Sales & Marketing Posts

By Charles Bernard, CEO of Criteria for Success, Inc. Every good salesperson knows that maintaining a robust pipeline full of well-qualified deals is the first step to successful selling. After all, few deals close without going through the pipeline first - and a better qualified pipeline results

Panda 4.0 . . . the bear of an algorithm is back to attack! OK - it's likely not that dramatic for most sites, but the panic over it is understood. After all, the original Panda rollout had devastating effects on some small business websites as demonstrated by the stories on savingsmallbusiness.org: ...

If you work or volunteer for a nonprofit, you know one of the challenges is marketing on shoestring. While traditional means of awareness and fundraising like direct mail and phonathon campaigns are very effective ways to engage supporters and donors directly, online marketing efforts help you spread the message further and reach new people.

Looking for ways to improve your search engine results page (SERP) click through rate (CTR)? Check out these four tips to improve CTR! These are not specifically about SEO -- although some of them may improve your SEO. 1. Write a Great Page Title & Description Page Title.

Savvy sales people have learned to harness the web for social selling. There are great tools for listening to and monitoring prospects online. However, don't just stop at social interactions. Set up a trigger event monitoring system to help you build and qualify your prospect list. What is a Trigger Event?

Statistically, your next enterprise project is going to fail. You may finish, but more than likely you'll be over time or over budget. In fact, according to data from a 2012 Standish Group study, only 39 percent of projects succeed on time and on budget. It's not a losing battle though.

Want more clicks and cheaper bids with your Google AdWords campaigns? In addition to improving your quality score, improving your click-through rate (CTR) will get you more clicks, cheaper bids and help you earn more money in the long run. So, how do you motivate people to click and improve CTR?

Are you new to Social Selling? If so, here are some great resources to help get you started Social Selling has become imperative to the business world. It's a way of connecting with others (social media), marketing your business (videos) and spreading ideas and knowledge (blogs).

Crowdsourcing design projects offer many benefits for small businesses including lower costs, more choices and fast results, but design crowdsourcing has distinct limitations and pros and cons that business owners need to consider. Many companies choose to run in-house contests through Facebook or other platforms, but using a qualified third party to administer these types ...

Think about some of your favorite commercials or websites. I bet one thing they have in common is that they relay a story. There's a plot, characters, and a climax. It's so brief in commercials that maybe you don't realize a story is being told. Others, like this sweet Budweiser commercial, are obvious.

Nowadays, the business world has turned out to be quite competitive and many small business owners are looking for the best strategies to drive customers to buy their products. To this effect, the emergence of online marketing trends can help them a great deal in realizing gains and gaining ranks within the shortest time possible.

An opt-in offer is a great way to keep leads flowing into your sales funnel. People are often hesitant to fill out forms that require their email and phone number, so it's important that you provide something valuable as an incentive to do so. Check out these great options for your next opt-in offer.

Think about some of your favorite commercials or websites. I bet one thing they have in common is that they relay a story. There’s a plot, characters, and a climax. It’s so brief in commercials that

If you aren't taking advantage of the contact organization features available on Twitter, you may be missing out on some potential efficiency and productivity gains. Does it take time? Yes --

I used to be a big fan of leveraging infographics to grow my traffic and brand. Why? Because it used to provide exceptional results. The results were so

If you haven't selected an app yet to manage your social media marketing, you may be missing opportunities to be more productive and effective.

Do inbound leads need to be pre-qualified? Dan McDade consults a panel of B2B industry experts. Read what they have to say. See if you agree!

Make social media automation work for you in your social media marketing efforts.

About a year ago, I started to rethink my views regarding the role and value of #third-party content in the marketing efforts of B2B companies. I had always believed that most of the marketing content used by a company should be developed internally or with the help of outside professional content developers. In either case, the “authorship” of the content is attributed to the company or to a company executive or internal subject matter expert. With third-party content, an external person or firm creates the content and is identified as the author.
My preference for “vendor-branded” content was based on the idea that a primary objective of #content marketing is to communicate your company’s expertise to potential buyers and thus cause those buyers to view your company as a trusted resource for valuable insights and as a capable business partner. Logically, ... Read More »

Looking for tips on scheduling your social media status updates? Check out this points.

Earlier this year, eMarketer published a new estimate of the amount of time US adults (ages 18+) spend with various types of media. Like many media analysts, eMarketer estimates that the amount of time spent with mobile media is growing more rapidly than all other forms of #media consumption, while the consumption of print media continues to decline precipitously.
eMarketer also estimated the amount of advertising spending per hour of time spent with each type of media, and the table below contains some of the eMarketer estimates. As the table shows, eMarketer is projecting that this year, advertisers will spend 7 cents for every hour a US adult spends consuming mobile media, but more than 10 times that amount (83 cents) for every hour spent consuming print media (magazines and newspapers).

eMarketer isn’t the only analyst to make this kind of consumption ... Read More »

Social media can be a great tool for marketing your business. Through networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and others, businesses can reach new customers and increase sales. In fact, social media marketing is such a popular strategy that it’s almost rare to find a business that doesn’t have a presence on any of the major social networks.
However, the fact that social media marketing is so popular does not mean it’s a good plan for every business. In some cases social media can actually do a business more bad than good. Here are some of the downfalls of using social media to generate leads for your business.
It Costs Time and Money
Although social media costs relatively little compared to other forms of marketing, it isn’t exactly free. To get the most out of the sites, many businesses choose to host ads. Even ... Read More »

Looking for long-term fundraising success? Check out this post to learn how to combine new ideas with tried-and-true methods.

In the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors in South America heard stories about a king who made an offering of gold and precious gems to his god as part of a religious ceremony. The Spaniards called the king El Dorado, and over time El Dorado came to mean the city of this king. According to the legend, El Dorado contained gold and precious stones in fabulous abundance. The legend was so powerful that for over two centuries, European explorers mounted numerous expeditions to search for El Dorado.
So far as we know, the “city of gold” was never found.
It’s only human to long for simple and easy solutions to complex or difficult problems. At least once in our lives, most of us have yearned for a magic diet pill that would enable us to lose twenty pounds in four weeks without eating ... Read More »

Effective marketing often boils down to instantaneous attraction - something that grabs the masses with the first glance. Social media is no different.