Council mock up

MOTORCOACH

ISSUE 01/ MAY 2014

MARKETING Marketing and Sales Information Designed for the Motorcoach Industry

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to

#Hashtags

Experts Agree, Don’t Start The Day

By Answering Your Email

The Top 5 Ad Mistakes Dont spend money on bad advertising. Follow these tips to build better, more effective, ads. Get better, faster return every time.

Facebook ROI for Business Explained

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08 08 14 18 22

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COMPANY CULTURE/ Today’s working environment is global in scope, rife with uncertainty and lacking...

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STAFF STRETCHED/

Chances are during the recession you called upon your employees to pitch...

HOW TO SELL/

I hear it all the time from business owners: “We have a great product or service but I just don’t know...

WHY 80 PERCENT/

Take a good look at your employees. Did you know 80 percent of them are ready to bail?

33 34 38

A Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) proposal...

FOUR REASONS/

Value is the killer app in sales.

Without it, you are relegated to competing on price.

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FMCSA NEW WEBSITE/

The new revitalized FMCSA’s website puts services front and cetnter.

5 STEPS FOR LEADERS/

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EXPERTS AGREE/

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Our research shows nearly three out of four organizations are infected with one or more of the costly behaviors of gossiping, shifting blame and turfism.

There are tons of books about timemanagement, but increasingly...

FMCSA LOOKING TO MANDATE ELD’S/

FACEBOOK ROI/

Have you been using Facebook for your business but are unsure if its providing any real return on investment?

THE TOP 5 HIRING/

As a business owner or manager, you know how tough it is these days to recruit the right people and keep them happy so they’ll stick around.

The war for talent rages on,...

CERTIFIED MEDICAL CHECKS/

Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration Attention Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) Drivers and...

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

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Please contact your Prevost Regional Sales Manager for more information.

USA 1-877-773-8678

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

The Motorcoach Marketing Council/ From the president.

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Sincerely Peter Shelbo President.

Peter Shelbo

MMC President.

Owner Tour West America

B2B vs B2C EMAIL / Best practice guide A better stratagy can result in far better conversion and a higher ROI on every email you send....

BY: Simon Bowker

B2B email marketing requires a differnt approach then B2C...

Here’s why

In the B2C world, purchase decisions are typically made very quickly, so your emails need to be brief and filled with emotionally compelling text and images. that meet the feelings of the recipient so that they are motivated to buy your particular product or service ahead of your competitors.

With B2B it’s slightly more complicated because you’re marketing your product or service to businesses and high profile company stakeholders rather than the individual end user or customer.

As a result purchases often go through long decision-making processes - from supervisors, managers or even whole departments – and email marketing is fundamental to cutting through this.

In order for consignors to make an informed purchase decision they have to convince a number of different people with objective details and specifications of the items to be considered.

Emails that are loaded with emotions can even be counter-productive in this scenario, because B2B customers are looking for more information and less emotion. That doesn’t mean your emails should be text heavy and you should abandon images and personalization elements. Your emails should still be factual, informative and clearly describe your product, but they should be appropriate to the business and industry of your target group.

So how do you put this into practice?

First of all you need to establish the right tone. Emails should be direct, professional and presented in a manner that makes your audience want to do business with you. Essentially, you need to approach it like you would a face-to-face meeting with your pros-

pects and make sure that you clearly state why you are sending the message and why it is relevant and valuable to the recipient. Make sure the call to action is clearly identifiable, and don’t get too bogged down by sending too many cross promotional messages or secondary marketing messages, otherwise the effectiveness of your campaign may be compromised.

The measurement of your campaign should be based on how many leads (and of course any subsequent sales) are generated and not open or click-through rates. It is still important to make sure that your content is highly relevant and targeted, but you need to make sure you pay attention to email forwards and any additional email subscriptions generated from the campaign. If you have a high open and click through rate but only a small number of leads you may have put up too many barriers to capture the lead. Therefore make sure your landing page and relevant gateway pages (for example, a whitepaper sign-up page) are easy to find and utilise. This may take some co-ordination that goes outside the realm of a typical email manager but can be incredible influential to the success of your campaign.

Once you have that sorted, make sure you consider the following five tips: Know your audience: Make sure you identify who your audience is, what their characteristics are and how they may want to be contacted. For example, if you’re sending out an email to an IT network administrator – a text approach is more likely to solicit a more positive response than an image intensive email.

More importantly you need make sure your emails are fully optimized for mobile and realize that you cannot adopt a one-solution policy.

Open or Click through rate is not a Metric that you need to care about. How many leads (and subsequent sales) Are.

Consider the most appropriate “From” & “Subject” lines: Sending an email from a CEO or top level executive is likely to resonate better with your recipient than an email from someone further down in your organisation. However in addition to sending the email from someone influential you need to support this with a short subject line which is clutter free and clearly sets out the intentions and purpose of the email.

A recent study conducted to determine the risk of having a safetycritical event as a function of driving-hour suggests that incidents are highest during the first hour of driving

Respect the audience’s time: The timing of your mailings is incredibly important, so do investigate the most effective times to reach your particular audience. However, if one of your subscribers doesn’t respond to your first few messages that doesn’t mean you should send them more messages more frequently. Instead, make sure that you create a follow-up campaign based on how each of your users responded (or in some cases didn’t). Using these metrics will help you to implement a more relevant strategy and increase your potential lead volume.

Offer something unique: You need to give people a reason to interact with you. Sometimes, you can do this via a whitepaper or by granting

access to content on your website or a free event. Whatever it is you need to bear in mind that the B2B audience is unlikely to want to spend money, so you need to stand out and provided added value if you want your lead volume to grow.

Don’t oversell: Make sure you don’t overwhelm your audience and offer them too many promises. If you do you will diminish your opportunity to encourage people to click on the links within your email which point to details of the services and products you want them to purchase from you.

Ultimately you need to remember that whilst you may use the same tools and resources, the way you communicate and present your content for your B2B and B2C email marketing campaigns differs exponentially. If you follow these five principals you will be able to build a strong campaign which delivers you highly qualified leads which can have positive impact on your business.  To read the full report visit: CLICK HERE

infographi

Make More Splash / How to successfully pitch journalists...

Nicholas Holmes co-founded startup MediaGraph to help startups pitch to make public relations accessible and affordable to small businesses, by providing them with tips, tricks, and access over social media to the journalists they are looking to access (read more about their startup founding process here). Hopefully they can lower the bar for fledgling startups; here are some beginning tips to help founders take the right approach when contacting the media (more can be found on the MediaGraph blog).

1

Be Colorful

Be Early The earlier, the better - in most cases.

Most publications, particularly in print, work with a lead time but still have to appear up to date, which is why PR professionals will normally pre-brief journalists well in advance.

Small businesses should do the same thing -- if you’re pitching for coverage of an event or a specific launch date, make sure you know how long they’ll need to plan, write it up and schedule it. This could range from months for glossy magazines to a few days for a newspaper and a few hours for a blog, and that’s without accounting for personal preference. A well-timed warning helps everybody to plan their diaries better - and who doesn’t like that?

3

As news has moved online, the need for good pictures has only increased -- many blogs and outlets now insist on an accompanying image for every story and in a world where picture editors are increasingly scarce, you’ll make a journalist’s day if you can offer some.

Offer, don’t attach; no-one likes receiving 12MB of high-res images with a pitch. But link to a Flickr/blog page with some royalty-free graphics and you’ll make friends fast. Increasingly, outlets are also embedding videos from companies they cover, so a YouTube channel is worth including if you have one.

4

5 Be Relevant This is perhaps the single biggest success factor in any pitch: you should aim to be relevant to the journalist, and relevant to the news.

Showing you’re human can make the difference between a press release being read or deleted - especially if you’re a founder. Your personality may be your best weapon against the hordes of public relations people pitching stories about larger companies. So show it!

This will be especially appreciated by high-profile journalists, who receive hundreds of pitches and press releases daily. Save time by putting the title of the press release in the message subject, and make sure you’re well into the meat of the pitch by the second sentence you’ve written.

Spend some time learning about the person you’re emailing and making sure you’re pushing the right buttons before you hit send. Read their recent articles to get a feel of the subjects, style and tone of what they cover -think about how your news might fit into that publication and try to work that into the pitch. That doesn’t mean suggesting a particular slot, but it’s worth highlighting the aspect you think will be most interesting to their readers

Include a personal note alongside whatever other material you’re sending, and put all your contact details on there so that it’s clear you’re open for a chat. It’s worth making sure they remember you as accessible, friendly and helpful, with more than an opportunistic interest in what they’re writing about.

If you can keep your pitch to between 100-150 words, you’re on the right track. Spend a sentence or two on why you believe the story is right for the publication, and then focus on how you’re prepared to work with the journalist, perhaps by offering exclusive access, a free trial or an interview.

Aim to tap into a relevant current trend you know the journalist has an interest in - it’ll help them to quickly form an association with your pitch and adds credibility to what you’re saying, which is a huge bonus. It also broadens the opportunity for them to use your news, as trends tend to resurface over time.

Be Genuine

2

Be Concise

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Don’t be fooled by its pretty face

Getting Started on Google + The Newest of the social media outlets has lots of opportunities for small business.

In his book, What the Plus! Google+ For the Rest of Us,author Guy Kawasaki details strategies, tactics and time-savers to create an effective presence and attract followers, engage the right people, and promote your brand. In this edited excerpt, Kawasaki explains how to get started on Google+, which has garnered over 250 million active users since its beta test in June 2011.

Since Google can divert the river and owns the playing field, you may find it hard to avoid Google+. Here’s how to get started: Sign up for a Google account that enables you to use all the Google prod-

ucts. Keep your name simple, which will make it easier for people to remember you and find your Google+ post.

The next step is to find people to “circle.” When you’ve circled approximately 50 people, Google+ gets really interesting. This process will only take a few minutes but will yield many hours of enlightenment, engagement, and enjoyment.

Google+ provides multiple options to get started. First, you can click on “Find people” to search for people you already know. Don’t be disappointed if all your BFFs (best friends for life) aren’t already on Google+; this is a chance to make new BFFs.

Second, you can click on categories of people, such as “Entertainment” or “Fun & Interesting.”

Google compiled a list of “Picks” based on the fame and level of activity of the people. You can add these entire preselected circles or individual people.

There are a few simple ways to decide whether to circle someone: Does the person have a pleasant profile photo? The lack of a profile photo indicates that the person is clueless, a newbie, or a spammer.

When there is a photo, you can infer a lot about the person.

How many people have circled the person? Lots of followers doesn’t necessarily mean the person is worth circling, but it’s a pretty good data point. There’s usually a bad reason someone only has a handful of followers.

When was the last time the person shared a post? This will show if the person is active on Google+. There’s no sense following someone who isn’t active because the purpose of circling a person is to generate interaction.

Are the person’s posts shared by many people, and commented upon? People who share posts

Google+ provides multiple options to get started.

that generate more than 10 shares and more than 10 comments tend to be interesting.

An easy way to check out a person is to use Chrome, Google’s browser, and install a Chrome browser extension called “CircleCount.” Then, when you mouse-over a person’s name, you’ll see the follower history and the average number of shares and comments.

Now that you’ve circled a few people, it’s time to explore how to navigate Google+. The nine buttons in the vertical navigation ribbon on the left side of the page are the primary ways to navigate Google+ itself. Here’s what the buttons do: Home: On Google+, home is where the “stream” is. This button displays your “stream” of what the people you follow have posted. Think of Home as your “news feed.”

Profile: When you want to see what you’ve posted, click on this button. It will show you all your posts, and it’s a good way to manually check for new comments on your posts.

Explore: This will take you to a page that explains Google+ features as well as the posts that have the most comments and shares.

Events: You can use Events to plan and invite people to your parties, meetings, and Google+ hangouts. You create an invite, choose a theme picture, set a day and time, and invite people and circles of people.

Photos: This takes you to photo collections, including those you and your friends have posted as well as photos you’ve been tagged in.

Googel plus does more then just help you find new customers... did you know it can impact your search results as well?

Circles: You create circles in order to organize and filter who you interact with. You circle people unilaterally, without their permission, although they are notified that you circled them.

Local: Google Local helps you find “recommended places” such as restaurants and hotels near your geographic location.

It provides Zagat scores and summaries plus the recommendations of people you know on Google+ and “top reviewers.”

Games: This is the front door to playing games on Google+. You have control over when you see games, how you play them,

and with whom you share your experiences.

Hangouts: Hangouts is a killer feature of Google+ that enables you to have a video chat session with up to nine other people.

Think of it as Skype on steroids.

More: This enables you to add navigation buttons such as Pages, which provides links to the pages that you have created or have access to. (Pages are Google+ accounts for organizations.)

There are more ways Google+ helps you find people to circle. You can search for people at any time by using the Google+ search area. When you find a person, Google+ also displays more people who might interest you.

You also can enter keywords that describe your interests and passions, and Google+ will display relevant people, posts, people, and pages. When you find people who share your sensibilities, circle them so you may continue to read their posts.

Then read the comments on their posts, which can also help you find people to circle To read the full report visit: http://www.entrepreneur.com/ article/224615#

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I hear it all the time from business owners: “We have a great product or service but I just don’t know how to sell it. I hate sales!” Unfortunately for these entrepreneurs, selling is a necessary evil. Unless your product is so revolutionary that people are willing to line up at your door for it, you need to learn how to sell; otherwise, your days as a business owner are numbered.

How can someone who either hates selling or doesn’t know

how to sell learn the fine art of getting customers to say yes?

It starts with three simple steps: 1. Understand Features vs. Benefits Look at your business from your customers’ perspective.

They don’t initially see the “features” of your product or service; they see the “benefits” of your product or service to them. Theodore Levitt, a Harvard marketing professor,

How to Sell (For People Who Hate Sales)

These three tips will help you master the art of getting customers to say yes, even if you’re not a born salesperson.

used to tell his students, “People don’t want to buy a quarterinch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” If you approach selling to your customers in this manner, then what are the most common benefits of your product or service to them?

If you’re not sure, ask some customers why they buy from you. They will be more than happy to tell you.

2. Help Others Help You

Paraphrasing a quote, “There are two types of salespeople that enter a room—the first one walks in and says, ‘Here I am!’ The second one walks in and says, ‘Ah, there you are!’” If you are uncomfortable with sales, the best and easiest approach is to be the second salesperson. Shine the spotlight on your customers and their needs. When you help them solve a problem or find the solution they sought, they will thank you, pay you money and hopefully become an advocate for your brand. If they have questions, answer

If you want increased sales without heavy lifting, the simplest and surest way to get there is by delivering the best possible customer service on the planet.

them. If you don’t know the answer, let them know that you don’t want to give them misinformation and you will make it a priority to get back to them with the correct response. Selling is problem solving. Someone comes to you with a need or a problem; you provide the solution.

RELATED: 5 Reasons Your Website Visitors Aren’t Buying 3. Deliver Exceptional Customer Service If you want increased sales without heavy lifting, the simplest and surest way to get there is by delivering the best possible customer service on the planet. Your credo should be “Happy Customers are the Best Customers.”

their terrific product. I feel good knowing that I’m delivering new business to a company that makes me feel like family. At that point, you are no longer selling. You’ve become a trusted advisor. I respect your work and your opinion. I trust you!

Selling can be an arduous task. Not everyone possesses the gift of gab and enjoys dealing with all kinds of people. If you struggle with picking up the phone, greeting potential customers or making presentations about your business, address your fears.

Don’t worry about rejection—just know that it’s coming. It won’t kill you and it’s not personal. Believe in your product, focus the spotlight on your customers and deliver world-class customer service.

RELATED: 12 Tips for a Perfect Pitch Problems arise with every product and service. How your company responds to those problems is critical to your sales success. As a customer, I will go out of my way to buy from people I know who put in the extra effort in making me feel like they really appreciate my business. When things go wrong, they make it right—without question. I then become their sales champion. I tell all my friends about their wonderful service or

READ THE ORIGINAL

ARTICLE ONLINE

Four Reasons Your Sales Fo to Create Value

orce Is Unprepared Value is the killer app in sales. Without it, you are relegated to competing on price. Here’s why your sales force is unprepared to create value and what to do about it.

No Business Acumen: Your sales force doesn’t have the business acumen, the experience, or the situational knowledge. To succeed in sales today you have to be a bigger salesperson.

Being a bigger sales person means being a better business person. It means thinking about your client’s problems through the eyes of the business owner. We use words like “trusted advisor” and ”consultative,” but we don’t prepare the salesforce to be those things. If you want real sales enablement, this is where it starts and ends.

No Differentiation: Your sales force can’t present your defining differentiators in a way that creates value in the minds of your clients. Ask a salesperson to differentiate their offering from their competitors in a way that is compelling. Most of them will tell you that they’re not very different from their competitors. They don’t believe that you’re very different from your competitors.

Without defining differentiators, those differences that make a difference, it’s very difficult to demonstrate the real value in your value propositions. As a sales leader, you have to sell this differentiation all the time.

Transactional Disease: Your salespeople behave transactionally because that’s what they believe they’re supposed to do. As a leader you have to build and protect a culture. You have to share your worldview and you have to enforce it. The world outside is telling your sales people that they are only going to win on price, that you’re supposed to be Walmart. They’re being led to believe that the only value customers really perceive is lowest price. It doesn’t matter that none of this is true, and it doesn’t matter that the sales people working in your organization don’t

If you allow discounting in order to win new opportunities then you are contributing to the problem of sales people not being prepared to create value.

understand the ideological inconsistency of believing this while carrying an iPhone and a new MacBook. What matters is you continually reinforce the perception of value and that you enforce the mindset that you will accept nothing less than value creation and reject all transactional beliefs and behaviors.

You Allow Discounting: Leadership and management sometimes doesn’t protect own business model by enforcing the creation of value when winning an opportunity. If you allow discounting in order to win new opportunities then you are contributing to the problem of sales people not being prepared to create value. If you do so for short term revenue at the expense of your business model, you’re breaking the business.

You challenge every deal to see what value you are creating that makes you worth paying more to obtain. Or you end up not creating value, and you step onto the slippery slope to a declining profit margins.

Ultimately, the sales leaders is responsible for the results of their team. If your sales team is unprepared to create value, improve their business acumen, their ability to differentiate, enforce a value-creation mindset, and don’t contribute to the problem by discounting.

Questions How do you learn to create more value? What experiences contribute to that outcome?

Can each person on your team easily differentiate your offering from your

Ultimately, the sales leaders is responsible for the results of their team.

competitor’s? Is each member of your team part of the differentiation?

sales force’s lack of ability to create value for their clients?

How much does the worldview that price is the only real value permeate your team’s mindset?

READ THE ORIGINAL

What do leaders do that contributes to the

ARTICLE ONLINE

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An Entrepreneur’s Guide to #Hashtags Hashtags are a key to riding today’s social media wave.

But understanding what a hashtag is, let alone implementing one, can be confusing for many small business owners -- even ones that consider themselves tech savvy.

“Hashtags open up the social media world to better converse with your company,” says Barry Sloane, CEO of Newtek, a health insurance agency for small businesses. “A website or URL post only brings you to the company’s website, while a hashtag allows people to use it in everyday conversations they have on social media.”

Similar to putting phrases in a search engine like Google, hashtags enable people to search and discover content on social media Websites including Facebook and Twitter.

With a hashtag, users can tag posts, pictures and videos with a hash symbol (#) followed by a word or phrase.

This allows the social media site to categorize posts based on like terms, which in turn makes it easier for people to search for similar and related posts.

For small businesses, especially ones that don’t have a big marketing budget, hashtags are a free way to build

a follower base on Facebook and Twitter, granted they are posting interesting content and using the appropriate hashtag keywords.

“On social media this is the most cost effective way to get your brand out there,” says Gurbaksh Chahal founder, chairman & CEO of RadiumOne, a digital advertising company.

Hashtags can also be a great way for small businesses to connect with people that care about their product category or business field.

For instance, if your company makes hair

products and you are able to post relevant content, than a whole swath of people (AKA new customers) interested in hair products can find yours under the hashtag.

“Repeated tweets to those hashtags will hopefully gain the emerging enterprise more notoriety and a regular following that could never be achieved cost effectively in any other known manner,” says Sloane.

For small businesses that have a marketing budget, hashtags can also be a great way to

Don’t give up if you miss a few days. Just jump right back in and keep on going.

Content is king.

run a promotion and at the same time get the word out about the business. According to a RadiumOne survey, 51% of respondents said they would be more open to sharing company hashtags if they got a discount or a chance at a prize for doing it.

Since any word of phrase can become a hashtag by adding the # symbol in front of it, Sloane says small businesses should use a hashtag in front of their company or brand name and hashtag related keywords or buzzwords. For example, Newtek often uses #smallbiz, he says.

“Not only can you give discounts, and therefore bring in more customers, but this allows you to track promotions activity online,” says Sloane.

While hashtags are used on Facebook and Instagram, they are primarily found in the Twitter domain. Because of that, experts say small business owners must embrace hashtags in tweets, and consider using them on Facebook and even Instagram as well.

But just like there are rules governing how a business should act on social media sites, there’s also a protocol to follow when it comes to hashtags. For instance, Chahal says small businesses have to choose hashtag categories that are broad enough to reach a diverse audience, but at the same time make sure it also reaches that niche user base. He also says small businesses don’t have to stick to just one hashtag, but can use multiple to reach even more potential customers.

“I’ve seen a brand thrive based on the conversation,” says Chahal. “The best way to get started at no cost and no investment is just using creativity to get your product out there.”

Don’t give up if you miss a few days. Just jump right back in and keep on going.

Content is king.

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Facebook ROI for Business Explained Have you been using Facebook for your business but are unsure if its providing any real return on investment?

Are you thinking of starting to use Facebook for your business?

For any business, return on investment (ROI) is the deciding factor in whether they will execute a specific marketing tactic - and Facebook is no different.

The Problem with Facebook ROI for Businesses The problem with Facebook though is that its ROI is a different beast than that of traditional online marketing like Google Adwords. The ROI from Adwords is easy to determine because you can see the direct revenue generated from each click. Facebook can provide such direct returns, through its Ads platform, but it also gives you returns such as leads, traffic and customer testimonials at fractions of the cost.

In this article I’ll explain the top 5 types of Facebook ROI for businesses, why they’re valuable, how you can get them and how you can track them.

What You’ll Learn from this Post: (Click each one to Tweet them) 1. Learn what ROI to expect from Facebook 2. Understand the value of Facebook ROI for Business (and how to utilize it properly) 3. Find out how to achieve Facebook ROI for your Business Tweetable Takeaways (for those who want it ASAP) (Click each one to Tweet them) 1. Asking people to share your Facebook posts is a big no-no. It sounds like begging and will turn people off.

2. 46% of U.S. adults trust online reviews written by customers, but only 10% trust online ads 3. Online retailer Nasty Gal has used social channels to grow 500% each year since its inception in 2006 4. Mine user’s interest data (using FB Apps) to create engaging posts, weaving in your own products & business Facebook ROI for Businesses #1 Fans Sharing with Friends This occurs when one of your fans shares, comments on or Likes on of your Facebook Posts. These interactions show up in their friends News Feeds and not only introduce your business to them, but includes a social recommendation from their friend.

Here is an example from my own News Feed from one of my friends: This is far more powerful than a simple ad.

Why? Because people care about what their friends think and do, not what a business wants to sell them. If a person’s friend is talking about an experience that involves your business, it’s a story with personal interest.

Compare the above example to Ad below.

Which do you think I’m more likely to click on?

According to a recent Forrester Research report, “70% of US online adults trust brand or product recommendations from friends and family”. That same report indicated that 46% trust online reviews written by customers, but only 10% trust online ads and company written text messages.

Don’t beg for shares though. In a recent article, The Five Most Common Facebook Posts Mistakes, I wrote that asking people to share your Facebook posts is a big no-no.

This sounds like begging and will turn most people off. You need to provide some form of incentive or interest to propel people to engage with you. Liking and sharing can be the mechanisms that people are told to use to engage with you, but it has to be done in a way that is fun or useful.

Here are two Facebook posts, made right after each other, from Walmart showing both the right and wrong ways to drive Likes and shares from Facebook posts. The post on the left is asking people to share the Facebook post to tell their friends about a sale happening at Walmart. This can be taken as basically asking you to spam your friends.

And it provides no interest or value for the person sharing. The post on the right is done correctly. It’s giving people a venue to express their opinion on how they like their steak cooked, which for some people is a part of who they are! As you can see its getting much more engagement: How do you track shares by your Fans?

Facebook’s new Page Insights makes it super easy to see how many shares each of your posts is getting and which are the most popular. Check out a piece from Wishpond’s Insights below. The orange bar represents “Reach”, the purple represents “Clicks” and the red “Shares”: Facebook ROI for Businesses #2 Referral Traffic to your Website People are turning to sites like Pinterest more and more to engage in “Social Shopping Sessions”. Instead of going to comparison shopping sites Rich Revelance recently analyzed 15 billion shopping sessions between December

2012 and April 2013 to see how social media affects purchases.

Take a look at the infographic to see Facebook and Pinterest’s effect on ecommerce sales: How do you use Facebook to drive Referral Traffic to your Website?

The best way to do this is to create posts that tell a story about your products or how people can use them.

If you just post about your new product line or what’s on sale, nobody will care. Those are not interesting posts. But if you give them some advice on how to solve a problem or how to improve their life, then they will listen.

Here are a couple types of Facebook Posts you can use to drive referral Traffic to your website: Give a Preview with a “See the whole thing: [Link]” Call-to-action This type of Facebook post is meant to tug on a person’s curiosity. It makes them want click a link to see or read something that are getting just a small preview of in the post itself.

This type of post includes two things: 1. A photo that shows a small piece of a larger, more intricate object. This can include a location, a product, an outfit, or even a piece of content.

2. A short description of what the photo shows and a call-to-action to see the rest of it.

Lowe’s Home Improvement does a great job using this formula to promote a bathroom makeover.

Posts like these that provide real-world ideas for doing cool things are perfect. And people are always interested in seeing a makeover. Before-and-after photos have big impact on people’s minds because they show what is possible in a believable way. A photo of a beautiful kitchen is nice, but if you add a photo of how the kitchen looked before, it can spark new ideas in your Fans’ minds on how they can do a makeover of their own.

“Learn how to [Do Something]: [LINK]” One of the reasons Pinterest is so popular is that it is an idea machine: It gives people tons of ideas and examples on new and interesting ways to do things.

Making your Page a source for cool new activities and tips for things that are relevant to your target audience is the best way to create lasting engagement with your

Fans.

Walmart made a killer post recently with a link to a guide on growing your own salsa. Many people in their target audience (families) have gardens at home, but probably never thought to grow the ingredients necessary to make their own salsa. This will provide them with a new activity they never thought of trying before.

Check out the post: One added ingredient to boost this formula is to tell people they can learn how to do something just like real-world examples. This builds a trust factor into your material that will drive a lot more clicks from skeptics. Etsy did this perfectly by showcasing a real person who successfully started an Etsy Store to drive clicks to a helpful article: How do you track Referral Traffic from Facebook to your Website?

Google Analytics makes it easy - and you don’t even need to use special parameters and Google Analytics tracks traffic from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites automatically via its Social Reports tool.

If you want to get more in-depth to see which posts are driving the most referral traffic, the easiest way is to use Facebook’s new Page Insights (which are awesome IMHO).

It allows you to see which posts are getting the most clicks: And then dig deeper to see how exactly people are interacting with your posts and clicking: Facebook ROI for Businesses #3 Sales Leads Facebook contests are an easy way to generate new sales leads for your business. By providing even a small prize, such as a $25 gift card to your store, you can collect hundreds of leads who are interested in your products.

card though, you will attract entries from those who are interested in the products you sell.

2. It will only attract people who are interested in your products, which is what you want! If you give away an ipad you will get a ton of entries, but those people will only be interested in ipads, not your products. This will make it almost impossible to convert these users into actual sales for your business. Giving away a gift card ensures that entrants have an interest in your products, which makes it easy to convert them into sales.

How does a Facebook contest get me leads?

Every person who enters your Facebook contest gives you their email and contact details, making them a new lead to sell to. To maximize new emails and leads you need to maximize entries. You can do this by making the barrier to entry as low as possible. Do this by asking only for an email in order to enter. Minimizing your entry form to just one field will make it as fast and easy as possible to enter, maximizing your entry rate.

How do you convert Facebook contest leads to sales?

If you followed my advice above (RE: Choosing an instore gift card as your prize) this will be easy!

The best way to convert these leads into sales is to send them a follow-up email immediately after they enter your contest with a coupon or promotion to entice them to visit your website or store. At that moment they will be most interested in your business, as they just interacted with you. Providing a small coupon will give them the incentive to visit NOW, especially if they are first-time customers.

Wishpond’s Facebook Contest Apps give you the ability to send automatic follow-up emails to entrants.

Learn more at http://corp.wishpond.com.

Facebook ROI for Businesses #4 Understanding Your Customers

The prize is the most important piece of your contest.

It’s what entices people to enter. Make the prize something relevant to your business.

Facebook has created an unprecedented repository of information about people. And for you, as a business, this gives you the opportunity to understand who your customers are and optimize your marketing, and product line, to boost sales.

A great prize is a gift card for your business. Why? Two reasons:

How do you use Facebook to understand your customers?

1. A gift card is enticing to all of your potential customers – it’s the prize that is the most enticing to the largest group of people. If you give away a certain product or service, you will only get entries from people interested in that specific product. With a gift

There are two ways to do this: 1. Facebook Page Insights Facebook Page Insights allows you to see the gender, age, language and location breakdown of your Fans.

You can access this information by going to the People tab in your Page Insights:

Is it possible that we’ve overengineered a complex solution to a simple problem? Is it possible that it’s a lot more organic and more altruistic than all of this? Is it possible that motivation can be enhanced and even optimized simply by helping others

2. Facebook Contests that Utilize Facebook’s Open Graph Facebook Contest Apps, like Wishpond’s, allow you to mine even more data through Facebook’s Open Graph. The most important data is user’s interests.

This allows you to see other Pages, People, movies, etc. that they like on Facebook.

How do you use this information to optimize your marketing and product line?

This information will allow you to create targeted Facebook content that resonates with them. If you see they like certain movies, sports teams or celebrities, you can write posts about them, weaving in your own products or business, that they’ll be interested in.

If you know what types of activities your Fans are interested in, you can add products to your product line that can be used in those activities or in similar ones. You can even change the value propositions of your products on your website or in-store to show how they can be utilized for those activities.

Facebook ROI for Business #5 Sales Facebook’s Ads products give you the ability to drive people to your website through paid clicks. This is the same format as Google Adwords, but there is one major difference: Google Adwords are intent-based, meaning a person only sees an ad when they search for a specific related keyword. This means they have an intent to find that thing and possibly buy it. Facebook Ads do not have that intent though, so they must be used a bit differently.

How do you use Facebook Ads to Drive Sales?

You cannot target ads to people at the exact time they are looking for it, so you need to provide an incentive to get people to click. The best type of incentive to drive a direct sale is a coupon or limited-time promotion.

Give them a reason to click NOW. If you don’t they will see the ad, have no real reason to click because they are not thinking about buying your products right now, and ignore it.

Once you have created an Ad with a great incentive to click, you need a great landing page to send them to. A landing page is a page on your website with a clear value proposition and call-to-action. If your ad included a coupon, send them to a page that includes the coupon code and a call-to-action to products on your website on which they can use the coupon. Make it as easy as possible to understand how to use the coupon and where to go next to use it.

Conclusion Facebook is still relatively new for businesses. As such, most don’t know the best practices for how to use it and end up abandoning it after seeing poor results.

But like any business tool, it has the potential to help your business, you just need to set your expectations of what you’ll get out of it.

If used properly, Facebook can be a catalyst for your business. Businesses lie Nasty Gal have proven that when used effectively, social networks can lead to explosive growth. Check out our infographic on Nasty Gal to see how they have use social networks to achieve over 500% every year since its inception in 2006.

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Benefits of CRM Software and How to Forming and maintaining relationships with customers is one of the most important aspects of any business.

Without positive relationships, it’s hard to thrive in any industry and long-term success can be jeopardized. That’s why it’s so advantageous to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) system into your operations.

Let’s discuss the basics of how this technology works, the benefits of CRM and some guidelines for choosing a CRM platform.

Function The primary purpose of CRM software is to streamline all major areas of customer interactions. This can include managing contacts, setting appointments, monitoring a marketing campaign, handling customer service, and numerous other tasks.

CRM software makes use of a dashboard, analytics and reporting tools to provide business owners with an all-encompassing vantage point of operations. By spotting patterns and identifying trends, this puts you more in control of customer engagement so your business can run more efficiently.

With that being said, there are some major benefits of utilizing CRM software.

Task Tracking Meeting deadlines is very important in today’s business world. By inputting information like scheduled appointments and important tasks, it takes the guesswork out of project completion. Many platforms also allow this data to be synced with a calendar to keep you informed of upcoming tasks and deadlines.

For instance, if you have a sales call scheduled with a valuable lead, CRM software would send you an email in advance so you remember to make the call. Whenever a customer has an upcoming birthday, you or a sales rep would be notified so you promptly send out birthday wishes. Consequently, you can make customers feel more valued and build deeper relationships.

This way you can juggle all of your tasks while ensuring that each customer gets the attention they need and nothing is forgotten.

Sales Rep Management If you have assembled a team of sales reps, it’s important to keep tabs on their

progress and know just how effective they are at nurturing leads and closing sales. Using this type of software will provide a firsthand look into each team member’s sales statistics, including information like average lead contact time, task completion time and conversion rate. This way you can reward the top performers and coach individuals who need some extra help.

Over time, your sales department should operate like a well oiled machine where sales are maximized.

Increased Organization When dealing with hundreds or even thousands of customers, it’s easy to become disorganized and overwhelmed. Fortunately, the right CRM software makes it simple and intuitive to keep customer information organized and retrievable.

By maintaining a contact list, it gives you quick access to a wealth of information like customer email, telephone, buying history and birthday.

Performing a search will provide an overview of this information so you can extract what you need without the hassle of searching through paper folders or using other outdated techniques.

Since many platforms incorporate metadata, you can search via broad terms instead of highly specific ones.

This is beneficial because you can find the customer you need by entering general keywords instead of a specified term.

More Selling Opportunities As information on customers accumulates, it’s common for more opportunities to present themselves. For example, keeping track of a particular customer’s buying patterns would make it clear what they are most interested in.

When launching a new product that’s similar, you could make it a point to contact that customer and let them know. Consequently, this makes it possible to increase sales without having to constantly advertise to new customers.

By capitalizing on an existing customer base, you can get more repeat sales while keeping customers happy.

Improved Social Media Marketing Another feature that most platforms offer is the ability to integrate with social media networks

Is it possible that we’ve overengineered a complex solution to a simple problem? Is it possible that it’s a lot more organic and more altruistic than all of this? Is it possible that motivation can be enhanced and even optimized simply by helping others

like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

This can have major advantages because it allows businesses to track all aspects of their social media campaign. For example, business owners can identify which networks are resulting in the most traffic, what followers are saying about their brand and the overall customer experience. As trends emerge, adjustments can be made so you get the most from your efforts and boost your brand’s presence across the Web. Now that we know the benefits of CRM software, let’s talk about how to find the ideal product for your business.

Determine Individual Needs Prior to checking out any products, it’s important to have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve. According to Michael Krigsman, CEO of Asuret: You need to get a package that’s tailored to your company’s size. At the most basic level you have simple contact management. Then you have contact management with a shared database.

You can have sales tracking or opportunity

tracking or customer service functionality. Match the capabilities of the software with what your business goals are.

any type of mobile technology, it’s necessary to look for CRM software that can be accessed on these devices.

After identifying specific needs, it should be easier to choose a suitable software platform.

This should help all team members boost their productivity and get things done on the road.

Scalability

Support System

Besides immediate needs, it’s important to consider long-term needs and take future growth into account. That’s why software that’s adequately scalable is so critical.

Ideally, a platform will be Cloudbased to accommodate increased data storage and more contacts as they are acquired. It will also have the option to conveniently purchase upgrades as needed.

Even if you’re tech savvy, it’s not always easy to figure out all of the components and features of a CRM platform. Consequently, a comprehensive support system with easy access to technicians can save you from a lot of headaches during the transition and afterward. This might include phone support, online chat and email correspondence to resolve issues.

Otherwise, getting locked into a lengthy contract with a vendor with limited scalability can be detrimental to your efforts.

While 9 to 5 support is helpful during the regular hours of the workweek, it’s best to have 24/7 support in case of an emergency at an odd time of day.

Integration Platforms

with

Existing

One issue that businesses run into is when the CRM they choose isn’t compatible with programs like Outlook, Microsoft Excel and Quickbooks. If you already have some form of an existing infrastructure for monitoring customer interactions, it’s smart to find software that can be integrated with relative ease. This should reduce your learning curve and help you put the software to use quickly.

Otherwise, the integration process can be arduous.

Stability Finally, the vendor you choose should have a positive reputation for providing a quality product and professional service. This should reduce the possibility of having to jump ship and find another CRM software provider in the future.

Generally speaking, the longer they have been in business, the better.

Reading some reviews and/or contacting a few references should give you a good idea of a vendor’s reputability.

Mobile Capabilities In the modern business world, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets have become the norm for many businesses. They make it possible to complete tasks and stay up to date on projects regardless of location. If your business uses

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