6 Sales Lessons Inspired From Presidential Election

Without stating any political comment, let’s start by visualising this year’s presidential election through the prism of strategies inspiring sales people and small business owners. All elections can be summed up as lessons learnt from sales and marketing campaign, from their huge expenditure over visuals on air or word of mouth on the ground.

Even this election, both the leaders propagated sales and marketing activities that are applicable to the wider business world. So, let us discuss what lessons were primarily inspired:

1. Spending billions will not make your brand popular: Huge budget, lavish advertisements will not inspire voters to switch sides. Target individuals rather than dozens in population and develop messages that are new, fresh and informative for confirmed sales.
2. Donot lose your temper or you will lose the argument: Keep all your powerful emotions under control. The most important rule of negotiation in sales is “never to lose temper” and for successful sales pitch “don’t take it personally”. 
3. Do not rename yourself as “CEO”: This presidential election renaming you as a CEO is a big no no. After all the downsizing, rightsizing, off shoring and outsourcing, the trust on the label of CEO does not fly with everybody.
4. Selling is different than installing: Donot promise something that you cannot deliver. Romney’s economic plan in this presidential election looked good on a long term basis, but it no way provided any immediate remedy for the current socio-politico-economic problems.
5. Leaps of years are required to change brand image: Mitt Romney, changed his brand image to severe conservative and for general election to a pragmatist again. But until there is a major change happening in the product itself, different brand image will take years to evolve.
6. Preaching people as product does not create additional customers: It seems the approach of politics as a religious preaching where a simple procedure can convert a non-believer to a believer. Such practices within politics annoy people more than actually convert.

Always trust he numbers spend proper time prospecting, focus on your deliverability and spare a little amount for hope for the perfect Sales dish. All inspired from presidential election 2012. 

10 Easy Tips To Increase Your Facebook Fan Engagement

Facebook marketing is not only about what you say, it’s also about when you say and how you say it. Facebook’s new timeline that rolled out earlier this year created immense opportunities for marketers to engage with their fans. 

Marketers have played with different design elements like cover images, private messages, and pinned posts, but they still do not have a proper understanding of how to optimize and engage with your fans.

According to study from Social Media Examiner, Likes (79% of all interactions), comments (15%) and shares (6%) and each of them can provide excellent opportunity for engaging with your fans. So let us discuss 10 easy tips to increase fan engagement in Facebook:

1. When to post: Best time to post on Facebook is during the non-busy hours of 8pm to 7am..
2. Best day to post: Research has shown that on Wednesday and Sunday, the engagement level is 8% higher, comparatively to any other weekday.
3. Frequency of post: In Facebook, quality matters not quantity. One or two brand posts receive 32% higher “Likes” rate and 73% comment rates compared to 3 posts a day.
4. Effective post schedule: You can achieve maximum fan engagement by posting one to four times that produces 71% more fan engagement than posting more than 6 times in a week.
5. Length of posts: Wall posts having 80 characters and less receive 66% higher fan engagement. Extreme concise post between one and 40 characters generate highest user engagement.
6. Post Content: Post content that of a question, as this type of post generates more than double the amount of Comments as “non-question posts”.
7. Design of posts: One of the most understated Post techniques, that is, the fill in the blank strategy, is one of the most engaging. It generates 9 times higher than other post strategies.
8. Keyword for offers: Analysing the top ten keywords for user engagement shows the following data, ad featuring “$ off” receives 55% more user engagement and “coupon” receives 39% more attention and hence increased fan engagement.
9. Coupon Offers: Offer tangible cash discounts, the data indicate that “$ off” offers generate twice the engagement of “% off” offers for the retail industry.
10. Keep it simple:  Make it interesting and still simple. Include videos, images, exciting content. Research has shown that posts containing only words receive 94% higher engagement than average.

So, more or less a combination of these factors can generate huge Facebook engagement for users. Any additions from your end?

Pinterest: The New Favourite Of Email Marketers

So, have you heard about Pinterest?  And if you are like one of those curious email marketers who keep on trying everything new, you would just love it. In simple words, Pinterest is a self-described “online pinboard” or a social bookmarking site where you can tag content and share it with other people. Facebook and Twitter is already ruling the online social media space.

So what different Pinterest has to offer? It offers users to create virtual pinboards and pin digital content they find interesting in a much organized and sleek way.To help these marketers leverage Pinterest to its fullest potential for their email marketing efforts, follow these 5 simple steps:

Boost Your ROI Using Direct Mail

Want to get the attention of your B2B prospects? Just follow the right, old fashioned way of direct mail. Direct mail advertising can include postcard, brochure or sales letter that goes out regularly to a mail list of customers in your database. In this regard, good timing, quick action and a personal touch can together generate unbelievable ROI on a direct mail campaign.

 

But if you are wondering how to best incorporate your direct mail into a B2B campaign, just follow the below mentioned tips:

5 important elements for Content Marketing Success

Content Marketing is a hot topic these days, and businesses are finding great success using it both offline and online. A study conducted by B2B marketing identified content marketing (51%) as being the most important tool for generating leads, outscoring brand awareness (38%), thought leadership (34%) and sales (29%). However, majority of business houses do not have the expertise to drive content marketing into long-term, sustainable and organic growth.

Kick Start Your Year End Celebration With The Festive Sale Of eSalesData, 15% DISCOUNT ON PURCHASE OF $5000 AND ABOVE

The world renowned mailing list vendor, eSalesData, returns with an exciting offer that would surely blow your mind away. Enjoy 15% discount on all purchases made above $5000 and above. Offer valid from 22^nd November till 31^st December 2012. 

“We love to be a part of people’s merriment. As the festivities come round the corner, it is essential that marketers take a step ahead and make the most of the holiday season sale. An anonymous decision of dedicating this offer was to share our gratitude to customers on behalf of Thanksgiving Day and celebrating the tradition of a Christmas gift”, said Mark Stevens, senior Marketing manager with eSalesData.

Plan And Start: Your Online Community Plan

Looking to build an online community? Do not start blank. Research shows that many community development plans were either impractical, irrelevant or do not exist. It is extremely important to have a plan before embarking on a community plan.

Today, let us discuss few pointers that should be kept in mind while making your online community plan:

Importance Of Earned Media And Its Impact On SEO

Earned media is a kind of marketing that you have to work hard to earn. Out of the three media types paid, earned and owned – earned media is considered as the holy-grail as it fulfills the dream of creating authentic social proof for your brand. Going by the figures, 68% of Facebook users intent to buy on an earned media recommendation. Earned media is also called as user generated content because it is created from Facebook likes, comments and shares, repins on Pininterest, retweets, and links to your site, customer testimonials and so on.