I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.
My mix of Outside Sales, Marketing, Social Media, helping Customers and Classroom Teaching experience makes me an excellent Marketing candidate for your organization.
Are you hiring for Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement, Lead Gen, Demand Gen, Retention Marketing, Talent Branding and Employer Branding roles?
I’m willing to build Marketing from scratch if no marketing function exists.
Hiring?
Contact me via LinkedIn or E-Mail to set up interviews. If you are not hiring, share this with people that are looking to hire.
See how I can improve your Sales and Revenue using Marketing.
My mix of Outside Sales, Marketing, Social Media, helping Customers and Classroom Teaching experience makes me an excellent Marketing candidate for your organization.
Are you hiring for Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement, Lead Gen, Demand Gen, Retention Marketing, Talent Branding and Employer Branding roles?
I’m willing to build Marketing from scratch if no marketing function exists.
Hiring?
See how I can improve your Sales and Revenue using Marketing.
There are many exhibits at the New York Auto Show that showcased innovations and technological advances in the automotive industry. After two days of coverage on the press preview days, I am going to share my favorite product unveils and displays. This year, I also did a video walk through of the show floor to provide an inside look.
If you are in the New York area, checkout the New York Auto Show. The New York International Auto Show is open to the public from Friday, March 30th to Sunday, April 8th, 2018. Tickets cost $17 for Adults, $7 for Children, pricing for groups and tours can be found on the website. For more information go to http://www.autoshowny.com/tickets.
What cars and trucks do you want to see? If you have attended the show, what was your favorite exhibit?
My mix of Outside Sales, Marketing, Social Media, helping Customers and Classroom Teaching experience makes me an excellent Marketing candidate for your organization.
Are you hiring for Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement, Lead Gen, Demand Gen, Retention Marketing, Talent Branding and Employer Branding roles?
I’m willing to build Marketing from scratch if no marketing function exists.
Hiring?
Contact me via LinkedIn or E-Mail to set up interviews. If you are not hiring, share this with people that are looking to hire.
See how I can improve your Sales and Revenue using Marketing.
Dan is passionate about using Marketing to help businesses drive sales. He has worked on various marketing assignments that include Start Ups, Political Campaign and a Digital Marketing Conference.
Prior to Teaching, Dan served customers as an Outside Sales & Marketing Representative in the Dental industry. In this role, he taught and trained Dentists on the company’s products and services using a consultative selling approach. He also supported the company’s marketing efforts at industry trade shows & in the field through lead generation of Digital Technology along with large Dental Equipment.
Dan is seeking a full time marketing role. He is interested in roles in Direct, Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing. If your company is hiring for roles in these areas, contact him directly via a free LinkedIn Message or email him at Dan@DanGalante.com to set up interviews.
Posted 336 weeks ago
Organic Sales, Growth Marketing & Social Media Strategies Video
How can I help?
Marketing, Sales Enablement & Customer Experience Q & A. Send me your questions.
Dan is passionate about using Marketing to help businesses drive sales. He has worked on various marketing assignments that include Start Ups, Political Campaign and a Digital Marketing Conference.
Prior to Teaching, Dan served customers as an Outside Sales & Marketing Representative in the Dental industry. In this role, he taught and trained Dentists on the company’s products and services using a consultative selling approach. He also supported the company’s marketing efforts at industry trade shows & in the field through lead generation of Digital Technology along with large Dental Equipment.
Dan is seeking a full time marketing role. He is interested in roles in Direct, Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing. If your company is hiring for roles in these areas, contact him directly via a free LinkedIn Message or email him at Dan@DanGalante.com to set up interviews.
2018 continues to be the year of Brand Safety for Brands, Advertisers and Agencies as the industry status quo was disrupted in 2017.
Many advertisers pulled or suspended their ad campaigns from YouTube and Google’s display network because the company put brands at risk by serving up inappropriate ads that conflicted with the value of advertisers.
Google has taken steps to address the issue and updated the YouTube Partnership Program in efforts to reduce the chance of ads being served up against inappropriate content. This is a great first step but where does the industry go from here?
For the industry to be successful, it is important that Brands feel that their Brand Safety will be protected. Brands need to deliver a consistent message to customers and prospects. When advertisers are showing messages that conflict with Brand values; consumer trust erodes. This can destroy a Brand.
Ultimately, a Brand is responsible for its safety.
· According to independent sources 70% of programmatic money in the UK is being used for various agency commissions leaving media platforms with 30%
· Brands are not sure how their media money is being used
However, for the industry to function successfully, Brands, Advertisers and Agencies need to collaborate; taking ownership of their respective role in the ecosystem. This collaboration, can take the form of: allowing Third party monitors from data science firms to examine data i.e. audit ad inventory, conduct site analysis, pre-bid targeting, keyword exclusion against Brand Guidelines and Standards.
How will these changes affect the digital landscape?
As Brands, Advertisers, and agencies collaborate more closely, allowing third parties to audit their work; campaign development and execution will take longer. More content moderators will be need to implement these changes. Google has announced that it will hire 10,000 Content Moderators this year to honor its commitment to Brand Safety. The fee structure of Advertising will need to be changed. Either the cost of advertising will increase or margins of Advertisers and Agencies will need to be cut.
Agencies will need to support the industry to overcome the issue of Brand Safety by: offering the above services to clients, providing clients with points of contact with partners that support client work, holding discussions/events on Brand Safety and offering guides on the topic.
Brands and Agencies, how do you address the issue of Brand Safety? Comment and share.
The Customer Experience and Customer Journey is being disrupted by technology. The technology comes in the form of social channels such as the internet, mobile, social media, publishing platforms, audio books and video on demand. All of these channels have the effect of giving consumers instant access to information about products and services. Mobile is becoming the biggest channel with 6.2 Billion Devices projected globally by 2020 According to Ericsson’s Annual Mobility report.
The way customers request information is changing. They may approach Sales, Marketing and Customer Service or an independent source for information and help choosing a product.
Competition in every product and service category has never been higher. This marks a significant shift from the days of Mad Men where brands controlled information and the conversation. This marketing shift is known as information marketing through content or simply content marketing. As a result, Marketers and brands have to become the educators or teachers of consumers. To become the educators of consumers, brands have to become the industry resource to consumers; showing how their products can solve problems and improve the lives of consumers.
Content Marketing needs to be used in Sales, Marketing and Customer Service because customers expect a consistent experience through out their journey.
Marketing is undergoing an AI revolution. The marketers surveyed anticipate their AI use will grow more than 50 percent over the next two years, helping them deliver more targeted campaigns, smarter personalization and higher ROI.
Marketers realize the importance of delivering customer journeys, but are having a hard time breaking down silos between sales, service and marketing, and bringing customer data together to deliver on this vision.
Marketers are making significant organizational changes, within their own departments and in how they collaborate with others, such as sales and customer service.
Over the next two years, marketers expect to see unprecedented growth in their marketing technology usage.
“According to a recent research study by Forrester, 71 percent of consumers begin their journeys by using a search engine to discover new products and services (initiation), and 74 percent reported using a search engine for consideration and purchasing (research, comparison, transaction).”
Once brands convert prospects into customers, they still need to focus on and support customers post sale. Here is where Content Marketing can help. Brands can use Content Marketing for customer retention, cross-selling and up-selling. To take advantage of this, brands need to involve their Marketing, Sales and Customer service teams in their Content Marketing strategy.
Sales Teams
Sales teams can provide a lot of information about customers, product concerns or issues and objections they face. They are front line soldiers that have a direct line to customer intelligence.
Including the Sales Team in your content marketing strategy
Meet with the sales team and encourage them to compile a list of customer complaints, objections and questions about products that they face. Ask the team to create materials that address these concern that customers can access. This could take form of blog posts, Power-points FAQ’s, product demonstrations and tutorials.
If the sales team feels uncomfortable creating content, they could be interviewed by the marketing department. The marketing department could take content /basic materials, emails from the sales team and polish it up into visually appealing content that customers can access.
Customer Service
Similar to the sales team, your customer service teams are front line soldiers to help customers with issues they face at call centers or through social media. Ask them to write down complaints they get from customers with the answers. These complaints of FAQ’s could be put up on a web site via a PowerPoint presentation, blog etc… If this is not possible for the team, interview them, collect basic materials, emails, notes and create the content yourself.
Customer Retention
Sales and Customer service team are an important part to using a Content Marketing Strategy for customer retention. The more products a customer uses from a brand, the less likely they will switch to a competitor. Remember it costs more to obtain new customers that it does to keep existing ones.
Cross-Selling & Up-Selling
Sales and Customer service teams can also help with cross and up-selling by sharing promotion and new offerings with customers. The Sales and customer service functions of brands are essential to creating a great experience for customers.
Marketing Automation and AI
Salesforce is rolling out a Customer Success cloud where Sales, Marketing and Customer Success can track the Customer Journey across the organization. Each function of the organization can create tasks for the other to make sure the customer does not fall through the cracks. I saw a demonstration at Salesforce World Tour.
This is how brands can integrate sales and customer service teams into their Content Marketing and automation strategy. How are you using content from sales and customer service teams to help your brand retain customers? What are the goals of your brands content marketing efforts?
Dan is passionate about using Marketing to help businesses drive sales. He has worked on various marketing assignments that include Start Ups, Political Campaign and a Digital Marketing Conference.
Prior to Teaching, Dan served customers as an Outside Sales & Marketing Representative in the Dental industry. In this role, he taught and trained Dentists on the company’s products and services using a consultative selling approach. He also supported the company’s marketing efforts at industry trade shows & in the field through lead generation of Digital Technology along with large Dental Equipment.
Dan is seeking a full-time marketing role. He is interested in roles in Direct, Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing. If your company is hiring for roles in these areas, contact him directly via a free LinkedIn Message or email him at Dan@DanGalante.com to set up interviews.
I am conducting a job search for a full-time Marketing role. ( CMO to Marketing Specialist, Marketing Associate etc…)
Are you hiring for Inbound Marketing, Digital Marketing, Product Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Sales Enablement, Lead Gen, Demand Gen, Retention Marketing, Talent Branding and Employer Branding roles?
I’m willing to build Marketing from scratch if no marketing function exists.
My combination of Outside Sales, Marketing, Social Media and Classroom Teaching experience makes me an excellent Marketing candidate for your organization.
Hiring?
Contact me via LinkedIn or E-Mail to set up interviews. If you are not hiring, share this with people that are looking to hire.
See how I can improve your Sales and Revenue using Marketing.
Launching a content marketing and digital marketing campaign is a big investment of time and resources. Before launching a campaign there are a lot of things to consider. Here are three questions that digital and content marketers should be able to answer before launching a campaign.
According to Research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs fewer than 33% of B2B Marketers who use these tactics seen in the infographic said these tactics will be successful to their Overall Content Marketing success.
Before jumping in it is important to study what type of Marketing works in your industry. The one size fits all Marketing Campaigns of the past are over. Below are three questions to ask before starting a Marketing campaign.
1.What are the best ways to market to my industry?
The best ways to market to your industry is through offerings such as whitepapers, industry events, Social Media/Content Marketing and through direct selling. As there is no single best way, all of these methods need to be integrated together and function as a synergy. The Sales and Marketing functions need to be aligned and support one other in order for any marketing effort to be successful.
Becoming a part of your industry community is one of the best ways to market to them. This can be achieved by becoming a trusted advisor. Earning the trust of the community can be achieved by demonstrating your value and becoming a resource they the turn to all of the time not just when they have a need. Understanding the pain points of this group is critical to creating and implementing the best solutions to solve their problems.
2. How you would repurpose/rewrite/market to increase readership?
In order to increase readership, I would create accounts on other social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube and Slideshare. Before content can be repurposed, you need to establish channels to share the content beyond a blog and LinkedIn in order for it to reach a broader audience.
Rewriting/Repurposing
The first thing I would do is to change the title in the form of a question. This way it invites the audience to weigh in. I would also ask a question at the end of the article.
A great call to action would be: feel free to comment, or asking a question of the reader at the end of the post. By having a call to action to comment, readers are more likely to start a discussion and share the content. It is important to talk with your audience and not at them.
Another, thing that I would add is an about the author section at the bottom of each post. This is another great way to showcase the author’s expertise and incorporate a call to action such as see how we can help or click here to sign up for a free demo.
Repurposing Formats
The contents of the article can be put into different formats such as a PowerPoint, a YouTube video all of which can be uploaded to Slideshare. The article can be published to LinkedIn’s publishing platform as well. The article can also be written and have presentations and videos embedded in the article itself. There are endless ways to repurpose content.
3. Imagine you could speak to a current customer. What would you want to ask them? How would you use their responses to market my product?
I would want to ask current customers the following questions:
1.Why did you chose my product?
2.What do you like about the product?
3.What do you dislike about the product?
4.Is it easy to use?
5.How long did it take to put the product to work?
6.Would you be willing to provide a testimonial in writing, on video about how the product helped your business, speak at an event?
(Questions may differ based on the user’s answers.)
I would take the information from questions to 1-5 and discuss them with the product manager and engineer to see how the product could be made better. Testimonials obtained would be uploaded to the website and integrated into product literature.
What questions are you asking before starting a Marketing Campaign?
About the Author
Dan is passionate about using Marketing to help businesses drive sales. He has worked on various marketing assignments that include Start Ups, Political Campaign and a Digital Marketing Conference.
Prior to Teaching, Dan served customers as an Outside Sales & Marketing Representative in the Dental industry. In this role, he taught and trained Dentists on the company’s products and services using a consultative selling approach. He also supported the company’s marketing efforts at industry trade shows & in the field through lead generation of Digital Technology along with large Dental Equipment.
Dan is seeking a full time marketing role in New York City. He is interested in roles in Direct, Digital, Content and Social Media Marketing. If your company is hiring for roles in these areas, contact him directly via a free LinkedIn Message or email him at Dan@DanGalante.com to set up interviews.
Today we receive a lot of mail. Most of the time, a majority of the mail that I receive is a solicitation and/or junk mail. People are very busy; as a result they will skim their mail very quickly. They have to think that your message is compelling and relevant to them within the first 30 seconds. Otherwise, your mail will get tossed in the trash.
To make sure you get your mailing opened, you have to make sure that you are directing your message to the decision maker. The decision maker will be different depending on your product. It is important that your recipient see’s your message as valuable. In your mailing, I would ask catching questions in terms of the person you are trying to market to. For example, I would ask questions such as: Are you happy with your company’s current sales and marketing results?, Are you satisfied with your company’s standing in the marketplace?, Do you want to know how you can produce more?, If you lost ______ what would you do?, Do you have a backup plan in place if this happens?
The insurance industry does this when they want to sell insurance policies. You have to customize the message for your product or service. This message will get the decision maker thinking because everyone wants to produce more. In other words, you need a message that drives people to act.
Another thing that you could do is to offer a free trial of your work. You could also offer a discount to new customers. For example, you could offer a free consultation. Also, if you are sending the mailing to existing customers, I would offer them rewards for referrals. Make sure to provide a direct response card with paid postage for them to mail back.
Besides the copy and content of the message, it is important to make your mailing visually appealing to your prospect. The copy should be clean, neat and easy to read. Use colors and images that are visually appealing in your message. Make sure that prospects are aware of your presence on social media sites by including badges with link addresses.
Make sure that your business address, phone number and website are included in each piece of the mailing. This is a good precaution to take in case any piece of your mailing gets lost.
I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.
I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.
Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.
The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging, content, and sales enablement.
Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event.
Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.
Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.
Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.
It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.
Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.
Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.
To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.
Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.
Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.
What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragmatic Framework.
Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.
Product Marketing needs a separate brief.
Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.
The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.
Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.
I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.
Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.
The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging and content and sales enablement.
Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event.
Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.
Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.
Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.
It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.
Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.
Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.
To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.
Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.
Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.
What is Product Marketing?
Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragamtic Framework.
Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.
Product Marketing needs a separate brief.
Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.
The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.
Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.
Propelify is an event where people from across the Northeast can turn ideas into action.
Officials from the New Jersey State government attended. They offered entrepreneurs resources to start and/or scale their business in New Jersey.
New Jersey Tech Council CEO Aaron Price and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy delivered the opening keynote. In their keynote, Aaron and Governor Murphy discussed Propelify’s mission and why businesses should consider New Jersey.
There were additional talks on topics from Cannabis, Customer Experience, Marketing, Sales, Recruiting and Entrepreneurship.
Cannabis: From New Brand To IPO In A Prohibition Market panel.
Rebecca Price moderates a panel on The Science Behind Smart Recruiting and Seeing Thru the Resume.
Entrepreneurs networked with investors. There was also a Startup competition.
Exhibitors represented diverse entities ranging from Government, Advertising, Financial Services, CPG, HRTech, Universities, Incubators, Accelerators, IT, Healthcare and E-commerce brands.
I covered Advertising Week in New York. Advertising Week is where the best minds of Marketing and Advertising meet to share and learn best practices.
Matt Scheckner Global CEO of Advertising Week shares his thoughts at the opening breakfast.
There were great panels and workshops.
My key takeaways from Advertising Week 2019 were:
1. Brands need to better understand emotional intelligence and be able to apply it to their content creation. Other emotions besides happiness drive purchases. Spencer Gerrol the CEO of Spark Neuro shares insights from a biometrics study on how emotion in content affects brand value.
Spencer also did a live demonstration showing how the brain responds to Ads in real-time.
2. According to Gary Vaynerchuk, Marketing is becoming more like Sales in terms of being results-driven. Brands will eventually need to create up to 500 pieces of content per day to engage the ever-increasing buyer personas and customers’ tastes. Gary also shared the idea that LinkedIn is the best platform for organic reach.
3. Brands need to organize their organizations around the customer journey and experience. Philips SVP of Digital Marketing and E-commerce Blake Cahill shared how the company is organizing and transforming around the Customer Journey. He provided actionable steps companies can take to better serve customers.
4. The funnel of today will look like a flywheel by 2030.
Nikki Issac of Mircosoft shares Microsoft’s Research on Marketing and the Customer Journey. She also moderates a panel with Esteban Ribero of Performics.
Brands need to use data and AI to better understand their customers. According to research conducted by Microsoft, only 20% of today’s marketers have a high customer experience quotient (CXQ). A high(CXQ) means that brands fully understand user intent to create their customer journey; improving their performance to increase customer engagement.
Why should Brands be Customer-Centric? Brands that were Customer-Centric saw a 45% increase in ROI/ROAS.
We will see the rise of the Chief Journey Officer or CJO.
Where are you on the Journey?
5. Brands need to understand the role of Social Media in Customer Journey and how it impacts customer buying habits and decisions.
Businesses need to improve how they use Social Listening
and Analytics tools to understand customer intent.
A framework needs to define and address KPIs at each touch-point in the customer journey.
Why is this important?
More Marketers believe Social Listening is important.
6. Brands need to apply design thinking to cultivating empathy for end-users, interpreting and framing problems they experience, creative solution generation, and continuous prototyping and testing. The goal is to provide creative solutions for the end-user.
7. Brands need to listen and understand the customers of tomorrow. It is not just about Gen Z but Gen Alpha. Gen Alpha will be more active on social issues and more open to challenging the status quo than Gen Z.
8. According to Samsung Ads, with the rise of the Connected TV, Brands will be able to track and measure the effectiveness of their TV ads, similar to online advertising. Targeted TV is of critical use for advertisers because TV is viewed on Mobile, Desktop, Native Smart TV and Display. Advertisers expect to be able to track customers across platforms while producing ROI/ROAS reports just like online advertising.
9. Televised sports will increase its presence in Television programming. Soon, Sports Betting will be Televised according to CEO Chris Ripley of Sinclair Broadcast Group. Eventually, gamblers will be able to view Sporting events and place bets in real-time over their Smart TV and/or connected devices. This will provide gamblers with great customer experience.
10. Any business can use technology and creativity to: build community, start and scale an eCommerce business, create content and campaigns that convert.
Facebook’s Mark D’Arcy, CCO and VP of Global Business Marketing showed how to do this using Facebook.
Mark also spoke on Facebook’s social initiative Boost with Facebook. Boost with Facebook helps break down socioeconomic barriers by offering people the chance to up-skill on everything from using Facebook to finding a job. Boost with Facebook is a combination of online learning and live workshops.
Advertising Week 2019 was a great event. I want to thank everyone that made the event possible. On a personal note, I want to thank Matt Scheckner the Global CEO of Advertising Week and the Sunshine Sachs Communications team for having me as their guest.
I covered the Digital Agency Expo in New York. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this event, Digital Agency Expo is a conference focused on how to build, grow and scale a Digital Agency in 2019.
Ryan Deiss, the co-founder, and CEO of Digital Marketer opened up Digital Agency Expo.
In his opening talk on how to recession-proof a Digital Agency, Ryan identified three Key skills that agency owners and marketers need to master for success.
1. Master the skill of Copywriting
2. Master Email Marketing
3. Be able to create Partnerships
Ryan challenged the concept of a Full-Service Agency. He also argued against the notion that a bigger Agency is more profitable and can consistently produce high-quality results.
Ryan also recommended books to read along with a model for a successful agency.
It was an insightful talk.
Another great talk was delivered by Keap CEO Clate Mask. He outlined the five Stages of Agency growth. Clay also shared how he struggled to get his business off the ground. He kept going despite being told to get a job. His advice for when things get tough:
Evan Radisic of Proposify shares the State of Proposal research. Proposify examined 1.6 million proposals creating a blueprint of a winning proposal.
One of my favorite talks was the Keynote by Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary shared how to create, grow and scale a digital agency. He shared how he built multiple businesses on a shoestring budget despite his humble beginnings. Gary also took questions from the audience. I have included a portion of the talk here.
I attended EdSurge ImmersionNYC this past Friday. The event was designed for EdTech startups that are looking for Advice in the areas of Marketing, K-12 Sales, Scaling Up and Exiting. Attendees had the opportunity to hear from leaders at Various Education organizations ranging from CEOs, Founders, School Superintendents, and Venture Capitalists.
I enjoyed the presentation provided by Brett van Zuiden of Clever. In his presentation, he reminds us to think of users when designing products versus the way we would use a product.
He reinforced the idea that great product design cannot happen without truly understanding our customers.
Attendees had the opportunity to take three Clinics led by experts in Sales, Marketing, Scaling up and Exiting. I enjoyed the clinics because they were customized and led by experts.
The clinics that were most relevant to me, were two clinics on Marketing and one on Selling to K-12 school districts. I was able to meet and connect with many great entrepreneurs in the clinics. We received advice that was customized and actionable.
There were also many opportunities to network throughout the event.
EdSurge also announced the upcoming launch of its new service called EdSurgeIntelligence.
The services will apply a fresh approach to market intelligence and learning for investors and executives. EdSurgeIntelligence will allow users to analyze trends from early childhood through higher ed, the workforce and more.
I want to thank the Edsurge Team for having me at Edsurge ImmersionNYC.
I covered the Digital Marketing World Forum in New York this past week.
There were great discussions on Digital and Social Marketing. The topics ranged from the customer journey, customer experience, customer retention, personalization, using data, and privacy legislation.
My key insights were:
1. To improve customer retention, brands need to understand their customers to personalize their experiences across all touchpoints. Marketers from different verticals shared how they were able to improve customer loyalty and retention by personalizing and creating customer experiences across all touchpoints.
2. Many times, customer data tells a story that contradicts preconceived hunches and opinions. Marketers from T-Moblie and Decoded found this out when they marketed Cell Phone plans to the 55+ community.
3. Marketers have the tools to better understand their customers and to track the results of their efforts faster than ever before. These tools empower marketers to improve the customer journey and experience. With this power comes the obligation to better serve their customers and to quickly pivot when their tactics and strategies are not effective. Marketers with different products and services shared their stories and strategies.
4. Companies that are going to use Chatbots to serve customers need to train Chatbots to handle complex requests from customers. Chatbots should not be used to answer questions like the hours of a store or simple information that can be obtained from a website.
5. Privacy Legislation similar to GDPR is coming to the United States. Laws in California and Nevada are being enacted in 2020. OneTrust shared how Marketers can prepare and comply with the Californa Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
I covered Voice Summit last week at NJIT in Newark, New Jersey. Voice Summit is the largest voice tech conference that brings the conversational design ecosystem together in one place.
Last year was the first Voice Summit. It was amazing to see how the industry has advanced in the past year. This year, the conference grew to over 5,000 attendees!
Voice Summit was a great place to network. Many Voice Startups demoed their offerings as well.
Founder Pete Erikson shares the story of Voice in the opening press conference. Pete shared the podium with Voice industry leaders and Newark Civic Leadership.
The conversation in Voice has shifted from should brands have a Voice Strategy to how to effectively incorporate voice technology across the organization. Attendees had opportunities to attend hands-on voice workshops on topics ranging from creating brand guidelines to building a voice strategy from the ground up. I took the Voice strategy workshop conducted by Brett Kinsella of VoiceBot.Ai. We received a workbook that had questions that served as building blocks to build our voice strategy.
I had was able to get a look at the Expo Floor where I was able to meet exhibitors and explore the Amazon Smart Home. It was amazing to see how voice technology has transformed the home experience. In this video, I was able to ask Alexa to play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and to play music, etc.
Marketers have many opportunities with Voice and Audio Content according to Voices.com research. Content takes the form of short and long-form ranging from Flash Briefings up to Audiobooks.
However, when it comes to smart speakers only, 18% of users discover skills from brand advertising according to Vixen Labs.
Brands need to prepare to change their Marketing and Advertising for Voice. A panel shared their thoughts on how to improve how to achieve this aim.
Edison Research and NPR conducted market research on the topic of smart speaker customer behavior. The number of smart speakers in U.S. homes grew 78% from December of 2017 to December. The research packed with data you can see here.
Brett Kinsella led a panel where Marketers shared how they have developed and implemented their strategy for Voice.
Steve Keller of Pandora shared his thoughts on the topic of Sonic Branding and Sound Business.
On a side note, NJIT was nice enough to provide me with a tour of the start-up incubator and co-working space opening this September. I was able to see areas being built from the ground up just as startups are.
I also was able to see the Alexa Cup which is Amazon’s initiative to pair Marketers and developers to work on projects such as Female Empowerment and Mental Health.
What touched me on a human level was the closing keynote entitled “A journey through a deaf developer’s eyes.” In this keynote, Thomas Chappell of Prudential shared his story. Thomas is unable to speak.
After his talk, I was able to meet him. People communicate with him using Voice to speech technology and American Sign language. I was able to use the technology on a smartphone to have a full conversation with him.
Voice Summit was an amazing conference. I want to thank Pete Erikson, the Modev Team, NJIT, the City of Newark, and the State of New Jersey for having me as their guest.
I covered the Digital Summit Series in New York City this past Wednesday and Thursday. The Digital Summit Series provides attendees with comprehensive workshops on Digital Marketing that are conducted by speakers from leading brands along with industry through leaders. Topics ranged from Content, Email,Search, Mobile, UX Design, Social and Strategy. Attendees were also able to network with other attendees. I learned so much over these two days. Here are some of the highlights.
Stacy Minero delivered the keynote on Day One of Digital Summit entitled the Craft of Content in which she show how Brands can make an impact using Content.
1.Key takeaways were that Consumers want Brands to talk with them and not at them.
2. Consumers want Brands to take a stance on Social Issues.
3. Consumers expect Brands to solve social problems.
4. 89% of Content is not noticed at all
5. 40% of Consumers are more likely to respond to brands who respond to them
6. The old world started with Storyboards and TV now The new world starts with the customer and canvas.
7. Examples of Brands Creating Great Content include Heinz with the #MayoChup campaign and HBO with with its promotion of the digital streaming of Sopranos.
8. Before posting content Brands need to ask if the content they create is memorable or meaningful.
The keynote gave me a lot to think about.
Seth Godin gave the keynote entitled This is Marketing on Day two. In the keynote Seth covered many great points on Marketing from his book This is Marketing.
Marketers make change Happen.
Pick Yourself.
Tell a story that resonates with the people you seek to serve.
Pick the Smallest Most Viable Audience or Most Viable Market
Marketing is not advertising anymore
Television is about Mass Marketing and the Internet is a micro-medium
Seth also had an interactive Q & A session. He had a Poke the Box style Mic with the caption Catch the box; which he randomly tossed in the audience prompting them to to ask questions.
I really enjoyed the talk.
Other sessions that I enjoyed were on the topics of improving: Email Marketing, Marketing Workflow, B2B Marketing and Video Marketing. Pictures of these slides will be posted to Instagram.
If you want to attend in your city, click here for more information.
Did you attend Digital Summit? What are your thoughts?
I covered TechDay in New York City at the Jacob Javits Center this past Thursday.
Organizers of the event offered the opportunity to: network with Venture Capitalists, Accelerators, listen to Tech Talks, Fireside chats and pitch your start up. Attendees were able to look for a job or business opportunity with exhibitors and start ups. Entrepreneurs even had the opportunity to audition for SharkTank.
There are amazing exhibits at the New York International Auto Show that showcased innovations in the auto industry. These innovations included an increased number of: Hybrid, Electric and Voice enabled vehicles. Mercedes-Benz showcased its Voice enabled vehicles in its Press Conference.
Porsche celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the 911 with the unveil of the 911 Speedster. This was really enjoyable to see.
Ford celebrated National Mustang Day celebrating 50 years of the Mustang.
The show is truly amazing but don’t take my word for it. See for yourself!
The New York International Auto Show is open to the public from Friday, April 19th to Sunday, April 28th, 2019. Tickets cost $17 for Adults, $7 for Children, pricing for groups and tours can be found on the website. For more information go to http://www.autoshowny.com/tickets.
What do you want to see at the show? If you have attended the show, what was your favorite exhibit?
I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.
When creating a new offering, I would offer a free or low-cost trial of your product to the end-users and industry experts. Consumers look for social proof before they buy a product. Now if the product is new, none exists. To lower buyer resistance, you need to make it low risk and feel safe.
In addition to market research and product testing; the free or low-cost trial is a great way to build trust and get feedback. Surveys can be created to ask potential customers about their experience.
If your product helps to solve a customer’s problem they will be more than happy to share it with others; converting to paying users! The product will earn testimonials and endorsements. Testimonials and endorsements will address product reliability creating: loyalty, brand recognition, and Sales for your product.
Loss Leaders
In place of a free or low-cost trial, a loss leader can be an option. A loss leader is when you offer a product at a loss or break-even point to gain business in the future. Supermarkets do this all of the time when a new product is rolled out.
Another place I saw loss leaders was when I was in Field Sales. I was selling Dental equipment at the time. Certain customers were loyal to certain types of equipment. When I ask why they stated that these were the tools that they had used in school. When I called on Dental schools and Hospitals, I found they were locked up with large contacts. My larger competitors sold the equipment at cost practically giving it away. Why would they do this? My competitors were creating life-long customers who were trained on certain tools and refused to switch.
Connection, trust, and advocacy are essential for customer acquisition. It is your job as a brand to turn your customer base into evangelists.
The decision on developing and implementing offering free, low-cost trials and/or loss leaders will be different for each product.
Free, low-cost trials and loss leaders help to Increase Sales and Customer Loyalty.
How have you used free, low-cost trials and loss leaders to create Sales and Customer Loyalty?
