Marketing Start-up Success Story: Backstreet Boys

With N5R’s Chairman and CEO, Roman Bodnarchuk explain some simple and easy techniques to help you marketing your real estate development the right way

Creating Your Campaign Assets

Once your plan is in place, you can start production on the asset or event at the center of your campaign.

Regardless of format, your rst step should be to create an outline in Google Docs. Start by guring out how you can organize information into di erent sections or chapters. Then, add bullet points beneath each section to highlight speci c examples and advice.

For a webinar, you might also want to include how long you expect it will take the webinar host(s) to speak through each section.

For something more visual, like an infographic, you can use the Drawing tool within Google Docs to create some initial sketches.

Again, the beauty of using Google Docs is that once you create your outline, you can easily share it with stakeholders to get approval and/or feedback.

If you are responsible for creating the content (or running the event), this outline will serve as your production roadmap. Use it as a guide as you esh out each section with information you gather via research and interviews.

Need to gather some contributions (e.g., quotes, pro tips, examples) for your campaign? You can use Google Forms to create and share prompts/questionnaires.

At HubSpot, we try to make our forms as speci c as possible, so contributors know exactly what we’re looking for (e.g., a piece of advice on X subject, written in less than 100 words, along with the contributor’s name, their job title, their headshot, etc.)

During this stage of managing your campaign, you’ll also want to create promotional images that you can use in emails, on your blog, and on social.

Use Google Drive to keep all of your campaign images organized and easily accessible. At HubSpot, we have a dedicated Campaign Images folder with sub-folders for each individual campaign:

And within those campaign-speci c folders are sub-folders for the di erent channels and platforms where particular images will be shared.

Using these sub-folders helps ensure that you’re always using the proper image dimensions when posting to di erent social channels.

Download It's Not the Market, It's Your Marketing

Brad Lamb walks Toronto residents through the real estate market they are living in.

We are not going to do a very good job creating semi or detached homes anywhere close to the city. In the 416 we will not be able to add to the existing stock of houses ever again as all the land is developed. The supply is fixed in the 416 and very limited in the 905. The demand for homes is going up every year. Population growth guarantees higher prices forever, with occasional moments of recession and panic. During a recession, prices will fall but only momentarily, creating an amazing buying opportunity. The condominium market is a bit of a different story. Some think that it is due for a fall. I believe that prices are set to soar. Land in central Toronto has become scarce and very expensive. Condominiums have remained very affordable. Most development land that remains consists of sites with under utilized buildings or assemblies of multiple properties. Both options are typically seen in fully developed expensive cities (like London, Hong Kong, New York, Paris etc). This is what Toronto is becoming; an expensive international city. Local, federal, and provincial levies and taxes continue to drive development costs higher. This combination of fees and taxes currently eats up approximately 25% of the cost of new high-rise new housing in Toronto. It is only going to rise. Green technologies and other new building code initiatives like fully sprinklered buildings and ground water taxes are adding additional costs to high rise housing. Currently, the cost of delivering a high rise in Toronto before profit is edging close to $600 per square foot. In some areas, it is closer to $800 per square foot. Keep in mind that this is the cost of creating high rise homes. New sales prices must now commonly be $700-900 per square foot (PSF) to allow for a reasonable development profit. The MLS condo resale market will see a 10-15% increase in sales volume this year. It will be a record year for sales. I believe prices will rise 5-10% this year in the resale condominium market. Over the last 5 years, we have seen a more stable 2-3% increase in prices, I believe that scenario is now over. Detached and semi-detached homes will appreciate 10-15% this year and sales will be up 10-15% in volume largely because so little will come up for sale. An interesting statistic that I follow is the number of condos for sale in C01, C02, C03, C08, C09, C10, C11 (an area bounded by DVP-Eglinton-Dufferin-Lakeshore). The volume of condos for sale in the region is down 14.5% this year and the volume for rent is down by 32.3%. This all points to significant increases for both sale prices and rental rates. Condo rental rates will rise 5-10% this year alone. There are not enough condos for sale or rent in central Toronto. It is currently particularly difficult to find a condo rental in any part of the GTA.

Now, some of you may believe that interest rates are going to rise and rain on the parade. That is not going to happen any time soon. Low rates are here for a long time. I believe at least 5 more years, perhaps 15 years. Even when rates start to rise we will stay in a low interest-low inflation environment for a long period of time. When interest rates rise it will be gradually. Governments are huge borrowers. All the municipal, state, provincial, and federal governments around the world are essentially bankrupt. Higher interest rates makes the situation worse. I cannot see any country intentionally bankrupting itself through a high interest rate policy.

2016 is going to be a very big year for Toronto real estate. Prices will be significantly higher in all areas and categories. Volumes for resale homes will smash last year’s record by 10%. Average prices will soar by 10%. New condo sales will stay robust with demand outstripping supply. Toronto will continue to be a hot spot for international money as it will continue to be considered a safe haven for money and investments.

Get the 2016 Developer's Guide. It's made by us, the people who sold 367 condos in 90 minutes, and it's only a matter of time before your competitors get their copy. Take the initiative, and click the image below:

14 of the Happiest Brands of All Time

Smart Home vs. Smart City

What’s A Successful Sales Professional?

Sales Techniques, Matching & Mirroring

o Matching the way your client sit to build rapport

o Speak the same way & voice tonality with client

o Pay attention to your client - try to pay attention to their workplace to see what intangible things they like or dislike, how they deal with work and etc.

o Make friend with their secretary/ PA

o When doing presentation, focus on the key people but do not neglect others

o Remember the sales staffs are important too because if the sales people buy the idea, marketing has to do it

o Future pacing your clients

o Breakfast meeting, lunch & learn meeting, wine & cheese meeting, webinars

o Follow up closely – call, voice mail, handwritten note, email, meeting… (average 17 touch points to make sales)

o Shorten the touch points and don’t take too long to revert or follow up

o Share success stories

o Visualise what you say : 12X bigger than Bkt Jalil Stadium (Allibaba website) we can put your project in front of the eyeballs

o Show and tell, let client see what you present

o Use different words to get them excited

We should control the conversation by asking!

Here is the discussion on how we can 2X up our sales in 30 days:-

§ 2X up activities to meet and propose to clients

§ Get more prospects

§ Work longer but have to be in smart way

§ Back to basic – 80/20 rules, focus on the 20% big spenders

§ Attend more property events

§ Be persistent (like a kid, never compromise untill they gotten what they wanted)

§ Build trust (sending hand written notes/ cards, do exactly what you promised them)

§ Create urgency (how to sell your inventory faster)

§ Strategic plan

§ Focus on most expensive and highly effective product

§ Be positive always

§ Upsell to existing clients

§ Make your daily, weekly & monthly game plan

§ Be a problem solver and attend to your clients need

§ Be responsive (respond immediately)

§ Integrated solutions (is like a whole meal deal, don’t forget to include case studies)

§ Prioritize your tasks

§ Brainstorming session between teams

Review – what was your goal yesterday, what did you achieve and what is your goal today?

Traditional Marketing is Broken

Buyers are taking control and tuning out impersonal and interruptive old-school marketing tactics. We’re able to skip commercials, screen calls, and largely block out unwanted communications. This means that outbound marketing methods like cold calling, direct mail campaigns, and purchasing email lists are steadily losing their effectiveness.

Wouldn’t it be great if instead of hunting down your buyers, you could swoop in and answer their questions while they’re making purchasing decisions? Inbound marketing turns your website into a magnet and pulls people towards your company by aligning your content with their interests.

N5R’s Sales and Marketing Platform

Built to complement the inbound methodology, Our all-in-one marketing software is easy-to-use and helps businesses grow. So, is inbound right for you? Let's explore the marketing funnel to see how an inbound marketing strategy and our software work together to solve business challenges.

6 of the best Gmail tricks you never knew existed

A few years ago, a Quora user asked the internet if they would share some lesser known Gmail tips. Over 100 answers later, the thread has become a surprisingly useful resource for anyone who uses Gmail on a regular basis.

Rather than ask you to sort through all 100+ answers, we’ve cherry-picked 6 of the most valuable tips and tricks from the list, all of which you can see below:

Use keyboard shortcuts

You have two email addresses

Find out who sold your email to spammers

Mail delegatioN

Compose in a new window

The best of Labs

A Campaign Approach

You might be thinking there’s a lot of work associated with an inbound marketing effort. That would be an astute observation. There is an incredible amount of work to be done to get all the necessary pieces of an integrated inbound marketing program together including all the blog posts, email, lead nurturing, video and educational materials. But all that work doesn’t have to be done at once. The best way to focus your efforts is to take a campaign approach to your inbound marketing. A campaign allows you to focus your marketing and content development efforts on a particular industry, service or targeted persona. The result is a concentrated effort that typically delivers improved results because your content is focused and direct. Campaigns are typically three to four months. An overall theme is created for the campaign.

The messaging is specific based on industry, service or persona. A few high priority keywords or keyword phrases are selected and the content includes a high concentration of these keywords. The Trio of Offers is designed to be directly related to the campaign theme. Blogs and emails are focused on this campaign. Landing pages and call-to-action buttons are created specifically for the focused effort.

Here is a representation of a real campaign for a national payroll services provider:

Campaign Strategy: Focus on acquiring new small to medium-sized business clients who have a variety of payroll or HR needs.

Target Persona: The business owner thinking about outsourcing their payroll. They are extremely busy managing their company. They might have an internal administrative person helping out with general HR or payroll processing issues. They have had some mistakes in the past and just want payroll to be processed without errors, on time and without their personal involvement.

Campaign Theme: Payroll Personalized For Your Business

Sample NRO: Whitepaper – 9 Secret Challenges Most Payroll Providers Hope You Never Find Out

Sample LRO: Webinar – Tips And Techniques When Outsourcing Payroll For The First Time

Sample DBO: No obligation, 30-minute call with a payroll specialist to discuss payroll processing at your company. Email Topics: Outsourcing Payroll Means You Get To Work On Strategic Issues For Your Business

Blog Topics:

1. What ADP And Paychex Don’t Want You To Know About How They Process Payroll

2. 3 Tricks To Make Sure Your Payroll Is Perfect Every Week

3. How A Payroll Specialist Works With You To Save You Money

4. What Government Regulations Impact Your Payroll And What You Need To Do About it

Campaigns provide two other success factors that can’t be overlooked. First, they allow you to set performance-based expectations at the start of the campaign. Metrics like website traffic growth, conversion rates and leads generated. As an example, for a campaign like the one above, you might look for 20% increase in website traffic month over month and a lead goal of 30 new leads over the course of three months.

TIP : Working to continuously improve the performance of your marketing month over month is the fastest way to realize the kind of results worthy of celebration.

Your Analytics - Tracking, Testing and Goal Setting

Over the past few years, marketing has transformed from an art into a science. Tracking, testing and metrics are key data points to help you make decisions that drive your business. Today we get real-time insights into what’s working and what’s not. Right now, from my smartphone, I have access to our company’s marketing metrics and the metrics for every single one of our clients. I quickly see if organic traffic is up or down vs. last month. If the social media initiatives we launched across are working or not. If a specific client’s conversion rates have increased as a result of a new piece of content we created or if we need to reconsider the CTA (call to action) button we created for that content.

Never before have we, as business owners, CEOs and marketing professionals, had this level of insight into marketing performance.

One of the most important parts of tracking the performance of your inbound marketing program is setting up a regular rhythm to review your performance. Even if you are looking at your stats daily, you still need a weekly 30-minute session to dig a little deeper and you need a monthly 60-minute session to review performance for the past month, set goals for the next month and discuss any adjustments that need to be made so that you ensure you hit your goals going forward.

It’s actually less critical that you hit your numbers and more important that you have a plan in place when you don’t hit your numbers. Every business can have a down month, but making sure your down month doesn’t turn into two, three or four down months in a row is the objective of this monthly session.

Here are some actual tactical adjustments we have made during one of these sessions:

• If visitors to your website are down for this month vs. last month, schedule a series of weekly guest blog posts for the upcoming month. Guest blog posts can add hundreds of visitors over a few days and contribute up to 20 leads a day in some cases.

• If leads are down this month vs. last month, time for a new free report or tip guide to drive up conversions. One you get traffic to your website up on a consistent basis, you should consider adding new educational content to turn those visitors into leads. Adding new content to your site on a monthly basis could increase lead generation by 30% month over month.

• If your site is getting a lot of returning visitors and not enough new visitors, take a look at your publication strategy. Find a few new websites that cater to your target personas and get them to publish one of your existing whitepapers, tip guides or e-books. Create a dedicated landing page to track traffic and conversions. If the website you select has enough daily visitors, then this tactic is sure to increase both traffic and leads for your business.

What gets measured gets done. Once you have this process in place, you will see month over month improvements. When you look back over a 12-month period you will see dramatic increases in both website visits and leads for your business. In some cases, clients have seen 5x increases in traffic and 3x increases in leads.

Your Leads - They Need Proper

Care and Feeding

You don’t need software to implement an inbound marketing program for your company, but it sure does make it easier. It’s going to help you in three very specific areas: education, analytics and automation. For most of you, this is going to be your first inbound marketing program. Some guidance and education is necessary when you do something for the first time. Software provides that guidance. For example, you might forget to include one of your keywords in the title of your blog post. You want a software tool that reminds you. You might forget to tag a new landing page, but if your software recommends keywords that makes your job easier.

TIP: If you want an inbound marketing program that generates leads, software isn’t optional, it’s a requirement for automation and analytics.

There is a community of inbound marketers and if your software connects you to that community you benefit from their experience, knowledge and learning. Now you become a better, more effective inbound marketer, too. There are a lot of marketing analytics tools. Google Analytics is a free tool available to everyone, but marketing automation software typically comes with everything you need to gain insights into the performance of your marketing and make the necessary adjustments to see you reach your goals in short order.

You don’t want to spend your time creating charts and graphs and you don’t want to spend your time trying to interpret them either. It should be quick, clear and flexible enough for you to drill down into important areas on an as-needed basis. Part of inbound marketing is executing a consistent and repeatable set of tactics like blogging daily, emailing monthly, nurturing leads as they come in and sharing content across all your social media sites. Marketing software helps make these regular tasks easy and it helps make them fast. Remember, you want to be spending your time thinking, being creative, coming up with new ideas to generate leads – not posting every single blog post to all your social media sites. There are a variety of good marketing automation software tools including Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua and Infusionsoft. If you are looking to automate some of the marketing tasks you execute today all of these software tools provide a lot of value, but if you are planning to implement an inbound marketing program, HubSpot is the only one that helps you with all aspects of inbound marketing including connecting you with a community of inbound marketing experts.

Your Leads - They Need Proper

Care and Feeding

Just because someone visits your website and downloads one of your e-books doesn’t mean they are ready to chat with you about hiring your company or buying your products … at least not yet. Actually, no one is really ready to have a personal conversation with anyone until the pain associated with their issue becomes acute. As marketers, you never know when that pain is going to be acute, so you have to continually nurture your leads with even more educational content. The real purpose for this nurturing is to help them feel progressively more comfortable with your firm. The more you help them with links, educational materials, videos, blogs and other relevant content, the more likely they are to hire your company.

TIP: Since your prospects will never buy until their pain becomes acute, lead nurturing keeps your company in front of them, so when their pain does become acute, they pick you.

This nurturing process can be automated and it’s recommended that this not only be automated but also planned out and personalized based on the lead’s target persona and profile. This ensures that everyone has the same remarkable experience, regardless of who they are and where they are in their own internal buying process. Regular email marketing campaigns are excellent examples of lead nurturing. Every month you publish an educational article along with a few other items you want your prospects and clients to know about and now everyone gets reminded of what you do, how you do it and why they should feel good about working with you.

Another great way to nurture your leads is with automated personal emails. These Outlookstyle emails come for you or someone at your company. They are personalized and include links to additional educational content. They could be specific blog posts, additional whitepapers, upcoming webinars or special e-books available just for them. These automated emails are scheduled upfront to send at predefined intervals (say 3 days, 6 days and 9 days) after a significant event or interaction with your company. Of course, the timing can be adjusted at any time and customized for any situation. Along with these emails we also get intelligence on the performance of these campaigns. Who is opening them? When did they open them? Did they click through to any of the materials? This information is critical to helping you adjust the performance of the campaign and move these leads through the funnel toward becoming a new customer as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

Your Publication - Placing Content Drives New Prospects

Publishing is a concept that is familiar to everyone. Newspapers, magazines, TV stations and even websites publish stories in one form or another. I bet you didn’t know that, as a business, you have to be a publisher also. Why? Because your prospects are out there and with the traditional media infrastructure fading fast, you have to be smart enough to get your educational content in front of your target prospects.

TIP : Don’t duplicate content. While it seems like you would be able to reuse a blog post from your site on an industry site, if Google finds out (and they will) it’s going to be a long time before you see the top of any search rankings.

A great way to do that is by guest blogging. Popular blog sites have thousands of readers and even more people who have subscribed to the blog. By offering your opinion and sharing helpful tips and advice on a popular blog, you drive brand new prospects to your website. If they like what they see on your website and they get a remarkable experience (remember this from earlier in the book) they turn into leads. Another way to publish your content is to extend your existing relationship with trade publications, trade associations and industry groups. Every industry has associations and groups like this. While their magazines might be getting thinner and thinner, their online properties are growing fast. They are looking for smart, educational and creative content to share with their readers, members and visitors. If your company can provide that content, they are usually happy to give you access to their website. Now these perfectly targeted prospects see your content, click through, land on your website and turn into leads. When you think about it, it’s not much different than what you used to do. Instead of buying space and placing advertisements, now you offer educational content with links back to your website. It should cost a lot less and drive a lot more business for your company than traditional outbound marketing. Better yet, it’s perfectly aligned with how your prospects want to buy, bringing your company that much closer to getting the deal.

Your Social Media - Give Them Something To Talk About

If you think your prospects and customers aren’t on social media, think again. If you believe that your prospects aren’t searching for businesses just like yours on social media, think again. If you still feel strongly that prospective customers aren’t talking about your business on social media, think again. With 1 billion people on Facebook and 250 million people on LinkedIn and 200 million people on Twitter and 190 million people using Google+, you can be sure that your prospective clients are on social media looking for firms just like yours right now. Social media has never been more important to businesses like yours than it is today. In the past 12 months, clients have seen social media catch up to organic search as a major source for new visitors to their websites.

TIP: If your content is remarkable people will share it and when you have people talking about your content you have more visitors to your website and more leads for your business.

The key is not to create another profile page, but to create social sites that continue your inbound marketing approach by leveraging educational content. Social media is where people come to converse. Your company has the expertise to facilitate those conversations, to start those conversations and to feed those conversations with content. The more active you can be in those conversations, the more new visitors you will send to your website, the more your website will be found on search engines, the more leads you will generate for your business and the more new client opportunities will present themselves to your firm. It all fits together, perhaps even more perfectly than you think. When you blog, you need to share that blog on social media. Besides publishing that blog content to your corporate social media sites on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google +, you also need make sure that all your people are sharing that content with every single one of their business contacts on LinkedIn.

In addition to all that personal sharing, you should be pushing that blog content into the LinkedIn groups where your prospects are members. These groups have literally hundreds of thousands of members all looking for educational content to be shared in those LinkedIn groups. This isn’t always easy. Some of those groups are moderated and moderators typically have to publish that content. Most moderators do a decent job keeping up with it, but others are actually absentee moderators. The best way around moderators is to be an active contributor to these groups. If you are a top contributor, you can be sure your content will be distributed to all the members in a timely fashion. Finally, instead of just using a static corporate profile, make sure you reuse your offers from the Trio of Offers on your website. This entices visitors to your social media pages to click back to your website to download the educational materials. Now your social media pages are actively driving traffic to your site and turning that traffic into leads. These four small changes to the way you market your business could result in an increase in social media traffic to your website and an increase in leads over the next few days – not months.

Educate and They Will Come

If you skipped all the other sections, this is the section you MUST READ. One of the major differences between traditional advertising and inbound marketing is its perspective on educating your prospects. The key to inbound marketing programs that generate leads for businesses like yours is the amount of educational content created by your company. The more content you create and add to your site, the more leads you generate for your business. Typically businesses like to talk about themselves – our people, our building, our experience, our products, our credentials or memberships. Like it or not, your prospective clients don’t care about that. They care about how you are going to help them. Think about your own buying behavior – do you care how long the car dealer has been around or how many years your sales rep has worked there? No, you just care about getting a fair deal on the car you want. You want to make a safe purchase decision. People hiring you or your company feel the same way.

TIP: By giving your prospects creative, fresh, engaging and informative content on a regular basis, you establish your business as a trusted resource. Crack that nut and build that trust and the leads will follow.

Educational content delivered on your website or as part of your business development process achieves the same goal. It helps your prospective clients feel like you want to help them. You want to educate them. You want to make them smarter. This experience goes a long way toward differentiating your company from other competitive businesses who don’t take this approach. Let’s face it: most people like to talk about themselves. But those who advise, guide and counsel are the ones that typically get the most referrals. It works the same way here. The more you help, the more leads you are going to get from inbound marketing. Typically, this educational content takes a variety of formats. E-books like this one, whitepapers, tip guides, research studies, surveys, webinars, live workshops, podcasts, how-to videos and infographics are all excellent examples of educational content that, when used properly, turns visitors into leads and moves prospects along the sales process without having to use the “hard sell.”

All educational material is not created equally. Some of your visitors are ready to hire you today – most are just starting to look around. Others might be in the middle of their process and are comparing your company to your three top competitors. The key is to have educational offers for everyone regardless of where they are in their personal decisionmaking process. The Trio of Offers ensures that you have educational content for all types of visitors. This trio includes the No Risk Offer, the Low Risk Offer and the Direct Business Offer.

No Risk Offer – People at the top of the funnel, who are just starting their research are naturally suspicious. They don’t want to sign up for anything, nor do they want to give away any personal information until they start to trust you. But if they have a genuine interest and your content is appealing, they will engage. This educational content is typically a free report, whitepaper, tip guide, e-book or video that provides the visitor with information that helps them make an educated purchase decision or learn something new. In exchange for this information, they simply need to provide an email address. You could ask for additional information, but only the email address should be mandatory.

Low Risk Offer – If your audience is satisfied and intrigued with the content they received in the No Risk Offer, many times they come back for the Low Risk Offer. If they are a bit more trusting, or further along in their purchase process, the Low Risk Offer provides them access to additional, more in-depth information. This offer requires a bit more engagement on the part of your audience. Those who engage with a Low Risk Offer are ready to move further down into the middle of the sales funnel. While you are going to ask more from them, you are going to provide them more in return. Low Risk Offers typically include free webinars/seminars, free assessments or reviews. Free trials or samples are also strong Low Risk Offers. Obviously, visitors need to provide additional contact information if they want to participate in or access these offers. This is typically their name, company name, website and even perhaps address and phone number. After all, if you are inviting them to an event and they are planning on attending, you might need to give them a call to confirm.

Direct Business Offer – Whether or not they have taken advantage of your Low Risk and No Risk Offers, there will be visitors who have already decided that they want to start a more active sales conversation with your company. The Direct Business Offer gives them the opportunity to jump right to this step, or to initiate this step when they are comfortable with your company, products or services. These offers typically look like, “Contact Us Today!” or “Schedule A Call.” Of course, there are a number of ways to make these offers more creative and enticing. 12 For instance, we provide prospects with a 30-Minute Website Review and Website Grader Report. Giving your prospect something of value is important to convert more visitors into leads. As we mentioned in the first part of this e-book, the buyer is in control. The Trio Of Offers gives potential buyers all the information they need to get comfortable with your company on their own terms. This makes them feel safer and more likely to do business with you.

The Secrets to Generating Real Results

Fifty-five percent of businesses who blog report their blog as a major source of new business. 73% of businesses that blog more than three times a week report that their blog is a major source of new business. People are searching for businesses like yours right now. One of the best ways to get found on the web is to have a blog on your website, post regularly and gain authority with search engines as a respected source of information. Over the past two years, Google has changed its search algorithm to promote more natural content like blogging. In short, the more you blog, the more visitors you get to your website. Google is also rewarding websites that have fresh content added regularly. Every time you create a blog post, you add another indexed page to your website. The more pages you add, the higher you rise in the rankings. Blogging provides one additional benefit to an inbound marketing program. It’s sharable content.

Today, more people will likely find your site from social media than from a searchengine. This means you need to share your voice, opinion, position and blog on social media. Blogging regularly is a great way to consistently share blog posts via Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social sites. The more you post, the more people connect with you, follow you, like you and view your messages. The more people you are connected with, the wider your reach and the more opportunities to turn that reach into new business. Your blog quickly becomes some of your most popular pages. On our site, 30% of our most popular pages are blog pages. Your prospects enjoy reading blogs because they are educational, contain stories and have a conversational tone to them.

Finally, there are a few best practices that need to be considered when blogging for your business.

• Every blog post must use a keyword from your prioritized and targeted keyword list in the title and in the first line. Do your best to get that keyword into your post two or three more times. Don’t do “keyword stuff” and don’t write for search, always write for your clients first and search second.

TIP: The more you blog, the wider your reach. The wider your reach, the more people visit your website. The more visits you get, the more prospects convert into leads. The more leads … well, you get the idea.

• Every post must have a graphic CTA (call-to-action) button. • Every post must have an image that is tagged with one of your keywords. • Every post must have meta tags and a meta description that uses the related keyword or keywords. • Make sure your post is between 600 and 800 words. • Make sure your post is assigned to an individual so that you are able to build up authority over time. • Every post must have social sharing icons that allow readers to easily share it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and email it along to a friend. • Make sure that the keywords in your post are linked back to relevant pages on your site. Try to use other links to other sites so your blog posts represents a variety of opinions besides just yours.

Follow these simple instructions and your blog will quickly lead to an increase in overall website visitors to your site and, eventually, more leads for your business.

Google reports that nine out of 10 people visit your website before they reach out to your company in ANY way. Microsoft Research reports that people spend 10 seconds on a website before they hit the back button. This means that your company is already getting prospects to visit your website but, in most cases, those prospects are leaving quickly to check out your competitor’s site. The good news is that an inbound marketing website provides many more opportunities to grab someone’s attention and turn them from an anonymous visitor and into a lead. The key is to create a website experience that delivers powerful messaging to the visitor, enticing them to stick around and get to know your company better. They have to feel as if you want to educate them. The more your website helps, the more leads you will get from your firm’s website.

TIP : Your website has to tell a story about how your prospects are going to see real value by working with you and you have to do it in 10 seconds.

Today 60% of people report viewing websites on their smartphone or tablet. This means your site has to be responsive (work on all devices seamlessly). Your site should adjust based on the device a visitor is using. The experience shouldn’t be degraded at all and, most importantly, the educational content should be deliverable regardless of device. This is a major issue with most sites over 12 months old. More and more people will be visiting your site from a device other than a PC. Make sure your site works right, every time.

Your website is going to need a little planning, too. What are the keywords you want your website ranked for? What keywords are your targeted prospects searching for online? You have to know the answers to those questions before you start redoing your website. You should consider dedicated pages on your site that highlight keywords. You need to plan for landing pages and conversion pages that make it easy for visitors to download educational content (more on that later) and you need to make sure that you have the proper tags, descriptions and URL naming conventions to ensure your site ranks on all the major search engines. Most businesses make two major mistakes when launching a website. First, they talk all about themselves and spend very little time helping the prospects and new visitors see exactly what you are going to do for them. Make sure your site passes the red/blue test. Go through your site and circle, in red, all the times the site mentions your company name or words like “we,” “us” and “our.” Then go through and circle, in blue, all the times your site mentions clients, or uses the words “you” or “your.” You should have 80% blue and 20% red. This simple exercise ensures your site is about your prospects and not about you. Next, make sure that your site has messages that connect emotionally with your visitors. People make purchase decisions emotionally and then rationalize their decisions. If your site doesn’t connect with them in the first ten seconds, you have a good chance of missing out on opportunities to deliver leads for your business. Remember, as human beings we don’t remember features and benefits but stories and experiences are memorable and sharable all across our individual networks and our social networks. Your website has to tell a story and deliver a remarkable experience if you want to use it to generate a significant stream of leads for your business.

The Secrets to Generating Real Results

Buyer behavior has changed forever. That means the time has come for companies everywhere to either get on board or get out of the way because there’s no going back to the old way of doing business.

To truly understand this new shift in buyer behavior, you need to take a look at how and why it came about: In the beginning, before the invention of mass media, buyers everywhere relied on salespeople and word of mouth to inform their purchase decisions. Then mass media came along and advertising was created to take advantage of the reach associated with mass media.

All of a sudden, you could reach millions of people with a single advertisement. This helped spread sales and marketing messages far and wide. Reach and frequency was the name of the game. Tell as many people as possible, as many times as possible about your product or service and hopefully, when they needed it, they would remember your message and choose to purchase from you.

In the early days of the internet, marketing professionals adopted and adapted advertising’s interruptive best practices and broadcast-style approach. That was a mistake based on an old, outdated way of thinking. The fact of the matter was, just like with every other mass media invention (print, radio, television) that preceded it, the internet permanently changed the way people interact and exchange information.

Today’s buyers have access to more information from more sources than ever before. They ask questions, get answers, read reviews, do comparisons and start conversations with people they’ve never met; all on the web, all on their own terms and all on their own time schedule. Look at the buying patterns of your own prospects and clients.

Chances are, they are researching the purchase of your services or merchandise via the internet long before they ever step into your store or give you a call. Today’s buyers are looking for informative educational content followed up by a consultative, guided sales process.

As a result, the traditional outbound advertising and marketing techniques that worked so well over the past century just don’t perform like they used to. Faced with that reality, businesses have two options: throw increasingly large sums of money at the problem or find an alternative approach. Inbound marketing techniques are perfectly aligned with this new buyer behavior and they do a much better job delivering a remarkable purchase experience that helps to differentiate and ingratiate prospects with your business.

Your Marketing Plan, Strategy

Before Tactics

One of the key mistakes made by most business owners, CEOs or marketing executives is hiring a firm or firms that specialize in a specific tactic (website design, search engine optimization, PR or social media) without having a well-thought-out overall marketing strategy and plan for the firm. Even if you hire an inbound marketing firm, starting tactics without a solid plan in place is a recipe for disappointing results. Before you jump in and start working on the marketing tactics for your company, you MUST create an overall marketing strategy and marketing plan that addresses some key areas.

Buyer Personas – Who do you want to attract with your marketing? Who do you want to repel? You might want to ONLY work with large corporations and you might NOT want to work with individuals. This business strategy has to be reflected in your marketing. Creating target personas (detailed bios) for the people you want to attract to your firm is critical.

TIP #1: Executing inbound marketing tactics without a solid marketing strategy and plan is one of the main reasons inbound marketing programs fail to deliver significant improvements in lead generation.

Voice & Tone – What do you need to say to those people to get them interested in your firm? Knowing how to connect and engage with your target personas is critical. If you skip this step, you run the risk of spending money on marketing that never attracts a single prospective client for your firm. You need to create messages that emotionally connect with your target clients.

Differentiation – What do you do that’s different than all the other companies in your market? What makes you stand out? What makes you remarkable? Yes, it’s safe to look like the rest of your competition but if you want to attract new leads for your business – you have to look, sound and act differently than your competition.

Tactic Mapping – What tactics do you need to implement to get to your goals? You need to have a broad overview of everything you need to do, when you need to do it so that you meet your new business acquisition goals. You need to have editorial calendars, schedules and detailed plans for each of the multiple tactics in an inbound marketing program.

Budget – How much investment is required? A marketing plan highlights a budget for the year and directly correlates that budget to expected results. Without this, you are just flying blind.

A little more on personas – One of the most important parts of your marketing strategy and plan is the creation of target market personas. Why? If you don’t intimately know who you are marketing to, you will never achieve your lead goals. Personas are more than just demographics. They include as much intelligence on your target market as possible. For instance, what blogs do they read? What email newsletters do they subscribe to? What trade associations or industry magazines do they read? What conferences or trade shows do they attend? What LinkedIn groups are they members of? Who do they follow on Twitter? Knowing these details about your prospects influences almost all of the marketing tactics included in your inbound marketing plan. It impacts the creation of your website, your social media sites, your blogging, email marketing and content creation effort – the more detailed your personas, the better your results.

TIP #2: If you’re not keeping score, you’re just practicing. Establish the number of leads your business needs to meet its new revenue objectives and then track performance against those lead goals daily, weekly and monthly.

A little more on goal setting – What gets measured, get’s done. Marketing has historically suffered from ambiguous goals, like getting your name out there or building your brand. Today, marketing has only one goal: generate leads for your business. But how many leads and in what time frame? Your marketing must be aligned with your business goals. Start with your high level goals. What are your revenue objectives for the year? If you need to add $1 million in incremental revenue to the top line and each new client is worth $10,000, then you need 100 new customers to hit your goals. If you have a 20% close rate on all sales opportunities, now you need 500 sales opportunities. If only 50% of the leads are actual sales opportunities, then you need 1,000 leads over the course of the year. If you don’t know these KPIs (key performance indicators) for your business, then getting to know them should be your first priority. Once you know how many leads you need, now you need to figure out how much website traffic is required to generate 1,000 leads. This is where inbound marketing shines. Each inbound marketing tactic in your strategic marketing plan contributes to website traffic, and overall lead generation. Welcome to marketing in 2013. I hope you see how important marketing strategy is to the performance of an inbound marketing program. Without it, you are virtually driving your car blindfolded.

Yong Kim, The CEO of Wonolo elaborates on the unspoken but known magic formula of success for students pursuing a business career. I don’t blame them as I fell into this same path in my early career. At the time, I recall the utter need and desperation to follow this algorithm, as I believed this was the only path to success.

Yet, if I could do it all over again, I would take a completely different approach. What would I do now? I would get a sales job. In fact, it does not matter what type of sales - insurance, cars, cell phones, cosmetics… I would take any opportunity that would teach me how to prospect, qualify, pitch, close and manage customers. And here is why.

The most important skill in business is sales

If I look at some of the most successful leaders in business, one undeniable common thread they all have is that they are incredibly gifted at selling. They know how to create and share the story with their customers in a way that is difficult to resist. Customers will say, “Wow, I really believe in this person. I want in.”

I am not just talking about selling a product or a service, but selling a vision. Ultimately, you have to get people to buy into you, follow you, and choose to support you. So, you have to sell not only to external customers, but to investors, your internal teams and new hires once you have your own team to lead. Building a strong team culture, with enthusiastic and excited employees requires selling your vision of why the work is important to them and to your customers. So, it’s critical to perfect selling, in all areas.

The most difficult skill to master in business is sales

Sales is not just about closing deals. It involves careful strategy around how to identify and prospect target customers. Then, once you have successfully reached out to key customers and have gotten their attention, it requires thorough preparation of your pitch. What are your customers’ unique pain points and how can you help offer solutions? This courtship may take a few days to weeks, if lucky, but often times, it can take up to many years. After successfully convincing them to trust you and your product/service, your job doesn’t end there. The goal is to maintain a strong relationship, and keep your customers happy for many years to come.

Each part of the sales process presents unique challenges and requires a multitude of skill sets to master. Along the way, you learn how to be mentally strong; being diligent, persistent and patient are core traits of being excellent at sales. So, the earlier you start, the more time you have to learn and master.

The most transferable skill in business is sales

Various researches have estimated that people switch jobs about 7 times in their career. Though the validity of this number has often been argued, one thing is clear; no one will have the same job, same role forever. Case in point: people switch jobs at some point even within the same company. Accordingly, roles and responsibilities associated with new jobs change, requiring a different set of capabilities. Regardless, there is one skill set that is required in any job - effectively communicating with both internal and external members, collaborating across cross functional teams and delivering results. These are fundamental skills naturally trained and developed in sales. In fact, if you look at the background of top executives at successful organizations, many of them started their career in sales and continued to prove their leadership in different roles.

I made my first cold call when I was in my mid thirties and only after I started my own startup. Many long months went by without a single sale, even after making hundreds of cold calls and sending out thousands of emails. I felt hopeless. Even with my MBA degree, prior experience in investment banking and consulting, I could not get a single new customer. It was a very painful truth to swallow - I did not know and had never learned how to sell.

Fast forward several years (and I have gotten better at it), I am still learning. I look back at the many years of missed opportunity to learn the art of selling and wish that I could have started the process much earlier in my career. It’s been some of my most challenging times, but sales has taught me so many things about business in a holistic way. Study your prospective clients, build relationships for the long term, nurture relationships once formed, never give up, etc.

Most importantly, it helped me become a better listener and more empathetic to my customers’ needs. Truly, having to work so hard to get one customer and seeing that that person has made a conscious decision to say yes, to give you a chance, and to choose to spend their resources on you, makes me that much more passionate to serve my customer.

So, if you are debating between Goldman Sachs or McKinsey, think again and get a sales job.