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If you want to step up your networking activities, but you’re not quite sure how, Rohit Bhargava has some advice. “The challenge isn’t how you can find more opportunities to network,” he writes at Influential Marketing, “but how to talk about business in an unobtrusive way.” To accomplish that goal, he offers tips like these:
Hone your conversational skills. Your networking strategy will fail before it begins if no one enjoys talking with you. According to Bhargava, great conversationalists ask leading questions, listen intently to answers and add their own personal stories to the mix.
Create a distinctive nametag. Bhargava decorates his nametags with a sticker of his book’s chicken icon. “People want to know why I have that sticker there,” he says, “and it gives me a chance not just to share the story of my book, but also to talk about my philosophy of business—which is that personality matters.”
Make friends with introducers. “These are the people,” he says, “who always come to a moment in their conversations where they say something like ‘oh, you do _______? You should talk to _____.'” Introducers are more likely to provide introductions, he notes, when you’ve made a favorable impression with your conversational ability.
Respect the nature of the event. Unless you’re at a networking event—when you can dive right in—always evaluate the situation before you start talking business.
“You should feel comfortable [networking] in every situation, as long you can avoid becoming that blowhard at an event who won’t stop trying to sell his or her company at every moment,” says Bhargava.
Source: Influential Marketing.
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Heads up: The age-old “sales funnel” metaphor—consumers begin their decision-making with a large number of options in mind and narrow their choices to an eventual sale—fails to capture the shifting nature of consumer engagement in the digital age, warns David C. Edelman in a recent article at the Harvard Business Review.
As a result, many companies could be wasting precious branding dollars, Edelman contends. “What has changed is when—at what touch points—[consumers] are most open to influence, and how you can interact with them at those points,” he explains.
He cites an article in the McKinsey Quarterly that redefines the sales process in terms of the “consumer decision journey” (CDJ). Briefly, these are the steps in that journey:
Unlike in the days of the sales funnel, today’s consumers often limit their considerations at this first stage, Edelman notes.
Evaluate. At this stage, consumers seek input from peers, reviewers, retailers—and the brand and its competitors. Be there to answer questions, he advises.
Buy. Increasingly, consumers put off a purchase decision until they’re actually in a store, Edelman says. “Thus, point of purchase … is an ever more powerful touch point.”
Enjoy, advocate, bond. This is perhaps the biggest change from the sales-funnel model, Edelman contends. Post-sale behavior has taken on vastly new importance as the consumer interacts with the product and with new online touch points after a purchase.
The shift to a CDJ-driven strategy takes three steps, according to Edelman:
- Understand your consumers’ decision journey.
- Determine which touch points are priorities and how to leverage them.
- Allocate resources accordingly.
Put your money on interaction. To best serve today’s consumers, companies need to spruce up their Internet presence and encourage more consumer feedback (chats, testimonials, brand pages)—before and after a purchase.
Source: Harvard Business Review.
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You know online content should have a more conversational tone than other marketing materials. But remember that “informality” isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. “Conversational style has room for plenty of variation,” says Rick Sloboda of Webcopyplus. “For example, a conversation with your banker will differ from a conversation with your spouse.”
To find the right tone for your customers, Sloboda has tips like these:
Keep your voice active—not passive. A simple change from “You will be contacted by the next business day” to “We will contact you by the next business day” makes the statement appear less stiff and more trustworthy. “Web copy in passive voice sounds more formal,” he explains, “but it can also sound vague, unreliable and possibly deceptive.”
Recognize the importance of contractions. While you don’t want to overuse contractions, consider how they transform “Do not hesitate to give us a call. We would be happy to help you” into the far more inviting “Don’t hesitate to call us. We’d be happy to help.”
Keep paragraphs short. Big blocks of text look daunting when someone’s browsing online. So stick to brief paragraphs. And even include the occasional one-liner: “These are great for emphasis,” says Sloboda, “and invoke a casual tone.”
Mix formal and informal vocabulary. Real-world conversations tend to draw words from across the formal-informal spectrum. So make your content “sound” more realistic by balancing highbrow (substantial/myriad/numerous) with lowbrow (plenty/lots/tons).
Reach out to your customers with a more relaxed online tone, but don’t get sloppy about grammar and spelling. It’s one thing to let your hair down—another entirely to look unkempt.
Source: Webcopyplus.
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“I love to do business with small businesses—in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work—it doesn’t matter to me,” writes Guy Kawasaki at his eponymous blog. Based on his experiences, he has 10 tips for making the customer experience enchanting. Here are four:
Staff your frontline with personable, passionate employees. Customers want to interact with friendly people who care about your product or service and know what they’re talking about. “Ask yourself this question,” he says. “Is the first impression of my business a good one? Because if it’s a bad one, it may also be the last one.”
Build a customer’s trust by trusting your customer. If you need inspiration, Kawasaki cites Nordstrom’s famously liberal return policy, which clearly indicates that the retailer thinks highly of its customers. “If you trust me, I’ll trust you, and we can build a relationship.”
Avoid placing unnecessary barriers in the path to a sale. When someone wants to do business with you, make it as easy and painless as possible. “Don’t ask people to fill out 10 fields of personal information to open an account,” he cautions. “Don’t throw up a CAPTCHA system that requires fluency in Sanskrit.”
Deliver bad news sooner rather than later. Even the best-run companies encounter the occasional problem, and withholding information from customers is a mistake—especially if they figure out what’s wrong before you get around to telling them. “[L]et them know how you’ll solve the problem at the same time that you’re letting them know it exists,” he suggests.
The single most powerful way to enchant me is a ‘yes’ attitude,” says Kawasaki. We’ll bet most of your customers—and potential customers—would agree.
Source: Guy Kawasaki.
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In a recent post at Bazaarblog, Tara DeMarco reports on author Erik Qualman’s concept of the “social media escalator.” It’s his design for the graceful entry of businesses into the social realm. According to Qualman, no one would walk up to a group of people at a party and say, “Excuse me … Can we talk about why I’m great for the next five minutes?” But that’s what far too many businesses are doing at social sites, he argues: They jump in and immediately begin selling.
Instead, Qualman suggests, businesses need to take these four steps to enter social media the right way:
Step 1: Listen. See what people are saying about your brand, your products and your industry before jumping in.
Step 2: Interact. Join the conversation in a way that adds value. “You have to contribute to conversations people are already having to gain an audience,” DeMarco notes.
Step 3: React. “If 70 percent of people are saying they like something about your product, how quickly [are you] changing your product to deliver more of what they like?” DeMarco asks. Conversely, if people are talking about what they don’t like about your product or brand, how quickly are you working to fix it? This stage is where many companies drop the ball, she notes.
Step 4: Sell. Now is the perfect time to seamlessly add in a little self-promotion. “If you’re reacting to customer feedback to constantly improve your offering, selling will come naturally,” DeMarco says.
You, too, can master the social graces. Businesses can best enter social sites by listening, adding value to the conversation and responding to customer preferences. The final, selling stage then becomes a natural part of the process.
Source: Bazaarblog.
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Every email list is going to have subscribers who sign up and then apparently vanish. “They may have opted in to a specific offer, then disengaged once they obtained the coupon, free content or other benefit you promised,” writes Karen Talavera at MarketingProfs. “Or they joined your list while in the market for your product or service but soon afterward their needs were met and they never bothered to unsubscribe.”
Inactive subscribers frustrate marketers because we don’t know what went wrong. Reasons they ignore us include realizing our product or service isn’t a good fit, waiting patiently for more relevant content, or fuming over bad customer service. In other words, it could be just about anything.
So, how can you deal effectively with inactives? Talavera offers this four-step strategy:
Conduct a reactivation campaign. Create an agreed-upon definition for “inactive” and reach out to that segment with special incentives for opting into your list once again, confirming permission or providing expanded information.
Make contact via social networks. “If you can get an active connection going in a social-media environment,” she says, “chances are the next time your email message arrives, that list member will pay more attention to it.”
Attempt offline communication. If you have an inactive’s telephone number or physical mailing address, go ahead and touch base. Those who “might be ignoring their inboxes or those who simply might have changed email addresses and need to provide you with the newest, most-relevant one, might well appreciate the contact,” she notes.
Reduce frequency, or cease contact. “You don’t need to wipe them off your list,” she says. “Simply don’t email them as much, unless and until they show an increase in responsiveness.”
Connect or disconnect. Inactives on your list aren’t harmless; their presence can damage your metrics and deliverability. Get them to re-engage, or let them go.
Source: MarketingProfs.
If you want to step up your networking activities, but you’re not quite sure how, Rohit Bhargava has some advice. “The challenge isn’t how you can find more opportunities to network,” he writes at Influential Marketing, “but how to talk about business in an unobtrusive way.” To accomplish that goal, he offers tips like these:
