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Doesn’t it seem like new social media technologies and platforms pop up every other day? If your business consists of brick-and-mortar stores, not only is it difficult to keep up with those, it’s easy to forget why you need these cyberspace shenanigans at all!

In fact, there’s so much noise that many retailers lose sight of why their Facebook page exists, or why their marketing agency insists on writing things on their behalf on Twitter.

So let’s review: your social media Facebook page is a lively community consisting of your customers, future customers, fans and staff. What does this mean? Well, it means you can put aside your old-school surveys and hold off on hiring that research company… because everyone that matters to you is speaking frankly about your brand – and they expect you to listen.

However, it is YOUR responsibility to identify useful commentary vs. vapid conversation – whiny vs. solid complaints – and to take action.

In other words, before jumping into the awesome world of location-based technologies and shiny new digital objects, brand managers need to make use of what they already have – invaluable research material and an attentive audience – to reap the benefits of digital marketing into their retail stores.

Unfortunately, most brands’ social media presence is still being monitored by interns or associates who don’t understand the business enough to identify golden customer comments – and wouldn’t have the power to implement changes if they did. As such, here are the top 7 ways to take advantage of your social media marketing to boost sales in the real world.

1) Customer Service In Store

While store managers are greeting customers, coordinating staff and checking inventory, your social media analyst is sitting in a completely different address reading about customer service on your brand’s social media pages. Make sure that information reaches the right ears.

2) Stock Optimizations

Sure, you can run surveys and talk to your staff to find out what items are in demand rotting on shelves. But your customers are logging into Facebook the moment they’ve returned from a shopping page to tell you they couldn’t find a particular size or model – monitor comments and extract trends to optimize sales (and remember to inform those who can implement changes!).

3) Personal Retargeting

Find customers who didn’t find what they were looking for and direct them to where they can find it. Locate dissatisfied customers and offer free shipping or a coupon to get them to reconsider making the purchase. Have an online store with (theoretically) infinite stock? Make sure to remind your community. Even better – make sure your cashiers are reminding customers of your online communities and shops as they’re processing a sale.

4) Bring Offline Events Online

Promote in-store events on Twitter and create an Event Page on your Facebook, inviting all your fans. To go a step further, run Facebook self-serve ads targeting friends of Fans, encouraging them to join their friends.

5) Take Online Events Offline

With websites like Meetup.com, helping your customers (and future customers) meet like-minded people at a brand-related group or event is a smart way to integrate platforms and add value to your audience’s lives. Sponsor a Meetup and distribute branded souvenirs, create an activity group or host an expert panel to remind everyone that your brand is at the top of the industry in terms of knowledge.

Not into the whole Meetup thing? Then host a Tweet-up (invite followers in specific cities to meet in person over drinks) or a Fans-Only Facebook event.

6) Track Social Media Campaigns Offline

Remember that your ultimate goal (though most social media strategists may tell you otherwise) is to SELL, and most sales still happen offline – especially if your consumers are not particularly tech-savvy. Therefore, measure the success of your social media campaigns not only in terms of engagement or fan increases but in foot-traffic and sales. Handing out…

7)… Social Media Exclusive Coupons…

…is a great way to measure the direct effect of an online campaign on offline customers.

Don’t forget to walk before you run. By creating a solid, integrated base across media and establishing your brand as consistent across online and offline platforms, your marketing team will be in the perfect spot to leap into the fun and uncertain world of start-ups and new technologies.

P.S. – Don’t forget to check up on your competitors too! Their communities may be loud and buzzing… and telling you exactly what you can do to level the playing field or go above and beyond in your stores.

Have you found creative ways to utilize your social media brand presence in-store? Share with our community below! And don’t forget to join the rest of our community on our Facebook.

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In news that should surprise no one by now — Apple once again had a stellar quarter and blew past Wall Street estimates for Q3 2010. Just as with Q1 and Q2 of this year, Apple has been doing so well thanks largely to the iPhone. But unlike those quarters, Apple now has an important new product adding money to their bottom line: the iPad (the iPad had been released just prior to the closing of Q2). And this quarter actually marked Apple’s best ever in terms of Mac shipments.

Apple posted a revenue of $15.7 billion for the quarter (a new record — beating even holiday quarters). And net quarterly profit was at $3.25 billion — $3.51 per diluted share. All of those easily beat both Apple’s own (always low) estimates, as well as Wall Street’s.

Apple sold 3.47 million Macs during Q3 — again, a new quarterly record. The company sold 8.4 million iPhones, which was down slightly from the 8.75 million they sold last quarter. But remember, that’s before the iPhone 4 (which went on sale just prior to the end of the quarter) and many customers likely held off on purchasing the iPhone 3GS to wait for the new iPhone. The company also sold 9.41 million iPods in Q3. This number continues to decline on a year-over-year basis as it’s being eaten by Apple’s other products, like the iPhone.

But the big number is the iPad sales. Apple moved 3.27 million units in Q3 2010, the first quarter they’ve reported sales. Yes, the iPad almost outsold the Mac — and that’s on record sales for the Mac.

All that being said, Apple’s gross margin did fall slight to 39.1 percent, versus 40.9 percent a year ago. Part of this is likely due to the iPad, which Apple is selling for relatively cheap (by its standards).

Of note, Apple CEO Steve Jobs chimed in with: “we have amazing new products still to come this year,” in the release. He also reiterated that the iPhone 4 was the most successful product launch in Apple’s history.

Apple’s earnings call starts at 2 PM PT. We’ll be following along live and updating with notes below.

View full post on TechCrunch

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• ISBN13: 9780070511149
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
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Major Account Sales Strategy

Guest post by Jeff Molander, professor of digital marketing at Loyola University’s School of Business, public speaker and author of a forthcoming book aimed at improving digital marketing results. Find him at jeffmolander.com

In this economy need is the new want. And exceptional businesses are realizing tangible, meaningful outcomes using social media & mobile marketing. Here’s how they’re doing it — in two words: Build utility.

Create Demand, Not Messages

Success with “social” marketing is becoming less about creating desire, positive sentiment or aspiration among customers. It’s more about demand creation.

Whether B2B or B2C, customers are buying based on what they need. Awareness, recall, positive sentiment, “engagement” and buzz aren’t enough to overcome this mercenary reality. And masses of Facebook fans or Twitter followers aren’t enough either. Buzzing or creating awareness we think generate incremental sales is worthless.

Success lies in discovering latent, hidden demand among customers and capturing it.

Ditch Experimentation and Plan Instead

The real social media success stories aren’t arising out of tactical experimentation with Twitter and Facebook. They’re being built from the ground up – strategically, with qualitative outcomes in mind. And they’re using tried-and-true marketing concepts to get the job done. These winning strategies key on usefulness and value-creation.

They’re strategic investments, not tactical expenses. They’re marketing-oriented but highly operational and often aimed at creating loyalty by improving customer experience.

The Secret Sauce Is Relevance

I’m noticing common themes among social media successes like BBVA bank. They focus on fostering customer behaviors that lead to profitability. Whole Foods does this similarly with its mobile application when it suggests meals/shopping lists based on health needs — and even suggests meals for ingredients you already have.

The secret sauce is being endlessly useful and hyper-relevant to customers. This means giving customers tools that make it easier for them to transact with you.

But beware: it’s easy to fall into the trap of novelty. Example: How many customers love iPhone applications? Many. But how many apps are truly needed by users and used as part of everyday life? Jay gives outstanding examples of how to discover what’s relevant.

It’s About Value Exchange

Adagio Teas has a fully customizable, “digital desktop tea timer” that helps tea connoisseurs brew a perfect cup each time, and mixes in a powerful, respectful marketing approach to all who use it.

Adagio gives tea drinkers a useful tool. In return, it gets access to intimate needs-focused information on the customer or prospect him/herself. Notice the qualitative outcomes for both parties?

It’s a value-exchange between parties. It’s balanced, and always gives your company the opportunity to foster more behaviors. How can your product snap effortlessly into customers’ lives in a profoundly useful, relevant way?

USAA Bank already knew that customers were using technology to make their “banking lives” more productive. It simply “turned up the volume” with social and mobile tools — allowing customers to take utility to new heights. They didn’t employ a secret formula or best practice from outside the company. They looked at their own scenario for answers.

Ask Better Questions

The question USAA asked itself was…

“If customers are already depositing checks by scanning/emailing them, might they be willing to snap a photo of the check with their mobile device similarly? Might that be valuable to them — and to us — in measurable (profitable) ways?”

Adagio went through the same process when it realized, “Our sophisticated customers drink tea, and perfect cups of tea are hard to create if you don’t have a reliable means to properly time steeping.”

So, as a next step ask yourself…

1) What does your business already do — that it could “digitally extend” to customers — based on what you already know customers are doing or willing to do? (and that creates measurable value for both parties)

2) What recent, successful promotion or existing valuable utility could be “digitally extended?” (to create more/new value)

I look forward to your answers.

(photo by D3 San Francisco)

View full post on Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

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The tales surrounding the launch of the EVO 4G have been intriguing, to say the least. On June 4th, the device launched. By June 7th, Sprint was touting the phone’s sales as mammoth, claiming that it had broken their previous one-day sales records (as held by the Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre) by as much as 3 times. Just two days later, they recanted that story, declaring that they had “erred” in their original estimations, and that the sales numbers were inline with those of their previous top sellers.

There was, however, a bit of the story which we didn’t see: the part where a Sprint employee used the inventory system to figure out exactly how many EVO 4Gs were sold and posted that number online, resulting in a speedy investigation by Sprint HQ and the employee’s immediate termination.

We’ve reached out to Sprint for a comment on the matter, but here’s the story as we’re hearing it so far from a trusted source: On the afternoon of June 6th (before Sprint had released any sales numbers), a Sprint retail employee posted a note to the growingly infamous phone hacking forum, XDA-Developers, with sales figure details gleaned from their system. The post has since been removed, but bits of it are still lingering in Google’s cache:

“according to sprint we as a [company] have sold 66,483 theres a whole bunch of stores though that dont have any more inventory i dont think any major city sprint does”

According to this employee’s perusing, Sprint had dished out roughly 66.5 thousand EVO 4Gs after a little more than two days following launch. (Note that, as far as I know, this number only accounts for Sprint stores — not third party sellers like WalMart, RadioShack, etc. Even then, this number could be incorrect, depending on how the employee uncovered the number and any updating latency involved. I doubt Sprint’s going to confirm its accuracy, so take it with a grain of salt.)

Now, this post went mostly unnoticed by blogs and other media outlets — but it didn’t go unnoticed by Sprint HQ. As leaks are becoming more and more prevalent, carriers and manufacturers are dedicating more resources toward keeping an eye on forums like these for any breadcrumbs leading back to the source. Unfortunately for this given leakster, the breadcrumbs were all there.

Within a few days, an internal Sprint team (which, we’re told, is known around the carrier as “Forensics”) had traced the employee back to his Florida store. One of Sprint’s internal security task force members was immediately flown from Kansas to Florida; the employee was pulled in, their posting habits literally laid all out on the table, and they were terminated on the spot.

We see leaks each and every day; they are, after all, the lifeblood of any good gadget blog. Just because they’re a regular occurrence, however, doesn’t mean that employers are going to let them slide. They’re well within their rights to let any red-handed info-leakers go — and if any NDAs are involved, there very well could be some litigation involved. If the breadcrumbs are there, they’ll find’em.

View full post on MobileCrunch

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At a time when consumers have increasingly high expectations for website content, site owners need to pull out all the stops when creating an engaging experience for their visitors. This may include social networking features, multimedia, interactive features like polls and contests, and of course, fresh content that changes frequently. And these features need to be easy to add to a site (and change often) without constant intervention from the IT department.

The trouble is that all-in-one solutions for online customer engagement are thin on the ground. For the most part, the various functions that a site owner needs to deploy for customer engagement – such as analytics, social networking, and content management – are found in separate solutions, creating software management headaches for site owners.

Why is customer engagement so critical for today’s site owners? In a still-recovering economic climate, websites can’t afford to lose customers who show up on the home page, only to lose interest and leave when they’re not drawn in by compelling content. Engaged customers will download information and submit their contact information, which fills the lead-generation pipeline. They’ll buy products, they’ll stay longer, and they’ll come back again and again.

You need to adapt your digital strategies to meet the high expectations of the consumers, and the requirements of your business, to make as many customer interactions succeed. Ideally, customer engagement systems contain the following functions if they are to achieve the goals of retaining customers and improving sales:

Tools to streamline marketing campaigns:  Marketing and sales departments shouldn’t need to enlist technical people every time they need to launch a new campaign, or shift gears on a current campaign. Nontechnical users should be able to easily create campaigns and monitor their progress.

read more

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Since the idea of Marketo popped into the minds of Marketo’s founders, Jon Miller and Phil Fernandez, marketing accountability was at the center of their thoughts. While many marketers think about reporting and analytics as necessary evils, Jon and Phil think about how properly measuring campaign success and capturing which lead sources are likely to turn into won deals allows marketers to get credit for all their hard work, providing visibility past the marketing department through to the sales department and even into the boardroom.

This has lead to lots of discussions in the marketing department about the best ways to measure results to ensure marketing gets credit for their contributions to the pipeline. To no-one’s surprise, these discussions could not be contained in Marketo’s four walls, and instead we began talking to CMOs, demand generation managers, thought leaders, and analysts about their best practices for marketing accountability. What we found is some people really ‘got it’. They were creating success for themselves by creating visibility into their revenue contributions. Internally at Marketo we began to call these people “The Revenue Masters.”

These Revenue Masters all have a few things in common.  Their best practice include:

• Providing proof about the revenue they generate for the organization as part of their reporting.
• Creating marketing forecasts that are used to help set objectives and provide company leadership with a strategic look of what’s coming.
• Developing campaigns that don’t run just to cross off tactics on a list- everything from search marketing through paid campaigns must be driving brand recognition and qualified leads for the organization.
• Ensuring sales and marketing alignment is more than just a gobbledygook word.
• Treating leads as high value assets of the company.  Though they also know that a name on a list and a lead are very different things and don’t deserve equal attention from sales.
• Creating clear goals for social media instead of just using it as a megaphone.

Unfortunately, learning everything you need about becoming a Revenue Master can’t be done in a brief blog post.  A great way to develop these skills is to learn from the masters themselves. To help with this I have put together one of the most robust marketing webinar series ever, highlighting best practices from over 20 Revenue Masters.

The series topics will range from “How B2B Companies Generate Revenue Through Search and Social Media” to “Rules for Revenue Mastery: What the CEO Needs from Marketing.” Every sales rep, marketing professional, and executive should be able to find the right webinar to help drive their revenue success.

Be sure to check out this series of webinars if you are ready to become a Revenue Master.

Lessons from Sales and Marketing Revenue Masters was posted at Modern B2B Marketing – Marketo Best Practices Blog. | http://blog.marketo.com

View full post on Modern B2B Marketing | Marketo Blog

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One of the key benefits of social media that’s not talked about nearly enough is its ability to mitigate doubt and confusion among fence-sitters.

Yes, your prospective customers are confused and uncertain. After all, why would they even be coming to your Web site unless they had questions about your product or service? To be entertained? I think not.

During my 15 years of Web site strategy and usability work (before I got all social media on you) I very much tried to live by the two-click rule (discover the most common questions customers have about your business, and answer them on your site within two clicks or fewer).

How does zero clicks sound? Social media makes it possible. The key is to create meaningful content that answers those questions, and propagate that content throughout the social Web, making a visit to your site unnecessary.

Here’s how it works:

1. Question Detective
First, you have to identify which questions are most important to answer. I recommend starting with six, because it’s a meaningful amount of content and will address the tip of your question iceberg.

You can use a few methods to determine which questions to answer. You can survey your customers, although that’s not always the best approach because the questions are not fresh in their minds – they’ve already made their buying decision.

You can study your Web analytics, and see which pages get the most traffic, and what questions are likely to be in prospects’ minds when they are on those pages. Or, you could survey Web site visitors, gathering data in real-time.

I also like to look at search data, both the searches that people are conducting about your company on Google (use this free keyword tool), (insert Google keyword tool screen shot) and the searches conducted on your Web site (assuming you have a search function).

I would also make a point to solicit input from customer service and sales teams, as they have more day-to-day interaction with fence-sitters.

2. Answer Man
Once you’ve identified your top six questions, answer them.

Not in a “here’s our FAQ” way, but in a vigorous, social media way. I recommend answering each question with a dedicated blog post, and a video – at a minimum. For B2B companies, I suggest adding a short slide presentation that answers each question, and possibly a podcast that answers all six in aggregate.

Remember that video is 52 times more likely to show up on the first page of Google search results, so don’t skip that part.

You don’t need a film crew. You don’t need a makeup artist. You need an inexpensive HD camera (I prefer the Kodak ZI-8 over the FlipHD because it has an external microphone jack. How did I know that? Because Kodak is very adept at the precise strategy we’re discussing here).

You need some clue about lighting, somebody in your company that’s decent on camera, and a loose script. If possible, on-the-scene video showing demonstrations would be great. And if possible, I’d recommend having employees closest to the product (designers, engineers, product marketing, customer service) be the stars of the show, not executives or marketers. It’s just more authentic and believable that way.

3. Digital Dandelion
Take your written and video content, and spread it as widely as possible on the social Web. Post it to your Facebook page. Your LInkedin page. Your blog, naturally. Put it on YouTube of course. Even better, use TubeMogul to syndicate it to dozens of other video sites. Certainly, link to it from your corporate Web site, although the ideal scenario is that the content performs well enough in search results that potential customers can answer their questions before they ever get to your site.

4. Improve and Expand
Now that your content is posted to your various social outposts, invite your current customers to make it better. Talk it up on Facebook and the blog. Send it out to existing customers via email, so they can refer fence-sitters to it. Invite current customers to comment on your answers.

Each quarter, commit to answering a few more questions. Involve your customers, and ask them to create their own content that answers other questions (maybe a contest for the best ones).

Now use social listening tools to find blog posts, tweets, forum threads and other discussions about your brand and your products, and as appropriate direct fence-sitters to your new social media answers.

Now you’re combining content with marketing, social media with customer service. Now you’re using social media to its full advantage.

Give this a try will you? Then come on back and tell us your story in the comments.

(illustration by HiddenLoop)

View full post on Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting

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While there are countless sites on the web that are making good money, more often than not sites are not performing as well as they could/should.  They aren’t living up to their potential.  If these websites were employees, we’d probably fire them.

So, what do you do when your website isn’t living up to its potential? Give up?  That is one option.  But a better option is to sit back and do an honest assessment of your site.

So what are some of the things you should look at?  I’m glad you asked.

Here are some key things to look at if you feel your site isn’t being all that it can be.

Start by analyzing your web stats.

• Figure out how long people are staying on your site.
• See which pages they are leaving from most often.
• Look at the keywords they are using to find the site – if they aren’t coming in on targeted keywords that it isn’t that surprising that they aren’t converting.

Identify a few actions you want people to take on your site (place an order, sign for your newsletter etc) and go to your site yourself and go through the steps it takes for people to complete those actions.

• Was it easy?
• How many clicks did it take?
• Did the text compel and guide you along?

It’s sometimes hard to determine this for yourself since you are so familiar with your site, so ask a few friends or colleagues to go through the exercise and give you honest feedback. 

Your most important info should not be more than a click or two from the homepage.

But don’t forget, people could be entering from pages other than your homepage – so if your special offers and newsletter sign up aren’t on every page, people may miss them.

You may want to find a way to list your special offers (or at least a banner mentioning that you have special offers) as well as your opt-in on every page of your site.  Not everyone wants to do this and sometimes it’s an intentional strategic decision not to (maybe you want to keep the pages simpler and not have anything to detract from the particular call to action on that page) – and that’s OK.  As long as you understand and knowingly decide that.

What can you do to get people to come back to your site?

Create a plan for content addition – keeping your site current with fresh content is good for the engines and your site visitors.  People need to see your site as a resource so they have a reason to keep coming back.  Give them interesting, important, funny, newsworthy info and you’ll see your repeat visitors start to increase.  The more times someone visits your site, the more likely they are to buy.

Beware of Broken Links…

Test your site for broken links and errors – nothing scares site visitors off like a site that isn’t well maintained.  Check for typos and spelling mistakes.  Look for broken images.  Remember people will make snap judgments about you and the quality of your product or service based on how your site looks.

Test your shopping cart often to make sure there are no errors that are causing you to lose sales. Make sure it is easy to use and if possible, keep reminding people of the benefits as they go through the sales process.  You don’t have the sale until they click the final submit button.  If your cart has a lot of steps, you could lose people along the way so keep them engaged and wanting the product.

Wasted Space?

Don’t waste your thank you page – make an up-sell offer on your thank you page.  People have already bought from you and should be open to other offers, plus they already have their credit card out and ready!

School may be finished, but you aren’t done with testing!

Test, test, test.  You should be split testing or multivariate testing your pages to improve results.  The littlest things – a blue header versus a red one, the word girl versus woman can make a BIG difference (I know this because I split test everything!).  So get testing – test colors, headline text, calls to action, different photos.  With Google Website Optimizer testing is so easy.

Prominence is key.

Make your opt-in box prominent and compelling.  Building a list is vitally important to your business.  If your site converts 4%  of your site’s visitors into sales, then the other 96% of your traffic is wasted – but if you capture their contact info and can market to them on an on-going basis, you will very likely get more sales!

Blah, Blah, Blah and other Common Copy mistakes

You don’t want to be boring and drab.  You need to excite and compel people.  You also need to guide them by the hand and get them to take the action you want.

Don’t use too much jargon or confusing language.  Talk to your site visitors in a language they will understand and relate to.

Website copy is truly an art and the right words make a big difference.  Make sure you have compelling headlines and strong calls to action.  Don’t assume because your product is good people will want to buy it.  They don’t know it’s good yet – you need to convince them!

Speed Matters.

Check out load time on your site.  No one has the time or patience to wait for a slow loading site, so they may be outta there if it’s too slow.

Busy, Busy, Busy.

Make sure there is enough white space to make the eye comfortable.  Too much text and graphics can be very busy looking and it makes people uncomfortable.

There is a lot more we could talk about – including some specifics on how to write more compelling text but a girl can’t reveal everything right away!  So, for now, I’ve given you some stuff to think about and a place to start.  Stay tuned for next month, I’ll talk about some copy tips and give samples of good copy and bad copy.

As always, I welcome questions, comments and anything you want to share!

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Is Your Website A Cash Generating Sales Machine? Probably Not!

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Have you ever had sales superstars that don’t abide by company rules? Or wonder how to foster healthy competitions between your sales reps?

Answers to these questions vary, but panelists at the MIT Sloan Sales Conference shared helpful insights.

1. Rule of Three (Plus)

Polly Sumner, Chief Adoption Officer at salesforce.com, advised against competitions between any two sales reps. In a two-person competition, there is always a winner and a loser, and it’s hard for someone who loses twice to win again. The result is evident: the two-person team can only harness the power of one.

Thus arises the Rule of Three. In a three-person team, the rep who ranks lowest has two chances of improvement: become the best or the second best. Either position offers hope and incentivizes hard work. The rep ranking 2^nd feels both safe (better than the worst) and motivated (worse than the best). And the best rep for the cycle will also have incentives to keep up the good work since he or she faces two competitors. Aside from fueling everyone’s desire for better performances, the competition atmosphere will likely be less antagonistic, since two of the reps might find a common “enemy” and become (albeit temporary) allies.

2. Some Rules Can Never Be Broken While Others Can Be Ameliorated.

How should we treat top performers who don’t abide by company rules?  Panelists suggested a two-end approach. Find out what kinds of rules these salespersons are breaking. If their behavior reflects the bureaucracy of your company instead of ignorance of its needs, then you might consider reforming or removing these rules. If, on the other hand, your top performers are ignoring obligations to update pipeline or outbound call numbers, they should be warned or penalized. These apparently tedious tasks are important to the accuracy of your company’s revenue growth, and lack of fulfillment may jeopardize the long-term development of your company.

3. Assign distinct tasks to marketing and sales but foster close collaboration.

Should sales reps determine the positioning of your product? Though they may adapt feature description to potential customers’ needs, the answer is no. Marketing is responsible for setting the pitch. Sales should abide by the central message to maintain consistency of product branding. What sales can do, however, is to collect feedback from leads and collaborate with marketing to refine or update that message. When a pitch doesn’t sell, it’s important to adjust it quickly, and first-hand data from the sales team can help determine the right direction. 

What other best practices have you found when managing or working with sales teams? 

Photo Credit: lucianvenutian

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