The "Result Junkies"

Last month in the United States was the start of the Holiday Season.  Thanksgiving starts off a fast and furious couple of months full of food, family, holiday parties and travel.  If you’re like my wife and I, then you are not originally from this great state of Texas, and it means that you get to travel back to your family and native lands.  Oh the joys!

The holidays always mean something different for each person and each family. Just as is does for all of our wonderful clients with whom we would not be able to be here today without.  So as we wind down this year I want to take a moment and thank all of our past and current clients. Without you we do not exist and we are not able to explore our minds and stretch the limitations of our abilities.

We want to wish a happy holidays to all of our troops both near and abroad. Not only do you sacrifice your lives on a daily basis for us to be able to write blogs like this, you spend these holidays far from home and your loved ones.  For that we wish you all of the men and women of the armed forces, the very best holiday season, safe travels and God speed.

January is named after the Roman god Janus, who was the god of doorways, beginnings, endings, and time.  He is often depicted as having two heads, one looking forward into the future and the other looking back into the past.  It is appropriate that we take this time to reflect on the past and look toward the future.  As re reflect, we are most thankful that all of our “Result Junkies” – you – have chosen to seize the opportunities and through hard work, we have had the chance to prosper and grow and know each other in our journey.  Thank you to ALL of you for the hard work over the past year and for your loyalty and support.  Thanks to your families who understood when you went to work early, worked late and traveled away from home which added to their load. These past couple of years have not been easy ones in business or in the World – but you have contributed to improvement in both our prosperity as a company and others who have benefited from our ability to share that.

Looking to the future and what 2012 has in store for us is what makes coming to the lab everyday worthwhile.

We sincerely hope all of our friends, families, colleagues and patrons have a wonderful and safe holiday season.

Do not adjust your computer, iPhone, Ipad or Tablet? screens…this is seriously what they released to the world! But alas, the many Gap enthusiasts, my wife included, quickly made a mockery of the company’s feeble and epic failed attempt to “refresh” their now iconic mark.

If you know me then you know I am going to squeeze the conspiracy out of this story, if for nothing other than making us all think.

Many of us are more than likely going to be inclined to cough this up as a foolish corporate mistake. But is it really? Gap has been a company known to be in financial turmoil. Dwindling stocks stemming from less than impressive year-end financial reports were the perfect contributing ingredients to an impending disaster. Just last year alone the company lost an estimate 2.3% when comparing their previous years revenue, which was also down from the previous year.  If you ask me, this massive sales deficit was not only a side effect of the fledgling economy, but spoke to the fact of the company’s diminshing brand presence. It was a matter of time until a “More Panic” meeting was called.

People always say to themselves, “I wish I was a fly on the wall in that meeting”. Well folks, I spoke to a fly, who spoke to a fly, who heard it on the grapevine, who claims she heard it from Cathy, about what went on…and here is how he thinks it went down”…

“Hear ye, hear ye”… well maybe not, but I have always wanted to start a meeting off like that.

“So what do we do?”…asks the guy sitting at the end of the table, donned in his red and blue neck-tie, white Armani dress-shirt (the irony kills me), Armani reading glasses and $1500 boots (we assume the rest of his outfit is pretty standard…except for his watch which can buy both you and I a brand new house…or feed a hundred starving families, whichever one makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside).

“We shake things up!”…says the marketing director.

“We change our prices and our line”

“Tried that before!”…says Armani suite…

“Well…hmmmm…ok how about we change our brand?”

“I don’t think that is a good idea, people are comfortable with our brand…it will cost us too much money and frankly I am going on vacation at the end of the month and don’t need the headache. Any other ideas?”..says Armani suit

The intern raises her hand, me..me…me

“Anybody else?”

“me…me..me!”

“Fine, Lindsay what do you think?”

“Why don’t we just pretend to change our brand. I will create a logo with my mediocre at best Photoshop skills, and then we can release it at midnight tonight. That way we can generate some press and hope to not lose our shirts…get it?”

“I don’t know”… say the now overpaid marketing director…”that is a silly idea!”

“What do we have to lose? Sales and credibility?… we have already lost those by releasing those stupid looking skinny jeans”…says Armani suit

“Lindsay, you are a genius. Do it!”

We flash forward through panic, disgust, laughter, ridicule and back-tracking, only to find Gap at the fore-front of every news media, trying to explain away what happened with their “failed attempt to release their new logo”.

While we all point and laugh at what a gigantic failure that it was, I must sit back and ask myself…

WAS IT?…WAS IT REALLY?

Have you ever noticed that people tend to act differently when they are online? It seems that we’ve forgotten how to act, so  Momma Manners is here to deliver a much needed lesson.

Mind Your Manners
Do you have an online business or an online presence? If the answer is yes, then you need to be extra careful about your online persona. Your social media accounts and websites reflect your character. Wouldn’t it suck if you lost business because of some drunken Tweet you decided to post,  because you posted a disgruntled Facebook comment after dealing with an antagonizing co-worker? If you don’t think your clients are researching you, then you’re senile. Here is a challenge for you, search your name or your company’s name and see what the search results yield. Be sure to use more than one search engine.

I Deleted Everything!
The first thing you should remember is that nothing is truly deleted from the internet. You can remove a snarky comment on someone’s blog, but your unkind words are still floating out there in cyberspace.

How Should I Conduct Myself?
Carry yourself online the same way that you would in person. Don’t post or write anything that you wouldn’t want on the first page of a newspaper.

Spelling—Try to avoid abbreviations or poor spelling on your social media accounts and website. We know that social media accounts are more casual than an office e-mail, but it is better to be overly formal then to be unprofessional. Your websites and pages are a reflection of your organization, and of your own character. Don’t tarnish your presence.

Watch Your Temper

One of your clients may have made you mad, or maybe a fellow employee really ticked you off, but don’t air your dirty laundry online. It’s just embarrassing and immature. Employees are losing their jobs over social media postings, and you don’t want to lose clients over something you wrote. Think before you type!

Keep It Separated—Make a professional and a personal social media account. It sounds like common sense, but some people haven’t figured out that it isn’t a wise decision to merge the two. If you have a Facebook, you should have a personal account attached to your personal email, and you should have a professional account connected to your professional email. There is nothing wrong with friending your customers and clients, but you don’t want them associating on the same page as your crazy cousin.

Censor Yourself

If you don’t have anything nice to say ,don’t say it at all. It’s an oldie, but definitely a goodie. Yes, you can post statements under an annonymous screen name, but if someone finds out who you are, you’re screwed. Just don’t do it!

Friending

Don’t friend your boss on your personal Facebook account! That’s what LinkedIn is for.

Responding—If you’re going to have a fanpage or some other form of social media, you need to engage your followers. If they posted to you, take the time to respond to them.

Keep It Clean—You and your friends may have a cool nickname for each other, but don’t make it a screen name. Also, keep your clothes on! We know you worked hard for that Adonis figure, but if a client were to come across a half-naked picture of you, I’m sure they won’t be impressed.

I Can See You!

Yes, there are privacy settings, but the world is a small place. There are ways to work around privacy settings on social media pages and websites, so keep that in mind when you are writing your content and posting images.

Music—If your website has music make sure that it isn’t offensive. Sounds like a no-brainer, but we all know what happens when we assume.

Language and Tone—Don’t use profanity! Also, if you’re trying to portray a certain attitude through your website (like sarcasm), you may want to reconsider. Your written content may come across as funny to you, but it may come across as offensive to another. Language and tone should be a special consideration if you’re conducting business internationally. Remember that context of your message can be received differently; depending on who is reading your website or posts.

Ultimately, if you wouldn’t want your grandma to read it or see it, then maybe you should reconsider what you’re about to publish.

Now it’s 2010, and social media is embedded in the daily functions of our lives. Businesses check their media feeds while they have their first cup of coffee. News stories are now being broken on Twitter before a reporter can reach the scene. People are meeting in person through social media connections (Tweetups and Facebook events). Let’s not forget that people are also constantly connected to the internet through their cellphones, computer or laptop.
If social media is still just a silly trend in your mind, you’re probably behind the curve. My marketing professor told me, “In the business world, only the fastest survive.” He’s absolutely right. If you can’t stay current, then you’ll become obsolete.

Swim Fast or Die

If these people were blogs, you'd want to be THAT guy.

Blogging. This phenomenon is for sure here to stay and we have advanced past the time of calling blogs just a trend. They are now essential tools in building brand awareness. Blogs provide opportunities to speak directly to audiences engaged in the brand already. Speaking to audiences in their own terms is one of the best ways to explain what your brand is all about.

So what’s the point of blogging?

Visiting a website can tell you lots about a brand. But not everything. And not a lot of the things you really want to know. If you want to KNOW the brand, the voices behind it and the issues that are important to it, a blog is where it’s at. You might find the beginning threads of what you want to know on an official website but digging deeper into a brand requires reading more.

Do us a favor: Just Keep it Simple

If you are blogging for your brand, you don’t want people to have to dig TOO deep. (Or else they probably won’t do any digging at all and move on to the next brand, next blog and not remember yours). It is important to also find ways to keep your old blogs memorable too. Remember that unbelievably awesome blog you wrote a month ago? Well there are a lot of ways to keep that work relevant and entice readers to check it out again. It also has to be easy to read. Establishing your blog and engaging people in what you have to say isn’t always easy though. If it was easy, then brand awareness would be simple and we would all know EVERYTHNG about ALL the brands we use and want.

Write TO your audience, not AT them…

In order for people to follow your blog, they have to have that basic interest in what you’re talking about. You have to know your audience too. Who is actually reading this stuff? Well, you have to know in order to write to them. Some of the best bloggers out there will tell you that branding is all about how you speak to your readers. Having a conversation with your reader is the best way to keep them engaged but also to keep YOU memorable. There are a lot of great articles out there, to help us figure out how to talk to potential clients.

Blogging allows you to literally write your own definition of what your brand represents. By showing people what you are interested in and what’s important to you, you build a personal relationship with them. Successful branding is not easy. This we know. But what we also know is how to create that brand dialogue and it starts with building a relationship.

1. Find a large enough group of people to talk to. Marketers are always looking for new segments to penetrate with their products and blogs are a great channel to communicate with them.  For example, if you sell executive suites to small businesses, you will probably want to target prospects based on geography and perhaps service firms. That will give you a large group of people to talk to but this group will probably be composed of several smaller groups with similar interest, so don’t stop there.
2. Learn what is unique about each smaller group. Within that larger segment you should create a variety of content that speaks to what is unique to each one do those smaller groups. Following the example above, it could be interesting to create content that talks about the importance of first impressions, the role of branding in finding new clients, the most successful stock investments strategies or the latest high-end entertainment events in the area.
3. Share with them and build trust. We all know that people like free samples, gifts, give away, free content, free research, extras or free trials. Use those to start building your brand and relationship with them.  Once you have built that trust and created that first impression, it is really hard to lose it – unless you really screw it. When blogging for sales you must honestly want to share knowledge and tips without expecting something back immediately, you must have patience.
4. Be patient and keep sharing. This is key as the game has changed for marketers and sales people, if you go aggressively for the sale without really knowing where the prospect is in the purchasing process, you will create a lot of enemies that could have been clients down the road. More than 95% of your blog’s visitors will not be ready to buy so you must be softer and broader with your message to appeal to a larger group that is most likely looking to simply educate themselves. However, make sure to make it easy for those that are shopping to contact you or purchase online.
5. Embrace your visitors and their networks. As people comment on your posts, bookmark them, share them on social networks and subscribe to your blog, make a task for you to develop each one of those relationships and ideally try to take them offline if appropriate. Don’t try to sell them until they are ready and ask more about your product or services. Developing those relationships will also help you reach a much larger audience than you can reach yourself.
6. Keep improving your sources. The content that you put in your blog is the fuel that will get your lead generation machine going, so make sure to create an editorial calendar and follow it religiously. If you have trouble coming up with your own thoughts or ideas, you can comment on research reports, studies, do book reviews, interview other experts, etc. Don’t ever run out of gas.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

I was going to use the question above to title this post, but then I realized that I was making the precise mistake that I am going to blog about – Making your titles/headlines/subject lines or your entire content too specific. The consequence is that you lose the vast majority of your audience that may not be ready to buy your product or services now, but may be be in the future. Being too specific in your pitch may be damaging your opportunities to build a stronger sales pipeline in the long run. This is what Chet Holmes talks about on chapter 4 – “Becoming a Brilliant Strategist, How to Get Up to Nine Times More Impact from Every Move You Make” – of his Amazon and New York Times best-selling book “The Ultimate Sales Machine”. He calls is “Education-Based Marketing”.

I have to say that I agree with his recommendation only to some extent. Conceptually it makes a lot of sense, however what happens when everyone else (your competitors) have also learned this? and they are changing their marketing messages too, from being very tactical or street-level to more strategic in order to build brand awareness, recognition, trust and thought leadership? I get bombarded all the time with webinars, white papers, podcasts, blog posts and videos with strategic marketing content. How to achieve better Marketing ROI with web analytics? How to incorporate Social Media into the overall marketing strategy? How to drive more leads? So, what I do with them is delete them right away because I have seen them all already.

If you noticed, the media I made a reference to, from which I get most, if not all my content, is online. Why is this important? Because sales and marketing happens on and off-line as we all know and the strategies should be coordinated but different. Being more strategic on your messaging, like Chet Holmes recommends, makes a lot of sense via traditional media and on sales activities such as cold calling, trade shows, conferences or networking. I want to emphasize that I strongly agree with such strategy when dealing offline, however, when you are online the game is different. The economics and the rules are different so you can implement a long-tail strategy to reach each segment with the right message at the right time.

I want to conclude with 6 suggestions to increase your sales performance using education-based marketing and online media (but make sure to compliment it with offline media)

1. Create targeted education-based messages. Identify the market segments or industries that you want to target and create a content strategy for them. But you can’t stop there, you have to create different messages based on where in the purchasing process the prospect may be: not considering, thus a more strategic message; researching, thus a more tactical message; or ready to purchase, an offer based message.
2. Use and integrate different online channels. Prospects may use different channels at different stages in the purchasing cycle, so you need to be present on all of them with the appropriate message. For example those that are researching may start (probably will) on Google so you want to make sure that your optimized (blog, website, social media sites) for the keywords used at this stage in the process with content that is more educational on why you are better than your competitor. In addition, you also want to have a separate web and content optimization strategy for those that not considering by using a more strategic message and for those that are ready to pull the trigger using for example email marketing to your house list with strong offers to those that have shown interest in your product or services.
3. Implement adequate supporting technology. You need to have the appropriate technology given your reality, otherwise all the work that you do on the front end to drive traffic to your website, blog, social media sites and any others may be lost. Assess what kind of volume you expect to get given your investment in online marketing communications, and what resources you can dedicate to monitor and turn that traffic into sales opportunities. Then, do a through research because there are hundreds of software as a service (SaaS) providers that can help you. But make sure to adopt one or a combination of several.
4. Develop and Nurture online relationships. Once you identify the leads, make sure to categorize them based on their time to purchase. That will give you more insight into how nurture them, what type of content to share with them and with what frequency. Engage with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Nings and on the Blogs.
5. Drive online interactions to offline relationships as soon as possible. It is my opinion that all these online tools; web 2.0, social media, or whatever you want to call them, will never replace face to face interaction. However they can be a great bridge to get you a face-to-face interaction and very effective tools to help you maintain and develop those relationships.
6. Analyze and refine. Establish clear goals and objectives for your plan from the beginning. As you probably know, what does not get measured, does not get improved. Utilize the technology in place and frequently challenge the process and results you’re getting to find ways to improve them.

Any thoughts or comments? Go ahead tell us what you think.

Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

Search Engine Optimization has been a cat & mouse game since its inception, marketer and web masters spent their time figuring out how to game search engine algorithms to only find out that these sites kept evolving and coming up with new criteria. The beauty of this game has been that it has evolved in the direction of making results more and more like what you would find on an offline search for a product or service. The difference though is that looking for an accountant offline could take you days or weeks to find a good one. You would probably look for one on the yellow pages, then ask your friends if they knew one, then interview several, than ask for references, to end up probably working with one that worked with someone you trust.  However, online you can do this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Product or service searches on Google (using their filters, social search features and Google buzz) or searches on Facebook (which can also be filtered for friends) will, if not already, complete the entire search and selection process.

So, the questions are: How do you optimize your web presence? How do you embrace word of mouth and user generated content around your brand? How do you grow a network built on trust and reputation? In a few words, and you can watch the presentation below to get more details, the answer is three-fold.

First, you want to establish an editorial calendar because it will help you increase content quantity, quality and your will get more subscribers. Do simple math, more content + better quality = better search engine ranking. Add a little of smart marketing and you will get more readership and that will drive more subscribers (or potential customers)

Second, become a publishing warehouse as it will help you get your target audience in the format and timing that they prefer the most. Take the topic for the day, week, month, whatever your reality is and put in your “content development process” to create blog posts, articles, presentations, tweets, white papers, questions, videos, podcasts, etc. or whatever your target audience respond best.

Third, leverage personal branding to distribute content to networks built on trust and reputation. As stated on a previous blog employees can become a great channel to distribute your content.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

Employees and their families are online and using social media related sites more than ever before (I assume I don’t need to give a stat on this to make the point) and they like to share personal and professional content with their networks. The beauty is that these networks are built on trust, reputation, friendship and real business relationships. Therefore, they listen to what each other has to say making it a great word of mouth channel for a brand. However, many companies are still concerned that access to social media sites while at work could be a source of loss in productivity…well, let me say that the next outlook version integrates with Facebook and other social media tools and most of them have mobile devices. So, I would say that corporate mind-set will have to change much like it did 15 years ago when email came up. Next are six simple ways to start embracing employee social media activities to boost your marketing target reach while retaining employees.

1. Set expectations and boundaries: Define how social media can help align employees with your business and marketing goals and what the objectives are for social media. Then be specific on what the expectations, implications and limitations are for employees. Clearly and frequently communicate this to them to make sure they are aware and accountable for their actions, but don’t force them into social media and make sure that they don’t feel that they have to do it.
2. Educate them: Create a program to coach them on the benefits and limitations of each tool for social and professional purposes.  Show them examples of what to do and what not to do. Do it frequently and embrace knowledge sharing amongst themselves. Encourage employees to try it and find their own social media style.
3. Invite them to participate: Share with them all your news, campaigns, events, promotions, offers, etc. and ask them to share them with their networks. But don’t stop there, make them part of it by asking them to provide content and help in the creation of these initiatives
4. Use incentives: Contest are great, I recommend setting up daily, weekly or monthly contest to rewards those that participate the most or help reach the goals of the initiative at hand.
5. Give them feedback: This is key, no one knows how they are doing and how they can improve if they don’t get any feedback. Give them metrics, comments, ideas and feedback in general on how they are helping the company. They need to know the consequences and implications (positive and negative) of their actions to improve them, correct them or embrace them.
6. Embrace their ideas: Social media is all about user-generated content and participation, so companies must incorporate employees ideas into their programs. Employees are the ones closer to the customers and prospects and understand better than anyone else what make prospects and customer click or engage. Create the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their social media ideas.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito