Hubast #40: BrightInfo & HubSpot Integration, Blogger on Board, & Seth Godin Quote

The Hubcast Podcast Episode 040       Welcome back to The Hubcast folks, a weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below including some new HubSpot video tutorials created by George Thomas. Show Notes: Hubcast Archive We got a great question on Twitter the other day.…

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Stop E-Commerce Window Shopping!—3 Ways to Actually Convert More Online Customers

Author: Yoav Vilner

If you were an online store, what would you be? What would be most important to you? What would you look like? These are the crucial questions you need to ask yourself before creating an online shop. In a nutshell, the idea is to embody and essentially “become” the store. But all of this is useless if potential customers don’t convert into actual customers. This is your conversion rate–the percentage of users or website visitors who take a desired action and buy something on the site. Most businesses spend a majority of their budget bringing visitors to their website, but they aren’t doing anything to convert them into customers.

As much as I can stress the importance of conversion optimization, the fact is, that it’s often overlooked. According to Smart Insights, the average conversion rate for the majority of e-commerce stores has remained at about 1.5% for a very long time, even with advancements in technology and the growing trust consumers have in entering their personal credit card details online. But, I think we can identify a couple of culprits here: a lack of understanding the customer psychology, as well as too much focus on updating products, finding new markets, and processing orders.

But have no fear! Your online store can fortunately be saved by following a few simple tips that make a powerful difference. Here are three ways to increase your e-commerce conversion rate:

1. Put Yourself in Your Visitor’s Shoes

Is your online store simple and easy to understand? Are your eyes drawn to the “add to shopping cart” button? Is the page complicated with crazy colors and pointless features? Visitors arriving on a product page want all their questions answered without having to go on a treasure hunt all over your website. By offering solutions to their questions, you can help push the customer along the decision making process faster and see a positive impact on your sales.

Ideally, your customer should be able to navigate around your online shop effortlessly. Conversion rates increase massively if things are uncomplicated. In this case, the phrase “less is more” definitely applies. As long as you have a clear and visible call-to-action, such as the shopping cart, there is less chance your users will feel overwhelmed. The shopping cart button should be visible with minimal distractions surrounding it. Consider offering a video chat or a co-browsing walk-through tool like Toonimo to visually guide the customers. This can lower customer frustration and help them to engage with your site more effectively (especially if what you are offering is somewhat technical). Ultimately, retention rates will rise.

2. Stop Shopping Cart Abandonment

There have been countless times I’ve visited an online shop, admired a product, but was hesitant to purchase it right away. So, I put the item in my shopping cart with the intention of returning to the site later. But then, of course, I never came back. Game over! If you’re already on the fence about a product and then faced with a lengthy check-out among other things, it’s easy to abandon the process. E-commerce sites need to understand this about consumers.

According to Baymard Institute, 68.7% of consumers abandon their shopping cart at least one time. This could be attributed to:

• Too many options: Online shopping has become extremely popular, and thus there is an abundance of options to choose from. It is easy to abandon a cart and toggle to another (competitor) site.
• High prices: If your product can be found elsewhere for a similar cost, you’ll lose out to your competitors. You need to make sure your pricing is competitive so you don’t fall victim to the window-shopping curse.
• Shipping costs: Shoppers often have an expectation of what the shipping costs should be, ranging from free to a low, flat rate. If potential customers are shocked by your “unfair” shipping rates, this fact alone can easily deter them from completing the purchase. Make sure that your shipping costs are as low as possible, or offer free shipping as part of a promotion.
• Lengthy check-out processes: Repeat after me: “I will always make my website’s check-out process as easy as possible for the customer so that I can get lots and lots and lots of sales”. With that thought in mind, here are some simple guidelines to follow:
  • Ask for minimal personal data (name, address, email address, etc)
  • Design the process so that there are only a few pages to click through (the fewer, the better)
  • Allow the customer to complete the transaction as a guest, thus not imposing the set-up of a new account

  The check-out process needs to be as seamless and as effortless as possible. Just remember—you’ve successfully gotten the customer to the point of actually wanting to purchase the item now, so don’t let anything get in the way of making this a done deal.

  3. Optimize Your Site for All Devices

  Whether it’s a phone, tablet, or wearable device, people are buying things and interacting with brands while they’re on the move, whether they’re walking to their car, waiting in line at a store, or boarding a plane. This may seem fairly obvious, but you would be surprised by how many e-commerce sites are still not optimized for mobile devices and thus suffer from lower conversion rates than their optimized counterparts.

  The proof is in the pudding. According to KISSmetrics, two-thirds of customers prefer to access a mobile website than a mobile application. While that trend may be shifting as time goes on, you need to give your visitors the same experience regardless of the device they’re using. Here, we use the term responsive design, which is an approach to web design aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience, such as the ability to read and move with minimal resizing, panning, and scrolling across a wide range of devices. According to Google, responsive websites have an impressive impact on customer conversion. Try to cater to your audience by ensuring your site is responsive or has a minimum of four different versions of screen sizes.

  Optimizing the customer experience throughout your entire site will help to increase conversion. Now that we’ve gone through how to identify points for optimization, it’s up to you to get the ball rolling! Have you tried any of these tips before? Share your experience in the comments below.

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Stop E-Commerce Window Shopping!—3 Ways to Actually Convert More Online Customers was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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#068: You Forgot Not to Do That

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Emma, Official Sponsor of the UnPodcast

On this episode of the UnPodcast we talked about a company that did a great job using Twitter to communicate with their customers during a time when their service was down. Among other things we discussed what the company did, the less than gracious response of some of their customers, and how their actions made Scott see their brand in a completely different way.

We also discussed the Beanie Baby craze and why some Beanie Babies are still sought after.

Finally, we talked about the decision that another company made that will cost them a lot of money but that will pay off in multiple ways.

Other topics include:

• [00:01:12.02] Never make a joke about this
• [00:03:03.28] What to focus on in your business
• [00:04:29.27] What our children do on the weekend
• [00:05:51.18] What brought all of our children out of their rooms at the same time
• [00:06:07.09] How to get your kids to come down for dinner
• [00:07:13.26] What to do when your cable goes down
• [00:08:22.28] What brands can do when something goes wrong
• [00:11:35.18] Why you have to take everything with a grain of salt
• [00:13:15.24] How companies can justify social media
• [00:13:58.20] The most proactive and reactive Twitter response I’ve seen in a long time
• [00:15:11.29] How many books I’ve started (and not finished) in the past three years
• [00:16:03.04] The one book I was compelled to read
• [00:18:25.05] How we prepare for the show
• [00:20:36.14] Ethics in car boot and yard sales
• [00:21:26.07] How we assign value to things
• [00:21:35.05] The problem with Beanie Babies and other collectibles
• [00:22:35.06] How to determine what items are really worth
• [00:24:40.14] What Alison can state with pride
• [00:25:08.08] A great reason to work at Starbucks
• [00:29:07.14] How to recruit top quality employees
• And so much more. . .

 

Items mentioned in this episode

Emma
The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute
Rarest Beanie Baby Bought in Car Boot Sale
Storage Wars
Starbucks to offer employees free tuition to complete online bachelor’s degree
 
Video provided by: AtomicSpark
Audio recorded by: Wayne Cochrane Sound

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How Content Cultivation Can Reinvigorate Your Content Marketing Efforts

Author: Anne Janzer

Where do you get the content for your content marketing efforts? You may create your own, either in-house or with hired help. Or perhaps you curate content from other sources. But don’t overlook a third content strategy: content cultivation.

With content cultivation, you plant the seeds by inviting current and potential customers to contribute fresh content for use in your campaigns. To make it work and work well, you should incentivize your contributors to not only participate, but to participate with their best foot forward. So, whether you launch a contest with an enticing prize or provide people a platform to get their name out, the goal is to make the process fun, engaging, and beneficial for everyone.

The content cultivation strategy serves several marketing objectives. In addition to generating more content (which, of course, is always welcome), content cultivation can extend the reach of your marketing programs and strengthen relationships with prospects, customers, and other stakeholders. Think of it as engagement marketing in action.

Extending marketing reach through cultivation

One of my favorite examples of content cultivation comes from Babson College. Like most colleges, Babson has a finite budget for marketing and needs to use creative methods to get its message out. Based in the Boston area, Babson offers undergraduate, graduate, and executive business programs on both coasts. The school defines itself as the educator for Entrepreneurship of All Kinds™.

Since 2012, Babson has invited the public as well as its own students, faculty, and alumni to contribute definitions of the word entrepreneurship on a dedicated website (http://ift.tt/xKZvd2). The landing page for the Define Entrepreneurship campaign serves as a virtual community for those interested in entrepreneurship. It continues to draw visitors and new submissions three years into the campaign! Nearly 200,000 people have visited the site and contributed, generating a rich assortment of definitions.

Babson then uses the submitted definitions to create various advertisements, everything from airport signage to videos. But the most significant benefit has been the extended reach of the Babson message. According to Sarah Sykora, Chief Marketing Officer at Babson, “We have been using our limited marketing dollars to engage our community and the market to share our message for us. Their reach is greater than our spending would allow, and third party sharing is much more powerful than us talking about ourselves.” Beyond the growth in online visitors, the campaign has driven a measurable increase in inquiries about the school’s programs. This is the power of content cultivation.

Crowd-sourcing Super Bowl Ads

For a highly visible example of content cultivation, what better than a Super Bowl ad.

Prior to each Super Bowl, Doritos invites independent filmmakers to submit 30-second commercials as part of its “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. This year the company received more than 4,900 submissions. What a high number of people spending time and effort thinking about how to sell Doritos! (That, in itself, is marketing genius). After selecting the top ten entries, the company determines which ads to air based on voting from two key communities:

• The public (Doritos customers and potential customers)
• Doritos employees (important brand advocates and representatives)

By opening up the contest to voting, Doritos increases the number of people who have an interest in the results, which contributes to a higher level of brand visibility. Each year, the resulting ads are pretty amazing, with this year’s winners being “The Middle Seat” and “When Pigs Fly”. Beyond generating unique, outstanding content, this campaign as a whole undoubtedly strengthens relationships and customer engagement around the Doritos brand. Content cultivation works.

Cultivating Endless Possibilities

You may not have the budget to sponsor a Super Bowl ad, but you can certainly use this strategy to start flexing your engagement marketing skills and have a real-time conversation with your customers. Try asking others for their best ideas for your campaigns. Invite people to contribute photos, six-second videos, or Twitter updates. Create a contest and open the voting to key communities.

Just think—beyond gathering creative content to fuel your content pipeline, you will also increase awareness, customer loyalty, and employee engagement. That’s a pretty good harvest for your marketing investment!

What are some other examples of content cultivation you’ve seen? Have you used this strategy in your organization? Share your responses in the comments below.

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How Content Cultivation Can Reinvigorate Your Content Marketing Efforts was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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The Essence of Going from “Content Marketing” to “Content Culture”

This post is going to be short and sweet, but its subject is one of utmost importance for companies truly looking to go beyond simply doing “content marketing.” In two days, I will be speaking to the entire sales and marketing team at Yale Appliance in Boston. This, in and of itself isn’t very unique,…

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4 Easy Steps to Building A Winning Sales Enablement Program With Marketing Automation

Author: Rajiv Kapoor

When implementing marketing automation one of the key, and often overlooked, strategies is sales enablement. So what is sales enablement and how does it pertain to marketing automation? Traditionally, sales enablement refers to educating sales on marketing activities, messaging, and content. In the world of marketing automation, sales enablement refers to educating sales on how they can successfully leverage marketing automation.

Successful sales enablement is a symbiotic process that involves both marketing and sales. There needs to be a dialogue so both teams understand proper definitions, program cadence, and how to best leverage the marketing automation platform.

This post focuses on the four steps to creating and implementing a sales enablement strategy from a marketing team perspective.

1. Identify Your Stakeholders

Here is an example of potential stakeholders and their interests:

• Executives: Sales enablement will benefit executives by creating more efficient marketing and sales teams, resulting in more revenue for the same level of input. Executives will need visibility into plans, progress, and results.
• Marketing team: Some marketing team members may need to be directly involved in the process, while others simply need to be made aware of what is happening.
• Sales team: Sales team members need to be well represented as they are the ones who will be enabled in this process. They will take part in the definition and in the adjustment of sales enablement.
• IT team: The IT team may need to be included for certain focused tasks.

2. Assess Your Current Situation

To better understand the current situation, start by asking questions. You’ll want to get a sense of the current processes and the status quo that exists in both sales and marketing. Here are examples of questions that will help you evaluate your organization’s current situation:

Marketing

• What is the goal of the sales enablement strategy?
• What is the current sales enablement situation?
• Which marketing automation features are currently being used for sales enablement?
• Are pre-requisites in place? (For example, has the marketing team already created email templates for the sales team?)

Sales

• What types of sales enablement is currently in place?
• What types of sales enablement does sales want?

Marketing Automation Platform

• Which marketing automation platform is being used?
• Which features does this platform have for sales enablement?

Sales Platform/CRM

• Which sales platform is being used?
• How does the marketing automation platform interact with the sales platform?
• What are the profiles and configuration in the sales platform?

You’ll find that as you go through this process, you’ll uncover additional questions that you or your stakeholders deem important.

3. Create A Plan

While there are a variety of sales enablement activities that you can perform with your marketing automation platform, generally the actions will fall into these broad categories:

1) Give the sales team access: Your marketing automation platform will allow you to make emails available for sales reps to send. There are a couple of advantages to doing this:

• These emails are tracked: This makes every email sent this way more valuable to your organization—you will have more activity to score, act on, and target.
• These emails will be displayed: Any email sent by your automation platform is recorded, so that no matter who looks at the lead or contact, all the emails will be visible.

Typically the sales reps can send these emails directly from the CRM or by using an Outlook or Gmail plugin. If you choose to do this, you will need to:

• Determine the method being used: Are they sending them from the CRM, Outlook, or Gmail?
• Determine which emails to make available: Interview your sales team to determine what type of emails your team wants available. For instance, if you are attending an event, maybe they would like event templates so they can invite key prospects.

2) Give the sales team visibility into marketing activities in the CRM: At Marketo, information is shared with our inside sales reps, so that over time, they get to know their prospects before they make a call. For example, your sales teams may know which events prospects attended, which content they downloaded, or which web pages they visited. In Marketo, many of these are called “interesting moments”. There are many ways marketing automation enables you to deliver visibility to your sales team.

4. Take Action

Once you have decided what you will deploy, you need to devise a plan of action. Below are some examples of action plans that you can implement as part of your sales enablement deployment.

Scoring Action Plan:

• Ensure scoring is specified and built
• Ensure scoring is activated
• Ensure sales is on board with the scoring model

Interesting Moments Action Plan:

• Specify what is an interesting moment
• Build and activate interesting moments
• Review interesting moments with the sales team

Marketing Training:

• How can the marketers get trained on the marketing automation platform?
• Typically the marketing automation vendor will have on-demand and/or live training if needed

Sales Training:

• Who will train sales?
• Which materials are needed?
• Your marketing automation provider may offer sales training for a fee

Sales enablement is exciting because it is strategic and provides great value. Sales enablement will lead to better conversions to revenue. Sales enablement is a big component of creating a joint process between sales and marketing.

How have you implemented sales enablement in your organization? What piece of advice do you have to share? Please let me know in the comments section below.

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4 Easy Steps to Building A Winning Sales Enablement Program With Marketing Automation was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Mad Marketing 51: Content Marketing Trends of 2015, Google Changes, and More

It’s Mad Marketing time again my friends! And in this episode of the podcast, we’ll discuss: -How mobile should be impacting the way you think about your business as well as the new, mobile design of The Sales Lion -The power of company retreats and “getting away” to work on the business -The best way…

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Do Brands Really Listen?

Author: Marissa Lyman

I often wonder what marketers think of me as I bop around the internet or cruise through my nearest shopping center. What do my habits say about me and what alarms do they set off? Will buy anything at Target–PING! Loves memes–PING! Makes purchases at online retailers at least once per week–PING! Regularly browses bridal registries for the five weddings she’s attending this year–PING! Expends a comparable amount of time determining how to get to these five weddings and weeping quietly over the amount of money they will cost her–PING! PING! PING!

At every turn—online, offline, inline (skating?)—there are opportunities for marketers to develop a fuller picture of who I am as a person and to find ways to communicate with me that will resonate. Some of these are straightforward: I bought car insurance, therefore I must own a vehicle and may be interested in auto-related offerings. Others may be harder to infer, but I’m fully confident that the savvy marketer can figure it out: I researched international travel destinations, therefore I’m probably planning to leave the country, change my name, and live out the rest of my days on a sparsely populated island in the mid-Atlantic.

Easy, right?

Wrong.

In my seasoned two months at Marketo, I’ve started to view the communications I receive from brands through a ‘marketing automation lens‘. Roughly speaking, I’ve been gauging how well brands know me and how much they’re really listening to what I say and do. This ranges from the emails I receive to the ads I see when I’m surfing various websites.

The Disconnect

What’s shocking is that marketing departments at major companies are still not evolved enough to make basic conclusions about my habits and therefore use those conclusions to nurture me effectively.

Here is an example: I recently bought a gym membership online. I completed the purchase, went in for a workout, and saw the trial period come and go. So why do I keep seeing ads to sign up for the same gym online, as though I’m still a prospect? If anything, shouldn’t I be seeing messages that encourage me to attend the company’s exercise classes and purchase cute workout gear? The focus shouldn’t be on conversion (since that already happened) but should instead focus on engagement—compelling me to go to the gym on a regular basis.

Another example: I’ve been an overtly proud cat owner for the past four years. I tweet, post, snap, and message about my cat, Monster (she’s adorable—I promise). I do 85% of my pet shopping at ONE retailer, both online and in-store. So explain to me why this retailer keeps sending me offers for dog food, poop bags, and leashes? My profile in their system could not be any more complete—I joined the rewards program, I set up an online account, I subscribed to the company newsletter, AND I adopted my cat from one of its adoption agencies. So, I ask, why the disconnect?

It’s Time to Evolve

What I’ve found is that a majority of B2C brands haven’t evolved to the point of really listening and appropriately responding to my trackable habits. Companies retarget ads, have multiple email lists, and believe they are ‘engaging’ customers with their content, but they haven’t taken their tactics and technology to the next level.

This trend is indicative that brands need to migrate toward real personalization and actually build relationships in order to stay relevant and marketable. In an era when brand loyalty can be hard to come by, companies need to go the extra mile to ensure customers feel valued and understood.

And where do my brand relationships pan out? The ad retargeting is one thing—for the moment it’s a necessary evil and in time, I know brands will learn and evolve. But the pet retailer? I see no excuse. Four years of loyal patronage rewarded with dozens of doggy spam emails, and I’m about ready to call it quits. Monster and I will take our business elsewhere.

Have you seen brands do a good job of establishing personal relationships and encouraging ongoing conversations? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please share in the comments below.

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Do Brands Really Listen? was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Lead Capturing & Nurturing with WordPress LeadIn Plugin – Interview Nelson Joyce from HubSpot

In this weeks interview I sit down with Nelson Joyce from the HubSpot product entrepreneur team. We cover the topic of generating and nurturing leads with your WordPress site. You might be asking yourself, I can do that? Yes you can.! Nelson teaches us how to achieve this with the Wordpress plugin LeadIn.  During this interview I…

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