Motorcoach Marketing Spring 2017

MOTORCOACH

ISSUE 02/ APRIL 2017

MARKETING

Marketing and Sales Information Designed for the Motorcoach Industry

6 rules for using hashtags effectively

How Editing Photo

Content Can Improve Your Website’s Looks The Ultimate Guide to Creating

a Sales Process

Organic traffic & link building for small businesses How to Collaborate With Your Prospect to Close More Deals

44

38 06 18 06

FACEBOOK’S VIDEO STRATEGY NETS 1,055% HIGHER SHARE RATE THAN YOUTUBE/ Native video is becoming hugely important. With 25 percent of U.S. users adopting an ad blocker...

08

4 WAYS SMALL BUSINESSES CAN COMPETE AGAINST THE MAJOR COMPETITORS/ Moving into a new city or job can be daunting, the hassle of finding accommodation, the stress...

14

6 RULES FOR USING HASHTAGS EFFECTIVELY/ A hashtag can help social media marketers encourage and guide conversations related to your brand.

HOW EDITING PHOTO CONTENT CAN IMPROVE YOUR WEBSITE’S LOOKS/ There’s no arguing that photo content plays a major role in most websites, as far as user experience is...

24

SHOOT MELONS, KILL BUGS: HOW BUSINESSES MAKE CREATIVE VIDEOS/

38

Building a repeatable, scalable sales process is tough. There’s no shortage of diagrams, methodologies, or...

44

LINKEDIN ADS: HOW TO TARGET YOUR IDEAL PROSPECT, EVERY TIME/ LinkedIn Ads is the undisputed king of targeting professionals in the world of advertising, and it does it...

34

HOW TO COLLABORATE WITH YOUR PROSPECT TO CLOSE MORE DEALS/ Working with your prospect during the sales process makes you far likelier to ultimately close.

ORGANIC TRAFFIC & LINK BUILDING FOR SMALL BUSINESSES/ When it comes down to it, the hardest part of SEO for most small businesses is building links and...

Melons going splat in slow motion.

Drawn-as-you-go animation about machines. A behind-the-scenes...

28

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO CREATING A SALES PROCESS/

50

CREATING A HIGH-FIVE CULTURE/ The average annual household income in the United States is $56,516. For the top 5 percent of...

56

8 REASONS WHY SALES REPS SHOULD PRESCHEDULE COLD CALLS/ Although we live in an on-demand world, people still tend to perform their best when following...

PRODUCTION Production deliverabilities layout&design: Phone: 360.468.3699

Email: info@deliverabilites.com www.deliverabilities.com

ADVERTISING Motorcoach Marketing Council opportunities: Phone: 360.840.0779

Email: chris@gomotorcoach.org motorcoachmarketing.org

GoMotorcoach

A SPECIAL THANK YOU TO ALL THE COMPANIES WHO DONATED, BID, OR PURCHASED ITEMS AT OUR 2017 AUCTION. WITHOUT YOU, WE COULDN’THELP OPERATORS SELL MORE CHARTERS, TO MORE PEOPLE, FOR MORE MONEY.

2017 AUCTION CONTRIBUTORS

CONTRIBUTORS ALSO INCLUDED: National Interstate Insurance Company Lancer Insurance Company Budget Truck and Auto Body staySky Hotels & Resorts Turbo Images J.J. Keller & Associates, INc. Amerisearch Background Alliance

Resorts Casino Distinctive Systems, Inc. Shore Funding Ltd., Inc. Access Commercial Capital, LLC Team Coach Imaging NTIS Group, LLC Myrtle Beach Convention & Visitors Bureau

Key Equipment Finance BusRates.com TCF Equipment Finance Bus & Motorcoach News Translite Enterprises, Inc. First Class Tours Paul Arnold Associates, Inc. Branson CVB

PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO OUR 2018 AUCTION. ALL PROCEEDS DIRECTLY BENEFIT THE MOTORCOACH INDUSTRY BY FURTHERING THE MISSION OF THE MOTORCOACH MARKETING COUNCIL. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MISSION OF THE COUNCIL, PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT MOTORCOACHMARKETING.ORG

TO DONATE ITEMS ONLINE, VISIT MOTORCOACHMARKETING.ORG/AUCTION

The Motorcoach Marketing Council/ From the president.

Here is text: For the industry, by the industry. This statement is something that we at the council are very proud of because we recognize that our industry is vastly different from the work done by even our closest cousins in the trucking industry, and there’s a stark contrast between what we do and your average 9-5 job.

We are proud of this motto because it’s a concise commentary on what we do, and it accurately conveys that the council represents a greater community— not just the products we’re becoming known for.

The trainings, tools, and resources we’ve worked to develop have been envisioned, planned, and executed by operators, manufacturers, associations, and other stakeholders that work in and love this business just as much as we do. Over the last few years we have witnessed an upsurge taking place—people are excited about what the council has to offer, and their energy in supporting our efforts is helping us accomplish our main objective of selling more charters, to more people, for more money.

this industry at this most pivotal time as companies redefine what the future will hold. It’s true that rising tides raise all ships, and at this moment, we can see that the tide is coming in.

Thank you to all of you who have continued to support the council as we work to provide you with the materials you need to grow your businesses. We’re also grateful to those of you who have made financial contributions to our efforts. While our budget is small, there’s nothing small about our mission, and there’s no way we could do this without you.

The future is bright for this industry. We will continue to be one of the safest, most efficient and cost effective ways to move groups, and as we move forward together, we will do it for more and more people every year. We look forward to helping you realize your goals this year and beyond!

-Jeff Rogers

At our biannual board meeting in April and September, one of the key discussion questions that’s always on the agenda is simply this: Is it working? While we recognize that our consistent efforts to build new tools, record more trainings, and find new ways to help operators is important, we also understand that the only real metric of success is whether operators are actually using these things to grow their businesses.

Over the last quarter, and since we published our first issue of this magazine, we have seen some important milestones. For starters, we saw the 500th order placed through our online customization system, a system that assists operators in creating powerful marketing materials to more effectively sell to niche markets. Our magazine readership grew to nearly 300—a number that surpassed our expectations—and we broke every forecast and record at our 2017 fundraiser and auction held at the UMA Expo in St. Louis. We’ve also seen many operators utilizing our website and training videos.

But perhaps most importantly? We have seen a palpable change in the industry’s activities when it comes to marketing. We hear stories of companies who are putting our tools and trainings to the test and achieving real world success because of them.

We are proud of what we have accomplished and what we will yet accomplish. We are excited to be a part of

Jeff Rogers

MMC President.

Owner First Class Tours Houston, TX

SOCIAL

Facebook’s video strategy nets 1,055% higher share rate thanYouTube/

BY STEWART ROGERS

And native video is one of the reason influencer marketing and user-generated content has become so important.

Native video is becoming hugely important. With 25 percent of U.S. users adopting an ad blocker last year, native content is how marketers are avoiding the cut.

And native video is one of the reasons influencer marketing and user-generated content has become so important.

from 6.2 million posts from 167,000 Facebook profiles throughout 2016 — one thing is clear. Native video has not only taken over Facebook, it has done so by design.

Facebook is determined to catch and pass YouTube in the video wars. In 2015, VB Insight studied both platforms and found that YouTube was still 11X bigger than In a study released today by Facebook. At the time, Americans social media analytics company spent an aggregate of 8,061 years Quintly — that took in data on YouTube, compared to 713 years

watching video on Facebook.

But with automatic video plays in the feed by default, and a design that downplays the importance of other video platforms, Facebook has been clawing away at YouTube’s dominant position.

“Our last video study already showed that Facebook native videos have been dominating the social network,” Nils Herrmann, digital communications manager at Quintly, told me. “But this study gives a more detailed understanding of this trend and just how substantial it is. It might not come as such a surprise that Facebook’s native videos are outperforming other formats, but what’s interesting is how those native videos performed on average 109 percent better than even YouTube videos.

And that number rose as high as 186 percent in December 2016. Also that same month, we found that FB native videos held a 1055 percent higher share rate than YouTube videos. Given how popular YouTube remains on its own outside of Facebook, these numbers raised a few eyebrows!”

Facebook’s tactic of downplaying other formats has seen Vimeo shares almost disappear from the network entirely — only 2 percent of profiles included a Vimeo link in their feeds. And video is now so prevalent on Facebook that 53 percent of all Facebook profiles share video content on their feed.

The performance of native videos suggests that influencer marketing could be a big winner for marketers who want to win on Facebook. However, that is a double-edged sword for Mark Zuckerberg’s social network, since it isn’t monetizing these videos in the same way YouTube does.

“At the moment, Facebook native videos simply increase your share of voice through a higher reach than other formats based on the results of our study,” Herrmann said.

“This is a good start for both companies and influencers to optimize their strategies,

to measure and then adjust. After professional Facebook users build a more grown-up video strategy, Facebook is very likely to do something comparable as YouTube.”

The study includes a few other surprises and further indications that Facebook’s strategy around video-sharing and viewing is allowing the company to catch up with Google’s YouTube.

“For starters, over 90 percent of the analyzed profiles used Facebook native videos — that is 3X more than the use of YouTube videos,” Herrmann said. “And it’s consistent in nearly every analyzed group of different profile sizes that FB native videos were a strong player. We also found that the biggest profiles (with 10 million+ followers) are increasingly likely to use Facebook native videos — a 35 percent growth rate in usage was detected for this profile group alone between July and December 2016.”

With Facebook now pushing video to Samsung and Apple TVs via its new app, the message is clear — video is important.

“Facebook really has succeeded in having their native video format take precedent on their own social network,” Herrmann said. “While it would likely never fully replace the use and shares of YouTube and other formats, in the long run, we might see those become even more rarely used, while Facebook native videos will continue to dominate users’ news feeds everywhere.”

The full study, which also details video performance, share rates, and growth statistics, is available today. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

STRATEGY

4Ways Small Businesses Can Compete Against the Major Competitors/ For a small business to strive and win competitors in an industry, use these strategies.

BY: Pius Boachie

Small businesses need to go laser focused on a chosen market segment....

Moving into a new city or job can be daunting, the hassle of finding accommodation, the stress of moving personal items and most especially the people or city accepting someone new might not be pleasing.

or a soft drink. So, Mateschitz went back to the drawing board and lasertargeted a market segment (students) and marketed to them relentlessly by sponsoring events, throwing campaigns, devotional social media challenges.

The same applies to small businesses that are launching into an industry ridden with bigger competitors. For an SMB, finding a niche can be timeconsuming but rewarding on the long-term.

By targeting a specific market, Red Bull was able to build a following, sales skyrocketed and growth exploded.

Right now, Red Bull can be found in almost every athletic or sports events holding a market share of 50 percent in Canada and 46 percent in the US as at 2011.

In the article below, I will be sharing 4 effective marketing strategies for SMB’s against bigger competitors.

1. Niche down Small businesses need to go laser focused on a chosen market segment. I am talking hyper focused, zeroed down to the barest minimum then expand from there as they grow.

To compete and beat bigger rivals in the industry, SMB’s need to focus on their basic consumers.

Basic consumers can range from college students to a particular demographic. Recognizing and marketing to the basic consumers allow for quick sales, more revenue for marketing and the ability to grow a following.

A perfect example can be found in Red Bull. Co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz started his little-canned drink with no specific market in mind, and even with no competition in the energy drink industry, sales were slow. Consumers could not decide if Red Bull was a sports stimulant

Key Takeaway: If you’re starting a business in a market that has established competitors, you need to niche down to strive then win it. Dig deeper and find untapped subcategories in your market, sell to that core customer then expand.

2. Pick your angle and flaunt it You’re in business to solve a problem for consumers. Now to strive and beat the anacondas in the room, you need to hold a competitive angle and flaunt it.

Winning customers over is all about effective storytelling. Your competitive angle (which will be your story) can be the reason you started your business (origin story), the value attached to your products/service or the difference between your products/ service (product story).

Your job as the founder is to find your angle and turn it into a story which can be shown to customers in your marketing campaigns and website.

Your job as the founder is to find your angle and turn it into a story which can be shown to customers in your marketing campaigns and website.

Your competitive angle for an amazing marketing story can be any of the following:

According to a new study from Microsoft, since the year 2000, the average attention span of humans has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.

•

Responsiveness to customer complaints, inquiries. How long do you take? Let them know.

•

Business A uses cheap packaging and yours is more alluring? Tell your target customers.

•

Business B products are not totally safe and yours is eco-friendly? Tell your customers.

•

Got a celebrity on your team or some smart-ass on the team? Tell your customers.

•

Offer better courier service than

business B. Mak your customers.

Businesses such as have used innovatio angle, IKEA boasts provide superior fur rates and these s reflected in their ma

Key Takeaway: The back to the drawing board full list of the you and your comp into stories for your

3. Jaw dropping services

ke it into a video for .

s Apple and Sony on as a competitive s of its ability to rniture at affordable stories are always arketing schemes.

list is endless, head g board and make a difference between petitors and make it consumers.

g products and

different from your competitors.

Back in the 80s when IBM and Microsoft produced PC’s, Apple came along with something revolutionary. As a new business, you need to build cheaper, better and different products which will earn you your spotlight.

Key Takeaway: Create products with a hook, something revolutionary and at the same time valuable to your customers.

4.

Customer service relationship should be sidekick

and your

One huge advantage of being a small business is the ability to interact with customers directly removing the bottlenecks and bureaucracy of larger businesses. Creating space to deliver better experiences and exceed customer expectations.

According to a new study from Microsoft, since the year 2000, the average attention span of humans has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.

In relation to business owners, you have less than 8 seconds to convince a customer about your products wherever they find them. Your website should pop and grab customers’ attention allowing them to understand your products or business.

Design your website to make valuable promises about your products and experience them. With a laser-targeted customer base, your products should be designed for your customers, it should deliver a valuable promise and experience which is entirely new and

Your ability to respond to emails, inquiries, send handwritten “thank you” notes and solve complaints results in amazing customer experiences which yield more customers through word of mouth marketing, online reviews and social media channels.

Key Takeaway: Better customer service and relationship should be a top priority for any small business looking to beat competitors and win new customers over, SMB’s should invest in quality CRM and customer services tools.

For a small business to strive and win competitors in an industry, the above strategies should be applied to a marketing budget and time frame to measure effectiveness and ROI. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

YOU’RE HEADED FOR SUCCESS. WE’RE FAMILIAR WITH THE ROUTE.

Prevost coaches do more than transport your passengers in style and safety. They move your business forward by giving you the best in dependability, fuel efficiency and support. Our high deck H-Series Coach offers state-of-the-art amenities that elevate every passenger’s experience. Our longer-wheelbase X3-45 Coach combines the smoothest possible ride with a wider entry and 80" high interior passenger space. All Prevost coaches deliver exceptional performance with lower operating costs. Which means they’re as perfect for your business as they are for your passengers.

Please contact your Prevost Regional Sales Manager for more information.

USA 1-877-773-8678

CANADA 418-883-3391

www.prevostcar.com

T h e u l t i m a t e c l a s s.

In CaseYou Missed It/ Important Articles Written Exclusively for the Motorcoach Industry.

The Next Generation of GoMotorcoach

Overcoming Phone Phobia

For the past 4 years, it has been my pleasure to help the Motorcoach Marketing Council further its mission. We have been working to raise awareness regarding...

I am often asked what is the fastest way to grow my motorcoach business? While this question warms me to my core because it represents a genuine interest in...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

Using Gratitude to Grow

The role of a marketing council

Even though it may seem crazy, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. If tradition holds true, we will gather together to eat, drink, be merry, and take some...

It has been said that to educate is easy, but to actually implement change is quite a bit more difficult. For the past 3 years I have been attending local, regional, and...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

Sales Process

Operationally Unimportant

There are very few ways to make a group of salespeople more uncomfortable than to start a sales meeting with these words: “Today we are going to discuss your sales...

Imagine for a moment that you don’t work in the transportation business. Instead, your life has lead you to be a salesman for General Motors. You’ve had a very...

READ IT NOW

READ IT NOW

STRATEGY

A hashtag can help social media marketers encourage and guide conversations related to your brand. When they succeed, hashtags provide a great means for you to create a community around a topic, to help people contribute to a bigger conversation related to your brand, to connect with your fans—and to have something measurable to present to the boss.

Unfortunately, hashtags often fail to give you a great ROI (or maybe ROH – return on hype – would be a better phrase). Sure, you might spend hours coming up with dozens of hashtag possibilities before landing on that perfect combo of brevity and clarity, but how can you make sure your new, beautiful branding device lives up to its potential?

If you’ve ever found yourself saying WTH?! when it comes to hashtag marketing, here are

6 rules for using hashtags effectively

BY Matthew Dooley

a few things you can do to get the most out of your brand’s latest hashtag.

dance (if there’s time) and engage with the post:

Make the hashtag visible.

•

Like it.

It sounds obvious, but making sure you put your hashtag to use at the brand level is the first step to promoting its use to your target audience—and this is often the first misstep.

•

Comment on it.

•

Share it.

•

Send them a message to say thanks for the shout-out.

Consistency is key: you have to put your hashtag everywhere to make sure people remember it.

Use your hashtag frequently and on multiple channels. Twitter and Instagram are the most popular social networks for tagging, but hashtags can also be effective on Facebook and even LinkedIn (“sort of”). Be sure to promote your hashtag outside of social, too. Think about your website, in-store signage (print and digital), packaging, uniforms, stickers, flyers, menus, and the like. Figure out where your customers are when they would ideally use the hashtag, and find a way to put it in front of them in that moment.

Reward fans who use it.

It’s not just about pushing out a hashtag and sitting back and hoping for the best. You have to work it. You need to promote your hashtag every day, and one of the best ways to do that is by finding, recognizing and rewarding users who have joined the conversation.

When people use your hashtag, do a happy

A little bit of recognition goes a long way.

You can also offer a reward to those who use the hashtag. Just don’t expect someone to use up their own social media in exchange for something small like a coupon. Put something exciting on the line, like special access or an exclusive experience. One example: Oreo’s Super Bowl ads asked viewers to join the #OreoDunkSweepstakes for a chance to meet Shaquille O’Neal or Christina Aguilera.

If you’re really good, you can scout for the best hashtag uses and then reward after the fact— these are called post-action rewards (PARs).

When you surprise people with a reward, it not only reinforces the behavior (in this case, participating in the hashtag conversation), it also encourages significantly more wordof-mouth marketing. People love to share unexpected, happy events in their lives. Think about all the wedding proposals, celebrity sightings, random acts of kindness, and other surprisingly delightful events your friends

frequently share online. Now consider how your brand could instigate that random, exciting event for your fans.

This Sports Illustrated article has some great examples of social media being used to reward NHL fans. The most pertinent example is the #YoTographer Instagram campaign used by The Arizona Coyotes. Here’s the money quote from Marissa O’Connor, the social media manager for the team: “We ask fans to upload their best shot of the night before the end of the second period, then we go through all posts with #YoTographer and select our favorite one. That person gets their photo re-grammed on our account and gets to watch the third period on the glass with the professional photographers.

It makes them a true ‘Yotographer.’”

Now that’s a great way to use a hashtag to encourage authentic brand conversations!

Employ a live hashtag feed.

A live feed is a one-two punch for recognizing people and promoting your hashtag’s use. Live feeds (also sometimes called “social walls”) allow you to display everyone’s hashtagged content in real-time, whether that’s on your website or in your lobby. This is a great way to combine your brand posts with user-generated content (UGC) in a fun, engaging display that will encourage even more participation.

There are tons of digital vendors you can partner with to provide a professional live feed for your business or event. Services vary based on price and features, such as the ability to curate posts (versus feeds that show any and all posts that use your tag, which is, in many cases, a huge risk).

Some popular live hashtag feed services include: •

UGC content aggregator for live displays, websites, and more

•

Free Twitter hashtag monitoring and website embedding

•

Paid platform for social media walls at

events •

Paid “earned-content platform” for curating user-generated content

•

High-end digital display system that includes a social media wall feature

•

Ohio-based social media displays service

These feeds can be used in tons of cool ways.

I’ve seen them deployed successfully on websites, in corporate lobbies, inside bars, on a billboard outside the bar, on the jumbotron at Reds and Bengals games, and on screens in between speakers at industry events. Don’t forget about your email list, too. (Tip: There’s a local Cincinnati startup that allows you to quickly pull social content into your e-blasts.)

Leverage influencers.

Come out of the gate strong by leveraging a group of people who can push the hashtag out early and often.

Visibility will be the key to launching strong and sustaining your success, and there’s no better way to get high-quality eyes on your hashtag than by tapping local influencers and micro-influencers to spread the word to their friends and fans. Search out the people in your target community who are very active on hashtag-friendly platforms like Twitter and Instagram, and think of ways you can include them in your campaign. This might include paying professional bloggers to write a post, or you could employ a strategy where you invite users to special events or offer up VIP treatment in exchange for social media participation.

You can also check out my 2017 social media strategy post for more information about micro-influencer marketing.

In the same vein, don’t forget that your own employees can and should be your biggest advocates. Make sure your internal stakeholders (everyone from the CEO to the sales team to the receptionist) understand the goals behind your new hashtag. Encourage them to engage with it using their personal accounts, and make sure to explain what’s appropriate. Even better,

invite your team to help you in the planning process early on, so your coworkers will take part in ensuring the hashtag’s success.

#TweetFromTheSeat (Charmin)

Promote a hashtag people will want to use.

#PutACanOnIt (Red Bull)

There are plenty of articles out there that provide great tips for creating a tag for your brand, usually with pointers like “keep it short” and “keep it simple.” But there is one thing I’d like to add: It is immensely helpful if your hashtag does NOT include your company name. Unless you’re trying to get people to #ShareACoke, or your brand is a TV Show like the #AmazingRace, chances are good that most people won’t want to tag your business name in their post.

didn’t create this one, but creatively took

Learn from the best.

For some extra hashtag inspiration, here are a few of my favorite non-branded brand hashtags:

#LikeAGirl (Always)

#CollegeIn5Words (Denny’s) Note: Denny’s advantage of the trend. #ThrowMeBack (Expedia) #NoFunLeague (GNC) #RuleYourself / #IWILL (UnderArmour) 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

WEB

How Editing Photo Content C Website’s Looks/

By John Lescott

Can Improve Your There’s no arguing that photo content plays a major role in most websites, as far as user experience is concerned.

Unless a user is dead set on finding certain information, or purchasing an advertised product, low-quality or amateurish-looking images can quickly turn that user off.

Even users that have no background in design or photo composition (and most do not), look for, and appreciate, certain qualities in website photos.

•

Image size, composition, overall quality, and exposure, are all things that users take note of while browsing.

•

Images can affect the actions of a user when they generate interest or excitement. Their appeal can be rational or emotional, or simply fit nicely with your website client’s brand.

•

An image also needs to convey or support a certain message. Images and text need to go hand in hand, or the image will serve no useful purpose.

There has even been a study that determined that users simply ignore non-relevant photos, or photos they cannot easily correlate with or link to the overall page or website message.

To get started, head on over to Google Alerts. The interface is fairly simple to work with, but I’ll take you through each step.

First, you need to enter the term you want to monitor.

Photo Editing Tip #1 – Color can Sometimes Save the Day One of the most effective of Luminar’s photo editing techniques is Color Splash. Here, a selective use of colors can produce vivid, beautiful and eye-catching results.

Color Splash works by turning a photo into a grayscale or black and white image, while retaining the color in certain objects.

This is done by clicking on Luminar’s Brush icon, selecting the Mask Erasing mode, and brushing out the monochrome to restore the color.

A nice-looking photo can be transformed into a brilliant one in these 4 simple steps, with the help of Luminar’s Color Splash feature.

Another powerful editing tool is the Hue, Saturation, and Luminosity (HSL) filter. This filter uses simple sliders to give you the ability de-emphasize certain colors, while highlighting others. This is accomplished by using sliders, and moving them to the right or left to emphasize or deemphasize colors for a certain object or in a certain area.

Both editing techniques enable you to be quite creative with your photos, and both techniques are relatively easy to work with; although it will naturally take a little

experimenting (which can be both instructive, and a great deal of fun) before you get the results you’re looking for. Photo editing in these two cases simply involves loading a picture into Luminar for Mac, and adding the appropriate filter. Other filter techniques work similarly.

Photo Editing Tip #2 – Creating a Huge Impact with Simple Effects Simply by using presets and filters, or in varying combinations of both, you can create some remarkable effects with minimal effort. The options open to you are, for all practical purposes, endless.

Some Examples Not only can you achieve a look you are seeking after through use of these features, but you they also provide you with wonderful opportunities for creative experimenting. Select the “60’s Black and White” preset for example, and your photo can take on a vintage, somewhat edgy look.

Or, you might select the “Portrait Glamour” preset, if you wish to give a photo an ethereal quality.

The “Grain” adjustable filter loosens the contrast in a photo, after which you can adjust temperature and tint to achieve the vintage hue you’re seeking. With “Lomo”, in combination with the HSL controls, you can reduce the tones that tend to be distractions, and make certain colors really pop out.

Layers and textures can take your photo-editing adventures to new levels of creativity. Layers allow you to blend photos together, or create

Three basic actions that can prove to be quite powerful in sprucing up an image, or giving it more of an impact on a viewer, are to adjust the intensity, adjust color temperatures, and adjust the size. composite images, while a texture overlay can effectively produce an illusion of depth.

Automatic presets act as a bonus to beginners, since remarkable effects on a photo can be introduced with a couple of clicks. The ability to make adjustments to these presets, gives beginners the opportunity to learn how to create even more remarkable effects, and also learn how to design their own special filters. Eventually, through learning and experimentation, it becomes possible for them to take advantage of Luminar’s full capabilities.

Photo Editing Trick #3 – Basic Actions Can Take You a Long Way

Three basic actions that can prove to be quite powerful in sprucing up an image, or giving it more of an impact on a viewer, are to adjust the intensity, adjust color temperatures, and adjust the size.

Adjusting the Intensity – The Saturation slider is an easy way to adjust the intensity of colors in a photo (Intensity and Saturation are one and the same thing). Increasing the saturation level slightly can add a little spice to an image. While this

adjustment is easy to make, you don’t want to overdo it, and create an artificial-looking image; something to be avoided in website design.

Adjusting the Temperature – You have two options here; give a photo a warmer look, or give it a cooler look. The goal is to adjust the reds (warm) and blues (cool) until you achieve the natural or attractive look you’re seeking. It’s a matter of experimentation and experience.

Size Matters – Bigger is generally better. Your goal should be to do what’s necessary to direct viewer

attention to what’s important; and images typically provide the best way to do that. A related function is cropping. The crop photo feature is the simplest editing function of all, and it can produce some powerful results.

These editing capabilities can easily be put into play with Luminar – the best photo editor for Mac, that adapts your style and skill level. Give this brilliant tool a try, and see for yourself! 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

MARKETING

Shoot melons, kill bugs: How businesses make creative videos/

By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG

The videos can be graphic, with items exploding at slow speed and Nardone splattered with barbecue sauce or peanut butter.

Melons going splat in slow motion.

Drawn-as-you-go animation about machines. A behind-the-scenes look at winery operations. Not the usual viral videos, but small business owners have realized offering something to watch and having a sense of humor about themselves can help grab customers’ attention.

In more than a hundred videos he’s posted on YouTube, Tom Nardone takes aim at racks of ribs, laptop computers and tires to illustrate what a bulletproof vest can do.

A Valentine’s Day-timed video sacrificed several boxes of candy.

The videos can be graphic, with items exploding at slow speed and Nardone splattered with barbecue

sauce or peanut butter.

Nardone, owner of Troy, Michiganbased PriveCo, began making the videos in 2013, less than a year after he began selling the vests. While he advertised in magazines and went to gun shows, he realized that to reach a wider audience he needed to be online. And he didn’t want a

demonstration of just the vests.

“It does its job, but it’s nothing to look at,” Nardone says. “We said, uh oh, we’ve got to come up with something good.”

PriveCo’s videos have collected a following; the melon video has nearly a million views since it was posted more than 2½ years ago. Nardone gets recognized at gun shows, and has gotten compliments from people who like to watch him shoot items from gravel to boxed wine.

It’s natural for some small businesses like real estate brokers

to use videos in marketing campaigns for houses and other properties; for others, it can take some brainstorming and perhaps even an offbeat sense of humor to come up with something compelling. But more businesses are getting on board — Facebook counted more than 3 million small business videos posted in September, up 50 percent from 2 million six months earlier, according to the company’s most recent published figures.

Arlington Machinery, which sells, repairs and appraises used plastic-making machines, began posting videos on YouTube nine

years ago with several objectives.

One was to raise the company’s rank in internet search results, and another was to display machines for prospective buyers.

Or, if equipment was sent to the company for repair, videos could show the owners that the machines were ready to be sent back.

But more recently, Arlington realized videos were also a way to market itself to different kinds of customers. The Elk Grove, Illinoisbased company decided to have a little fun, and commissioned the whimsical animated video that explains the company’s services.

“Used machinery is not all that exciting to most people,” says David Pietig, a general manager at the company. “What we’re trying to do is make people interested in what we do.”

Thinking about what customers want to see is the best way to get inspired, marketing experts say.

“Good ideas can come from everywhere. If there is an oldschool mentality at a company, they should get a pool of 21-yearolds that are more digitally and socially media savvy,” suggests Brian Metcalf, CEO of GreenRoom, a digital marketing company based in Miami.

Making videos can cost almost nothing or run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Arlington Machinery says its animation cost only about $100, but Nardone paid more than $15,000 to produce a series of videos last summer. At Mountain View Vineyard, a Pennsylvania winery that began making videos in the past year, a smartphone and a still camera have kept the costs minimal.

When marketing director Laurie Monteforte started working at Mountain View a year ago, she made it a priority to create a campaign that included videos.

But the standard way of selling wine — showing smiling people gathered around a food-laden table and lifting their glasses in a toast — won’t work in a video, she says.

“Today’s audience doesn’t want commercials, where we try to sell you something,” Monteforte says.

Mountain View’s videos teach viewers how to make something with wine, such as red wine hot chocolate, or show some aspect of the winery’s operations.

Last summer, owner Linda Rice demonstrated how she handpicks Japanese beetles off of plants and drops them into soapy water, killing them without chemical pesticides.

Mountain View says its revenue is up about 30 percent in the past year, and credits about threequarters of that gain to video and social media.

“There are so many options where people can go for wine and spirits,” Rice says. “Video and social media set us apart because people get to know us.”

Some of the videos small business owners have made: h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e. c o m / watch?v=UzOSnwNDLBs h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e. c o m / watch?v=BFfMptOnWGI h t t p s : / / w w w. yo u t u b e. c o m / watch?v=s0j0h3u6eEs 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

Thinking about what customers want to see is the best way to get inspired, marketing experts say.

STRATEGY

LinkedIn Ads: How to target your ideal prospect, every time/

By AJ Wilcox

LinkedIn Ads is the undisputed king of targeting professionals in the world of advertising, and it does it at scale.

In an ideal world, we’d love to simply target by job title and know that we would reach everyone who’s relevant.

The issue that comes into play is profile completeness.

Profile completeness LinkedIn, like any social network, struggles with profile completeness.

This is because it relies on the user to volunteer information about himself/herself.

For instance, if you expect to reach 100 percent of the possible CMOs on LinkedIn by using the job title “CMO,” you’re going to be disappointed.

Similarly, if someone neglects to join any groups, then they’ll be ineligible to be targeted through Groups targeting.

Because of the inherent weakness in relying on users to provide all of their information accurately, I

recommend combining multiple types of targeting around the same persona. This manifests itself as multiple campaigns targeting the same type of person in your LinkedIn Ads account.

audience, I th following targetin

Eventually, as you gather deepfunnel data about each of these audiences, you may find that some are more efficient than others. These insights allow you to spend dollars on only the most efficient audiences to become a finely tuned, leadgeneration machine.

3. Skills + Se specific)

Introducing the four pillars of LinkedIn targeting

Job Title target

Whenever considering any potential

1. Job Title (usu

2. Job Function broadest)

4. Groups + Se and most spe

Each targeting ty own way, so here consider about e

There are as many as there are jobs

hink through the ng methods:

ually the easiest)

n + Seniority (the

eniority (broad +

eniority (narrowest ecialized)

ype is nuanced in its e are some things to each one:

ting

y potential job titles s, so LinkedIn made

the Job Title field on your profile a freeform field where you can write whatever you want. Then the platform must inspect those titles and categorize them into common buckets for advertisers to select. For LinkedIn to justify creating a bucket for a certain job title, many hundreds of professionals must exist with that job title.

I’ve found that Job Title targeting is generally the first type that marketers will try because it’s the most straightforward. For the rest of us, that leads to increased competition and higher costs per click (CPCs).

Pros: Precise targeting Cons: Small audiences and high CPCs

Job Function targeting I like to think of Job Function as which department someone would traditionally sit within in a company.

This is the broadest targeting available on LinkedIn, which means it gives you access to the largest audiences but doesn’t get very precise.

For instance, if you wanted to reach digital marketers, the Job Function of Marketing would be too broad, since it would reach all those in marketing roles, and not only those in digital.

It’s best used when you’re trying to get in front of as many people as possible, with a big budget.

Pros: Creates largest audiences Cons: Often too broad, and will show to people you’re not interested in

Groups targeting Not everyone joins a group, and not everyone who is interested in a given topic is a member of a group around said topic, which leaves you with small audiences.

However, if you join a group on a certain topic, that means you’re likely REALLY passionate about that topic or your job is quite dependent on it.

Say, for instance, that you’re targeting JavaScript developers.

If you target by job title “Software Developer,” you are likely to get a bunch of back-end folks seeing your ads. If someone went out of their way to join a JavaScript group, though, you can be certain it’s a very important topic to them.

Pros: Active, relevant audiences Cons: Often results in smaller audiences

Skills targeting Skills are similar to groups, except they are simpler to add to your profile, making the targeting much broader.

For instance, I’m a technical marketer, and I have SQL as a skill on my profile. Would you want to hire me for a job creating SQL queries, though? No. You absolutely would not.

By targeting skills, you get access to professionals with more precision than Job Function, with pretty large audience sizes. They won’t be quite as relevant as a group or a specific job title, though.

Pros: Large, self-selected audiences Cons: Sometimes too broad Don’t combine any of these four pillars, as doing so makes audiences small without becoming meaningfully more targeted.

That being said, I do find it effective to layer the pillars as exclusions to targeting under certain advanced circumstances.

Audience size importance In the above targeting types, I made reference to small audiences as being negative, but there are great reasons to have both large and small audiences. The goal in my strategy is to get as specific an audience as your budget can accommodate.

LinkedIn will tell you to make sure you have at least 300,000 in an audience, but I strongly recommend against ever having an audience even remotely that large, unless you have a massive budget.

On any sort of limited budget, you might as well make sure your dollars are spent on the most perfect audience. Don’t be afraid to focus your limited dollars on only the most applicable people. Don’t feel the need to make your audience larger than they need to be, just because it’s “best practice.”

I like audiences to be between 20,000 and 50,000. Any larger than that, and you’re unlikely to learn much from the performance of any single audience.

When faced with a larger audience size, I like to break it up into multiple smaller segments and split them up by seniority or geography. This allows me to measure the differences in engagement based on facets that help me better craft meaningful messages and content.

A real-life example Let’s use a digital marketer, for example.

By testing separate audiences of the four pillars of LinkedIn targeting (Title, Job Function, Skills and Groups), you can find efficiencies in reaching your audience at lower costs and higher performance.

Let’s say you are looking to sell your product to Digital Marketing Managers. Here’s the thought process I would go through: 1. Job Title – Digital Marketing Manager (YES!) 2. Job Function – Not helpful because Job Function + Seniority would only get us to a Marketing Manager. That would leave you with a bunch of irrelevant marketers who aren’t guaranteed to have digital marketing responsibilities. (NO!) 3. Skills + Seniority – We can target digital marketing skills like “technical SEO,”“paid search” and “paid social,” while layering on the Manager level of seniority. That gives us Digital Marketing Managers quite precisely. (YES!) 4. Groups + Seniority – We can target groups that digital marketers would join, such as “Social Media Marketing,” “Online Marketing” and “LinkedIn Advertising Group.” Then, as with #3 above, you’d layer on a Manager seniority, and be left with Digital Marketing Manager. (YES!)

Seniority As you might be able to tell, Seniority is one of my most often-used filters, but recently added is the Years of Experience filter, which can work as an alternative to Seniority. That may be useful for targeting someone with a certain longevity to their career, regardless of the outward title.

Use them interchangeably as needed.

Company targeting

your targeting, which will create an evergreen campaign you can continue to use for as long as this is an audience you find worthwhile to show ads to.

Now that you’ve specified the right person, it’s time to qualify what type of company they work for. You’ve got a few options for this:

Let’s say you’re targeting: •

Digital Marketing Titles

•

Company Industry

•

High-tech Industry

•

Company Size

•

Company Size of 200+ employees

•

Company Name

•

In the United States

•

Company Industry

Pretty straightforward — target the industries that bring your ideal customer.

Company Size The most helpful filter in differentiating your targeting between Enterprise, Startups and everything in between.

I’ve found that many marketers like to define their target by yearly Revenue, while LinkedIn gives you employee size. A simple heuristic is to multiply Employees x 100K to get an average revenue. (e.g., 50 employees x 100k = roughly a $5M/year company).

Company Name This is by far my favorite filter as AccountBased Marketing continues to heat up.

Specify a list of up to 100 companies (more coming soon!) to target by name. Determine these target companies yourself, or poll the sales team for bonus points, and watch your leads get treated with extra care.

Putting it all together Now that you’ve assembled your targeting around both the professional and by the type of company where that professional works, you’re ready to craft messaging and show advertisements to those audiences.

I recommend naming your campaign after

I might name that campaign something like: Digital Mktg Titles | Tech Ind | CS 200+ | US This way, it’s easy to group all similar audiences alphabetically for easy comparison of each type of audience. You also have all targeting attributes in the name, so reporting is simple to pull out insights (i.e., a quick pivot table in Excel can group all US campaigns or performance by larger company sizes).

Conclusion By testing separate audiences of the four pillars of LinkedIn targeting (Title, Job Function, Skills and Groups), you can find efficiencies in reaching your audience at lower costs and higher performance.

Layer on your company information to ensure you’re reaching companies that are a good fit for your products/services.

Compare the campaigns against one another to fine-tune which messaging/ content most closely engages the various personas you’re targeting. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

STRATEGY

How to Collaborate With Your Prospect to Close More Deals/

By Aja Frost

Working with your prospect during the sales process makes you far likelier to ultimately close.

Not only will they feel more invested in the deal after they’ve done some work, they’ll also feel beholden to you -- after all, you’re their partner.

In addition, the results of your collaboration (whether that’s a sales plan, a personalized demo, a marketing strategy, or an implementation program) will help you win internal support. Imagine a buying committee choosing between three products. Two of the vendors gave straightforward presentations, while the third showed up with a presentation that used the company’s real data and quarterly objectives. You can imagine which pitch will be the most compelling.

Lastly, the more familiar your prospect becomes with your product, the less work she’ll have to do after she buys it. That means less risk and a greater sense of security.

Use these four strategies to turn your prospect into your collaborator.

Option #1: Create a Sales Plan If the buyer has never made a purchase like this before, a sales plan is an invaluable resource. It combines your experience selling the product with their knowledge of their organization.

Together, map out the remainder of the sales cycle. Which stakeholders should be involved?

What are those stakeholders’ goals, and how does your solution fit into their goals? Do any big obstacles stand in the way of this deal? If so, how can you navigate around them?

Depending on the product, your sales plan may also need to encompass delivery and/or implementation. Figure out the various steps you’d take if the buyer ends up committing.

Will Legal need to review the deal? Is there a Procurement department responsible for negotiating the actual terms? How long will it take your prospect to transfer their existing data to your system, train their employees, and so on?

Option #2: Customize the Product When possible, customize your product with your prospect. If you sell software, integrate their company name, brand colors, and logo into your demo -- or even use their data to show how the product would look after they bought it.

Reps who sell physical products can create customized samples. Maybe you work for an office supplies vendor: You and your prospect could design the types of notebooks they’d order, then you could bring one to your meeting.

Even if making a tangible sample is impossible or prohibitively expensive, it can be impactful simply to show the buyer a virtual representation of what their customized product would look like.

It’s hard to overstate how powerful these visuals are. Your prospect won’t have to imagine what life with your product would be like: They’ll be able to see and/or touch it.

Option #3: Craft a Marketing or PR Strategy Help the buyer develop a post-purchase strategy for marketing their improved services, processes, or offering. Depending on your product and their needs, their audience might be their own employees, their supervisors, or their customers.

For example, if you sell exercise equipment to hotels, you and your prospect could work on a

campaign aimed at health-conscious travelers.

This plan doesn’t need to be in-depth to be effective. With a slogan or call-to-action, a few social media concepts, and some suggestions for where to advertise the upgraded fitness facilities, the buyer can visualize how they’d roll this change out. They’ll also have something concrete to show the other stakeholders.

This strategy also works if your end users or customers work at your prospect’s company.

Perhaps you offer sales training and coaching programs. Together, you and the buyer could write a plan for getting their salespeople excited for training and ensuring the front-line sales managers will reinforce the lessons.

If your product will primarily affect your prospect’s day-to-day, write a plan for how they’ll use it to succeed professionally. To give you an idea, suppose you sell freelance graphic design packages to marketing managers. You could scope out how your prospect could use your services every quarter to create incredible blog posts that’ll help him exceed his traffic goals.

Option #4: Make an Implementation Plan Some products are trickier to get up and running than others. For example, if you sell a

mission-critical tool, your customer will need to make the transition from their current solution to yours as quickly and seamlessly as possible.

They’ll also need to adapt their other tools, train their employees, and transfer their data.

Make this task less intimidating by helping them map out the process. Give them suggestions on how long each stage will take -- for example, maybe it typically takes customers three days to show their teams how to use the new tool and one day to customize it to their specific processes.

You can also share best practices. Perhaps you’ve found customers who adopt the product in stages rather than all at once tend to be more successful. With this in mind, suggest a multiweek implementation.

By the time you reach the negotiation stage, you and your prospect should feel like partners.

Buying your product will feel like the natural next step. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

STRATEGY

The Ultimate Guide to Creati

By Cambria Davies

ing a Sales Process/ Building a repeatable, scalable sales process is tough. There’s no shortage of diagrams, methodologies, or experts with opinions on exactly how you should be doing things.

So where should you start? Right here. We’ve pulled together an introduction to all things “sales process” to help you get started down the road toward defining what your company’s ideal sales process should look like.

If you’re looking for more comprehensive information, take this free on-demand sales training course or download this sales process cheat sheet.

What is a sales process?

“Sales process” most often refers to a repeatable set of steps your sales team takes with a prospect to move them from early stage to a closed customer.

The common stages of the sales process include:

Prospect The process of sourcing new early stage leads to begin a sales process with. Prospecting may involve online research to find net new prospects, or researching into an existing database of contacts.

Connect Initiating contact with those early stage leads to gather information

If you’ve heard the phrase “sales process,” you’ve probably also heard the phrase “sales methodology.” There is a difference, and it’s important to understand. and judge their worthiness for moving forward.

Research Learning more about a prospect and their company as they progress through the sales process can help sales reps offer a more tailored experience, and improve the likelihood a deal will close.

Present A typical stage of many sales processes is to run a formal presentation or demonstration of what is being sold. This stage is time-consuming, so it typically comes deeper in the sales process and only for well qualified prospects.

Close This stage refers to any late stage activities that happen as a deal approaches closing. It varies widely from company to company, and may include things like delivering a quote or proposal, negotiation, achieving the buy-in of decision makers, and other actions.

If you’ve heard the phrase “sales process,” you’ve probably also heard the phrase “sales methodology.” There is a difference, and it’s important to understand.

“Sales process” refers to the specific, concrete set of actions that your team follows to close a new customer.

“Sales methodology” refers to the framework for how different parts of your sales process are actually carried out.

The next natural qu need both? The answ While your sales proce map of steps your t each step, you’ll want different methodolog guide how the mem actually approach the

Popular Sales Me

It’s worth thinking a finer points of how carry out their day

uestion -- do you wer is probably yes. ess is the high level team takes, within t to be aware of the gies that can help mbers of your team e sales process.

ethodologies

about some of the your team should y to day selling

activities. Choosing a sales methodology sets the foundation for our your sales team approaches their work.

learn about a customers’ business, and to push the customer or challenge their preconceptions during the sales process.

Challenger Selling

Solution Selling

“The Challenger Sale” is a book that rose to popularity after being authored

by Matthew Dixon of CEB in late 2011.

The book defines five types of sales professionals and the challenger persona was most highly correlated with high perfomance. “Challengers” are characterized by their willingness to

First popularized in the late 1970s and early 1980s, solution selling first focuses on the customers’ pain instead of his or her own companies’ products.

Products are instead framed as solutions, and emphasis is placed on achieving agreement on what a resolution of the customers’ pain would look like.

Consultative Selling An outgrowth of “solution selling,” consultative selling also came into popularity during the 1980s.

Consultative selling places the emphasis on the salesperson becoming a “trusted advisor” to the customer, gaining authority and trust over time.

When we set out to build our marketing platform in 2007, we defined the concept of inbound marketing -- an approach characterized by “attracting” buyers, instead of following a dated playbook of interrupting your prospective customers with irrelevant messages and advertising. The inbound sales methodology matches how people buy.

Now, it’s becoming more and more important for sales teams put the needs of their buyers ahead of their own needs. Think about some of the changes to how we all approach buying goods and services today.

Buyers can now find most of the information they need about a company’s products or services before they ever engage a salesperson.

Buyers have gotten better and better at blocking out cold and interruptive sales techniques (cold calls and irrelevant sales emails, for example.)

Buyers have heightened expectations around the experience of buying. They will control the experience, and they will move through the process largely on their own timeline.

These shifts are all examples of how buyers have seized control of the sales process from the sales reps who once held all the power and control in the sales process. With these changes in

mind, it’s important for sales teams to adopt a more helpful, human approach to selling. We think of this as inbound selling. A few guiding principles we’ve outlined:

Inbound selling is personalized.

Your prospects want content tailored to their goals and challenges and how your product can help them conquer those goals and challenges. Throughout a sales process, you are gathering data through conversations about how to personalize your message.

Inbound selling is buyer-centric.

There’s no longer any question about where the power lies in the salespersonbuyer dynamic: It’s all in the hands of the buyer. For sales professionals to be a part of a buyer’s process, they need to demonstrate how they can add value by acting as a partner and trusted advisor.

Inbound selling is advisory.

about as you get sta

Start by observin

Look back at the la that closed. What w in the process? Tou customer? Roughly entire process take time elapsed betwe more examples you people on your tea are coming from), th

Map your observa example.

While every sales p chances are the st align at least som common steps outli of steps may be sho stages not listed ab example is often a g

Define the prosp moves them to th

It used to be that tenacity and dogged pursuit of a lead was the only way to close a sale. Now, it’s easier than ever for buyers to block out annoying and interruptive messages from salespeople. Everyone has a spam folder, and everyone has caller ID. Sales professionals need to build trust and a relationship with buyers to keep the lines of communication open.

For each of the stag want to have a crisp causes a prospect stage to the next. Id cause will be based o prospect, not the pe rep. Yes or no ques with quantifiable an

How to Build a Sales Process Creating a Sales Process Map

Devising your team a job that never end weeks and months research, you’ll wa iterate on your work from your team. Ov likely your sales p

You’re ready to put pen to paper (or, mouse-to-drawing tool) to diagram your own sales process. Where do you begin? Here are a few things to think

Iterate over time.

arted.

ng.

ast five or 10 deals were the major steps uchpoints with the how long did the e, and how much een each step? The have (and the more am those examples he better.

ations to a generic

process is different, teps you observed mewhat with the ined above. Your list orter, or may include bove, but a generic good starting point.

pect action that he next stage.

ges you define, you’ll explanation of what to move from one deally that reason or on the actions of the erception of the sales stions or questions nswers are best.

.

ms’ sales process is ds. Especially in the s after your initial ant to continue to k based on feedback ver the long run, it’s process will evolve

as your team finds ways to work more efficiently and move prospects through your pipeline faster.

Measuring Your Sales Process

As you define and evolve your sales process map over time, you’ll want to think about what the key metrics are that you should be measuring at each stage.

Some basic examples include: How many prospects transitioned into and out of each stage in a given time period? For example, you’ll want to be able to easily draw out conclusions like, “In July, we started with 75 prospects in the ‘awaiting demo’ stage ... at the end of the month, we had moved through 28 prospects, and added 19, leaving us with 66 prospects in the ‘awaiting demo’ stage.”

How long are your prospects staying in particular stages on average? Are there places where you could “speed up” the time spent at one stage?

These are the very basics that most teams find value in measuring. Give some thought to other metrics that are specific to your business and will help you define success or the need for improvement in a particular stage.

Don’t expect any one sales methodology to be the “silver bullet.”

While some teams choose to stick with and follow one methodology closely, others choose to study several popular methodologies and pick bits and pieces they find useful from each. Regardless of which approach you take, it’s a good idea to at least keep abreast of what is new and changing over time. As the needs and desires of buyers change, different approaches, methodologies, and ways of doing things will fall into and out of favor.

Your sales process map will always be a work in progress.

As we mentioned above, this won’t be a one-and-done project -- your sales process will always be a work in progress. It’s good to get in the habit of stepping back to review how you think about your sales process every four to six months with the folks who are in the trenches selling every day. (This should be in addition to watching performance metrics on a daily basis.) 

Common Mistakes & Tips for Success Don’t leave your sales process steps open to interpretation.

It’s important to define specific, concrete actions on the part of the prospect that cause them to be moved from one stage to the next. Leaving it up to your sales team to interpret these triggers will leave you with a less accurate understanding of where things are and aren’t working in your sales process.

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

WEBSITE

Organic traffic & link building for small businesses /

By Marcus Miller

When it comes down to it, the hardest part of SEO for most small businesses is building links and authority. Keyword research, on-page optimization, local SEO — it’s all doable, and to some degree mechanical.

But raising your authority? Not so much.

While the importance of links is clear, Google’s messaging is confusing and unhelpful. We are told to “make sure other sites link to yours” while at the same time “avoiding link building as it can do more harm than good.” So, what’s a small business

to do?

In this article, I am going to take a quick look at why links influence results and then outline a simple link-building strategy.

The goal is to help small businesses build authority and target the commercial search terms that matter to them.

There is still a creative element required here, but my goal is to provide a simple strategy that small businesses can use to help build their authority and improve their

overall organic search visibility.

How important are links in 2017?

In the most recent Search Engine Ranking Factors published by Moz. com, domain-level link features and page-level link features are still the top two ranking factors. Keywords and content factors are not far behind, but those elements that

are directly under the site owner’s control are far easier to dial in.

There are a few other factors to consider for local businesses that typically fall under the local SEO banner. Address, citations, NAP consistency, Google My Business and reviews all factor. However, in the Moz Local Ranking Factors study, links are still the second most important factor after on-page signals, and yet they are considerably

domain-level link features and page-level link features are still the top two ranking factors.

more difficult to influence.

Both of these studies were published in 2015, yet things don’t move all that quickly, and new signals tend to have a more gentle influence. Much more recently, Google’s Andrey Lipattsev revealed links, content and RankBrain are the top three ranking factors, so links are every bit as important in 2017 as they were in 1998 when the first Google prototype launched.

Penalties, spam and link quality I really don’t want to go too far down this rabbit (penguin) hole, but given the financial rewards associated with visibility in search engines, it did not take long for individuals to start trying to reverse-engineer PageRank. This led to 15 years or so of duff tactics (that often worked better than they should have), subsequent penalties and all manner of problems.

I am not 100 percent convinced that Google has completely solved this issue yet, however, focusing on the relevance and quality of the links you build is crucial for long-term success.

That means real links from real sites that are returned in real search results and are read by real people. Got it?

Get everything else dialed in first Before we dive in, let’s just get a few things straight — don’t start here. Get everything else

dialed in first. It may be enough.

Certainly, you want to maximize results from the somewhat easier tactics and get your Local SEO and on-page optimization dialed in.

Local SEO Local SEO is the cornerstone of organic visibility for most smaller businesses. Things have gotten more competitive recently with the move to a smaller local pack and more competition from ads.

That said, local SEO still provides the backbone of local listings in the three-pack and strongly influences organic listings for local businesses. Do this well and you can get a spot in the threepack with the organic results underneath.

It’s a little beyond the scope of what we can cover here, but this article is a good jump-in point.

On-page optimization On-page optimization covers the nuts and bolts of optimizing your site. If you are a local business, then you will cover this in your local SEO. If you cover a wider geographic area, then you still need to make sure that your domain-level and page-level optimization is fine-tuned to maximize results.

Google’s own SEO guide is a good place to start here. The document covers optimizing page titles, meta descriptions, site structure, URLs and navigation. It’s an oldie, first published in 2008, yet it covers the basics well enough.

Leverage existing assets & relationships Many small businesses only need a couple of really good links. Have you got links from your suppliers?

Have you got links from any trade organizations relevant to your business? From the major web directories like Yell in the UK? From any industry-specific portals or directories?

Get together in your office and have a quick brainstorm on where you could possibly get links from.

You may find a surprising amount of common-sense opportunities here.

Small business guide to link building The strategy outlined here is designed for small businesses.

It is an approach that we have used to help hundreds of smaller businesses rank in the UK. Often this is the last big push when everything else is dialed in.

This strategy will help you develop anchor text that includes your primary keywords, and do so in a way that is natural and will not upset the Google gods. This will help you build more organic traffic and build overall authority.

Most importantly, this approach will allow you to rank for the big terms that you know deliver the leads and customer inquiries that your business needs to prosper.

This approach works as a one-off, or it can be repeated and scaled.

It is also based on delivering value and has a creative element, so it can’t simply be copied by a

competitor. That also means it is not as easy, but it is strategically sound.

Approach

Link-building philosophy

Step 1: Create something of value to your target audience

Before we dive in, we must get our thinking straight here. The biggest issue with many small business link-building efforts is the mindset in which they are approached. If you can change the way you think about link building, then you have a strategic advantage that will leave your competitors in your digital wake.

1. You must first build something that deserves to be linked to.

2. You then simply connect what should be connected.

We are not trying to manufacture links and artificially inflate your authority. We are trying to create something that your competitors don’t have and, as such, earn links that they never could.

Remember, we want links from high-quality and relevant sites, as these links are more trusted and add more value. But real websites only link to other real websites, hence the key to this strategy: build something that deserves to be linked to. From Google Search Console Help: Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote by page A for page B. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

The approach works as follows:

Create something of value to your target audience. This is often the hardest area. Ideally, this will be something that can be integrated into your overall marketing strategy. Something that in of itself will help you generate more business. In an ideal world, all digital marketing will work in synergy (rather than in silos). This is not always possible, but if your marketing assets can be multiuse, then you will get a better return overall.

Ideally, this content will be something your target audience could search for, like the resolution to a specific problem.

If we think about it from a small/ local business SEO perspective, it could be: •

small business SEO guide.

•

small business guide to link building.

•

small business guide keyword research.

to

These are all relevant to the services provided by an SEO business and contain a relevant keyword. They are also (assuming they are well put together) solid resources that it is far easier to place a justifiable link to.

You get the picture.

Nobody is better suited than

you to determine what this content should look like. What questions do your customers ask?

What are the common problems your prospects face? What are your goals here? New business?

Upselling to existing customers?

Create the content that will help your audience and you are halfway there. Here are some examples: •

Small business bookkeeping

guide

to

•

Small business accounting

guide

to

•

Small business guide chartered accounting

to

•

DIY plumber — How to fix a leaky tap

•

DIY electrician — How to change a plug

•

Toothache — Do you need to go to the dentist?

A key point is that, where possible, the content should include the commercial keywords you want to rank for. We are trying to help Google understand what you do by creating content relevant to the services and then generating links with descriptive anchor text that relates to the target article.

This is not rocket science. Create an article that is relevant to the problems your audience faces, and, where possible, include the main service term you desire to be found for.

You want this piece of content to be good. Good enough that you can enrich another article by linking to the article. But if you are a local business, you don’t have to create a best-of-class piece of content. It simply needs to provide value.

If you have multiple services, this approach could scale — at Bowler Hat, we provide SEO, PPC, social and content marketing, so we will want articles on all of these topics. If you provide one service (plasterer, plumber and so on), then it is even easier.

Once created, this article needs to be published on your own site and is what we will refer to as our linkable asset. This is a piece of content on our target site that it makes common sense to link to.

Step 2: Promote this content on relevant sites We are now going to look at creating articles on relevant, high-quality sites and linking to our article with descriptive anchor text.

A key point here is that the content you create and publish on a third-party site should be enriched and improved by linking to your article. This is critical to ensure that the link is natural and is there for the reader and not purely for SEO purposes. Sure, we want the link, but we have to do so in a way that makes sense in the real world.

The specifics of the approach depend upon the content you created. However, a simple strategy we have had success with is to: 1. create a linkable asset on a broad topic (like SEO).

2. then create a series of smaller

articles on subsections of the topic like keyword research, on-page optimization, link building and so on.

3. link to the linkable asset from your articles using descriptive anchor text.

4. In many cases, you will also have a branded link to the home page in your author box or bio.

Strategically, this is pretty simple stuff and easy to execute. We are not trying to put some unnatural anchor text links to our home or service pages in an article that the editor of any quality site is going to nuke in a second. We are instead offering value to the reader and linking to a resource that expands upon the topic covered.

Using the example of this article about link building for small businesses, and assuming we had a guide that expanded on the subject, an article we put out could easily work a link in at the tail end of the article as follows: Hopefully, this article has provided you with a good jump-in point and a number of strategies you can use to build links to your small business. If you are hungry for more, we expand upon the range of link-building tactics covered here in our small business guide to SEO. If you have any questions, get in touch on Twitter or Facebook.

This is not manipulative. It’s helpful. We are primarily concerned with building links to influence our authority

and visibility, but a secondary benefit here is that we may well build positive referral traffic.

Win-win. Marketing that covers multiple bases is marketing that delivers the best possible ROI in the hypercompetitive digital landscape.

Link-building tactics The specific tactics you can use to find link opportunities are outside the scope of this article. However, if you are looking to dive in and create your first linkable asset to build some links, I would suggest investigating the following tactics.

1. Guest blog posts. Finding sites in your category is relatively straightforward. Remember to focus on quality and think of this as digital PR that builds awareness and credibility; it just happens to also help you rank.

2. Digital PR. Tools like HARO can help you identify any number of link-building opportunities.

You may not be able to work a link to your content into every one of these, but most will come with a branded link if that fails. This is certainly worth exploring, as typically, this is great PR, and again, can help build authority.

There is a myriad of tactics out there, but I want to keep this simple. By focusing on guest posts and PR, you can easily identify opportunities without needing an SEO magic wand.

A warning

visibility.

You must focus on quality here.

You must only look to publish on sites that you would be proud to appear on. Real sites.

Read by real people. Think more PR than SEO. Any popular linkbuilding strategy gets abused, from directories to guest posts.

When quality suffers, and the link exists only for SEO, then you are on shaky ground. Focus on quality, and think of this as PR with benefits.

TL;DR

Quantity As a small business, you should not need tons of volume here.

Try doing one of these per month. Again, look at it as a bit of monthly PR and exposure that helps improve your organic

Link building is often where we see small businesses hit an SEO brick wall. It is all too easy to fall into a world of manufactured links, which can lead to problems.

A simple strategy starting with a linkable asset, and then a campaign to promote that asset, circumvents these problems if done with robust quality control.

1. Create something of value to your target audience.

2. The title of that content should include your commercial keywords.

3. Publish guest posts or contributions and link to the post.

4. Use descriptive anchor text

that contains your targeted terms.

5. Measure your results and don’t get carried away.

In most cases, small or local businesses only need a few good links to help improve their organic position. Creating linkable assets that deserve to be linked to makes the link-building process far easier. Working in this manner, we are working with the interlinked fabric of the web and simply linking to something using descriptive anchor text. This is in contrast to forcing unnatural links with service-specific anchor text to the home page of a site. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

STRATEGY

Creating a High-Five Culture/ How do you build a High-Five Culture?

Simple. Hire sales associates who aspire to be 5 percenters and coach them to success.

BY: Larry Kendall

Success takes effort. Hire associates who hunger to succeed and the work ethic to get there.

The average annual household income in the United States is $56,516. For the top 5 percent of households, it’s $159,619 and for the 1 percenters, it’s $380,354. In our company, we are only interested in hiring associates who aspire to be 5 percenters or better. We call them High Fivers, and we have a system to help them get there. Our associates averaged $221,485 in gross commission income (GCI) in 2016.

How do you build a High-Five Culture? Simple. Hire sales associates who aspire to be 5 percenters and coach them to success. Here are our observations of the top 10 attributes and activities of top salespeople:

1. Mindset – Players versus victims.

Look for associates with a growth mindset who believe they can figure this business out and be successful if they work hard enough. See Dr. Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.”

2. Hungry – Success takes effort.

Hire associates who hunger to succeed and the work ethic to get there. What is their motivation?

What is there why?

3. Character – Hire likable people

who tell the truth and do what they say. These character attributes are the keys for them to be a trusted advisor rather than just a salesperson.

4. Empathy – Having the social skills

to pick up on the subtle nuances and the feelings of another was the key attribute of the top 10 percent of sales associates, according to a study by Franklin-Covey.

5. Flow – Flow fixes everything. We are in a contact sport. High Fivers are in flow (face-to-face or voice-to-voice) with at least 50 people a week. For some of them, it’s 50 a day! They use technology but tend NOT to spend a lot of time looking at screens.

6. Database – What holds an

associate back from flow? Fear of making calls? It could be, but we’ve another common factor. They don’t have a good database. They can’t make the calls or send the mailings because they don’t have phone numbers, home and email addresses.

Help them put together a database or hire a student to help them. A survey of 20,000 Realtors® showed that less than 40 percent had a database (even scraps of paper and business cards in a shoebox counted). Those with even a semblance of a database earned 251 percent more than those without one.

7. Value Proposition – High Fivers know how to create value by solving problems and making their clients feel good. They are constantly solving and serving versus selling. They bring real value to their clients and know how to articulate their value proposition.

8. Negotiation – A survey by the

National Association of Realtors® of home buyers and sellers, rated negotiation skills as a key attribute in selecting a real estate professional.

Are you practicing negotiation skills in your meetings? Share best practices on the five negotiation points of a real estate contract: price, terms, dates, inclusions/exclusions and contingencies.

9. Focus – Dr. Stephen Covey, in his book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” talks about living in our three

High Fivers know how to create value by solving problems and making their clients feel good.

They are constantly solving and serving versus selling.

Harvard Professor Dr. David McClelland found that 80 percent of a person’s success can be attributed to their reference group (peers, role models, mentors). His research supports the adage “Birds of a feather flock together.”

What kind of a flock are you creating at your company? Are you focusing on High Fivers?

circles. Circle One is our circle of concern – everything from politics to celebrities to football scores. Circle Two is our circle of influence – clients, friends, kids, business. Circle Three is our circle of control – our mindset, behavior and daily activities. High Fivers focus on their circles of control and influence. The 95 percenters tend to focus on their Circle of Concern and live their lives worrying about everything over which they have no control. This is also the focus of the victim. Players focus on their circles of control and influence.

models, mentors). His research supports the adage “Birds of a feather flock together.” What kind of a flock are you creating at your company? Are you focusing on High Fivers?

10. Reference Group – Harvard Professor Dr. David McClelland found that 80 percent of a person’s success can be attributed to their reference group (peers, role

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE

Focus on these 10 attributes and activities of High Fivers, and you will build a High-Five Company.

Just as importantly, you’ll build a High-Five Culture. Remember what management scientist Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” 

CLICK HERE

GoMotorcoach Auction Raises Record Amount for Industry Promotion, Education/ The GoMotorcoach Auction, the Motorcoach Marketing Council‘s premiere annual fundraising event, produced a new level of excitement and record donations to support the industry and its dedicated operators at UMA Expo Feb. 27.

“We were thrilled to have MCI as part of this year’s auction,” said Christian Riddell, Motorcoach Marketing Council executive director. “Not only did they make our first full-sized coach available, they gave everyone an incentive to raise their support of our important objectives.”

“With valued donations and great bidders, we once again set a new record for our fundraising efforts. We thank our industry manufacturers and suppliers who generously donated items and we especially thank all the UMA members who made their bids,” said Michelle Petelicki, Motorcoach Marketing Council treasurer and president of Panorama Bus Tours, Clifton, NJ, who has organized the auction events for the Motorcoach Marketing Counsel at UMA Expo for the last three years.

“MCI decided to do a little more this year, not only supplying the J4500, but to offer additional funds if we saw overall auction bidding going higher,” explained Brent Maitland, MCI vice president of Marketing and Product Planning and a member of the Executive Steering Committee for the Motorcoach Marketing Council. “We at MCI are very proud of everything we can do to support the GoMotorcoach campaign, and the Council, a valuable asset to our industry and its operators.”

This year’s auction delivered another first: MCI donated an unprecedented portion of the proceeds of the first full-size coach to go on the auction block at UMA Expo. The company’s 45-foot MCI J4500 provided one of the most exciting startsin the three year history of auctioning coaches.

An action-packed auction It was an event worth watching as the MCI J4500 launched a bidding war between three operators. When the dust settled, Jodi Merritt, President of H & L Charter from Rancho Cucamonga, CA, came out on top with a winning bid of $531,000.

“We are excited to have purchased the MCI J4500 at the auction. Not only were we able to acquire a great new coach for our fleet, we were able to help the Motorcoach Marketing Council,” Merritt said. “We use their marketing products and services and H & L Charter has been a longtime contributor to the Council. We believe in what they are doing and are happy to support them. At the same time, we acquired a great new addition to our fleet!”

The Motorcoach Marketing Council has been busy over the last few years introducing powerful business development tools, many of which are free to the industry. The Council’s continued mission is to help operators sell more charters to more people for more money and this fundraiser supplies a major portion of its annual operating budget.

“Our mission is to do as much as we can to help grow the industry, and do it very

frugally,” said Jeff Rogers, President of the Motorcoach Marketing Council, and owner of First Class Tours, Houston, TX. “The Council operates on annual budget of around $150 thousand dollars, and we take our responsibility to make that go as far as we can very seriously.”

Rogers added, “The annual auction goes a long way to helping us meet our objectives and this year was no exception. We are pleased to continue to say that we are indeed an organization that is funded by the industry for the industry, and we will continue to work to make every operator who uses our tools, trainings, and resources more effective.”

To support the Council, see the available tools, trainings, and resources or to watch a video of the live auction, visit the Council’s website at www.motorcoachmarketing.org. 

STRATEGY

Although we live in an on-demand world, people still tend to perform their best when following a scheduled routine. This is especially true when we look at the little things we do that contribute to our success. Just pick your favorite sports legend (LeBron James, Tom Brady, Serena Williams) and you will undoubtedly find someone whose success is the result of many years of following a scheduled routine of practice and conditioning. Without a doubt, telephone prospecting falls into this category for salespeople.

Although cold calling is often unpleasant, and we rarely if ever “close the big deal” when we do it, most salespeople and sales leaders would agree that it needs to be done to bring success.

Because cold calling can be disagreeable and typically takes a long time to yield results, it is very tempting for salespeople to move it to the bottom of the list and “get to it later.” Here are eight reasons why salespeople should avoid this pitfall by prescheduling their phone prospecting sessions.

1. You’ll be better organized. How many

times have you planned on spending an hour to make some cold calls, only to find that the hour has elapsed before you’ve made your first call? You have spent the entire hour building your list, modifying your script, or handling other items that have nothing to do with prospecting. But by getting everything ready ahead of time, you’ll get more done in a shorter

8 Reasons Why Sales Reps Should Preschedule Cold Calls/

By Pat Morrissey

amount of time.

2. You’ll find your focus on an important task—prospecting. You are unavailable

during other prescheduled activities, such as demos, proposal reviews, one-on-ones, etc.

Why not dedicate some time to finding more business? The world isn’t going to end in an hour. Don’t let something that is urgent and unimportant take priority over something that is very important—breaking new business.

3. Your mental preparedness will increase. Don’t waste valuable prospecting

time “getting your head in the game.” By scheduling ahead of time, you will be mentally prepared right when you start. There is no need

to waste time thinking about your approach to cold calling when you’ve given yourself plenty of time to mentally prepare yourself.

4. You’ll be more accountable. I always

feel more confident that something is going to be completed when the task at hand has been scheduled. Ever hear a contractor tell you that they “will come by to fix it sometime this week”? And how often do they “come by to fix it sometime this week”? You demand a specific day and time from them, so why not from your salespeople, or yourself?

5. It will give you a chance to reboot.

Although cold calling is difficult, it can actually make your day seem easier by breaking it up

with some prospecting time. Also, by dedicating some prescheduled time to finding new opportunities, you will reset your focus and may have a few mental breakthroughs on your current opportunities.

6. It can provide opportunities for synergy/ team building. Scheduling prospecting

activities as a group can add fun and learning to an otherwise difficult task. Although I have been in sales many years, I still learn from hearing my colleagues make calls. It’s a lot more fun to have a successful prospecting call when you can celebrate it with your peers. It’s also a lot easier to deal with rejection when the team is together and you can laugh about it and even laugh at yourselves.

(Nothing builds a team better than an environment of encouragement combined with some goodnatured ribbing!)

7. It can lead to healthy competition. By

scheduling group dialing sessions (“blitzes”) with built-in challenges or contests, you will get more out of your salespeople and increase morale as well. Just as horses like to run, salespeople are competitors by nature and will give their best in an environment of friendly competition. Competition also provides some short-term rewards for a task

that typically does not lend itself to them. It’s great to build a sales pipeline, but it’s even more fun to be No. 1 on the blitz board.

8. It will give you more moments of zen. By

prescheduling your prospecting, you will not only ensure that it gets done, you’ll also free yourself from having to think and worry about it until it’s time to do it. This will allow you to live in the present and focus on the task at hand until it’s time to make some dials. (I can only assume that the “task at hand” is usually going to be closing sales and assisting your customers.) Just as you didn’t dread schoolwork on Saturday morning when you were a kid, you won’t dread cold calling when you schedule your prospecting sessions ahead of time.

You just need to show up and make calls when the time comes, and things are never as bad as they seem once you start doing them! Not to mention that most people perform better with a relaxed and positive state of mind. 

READ THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE ONLINE CLICK HERE

GoMotorcoach

do•it•for•you

NO TIME FOR MARKETING? NO PROBLEM... WE CAN DO IT FOR YOU.

GoMotorcoach

23 CAMPAIGNS 782 MARKETING PIECES

432 SOCIAL POSTS 108 SOCIAL IMAGES 64 TRAINING VIDEOS

MADE FOR THE MOTORCOACH INDUSTRY

BY THE MOTORCOACH INDUSTRY

MORE THAN YOU THOUGHT. FOR LESS THAN YOU THINK.

JUMPSTART WEBINAR

READY TO GET STARTED? JOIN A 45 MINUTE JUMP START WEBINAR AND START SELLING MORE CHARTERS, TO MORE PEOPLE, FOR MORE MONEY.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE NEXT WEBINAR