall success was about the same as a year ago, and the top two reasons they cited are strategy issues (49%) and not enough time devoted to content marketing (48%). B2C marketers who reported more successful content marketing efforts than a year ago attribute their success to doing a better job with content creation (77%) and developing or adjusting their content marketing strategy (71%). 40% of B2C marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. 69% of B2C marketers agree that their organization is realistic about what content marketing can achieve. 78% of B2C marketers agree that they/their team can demonstrate, with metrics, how content marketing has increased audience engagement. Below, the report’s chapter headings and a single chart from each chapter: B2C Content Marketing Usage and Team Organization Clarity, Commitment, and Overall Success of B2C Content Marketing B2C Content Marketing Strategy B2C Content Creation and Distribution B2C Content Marketing Goals and Metrics B2C Content Marketing Budgets and Spending See and download the entire 2017 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report here: 2017 B2C Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends from MarketingProfs About the study: The B2C Content Marketing: 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America report reflects findings from 480 North American B2C marketers from diverse industries and a wide range of company sizes. This year the survey was redesigned, asking new questions and changing other questions, to derive clearer insights into the successes and challenges content marketers face.

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