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2012 is here folks. New goals and high ambitions are in place as the slate is cleaned for the new year. It’s time to stoke the 2011 coals and fuel the 2012 fire. Here are 15 posts I put together with some very interesting predictions and strategies for this coming year. Hope you enjoy it and best of luck for this fine year!
- 30 Social Media Predictions for 2012 From the Pros – Social Media Examiner
- 5 Sales Management Questions We Answered in 2011 – Selling Power
- 8 Great Marketing Infographics To Inspire Your 2012 Objectives – B2B Marketing Insider
- 11 B2B marketing trends to watch (or wish) for in 2012 – Customer Think
- How to Get Your Prospects to Call You Back in 2012 – InsideView
- Sales Discussions That Need To Disappear in 2012 – Paul Castain’s Sales Playbook
- Things I’m Wishing For In 2012 – Insider Sales Experts Blog
- Social Media: Five Facts to Bank On in 2012 – Ad Age Digital
- CRM 2012 Forecast – The Era of Customer Engagement – ZDNet Blog
- SaaS Predictions for 2012 – Smart SaaS
- Top 7 Critical Sales Trends for 2012 – Heavy Hitter Sales Blog
- 12 Sales Trends for 2012 – Barrett Sales Blog
- Bring on 2012 – Salesopedia
- Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do – Business Grow
- How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK – Guy Kawasaki
Sales people blogging comes up when talking to companies about ways to involve more sales and marketing alignment programs. I was reading Dave Brock’s recent post on the same subject and he explains that companies are “dead wrong” from a business point of view if they have sales bloggers. There could be some healthy discussion around this being a valuable use of time for short term gains but it’s getting much more clear as time goes on that content is king. Having a social and transparent company drives customer loyalty and generates new business. I think that companies that empower their sales people to use social media tools like blogs can exponentially increase awareness and drive lead generation and revenue for a company. I’m not the only one that thinks this. IBM has the same idea.
How successful can a B2B business be using social media? Fairly successful, at least in the case of IBM. We recently chatted with Ed Linde II, whose team is responsible for building Web assets to support the IBM.com sales channel and organic Web visitors, about IBM’s social media efforts and successes. He spoke about their Listening for Leads program, which he says has “uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads” so far, and is expected grow even more. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access.
Mr. Linde II: Within IBM we have a number of people in the brand areas who are blogging and doing things in the social media space relative to topics like cloud computing.
In B2B we have a number of Websites that we built for our sales reps where we’ve enabled the reps to have a blog with RSS feeds that are connected to LinkedIn and Twitter. Their customers can follow them where they have an individual relationship.
Some of our reps have Facebook pages also. We also have a program called Listening for Leads, where we have people we call “seekers” who on a voluntary basis go to particular social media sites where they listen to conversations and determine whether there’s a potential sales opportunity.
eMarketer: How is IBM using Twitter?
Mr. Linde II: We promote our customer events on Twitter. When I say customer events, they could be Webinars, podcasts, virtual trade shows or physical trade shows. We advertise some of our promotions via Twitter. And our individual reps use Twitter to keep their customers updated about interesting news, events and things of that nature. Each rep has their own Twitter account. We also have the handle @IBMpcs because we sell refurbished PCs .
eMarketer: How are you tracking and measuring your social initiatives? You mentioned that you’ve identified millions of sales leads.
Mr. Linde II: We measure against number of sales leads identified. And we rate the lead value from those leads. Then the win revenue and win rate. So there are four key metrics—number of leads created, lead value, win revenue and win rate.
The purpose of the blog is to drive sales. Giving sales people a resource like their own blog or the ability to create content for the company blog is a valuable asset that businesses should not overlook. Marketing shouldn’t control the blog with an iron fist, most marketing people I know are constantly looking for new content to drive traffic and leads so it just makes sense to use internal talent to make this happen.
Take a look at your sales team, find out which of them can write well and articulate the sales landscape they are working in. With a little sales 2.0 training, they should be able to dedicate a couple hours a week to writing a post for the company. One blog post can go a long way, we are still getting leads from blog posts from almost a year ago written by members of our sales and support teams.
Paul Greenberg published an article on ZDNet called “Looking Back at 2010 – In 2010” and he gave a great explanation of his methodically scientific approach to forecasting. Covering the increased priority of mobile CRM social marketing, and the growing need for companies especially y in the support function deploying social CRM to work with customers.
When it came to integration with traditional CRMs Paul had some great things to say about InsideView.
InsideView continued its relentless drive to integrate with everything including the basil plants that are growing inside varying foodies homes – and they’ve been a happy success accordingly with integrations to most of the CRM standards out there.
You can read the entire article on ZDNet here.
What better way to kick off November by having a reading list o the best social selling articles fro the past week. Here are the posts I thought would be the most interesting to you. Thanks to all of you that sent in requests for new blog’s I should follow after last weeks top 20 social selling articles. Feel free to leave a comment or tweet @insideview with any new suggestions. I love reading new blogs and I get some of my best suggestions from you, the readers.
- Always Be Closing?!? – The Pipeline
- Focus Funnel Expert: Barbra Gago of Cloud9 Analytics – The Funnelholic
- E2.0 Thinking: Steve Jobs – The FastForward Blog
- Myopia and Entropy – IT’s Great Escape – The Cloud Blog
- 9 Helpful Tips To Deal With Negative People – The Chris Voss Show
- Mom, what’s a phone booth? – TeleSmart Communications
- How to Improve Your B2B Sales Workflow with Social Media – Social Media B2B
- Salesforce.com’s Benioff unplugged: Supervendors suck, Oracle, Zuckerberg as Gates – Saleforce.com
- 8 Ways To Reduce Sales With Twitter – Sales Operations Blog
- An Opportunity For “Wow”! – Paul Castain
- You failed at Customer Service, so now try Social Processes. – Micahel Moaz
- 25 Case Studies Using Twitter to Increase Business and Sales – Kyle Lacy
- Why Should I Network on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn etc? – Jonathan Farrington
- 7 Trends Leading to the Growth of Marketing Automation – Eloqua Blog
- Sales 2.0 Conference – Collaboration That Delivers – InsideCRM
- 8 Ways to Not Get ReTweeted – HubSpot
- What’s Hindering Cloud Adoption? Try Humans. – GigaOM
- Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM, Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together – Entperprise 2.0
- CRM: More Relevant Than Ever – DestinationCRM
- CRM Is Only Half of the Story – CustomerThink
- A Sneak Peek at Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - CRM Software Review
- Should we stop marketing to the CIO? – Chris Koch
- Kickstarting your Social CRM Initiative: 5 Fundamentals and 5 Immediate Opportunities – Brian Vellmure
- Who Are Our Customers ?! – B2B Buzz
- The 15 Minute Prospecting Workout – Sales 2.0
- Always Be Closing?!? – The Pipeline
- Focus Funnel Expert: Barbra Gago of Cloud9 Analytics – The Funnelholic
- E2.0 Thinking: Steve Jobs - The FastForward Blog
- Myopia and Entropy – IT’s Great Escape – The Cloud Blog
- 9 Helpful Tips To Deal With Negative People - The Chris Voss Show
- Mom, what’s a phone booth? – TeleSmart Communications
- How to Improve Your B2B Sales Workflow with Social Media – Social Media B2B
- Salesforce.com’s Benioff unplugged: Supervendors suck, Oracle, Zuckerberg as Gates – Saleforce.com
- 8 Ways To Reduce Sales With Twitter – Sales Operations Blog
- An Opportunity For “Wow”! – Paul Castain
- You failed at Customer Service, so now try Social Processes. – Micahel Moaz
- 25 Case Studies Using Twitter to Increase Business and Sales – Kyle Lacy
- Why Should I Network on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn etc? – Jonathan Farrington
- 7 Trends Leading to the Growth of Marketing Automation – Eloqua Blog
- Sales 2.0 Conference – Collaboration That Delivers – InsideCRM
- 8 Ways to Not Get ReTweeted – HubSpot
- What’s Hindering Cloud Adoption? Try Humans. – GigaOM
- Enterprise 2.0 and Social CRM, Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together – Entperprise 2.0
- CRM: More Relevant Than Ever – DestinationCRM
- CRM Is Only Half of the Story – CustomerThink
- A Sneak Peek at Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 - CRM Software Review
- Should we stop marketing to the CIO? – Chris Koch
- Kickstarting your Social CRM Initiative: 5 Fundamentals and 5 Immediate Opportunities – Brian Vellmure
- Who Are Our Customers ?! – B2B Buzz
- The 15 Minute Prospecting Workout – Sales 2.0
Last Wednesday I posted about 15 Sales Productivity articles you should read and I’m switching it up a bit and thought I would share my reading list on a Monday. I’ve scoured the web looking for news and insights that related around sales, CRM and social selling tips to come up with a list of articles I found interesting. If there is something you think I should add to my reading list, leave me a comment and let me know.
1. Drive Increased Sales Productivity with Sales 2.0 – Selling Power
2. Are You Interested in Monitoring Social Media? – CustomerThink
3. The Role of Technology in How Sales and Marketing Work Together – Marketo
4. Is Brand Awareness the Number One Social Media Goal? – Small Business Trends
5. B2B Social Selling Meets CRM – Social Media B2B
6. The Brave New Business Model for CRM – destinationCRM
7. Control or Ownership? Either Way, the Customer Has It (Or Both)! – CRM Outsiders
8. Difference between Social CRM and traditional CRM – Customer Think
9. The Silent Zone: Lost Sales or Lost Truth? – Eye on Sales
10. Gatorade Mission Control Project Misses the Social Biz Mark – The Blakery
11. 9 Awesome Ways to Market a Business Blog – Hubspot
12. What’s next after Social CRM: VRM - Marketing & Innovation
13. The Power of the Social Cloud – Paul Mulder
14. Customer Engagement: Key to Internet Marketing Success – CRM 1080
15. Improving B2B Sales Productivity with Social Media – Business Idea
16. What Is Customer 2.0? – The Social Nexus
17. How 4 Small Businesses are Using Location-Based Services – Mashable
18. When Success Get’s A Stay Of Execution! – Paul Castain
19. Three Steps in a New World of Customer 2.0 – Rare Agent
20. Is CRM training really that important? – Tracy Kinsey
With new businesses implementing online marketing and blogging strategies every day, more and more business owners are now taking on the daunting task of online marketing, and they’re looking online for help on where to start. This can be a seemingly great tactic, albeit dangerous. The danger lies with the massive amount misinformation floating around. Because of that, I wanted to clear up five popular myths in order to help you avoid unrealistic expectations, expectations created by new businesses about the wonderful world of online marketing.
Thanks to Marketo for sparking my idea to take the opposite approach of their post.
And now, without any further ado, the list…
1. If You Build It, They Will Come
This common mistake is the inherent weakness of the “Content is King” argument. Creating content by publishing blog posts and articles does not mean search engines nor visitors will find your content. The truth is that even the best and most deserving content usually does not win because “Content + Marketing = King”. This is where search engine optimization and social media marketing have an effect on your success.
2. Creating a Twitter and Facebook Account Will Help Your Marketing Strategy
I’ve seen it a hundred times. A business wants to ‘get social’ and start focusing on social media marketing and interacting with their customers. So, they setup a Facebook profile page and a Twitter account and phew… that was hard. And now the traffic, customers and comments should come rolling in…yes? Wrong.
Leveraging social media for B2B sales and marketing success takes time, effort and some strategy. Expect it to take a little time, some research and learning on your end and a lot of tweets and updates to really get going (unless you’re a big brand). If done correctly, it can be a huge benefit to your marketing goals, sales objectives and your customer service.
3. Reading Online Tips and Techniques is a Substitute for Professional Help from Experts
The Internet is a large, large place full of great information. The problem is the percentage of content that is trusted, referenced, truthful and written by credible experts is particularly small. The fact is, what you read online is mostly opinion, made-up, you name it and should not be substituted for real facts or expert advice. Think of any medical website or advertisement and the message they throw in the fine print “This information is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified professional.” If you understand and follow that methodology to keep your body healthy, do the same for the health of your business and its marketing strategy!
4. Automate Everything You Can to Save Time
This is yet another classic mistake caused by efficiency overload. Some things can be automated. Other things should never be automated. Lead scoring, company research and sales intelligence, tracking search engine rankings are a few examples of aspects that automation can save a great deal of time. However, other aspects like search engine optimization, demand generation and conversion optimization to name a few should always be manual. Sure, there are tools you can use to help, but these tasks are more of an art than a science where automation has no place.
5. Being Successful Online Is Easy
Probably the biggest oversight that companies fall prey to is the misunderstanding that being successful online is easy. What may have worked in 1998 definitely does not work in 2010 and success is much, much harder now-a-days. Search engines and stiff competition have taken away most “fast-track” online marketing efforts. Yet, companies are still misinformed and, just to name a few, still:
…think that a “set it and forget” approach will work (Not so much. It takes real work!)
…want to spend as little as possible to get great results (When has this ever worked?)
…want #1 rankings in less than a month (LOL! Really?)
…give IT departments more control than they do marketing departments and SEOs
Inbound Marketing is still a relatively new and quickly trending marketing strategy that was coined a few years ago by HubSpot. While it has fast become a high priority for companies looking to increase their awareness, traffic, and revenues via the Web, Inbound Marketing is often confused with search engine optimization.
What is Inbound Marketing?
Wikipedia defines Inbound Marketing as:
Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that essentially focuses on getting found by customers. Marketers “earn their way in” (via publishing helpful information on a blog etc.) in contrast to outbound marketing where they used to have to “buy, beg, or bug their way in” (via paid advertisements, issuing press releases in the hope they get picked up by the trade press, or paying commissioned sales people, respectively).
In short, Inbound Marketing is a way to ”get found online” by publishing information on the web and customers finding your published content. This allows your company, website and brand to earn credibility as the customer finds your content (provided they also find value in that content), making them more likely to trust your information, buy your products, recommend you to peers, etc. Put another way… Inbound Marketing = Getting Found by Customers
There is a bit of a Field of Dreams “if you build it, they will come” assumption with
inbound marketing. Just because you are publishing articles, white papers and blog posts does not mean customers will ever find your content. Why? Because publishing content, even great content, does not mean that search engines will find you, rank you high enough to drive meaningful traffic or that websites will link to you and promote your content. To do all that, you need search engine optimization (SEO).
What is Search Engine Optimization?
SEOMoz, a hugely popular search engine optimization company and online community, define SEO as the following:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines.
In short, SEO is a marketing strategy that is the complex process of creating, publishing, promoting and optimizing your web site to maximize your ability to “get found” by search engines that will potentially drive traffic and customers to your site. Put another way… SEO = Getting Found by Search Engines
Within the internet marketing and SEO communities, Inbound Marketing is simply thought of as accessibility and content creation, along with the hundreds of other factors taken into account by SEO rankings.
SEO + Inbound Marketing = Getting Found (by search engines AND customers)
SEO not only encompasses publishing content to get found by customers, but the underlying process that inbound marketing assumes – making sure that your content can be found by search engines so that it can in turn be found by customers.
As you contemplate your Inbound Marketing strategy, take into account this classic quote: “great content is no substitute for great marketing.” A strong advertising, promotional, social media, inbound selling and/or SEO campaign has the ability to attract far more attention than the content may “deserve”. Seemingly unfair, it’s a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable – just look at the world of politics.
