Should you consider hiring a guru.com for business development?
24/01/14 10:44
There comes a time in many business’ life where they will need to hire outside service providers. Whether it be computer programming, or designing a new website, business consulting, logo designs or even legal, sometimes you just need an affordable resource for your business development requirements. It can be quite difficult for new entrepreneurs to accomplish these tasks with so many expenses and when funds are tight. Not only can some service providers charge very high prices, but also equally challenging can be finding good quality people to do the job. At My Lead Agency, we put an extra emphasis on affordability for that very reason. However, sometimes you can’t even afford a nimble agency like our own.
When a customer came to us recently with a modest budget and seeking our services, our creativity was called upon. In a nutshell, their budget was too modest, if you know what I mean. We decided to work with them, free of charge, to see if we could help them achieve their goals within their constraints. That's just how we roll.
Initially, they had tried placing an ad on a few local classified websites, to merely receive horrible results. The skill level that was needed was just not there. So it came as a shining beacon of light to them when we recommended expanding the search beyond the local realm. We suggested a few different freelance websites. We started to look into them, each having their own unique ways of functioning, all with their own advantages and disadvantages.
There seemed to be two distinct types of freelance websites. The first type, like crowdspring.com or designcontest.com, let’s you list your project details and how much you are willing to pay for the work. You then send this money to the website who holds on to it. The artists will then submit their work to you. The vendors advise that you should expect to get 30 or more submissions. Obviously the more you pay, the more likely people will want to work on it. You then pick the design you like, and only then does the winning artist get paid. If it so happens that none of the work is what you want, there is no cost to you. You get all your money back.
The second type of freelance website, such as guru.com, allows you to list your project just like the others sites; however you do not put a set price, although you may give a price range you are willing to pay. You then wait for artists to respond to your project with their price tag. It is up to you to then choose which artist you would like to do your project, and only then do they start working on the project.
Based on our customer’s requirements, the guru.com website seemed more fitting. Within the first day of posting the project they received about five responses. The next day it was up to about ten responses. Not only were prices very affordable, but also our customer was also able to view many different portfolios and personal websites. The quality of these artists was outstanding; some of them even worked for major corporations like Disney, or ran their own studios. The hardest part for our customer was choosing which artist they actually liked best. When they finally decided upon one, we helped them write up a project agreement for five different pieces (including some revisions) and they started to work.
The quality was great but the process was not without issues. Minor conflict arose when things needed to be changed and the artist liked them the way they were. All of this may have been avoided if our customer and the artist had been able to talk face-to-face and get these details figured out. Eventually, our client determined the artist had become too difficult to deal with them, so the project was cut short. It was a little bit frustrating for our customer as they felt like they were back to square one again. However, all was not lost, as they were able to go back to one of the artists they had debated using, and successfully finished the project with them.
Freelance websites are excellent tools for the budget conscious person; you can easily use them for small, one-off projects. Nevertheless there are strings attached. The lack of direct communication can be a unique strain to getting a simple project accomplished. These service providers can work for simple tasks but they lack the abilities to coordinate an integrated guerrilla marketing campaign. Said another way, I wouldn’t advise using them to augment your demand generation strategies, or any inbound marketing or marketing automation projects, but I would suggest they could be an effective resource for small, budget-friendly engagements.
What is the number one rule of content marketing?
17/01/14 15:14
Recently, I stumbled across a fantastic discussion on LinkedIn, in the group “Inbound Marketers – For Marketing Professionals” that asked this very simple question “What is the number one rule of content marketing?”. The discussion was started by Rey Tamayoof www.awiserstart.com, and it has over 200 posts at the time of this blog writing. That tells you that Rey has hit a nerve with this question. That also prompts me to ask “Why?”
For context, let me summarize the most prominent answers that appeared in the posts:
- Relevancy
- It must be compelling
- Remarkable content
- Address the needs of the reader; it's not about you
- Utilize keywords and key phrases
- Fresh content
- Use understandable language; shoot for high school readability
- Visuals
- Solve a problem
- Authenticity
Perhaps this answers my earlier question of "Why". The implication is that too many people must feel that too much content in existence today is simply not relevant. Would you agree?
I fully agree the relevancy is critical, however I do not believe it is the number one rule of content creation. In fact, I think it’s merely an attribute. It’s something you strive for when you generate your content, as are the other attributes like being compelling or authentic or fresh. While all of these attributes may help your content to be consumed, they do not necessarily help you achieve your goals, which is why you’re creating content in the first place.
Think about it. What are your goals? Are they to...
- Generate awareness?
- Establish thought leadership?
- Increase your search rankings?
- Feed your social media engine?
- Contribute to your lead nurturing programs?
- Engage your target audience?
Therefore, I submit that the number one rule of content marketing is to generate content that will help you fill your pipeline and close more deals. That’s it. Easy. Simple. End of story.
How would you do that? Well – I posted about that on the discussion group and summarized it accordingly:
“Content needs to start with your Sales Funnel. Analyze your sales funnel. What is the leakage and the lag from sales stage to stage? What are the common objections you get at each separate stage? What are the frequently asked questions your sales teams get asked? Once that's done, you can map your current content inventory against how each piece supports the sales funnel stages. Do they address the sales objections? Do they address the FAQs? Will they help you reduce the leakage or the lag? Is the content serving the top of the funnel or the middle of the funnel? How can your content help your Sales team be more successful? How can your content increase your conversion rates? To answer your question directly, the number one rule of content marketing is to help Sales close more deals. Everything else - relevance, thinking like the content consumer, personality, etc. - are aspects to what content should be produced and how it should be created. If you don't know the content you need, if it doesn't help achieve your end-goal of sales (I'm assuming it's sales but you may have another end goal), then your content will not be effective. Hence, always start with your sales funnel and figure out what you need to make, how your audience wants to consume it (which channels - video, podcasts, white papers, etc.) and how it addresses the challenges of the sales cycle.”
Those who read my blog posts know I often have pretty strong opinions, but perhaps my opinion is wrong on this. What do you think? Better yet – what would your sales team think?
Musing about Social Media and its lead generation effectiveness
12/01/14 09:51
Social Media is a major part of any B2B sales or marketing strategy that we endorse for our clients at My Lead Agency. It doesn't mean we always enjoy or embrace social media. Despite the typical verbosity of my blog posts, I don't always have a lot to say. I'm good with 2-4 character posts ("Yup", "Nope", "OK") rather than 140 characters, and blogging can sometimes be downright painful. I've got so much to do during the day that social media can sometimes be an afterthought. With that all said, is it effective for lead generation? Well, as it relates to inbound marketing, it's critical however we need to keep perspective; it's still only one tool in our bag of business development weapons. In other words, stay focused on developing a comprehensive and holistic approach to your lead generation efforts; do not get tunnel-vision and believe social media is the answer to all of your sales pipeline woes. Trust me when I say that many companies we work with have been barraged with sage advice preaching that social media will fill their coffers. With that as the inspiration for today's post, I decided to go have another look at the MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report and see what the numbers say about this topic.
When asked to indicate the effectiveness of social media for their organization, the answers were as follows:
- 16% - Very effective
- 59% - Somewhat effective
- 25% - Not effective
If I drill down further on this topic, MarketingSherpa asks the question "Which of the following social media tactics does your organization currently use? Check all that apply". The answers are intriguing:
- 87% - Participating on company branded or managed social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
- 64% - Microblogging on company branded or managed microblogs (Twitter, Jaiku, etc.)
- 64% - Blogging on company branded or managed blogs
- 62% - Sharing content on multimedia sites (YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, etc.)
- 59% - Using social media to improve search engine rankings (SEO)
- 41% - Social media news releases
- 33% - Blogger or online influencer relations
- 30% - Sharing email content with social media sites
- 21% - Advertising on blogs, social networks or other social media sites
Alright, let's bring this blog post home and reference the chart that really means something to those within the organization responsible for revenue: Please rate the following tactics for their level of effectiveness in achieving social media objectives (1 star is the lowest level of effectiveness, 5 stars is the highest level). For brevity, I'm going to add up the percentages for those who answered 4-stars, or 5-stars, into a single percentage, as that percentage reflects a strong perception of the tactic's effectiveness in achieving the organizations's goals for social media. For our clients, that goal is almost always lead generation.
- 44% - Blogging on company branded or managed blogs
- 40% - Using social media to improve search engine ranking (SEO)
- 34% - Blogger and online influencer relations
- 30% - Sharing content on multimedia sites (YouTube, Flickr, SlideShare, etc.)
- 30% - Participating on company branded or managed social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)
- 24% - Microblogging on company branded or managed microblogs (Twitter, Jaiku, etc.)
- 20% - Social media news releases
- 24% - Sharing email content with social media sites
- 17% - Advertising on blogs, social networks or other social media sites
Why?
In the end, deals occur because of relationships. One party trusts another to help them resolve a pain they have. Trust is built slowly, often after repeated demonstrations that a vendor has skill, and a track record of success, such that a Buyer's objections, and fear of risk, are mitigated. The vendor becomes credible. As is often the case behind earned trust, word-of-mouth implies credibility. When a trusted advisor refers a vendor to a friend (virtual word-of-mouth), the vendor is perceived as credible and trustworthy. That's what content does for you. It puts your knowledge in a consumable format. That content is then shared among friends. If it's deemed valuable, trusted Influencers reference and endorse you. Blogs also convey personality and are a more personal way of referencing and delivering content. Content builds SEO. Content becomes a sales and a marketing tool; it's embedded in your processes with things like lead nurturing or objection handling. And all of these factors generate inbound leads which then results in measurable lead generation success.
So there you have it. My musing for the day. Sorry I went a bit long. I did admit initially to being verbose with my blogs. I'd love to hear your feedback.
Social Media, and lead generation, is all about the humor
09/01/14 16:51
I hosted a webinar yesterday for our partner OnPath. The guest panelists were Tim Washer (@timwasher) and Deborah Strickland (@deborahs) ofCisco. It was a fun 29 minute discussion (not counting Q&A) about social media and the lessons that Cisco - the 2010 B2B Twitterer of the Year - has learned. These people were really honest and transparent, and I might add, very funny. I hope we can work together again and I suggest you follow them on Twitter. With that said, the webinar attempted to tackle the following six questions in our relatively tight timeline:
- How does Cisco use social media and why?
- Does a higher volume of views, fans, followers, subscribers, translate into more sales?
- How many people does it take to manage a successful social media strategy?
- What can a small-medium size company do to get started? Do they need a plan or just jump into it?
- How do you coordinate the technology of scheduling posts, building lists, and measuring clicks with team collaboration?
- Should a company consider outsourcing these activities?
What Tim and Deborah shared can best be summarized as follows:
- Use humor to engage: whether it's in your posts, or in your content you create (videos, blogs, etc.), people react better, and engage more, with a touch of humor.
- Be transparent, be relational: don't just push your posts out there non-stop, rather you should be conversational and honest with your audience. It should be a two-way dialog but not necessarily an ongoing diatribe of your daily existence.
- Sit back and watch while you're getting started. You'll soon figure out who is worthy of watching and engaging with compared to who is simply shouting/spamming with no interest in being "social".
- Use services like Technorati to find cool blogs to follow, and then get active contributing.
- Look at your competitors and see what they're doing. There is a good chance that you should be following some of the same people they do.
- Create a schedule and stick to it. Consistency is critical.
- Social Media takes a lot of effort. Don't let others in your organization make the false assumption otherwise. Assume at least an hour or two per day. If you don't have the time, or the additional resources or budget, to make that commitment then consider eliminating something else from your existing marketing mix or daily obligations.
- Social Media does not necessarily result in a dramatic increase in lead generation activity. It does, however, positively impact your search engine optimization (SEO), your thought leadership, and your exposure. It's great to get a handle on what customers are saying about you or your services and products, and it absolutely allows you to respond to any concern they may have.
- There is lots of technology out there, so use it. The usual suspects like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite are good, but so are more analytical tools like Radian6 or PostRank.
- Outsourcing of social media is a challenging thing, as the vendor will never know your business like you do. That said, it can be safely done in controlled circumstances with sufficient checks and balances.
- Foremost, what I took away, was a comment that for social media to be successful, you have to have a goal. Once you start the program, always be measuring against your goals. What was very interesting was the observation that your goal may not be the same as what others in your organization believe the goals should be. That means you need to get consensus early in the process.
Thanks to @onpath for the opportunity to host.
If you want to hear it yourself, you can find the recorded version here.