Thursday, 22 May 2014

Best Stomach Weight Loss Exercises - How


How to Lose Stomach Fat? Best Stomach Weight Loss Exercises

1. Crunches:

Nothing burns belly fat faster than crunches!

Crunches occupy the number 1 position when it comes to fat-burning exercises. Now, it’s time that you start with this abs crunching exercise. Follow the steps mentioned below.

  • Lie down flat on a mat with your knees bent and feet on the ground. Alternatively, you can also lift your legs off the floor at a 90 degrees angle. (See picture).
  • Now lift your hands and place them behind your head or keep them crossed on your chest.
  • Inhale deeply and as you lift your upper torso off the floor, exhale.
  • Again inhale as you get back down and exhale as you come up.
  • Do this for 10 times as a beginner.
  • Repeat another 2-3 sets.


As you lift your torso, do not just sit up straight. You should be at a 30-40 degrees angle off the ground. Thus, you’ll feel pressure on your abdominal muscles.

2. Twist Crunches:

Twist crunches


Once you get used to the regular crunches, modify the basic crunch to get an even more effective tummy exercise!
  • Lie down on the floor with your hands behind your head.
  • Now bend your knees as you would do in crunches, keeping your feet on the floor.
  • As in a crunch, you would have lifted your upper torso; in twist crunches you just have to lift your right shoulder towards the left, keeping your left torso on the ground.

Again alternatively, lift your left shoulder towards the right, keeping your right torso on the ground.
Repeat for another 10 times.

3. Side Crunch:


Side Crunch

This is the same as the twist crunch exercise. The only thing that you need to do is tilt your legs to the same side simultaneously with your shoulders. The side crunch focuses on the muscles on your sides.

4. Reverse Crunches:


Now it’s time to do reverse crunches. This is another best exercise to lose stomach fat.
Reverse crunches
This is the same as the twist crunch exercise. The only thing that you need to do is tilt your legs to the same side simultaneously with your shoulders. The side crunch focuses on the muscles on your sides.


5. Vertical Leg Crunch:

vertical leg crunch
Lie flat on the floor or on the mat with your legs extended upwards towards the ceiling and one knee crossed over the other.

Now that you have positioned your body perfectly, do the same as you would have done in case of crunches. That is, breathe in and lift your upper body from the floor towards the pelvis. Now breathe out slowly. As you bring yourself down, breathe in again and exhale as you go up.

Do 12-16 crunches for up to 3 sets at a go.


6. Bicycle Exercise:


No, you don’t need a bicycle for this. Thinking how? We’ll tell you.

bicycle crunch exercise

Lie on the floor and keep your hands either by your side or behind your head as we do in crunches.
  • Now lift both your legs off the ground and bend them at the knees.
  • Bring your right knee close to your chest, keeping your left leg out.
  • Now take your right leg out and bring your left leg close to your chest.
  • Alternate bending your knees this way as if you are paddling a bicycle.


7. Lunge Twist:


This is a beginners’ workout for starters who want to reduce belly fat fast.

Lunge Twist

  • Stand with your legs hip width apart. Keep your knees slightly bent.
  • Lift both your hands in front of you keeping them straight with your shoulders and parallel to the ground.
  • Lunge forward as shown in the picture. Take a big step forward with your right leg and sit yourself down as if on a chair so that your knees are at a 90 degrees angle from the floor. The left leg should be backwards supported by the toes.
  • The spine should be kept straight. Don’t bend your spine forward. That is a very wrong way of performing lunges.
  • First twist your torso to the right and then to the left. Twist just the torso, not your legs.
  • Continue repeating this for 16 times.


8. Rolling Plank Exercise:


rolling plank exercise - The rolling plank trains the muscles around your abdomen, hip and lower back.
  • Position yourself on the floor with your knees and elbows resting on the ground.
  • Keep your neck aligned with your spine. Look forwards.
  • Lift the knees upwards and support your legs on the toes.
  • Contract your knees and keep breathing normally. This is the plank pose. Stay in this posture for 30 seconds.
  • Now start moving to and fro for the next 30 seconds. This is the rolling plank exercise.


9. Side Plank:


plank stretch -- Lie down on the floor sideways.

  • Support yourself on your right elbow and right leg. Your elbow should be perpendicular to the shoulder and the left leg should be above the right leg, keeping them together.
  • Keep your knees straight. Your hips should not be touching the ground.
  • Hold this position for 30 seconds. Once you get comfortable, you may hold this for 1-2 minutes.
  • Repeat with your other side too.
  • While in this position you may also lift the leg placed on top and bring it back again. This makes the exercise more effective. In that case, it works not only for your abs but also for the thighs and hips.


10. The Stomach Vacuum:


Stomach vacuum exercises are low-impact exercises that place greater emphasis on breathing instead of getting your heart rate up.

a. This is similar to what we call the cat stretch pose. This is also known as the four-point, transverse-abdominal stomach vacuum. Follow the steps mentioned below to do this exercise for reducing belly fat:

Come down on the ground to sit on all fours, supporting your body on your hands and knees.
  • Now inhale deeply and loosen your abdomen.
  • As you exhale the breath, tighten the abdomen muscles.
  • Hold this abdomen contraction for 15-30 seconds.
  • Repeat the process again.


b. Another type of stomach vacuum exercise is elevators. Here’s how to do it:

  • Sit on a chair. Imagine your belly to be an elevator that’s moving up.
  • Now inhale deeply using only your nose and think that it’s the 1st floor.
  • Breathe out using your mouth and simultaneously push your belly towards your spine, imagining that you are going up to the 5th floor.
  • Breathe out fast 5 more times, squeezing your abs every time you exhale the air.
  • Repeat the same steps another 5 times.


c. You can try standing pelvic tilts. This is another form of stomach vacuum exercise.

  • Stand with your legs hip width apart and bend your knees slightly.
  • Inhale deeply through your nose and push your belly inwards towards your spine, and at the same time roll your hips out in front.
  • Do 5-6 sets of this exercise.


11. Captain’s Chair:

captains chair exercise -- All you need to do this exercise is a chair.

  • Sit on the chair with your spine straight and shoulders relaxed.
  • Keep both hands beside you with your palms by the side of your hips, facing downward.
  • Inhale deeply.
  • Now as you exhale, bring both your legs upwards such that your knees are close to your chest. Hold for 5 seconds. Don’t bend forward and arch your back.
  • Bring down your leg slowly and repeat again.


12. Bending Side to Side:


This is the best workout to slim down your waist. This is yet another perfect exercise for reducing belly fat!

Standing side stretch pose
  • Stand erect with your feet together. Raise your hands above your head as in a ‘namaste’.
  • Now keeping your legs grounded, bend your body to the right as much as possible till you feel a strain on your left waist. Stay for 15 seconds.
  • Return back to the original position.
  • Now bend left. Retain this position for another 15 seconds.
  • Slowly, you may increase the holding time to 30 seconds.




Cardio Exercises:


running


Cardio is one of the most effective ways to burn calories and shed unwanted flab from your body. Cardio exercises are immensely helpful for reducing belly fat. At the same time, doing cardio on a regular basis will offer you with other health benefits such as reduction of stress, an increase in your lung capacity, better sleep and a sense of overall well-being.

13. Walking


One of the very first cardio exercises to reduce belly fat is walking. Are you surprised to know this? Do you think it’s too simple to be effective? Well then, know that walking is a great and effective way to burn away that ugly belly fat. In fact, it is an excellent fat burner for your entire body. If you follow a healthy diet along with walking at a steady pace for 30-45 minutes for at least 4-5 days every week, you will witness a gradual change in your weight. This low-impact exercise increases your metabolism as well as your heart rate. A heightened metabolic rate will burn away calories at a faster pace, thus helping to eliminate the fat accumulated around your belly. In fact, walking has a decreased risk of injuries and is considered to be a good workout for beginners.

14. Running:


You have to prevent your body from getting used to any fixed workout routine. Hence, you can switch occasionally. Try running for a change. It is an effective way to keep your heart rate up, burn calories and lose belly fat.

15. Jogging:


If you don’t like running, try jogging instead. Research suggests that jogging is more effective at breaking down unwanted fat when compared to weightlifting. This is a form of aerobic exercise that is extremely useful for fighting against obesity and staying fit.

16. Cycling:


This is another kind of effective cardio exercise that helps you to shed belly fat by burning calories. Ensure that your heart rate goes up while you are cycling.

17. Swimming:


With swimming you get cardio, weight loss and toning at the same time! The strokes that you choose should be up-tempo and strenuous in order to help you burn more calories. You can start with swimming 1-2 times every week.

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Inbound marketing focuses on being found by potential leads instead of searching for customers.


Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Traditional marketing methods such as paid TV ads, direct mailings, cold calling and trade shows are costly. Inbound Marketing is not only effective and less expensive but the results are better tracked.

1. Search Engine Optimization

The primary way that inbound marketing works is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  SEO is a method to get your website to rank high on search engines for specific keywords.

When a potential customer does a web search, they are actively searching for your product or service. So as a marketing firm your audience might type in “Marketing San Antonio,” if you’re website is listed on page 1 of Google, Bing or Yahoo search engines you’ll be likely to receive more quality leads.

Help your business get visibility online with these SEO marketing tips.

2. Content Marketing

Content marketing is creating valuable information to display on your site to increase customer interest. Often businesses will attract customers by delivering a blog or a tips area on their website that provides relevant content making  their company a trusted and helpful resource.

Ways to provide valuable content:

  • Educational Ebooks
  • Training  or How To Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • Webinars

Tip: don’t forget to provide a call to action in your content to convert sales.

3. Email and Marketing Automation

Inbound marketing should not relying just on generating business but a balance of nurturing leads and converting visitors into customers. Email and marketing automation should contain information useful to nurture the visitor’s interest and is a great opportunity to deliver sales pitches.

How to capture email addresses:

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers
Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers

Since the newsletter was actively sought, it is less likely to be viewed as spam, but it is wise to set expectations and inform how often your emails will be sent to the individual.  The optin opportunities are most effective on a landing page, above the home page fold, or on sidebars of your site.

Affordable and easy optin and email automation systems include:
  • Aweber.com
  • ConstantContact.com
  • Infusionsoft.com

These email automation systems have customizable opt-in templates and for more creative opt-ins you may need a developer to create unique opt-in forms.

4. Social Presence 

Social Media Inbound Marketing

Using sites such as Twitter and Facebook to generate interest in a product or service are great ways to use inbound marketing strategies. Provide regular content that is engaging on your social media account to attract potential clients.

Some important factors to consider:

  • Who is your target audience on social channels?
  • Which social channels does your audience communicate and interact in?
  • What type of content is valuable?
  • Tip: don’t just self promote, give your audience useful information and encourage sharing.

Learn more why your business should get social!

5. Video Marketing

Viral Video Inbound Marketing

One of the most effective ways to convey information is through videos. People often go to popular video channels such as Youtube or Vimeo to get info to solve problems or learn about a service or product. Get in front of your audience by being visible on these video channels.

Inbound marketing focuses on leads instead of searching for customers


Tip: Also make sure to provide a link or phone number in the video description to ensure they will find your company.  Check out these top 5 tips to make your viral video reach more!

It’s a brave new world for marketing and it’s important for businesses to stay on top of all the current trends and directions that inbound marketing are taking. By staying current and staying focused on inbound marketing, businesses can take advantage of all the new possibilities being offered with today’s technology.
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Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory


Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory


Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory


Your business will face multiple crossroads where you’ll have to decide if "best practices" are really what's best for you (and your customers).

We faced a recent conundrum of this sort in regard to content: is it really the right approach for us to gate some of our resources behind opt-in pages?

If you aren’t knee deep in marketing every day of the week, using an “opt-in page” simply means putting a piece of content behind a gate, that only opens when a reader enters their email. Upon doing so, their email is also added to your newsletter (you should always tell people when this is the case).

Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory

The thing is, our company has been built on content. Doing right by customers via free education has been the strategy that has carried our business to where it is today. Needless to say, we take content very seriously.

We’re a company that truly believes in looking after customers. We want ease of use and long-term value for each piece of content we create, and the resources we put out need to reflect that.

The always-articulate Seth Godin has written a succinct summary of what we're after:

Working to maximize the short-term value of each transaction rarely scales. If you hoard information, for example, today your prospects will simply click and find it somewhere else.”

Our marketing strategy is driven by the customer experience, not by "growth hawking." We believe companies should be about fewer games, fewer hoops, and more value. We feel like open content speaks to that.

I’d love to fill you in on the details. Below I'll explain what our thinking was, and why we decided to move away from our tried-and-true gated pages to ‘open’ resources for all.

The Genesis of Our Resource Page


It began as I’m sure many do—we wanted to have that little something extra to show our appreciation for folks kind enough to give our newsletter a chance. As it was just finding its legs at the time, it made sense to add an element of exclusivity for people who chose to follow along via our preferred medium.

Truth be told, it worked well then and it certainly works well now. Email is a channel guarded like few others, and word gets around fast if your company is overly aggressive or irresponsible with people’s emails.

Word-of-mouth certainly affected us, but in the best way possible—people couldn’t stop talking about the “beautifully designed eBooks housed Help Scout’s site,” and on customer service no less!
From a strategic standpoint, they helped us establish an early footing for our blog. As we managed to land on great business sites like FastCompany and Copyblogger, we found having an incentive to offer their readers far and away outperformed linking to our homepage and hoping for the best (example below).

Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory
Why Opting Out of Opt-in Resources - Know This Theory

Building a resource page, with a multitude of meticulously designed eBooks, also served to win over those on the fence about subscribing to a new blog. I’ve personally received dozens of emails that have read: “We found you guys through [X resource], and have been reading the blog ever since!”

Long story short, putting some of our best content behind gated pages allowed us to offer a win-win outcome for readers, and it aided in growing our newsletter from a barren wasteland to over 30,000 subscribers in 12 months.

These weren't “bribes,” they were bonuses, and qualifiers that sorted out people who were truly interested in customer service content that was a bit different than what was out there. If you were willing to enter your email to get great customer service information, it was obvious that our blog would be to your liking.

With such glowing praise for the old style of our resource page (we’d recommend it to all budding startups), one has to ask—why the change?

Storm the Gates: Content Open for All

The transition to open resources, once the topic had been up for debate, honestly came down to a few simple arguments.

We felt like we were evolving from a rookie blog to a fairly established online presence. In the beginning, blogging was this crazy experiment for us, and we were nobody. It made sense to focus on building our newsletter with opt-in pages, because without an email list as a foundation, our other marketing options were limited (as it turns out, ranking for tough keywords without an army of loyal readers is kinda difficult!).

There comes a time, however, when you need to stop obsessing over “the metagame.” In competitive games, the metagame is defined as the current environment of best practices for top players. Expert chess players have confessed that one can become quite good at chess just through memorization. Many books on chess for beginners thus curiously read like playbooks.

The problem is that you can never be great at chess (or anything else) by mimicking someone else’s innovation. World-class chess players often criticize this obsession with memorization, because it isn’t about understanding the moves, it’s just about copying them.

Inbound marketing has the same problem—there’s a sea of people copying the current metagame, but those who are winning big are those who are doing what nobody expects.

What got you here won’t always get you there, and it began to dawn on us that it was time to stop following the current trends and start writing our own playbook.

All things considered, we had four important reasons why we believe un-gating our eBooks is one move that will take our business to the next level.

Our priorities have changed. You’ll never hear me utter these words: “Okay, that’s enough newsletter subscribers!” But honestly, we have grown to a point where things like guest posts don’t offer the returns they used to. We needed to turn inward, and start doing things on site that brought our ideas and reach to a whole new level. Making each resource available without a single hoop felt like a step in the right direction, strategically.

It’s on-brand for us. Your brand is what customers think of you, not what you think of you. We value ease of use and our goal with content is to empower every company with strategies to provide better service. Open content feels like "us," and making it easily accessible aligns better with our goals for a universal lift in service quality (a rising tide lifts all boats).

We don't have sales people. No slight to sales teams, but entering your email on our site will never end in a call from me (slick backed hair and a business card in hand). We’re high touch for service, but traditional selling just isn’t a part of our strategy at the moment. Our email is used to deliver content only, so why bother with gates now that we have a large newsletter?

The long term value of reciprocity. That's a subject we tackle a lot on this blog—the practice of giving without an ulterior motive and allowing the goodwill to make its way back to us. We believe open resources will accomplish that. This is an ongoing experiment that I’d love to update you on, but the gut feeling is that the love comes back tenfold when you give and ask for nothing in return (even a simple email sign up).

Last but not least, you'll have to allow me to brag on our designer, Jared McDaniel, here: these new resources are straight up beautiful!

Why show them to newsletter subscribers only? Sure, we do have a small army of 35,000+ people, but one golden rule of content is if 10,000 people love it, 100,000 people will love it. Once the traction is there, it’s just about scaling up to a new audience. Your job simply becomes getting the content in front of them, and open resources make this much easier.

Experts Tips for Create Customer Profiles to Reach Your Target Audience


Experts Tips for Create Customer Profiles to Reach Your Target Audience



Customer profiling may sound like a mug shot lineup of your customers, but the goal of this post is not to imprison your customers. On the other hand, I hope to offer three steps to creating and evaluating the types of people you are looking to sell your products or services to so that you can effectively market to them.

A useful customer profile (aka a persona) is akin to a comprehensive how-to guide on reaching your ideal customers. It gives you a structured look at their goals in trying your product, the features and content that matters most to them, and the messaging that will help them find you in the first place. If your business is currently winging it to create an understanding of your ideal customer or if your current profiling attempts are vague and ineffective, then be sure to read the following post very carefully.

We are going to look at how you can easily create an informative and flexible customer persona template that you can use to paint a clear picture of who exactly is a fit for your product.

How Customer Profiling Can Increase Sales

Trying to sell products and services without understanding your ideal customers is like driving with your eyes closed.

Although utilizing customer feedback is a great place to gather intelligence on your customers, what to do with that information is the next step that often eludes many business owners.

This is where a simple customer profile template comes into play. You can create one this week by following three simple steps.

Step #1 – Create Broad Descriptions of Your Ideal Buyers

The first step you should take in assembling your customer persona is to create broad descriptions of each ideal customer. We’re not talking about demographic data or any sort of personal information, only a high-level view of what they do and what’s important to them in doing business with a company like yours.


The outline of your ideal buyers will include elements about the customer and their attitude towards products in your industry.

Your “About” section should briefly describe where your product fits in with this customer’s search. Ask yourself what about this customer is a telltale sign that your product (or service) will benefit them and that your company values the same things they do.

Here’s a sample from our Growth Graham persona:
 Graham gets what it means to love customers. He’s held on to using email (Gmail, usually) for a long time because he loves how personal it is, but his business is growing fast and he needs something that scales better.

Even this basic portrait of Graham lets us know that he’s utilizing a free product and is at a crossroads; he doesn’t want to give up the personal touch of email, but his team is finding themselves crushed by the current workflow.

That’s a lot of key information, and we’ve only just begun!


When assembling information on your customer’s attitude, you need to look at how your customer typically feels towards the other offerings available in your industry.

For instance, Help Desk Heidi is quite knowledgeable about other available help desks and has most likely tried most of them. She needs very little coaching on the benefits of a help desk. Her concerns will center on the time and cost of switching from her company’s current solution to ours.

Heidi will also be interested in how our reporting tools compare with what she uses today; for the larger-size company Heidi works for, data-driven insights can greatly impact the bottom line.

Now that you’ve created basic identities for your ideal buyers, it’s time to build out these profiles by procuring more detailed information on what these buyers are looking to achieve with your product.


Step #2 – Identify Unique User Goals & Most Important Features

This is where you begin to enhance your customer persona with detailed insights that you can use to better appeal to each customer.

The most important information to identify in step two is the user goals for each customer type and the most important features that may affect their willingness to purchase from you.

Identifying user goals for a customer persona, make sure you come up with crystal-clear answers to the following questions:

  • What language would this customer use to identify their current problem?
  • What is their greatest hesitation in trying out your offering?
  • What is the best way to engage with this customer?

  • When looking at a customer’s current problem, it’s important to pay attention to the language they use to describe the problem. Knowing their thought process will allow you to write the kind of copy that feels like mind-reading.



Experts Tips for Create Customer Profiles to Reach Your Target Audience

The next important user goal to identify is why each of these customer types may be hesitant to try your product.

We know that Help Desk Heidi has concerns that the newest solution she finds will be as bloated as the one her company currently uses. We spend ample time addressing her concerns on our help desk page, which is the ideal place for her to land on our website.

Lastly, how can you best engage these different customer types? Heidi wants in-depth, data-driven customer service resources, whereas Graham cares more about what integrations are available and what features he can expect in the future.


Is this sort of information available on your site?


Step #3 – Locate and List Where Customers Will Find You

How are these ideal customers likely to find you?

If your ideal customers are as varied as Growth Graham and Help Desk Heidi, then the answers to this question differ greatly.

There are certain key elements that you must identify during this process:

  • What websites will this customer frequently visit? What blogs do they read?
  • What are likely search terms they will use?
  • What sort of content appeals to them the most?
  • To answer the first question, take a close look at the other information you’ve gathered on this customer and assemble a list of websites that they frequent regularly.


Professional products are going to be well-received on LinkedIn, entertainment products will find a great home on places like BuzzFeed, and a bootstrapped cologne company can find some interested buyers on AskMen.

As a B2B company, look at the sample metrics below and see if you can guess which two social networks are filled with Help Scout’s ideal customers.


Experts Tips for Create Customer Profiles to Reach Your Target Audience

This sort of information is incredibly useful for planning advertising strategies, crafting successful guest blog posts and collaborating with other businesses that may have a similar audience.

Next, you need to brainstorm what search terms are going to be commonly used by each of your customer personas.

For instance:


Growth Graham is concerned about switching over from email, so we have a page all about email for him to find in a search.

Help Desk Heidi needs to find a new solution since she is already using something to handle support. She’s likely searching for other alternatives and would end up on our help desk comparison page.

Lastly, think about what sort of content will appeal to each customer type, and what sort of content could be useful for support.

To simplify this process, we split content on our blog into two distinct categories: “white bread” content and “wheat bread” content.

White bread is high-level data and advice, meant to appeal to the largest audience possible. Wheat bread is written for a more narrow audience, but the content is packed with healthful content that adds a lot of value.

An example of white bread content would be a large list post that was made for social media shares, such as our article “15 Customer Retention Strategies that Work.” This type of content appeals mostly to Growth Graham because he loves interesting bits of information that he can easily consume and share online.

Conversely, someone like Help Desk Heidi would be more interested in wheat bread content, which covers deeper topics within our industry. Something relevant to her interests would be along the lines of “How to Create Successful Customer Loyalty Programs.”

Identifying which types of content works best for each customer allows you to create meaningful content that converts on your company blog instead of firing off random blog posts that you hope will resonate with your potential customers.

Your Turn
Now I want to hand things over to you!

We’ve taken a detailed look at how to create smarter customer profiles, and I want to hear your thoughts on the following…
  • Would you add any sections to your particular template?
  • What are some ways that you cater to your ideal customers?
  • Start the discussion by leaving a comment below.

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Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared on HelpScout.net.

How to Close Leads for Better Business in Inbound Marketing


How to Close Leads for Better Business in Inbound Marketing


You’re on the right track. You’ve attracted the right visitors and converted the right leads, but now you need to transform those leads into customers. How can you most effectively accomplish this feat? Certain marketing tools can be used at this stage to make sure you’re closing the right leads at the right times.

Closing tools include:


Lead Scoring

You’ve got contacts in your system, but how do you know which ones are ready to speak to your sales team? Using a numerical representation of the sales-readiness of a lead takes the guesswork out of the process.


Email

What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page, or downloads your whitepaper, but still isn’t ready to become a customer? A series of emails focused on useful, relevant content can build trust with a prospect and help them become more ready to buy.


Marketing Automation

This process involves creating email marketing and lead nurturing tailored to the needs and lifecycle stage of each lead. For example, if a visitor downloaded a whitepaper on a certain topic from you in the past, you might want to send that lead a series of related emails. But if they follow you on Twitter and visited certain pages on your website, you might want to change the messaging to reflect those different interests.


Closed

Loop Reporting- How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the best leads? Is your sales team effectively closing those best leads into customers? Integration with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system allows you to analyze just how well your marketing and sales teams are playing together.

How to Convert Visitor of website in Sales Marketing Leads


How to Convert Visitor of website in Sales Marketing Leads

Once you've got visitors to your site, the next step is to convert those visitors into leads by gathering their contact information. At the very least, you’ll need their email addresses. Contact information is the most valuable currency there is to the online marketer. In order for your visitors to offer up that currency willingly, you need to offer them something in return. That “payment” comes in the form of content, like eBooks, whitepapers, or tip sheets -- whatever information would be interesting and valuable to each of your personas.

Calls-to-Action

Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action, like “Download a Whitepaper” or “Attend a Webinar.” If you don’t have enough calls-to-action or your calls-to-action aren’t enticing enough, you won’t generate any leads.

Landing Pages

When a website visitor clicks on a call-to-action, they should then be sent to a landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the prospect submits information that your sales team can use to begin a conversation with them. When website visitors fill out forms on landing pages, they typically become leads.

Forms

In order for visitors to become leads, they must fill out a form and submit their information. Optimize your form to make this step of the conversion process as easy as possible.

Contacts

Keep track of the leads you're converting in a centralized marketing database. Having all your data in one place helps you make sense out of every interaction you’ve had with your contacts -- be it through email, a landing page, social media, or otherwise -- and how to optimize your future interactions to more effectively attract, convert, close, and delight your buyer personas.

How to Attract Websurfer to website for Better Sales ROI


How to Attract Websurfer to website for Better Sales ROI

Blogging

Inbound marketing starts with blogging. A blog is the single best way to attract new visitors to your website. In order to get found by the right prospective customers, you must create educational content that speaks to them and answers their questions.

Social Media

You must share remarkable content and valuable information on the social web, engage with your prospects, and put a human face on your brand. Interact on the networks where your ideal buyers spend their time.

Keywords

Your customers begin their buying process online, usually by using a search engine to find something they have questions about. So you need to make sure you’re appearing prominently when they search. To get there, you need to carefully, analytically pick keywords, optimize your pages, create content, and build links around the terms your ideal buyers are searching for.

Pages 

You must optimize your website to appeal to and speak with your ideal buyers. Transform your website into a beacon of helpful content to entice the right strangers to visit your pages.

Tuesday, 20 May 2014

Tip for Checklist to Achieve B2B Sales Calling Process to Improve Sales ROI


The quality of the information that you know about your prospects affects how well you can seal the deal with them. A definite sales approach along with a solid pre-call research method makes a big difference in winning and losing an opportunity.

As per Kelley Roberson from ‘The Robertson Group’, the thought behind pre-call research isn’t in devoting “hours scouring the Internet or news services”. Instead, it is measured by how cleverly you can correspond with your prospect about the key business issues that they face.

Try asking yourself: 
Tip for Checklist to Achieve B2B Sales Calling Process to Improve Sales ROI

How much time it took for you to gather data about your prospects? How well was your previous sales call? Did you accomplish your set goal? Do you know your next plan of action with the prospect? Do you have an indication that a real sales opportunity exists?

It’s very important that you define and follow a standard procedure for better closure of deals. Using a pre-call and a post-call checklist goes a long way in helping you out when you are stuck up somewhere or don’t know how you have to move ahead to finalizing a deal. This will also help you in evaluating the value of your sales calls.

It is next to impossible for anyone to achieve a successful sale from a single prospect or a contact. Showing up with no future plan of action makes you look amateurish in front of your prospect which is exactly what you don’t want in this day and age of tough competition in the market. A lot of sales opportunities have a range of variables that should be considered and acted upon if they are to attain a booming sales conclusion.

You have a take many strides before achieving this and just like a good chess player; you need to think ahead of the game. 


Given below are a few useful pre-call and post-call checklist items that can help you to boost your sales calling efforts:

Pre-Call Checklist


Here are a few issues which you need to think before calling on a new prospect or an existing customer:

  • What is the objective of my call and who is the correct point of contact with whom I need to speak to in the prospects company?
  • Try to make a profile of the prospect – both in terms of the organization and contact person. This will help you to have an idea of who and what the prospect is and what authority he/she holds
  • Get as much information as possible on the current processes/situation related to your offering
  • Who all are the key decision maker(s) in the company? If there are many; who has the major power in the company?
  • What potentially hindrances exist that can derail the sale?
  • Which juncture am I at in the sales life cycle? Suspecting, Prospecting, Solution Proposal or Negotiation, etc. Knowing this will help to frame your discussions
  • How will I initiate the call with the prospect?
  • What information do I have and what is missing which I need to discover about the prospect?
  • What sort of doubts could emerge out on the call and how will I handle them?
  • What will be my fallback position?


Post-call checklist

  • Here are a few scenarios to think of when analyzing your prospect sales interaction:
  • Did I achieve my set goal?
  • Was there anything which went unfavorable during the call?
  • What additional prospect/business information I have collected?
  • Was I able to find out their business processes? For example, we need to understand a number of things about our prospects - Current Demand/Lead Generation Process which includes Data Sources (In-house, Standard Data, Custom Data, etc.), Campaign Channels, Current Sales Strength, Sales Model, Target Audience, etc. This would help our team to sale better!
  • Did I discover their current challenges & their business objectives of looking at a solution
  • Do I have any indication that this is still a probable sales opportunity?
  • Did I put appropriate qualifiers – BANT, MEDDIC Qualification, etc. based on our sales process
  • Was I able to take the sale to the next stage of our typical sales cycle  
  • What should be my next steps to move the sales opportunity ahead?
  • What are the action items from the call? What types of timelines and who is accountable? Do I need support from other teams like Marketing or Operations? When is my next interaction with the prospect?
  • What will be the next objective of my call?
  • What is the best-fit scenario after he final analysis – is the opportunity worth pursuing


This tracking process will help you to find out your exact position in the sales cycle with that particular prospect; so that you know what key actions need to be taken. It also helps in continuous improvement of your sales calling process, which lets you to perk up your prospecting skills as you analyze what had worked well for a previous prospect and what did not.

If you miss any of these pointers, however, make sure that you take time to revisit them later on in the sales cycle – to improve your productivity. 
Source : Inbound Marketing |  CRM Data |  Event Marketing |  Account Based Marketing |  Marketing intelligence |  Target Audience Profiling |  Sales Intelligence

How to Build an Email List for B2B and B2C


Step 1:   Specific to Business-to-Business (B2B)

- Define your ideal prospects – who are likely to buy your product/services
- Set criteria and filters – company criteria (firmographic – size, LOB, Location, Markets, product/service, financials, company purchase pattern, etc.) and contact criteria (job role, designation, location, authority, etc.)
- Define the data fields you want including Email id and first name (typically emails are addressed by first name)
- Use your in-house team or outsource to a data vendor the task of sourcing new email ids; as well as appending your existing data
- Verify Email id through verifier tool (many data vendors provide verification technology). A few vendors provide verification of email data through tele-calling
- Once the list is built – tag and segment for your various marketing campaigns
- Certain country regulations require ‘opt-in’ for B2B commercial email too. For such countries one needs to deploy a data provider having experience in generating consent based data. 

Step 2 : Specific to Business-to-Consumer (B2C)

- Building individual consumer email list is more difficult as well as governed by stringent regulations
- Best practice is to build ‘Opt-in’ Email list through various channels like ‘point of sales consent’ (requesting permission during an online or offline purchase), Online initiatives like Sweepstakes, Social media activities like surveys, contents, Polls, etc. The basic idea is to incentivize/ reward consumers/prospective buyers for sharing their information as well as inputs.

Narendra Modi start An era of responsibility has begun - IANS


New Delhi: An era of responsibility has begun, said PM-designate Narendra Modi who became emotional Tuesday while delivering a speech after being elected leader of the BJP parliamentary party in Parliament House.

Addressing the party's new MPs and other leaders in the Central Hall of parliament, which he visited for the first time and went down on his knees to touch his forehead to the steps leading to it in reverence to the 'temple of democracy', Modi said the majority given to the BJP in the Lok Sabha was "a vote for hope and faith".

"A government should be one that works for the poor and this is why the new government is committed to the poor of the country and dedicated to the youth of the country as well as our mothers and daughters," said Modi, adding: "The celebrations, excitement will go on but the era of responsibility has begun."

Modi's name was proposed by party patriarch L.K. Advani and seconded by other leaders including Murli Manohar Joshi, Venkaiah Naidu, Nitin Gadkari, Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley.

The BJP-led NDA will laterTuesday meet President Pranab Mukherjee and stake claim to form the government.

The Modi-led BJP won a staggering 282 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha, becoming the first non-Congress party since independence to get a majority on its own. The Congress fell to an embarrassing tally of 44 seats, its lowest ever.

Calling himself a disciplined soldier and vowing to work for the "poorest of the poor", Modi said he would present his government's report card in 2019.

Modi underlined that he should not be seen above the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and credited his party's stunning electoral victory to the BJP's organizational strength. The Gujarat chief minister became emotional when he responded to veteran colleague L.K. Advani's remarks that he had done a favour by leading the BJP in the election.

"Please don't use the word 'kripa' (favour)," Modi said. "A son doesn't do a favour to his mother. A son works with dedication. I treat the BJP as my mother just as India is my mother."

"The party has done me a favour by giving me an opportunity to serve."

Modi said it would be for the first time that the government would be formed under the leadership of a person who was born in independent India.

"We may not have been able to fight for the country's independence but will dedicate our lives to develop this nation and work for the betterment of the people."

BJP president Rajnath Singh described the moment as historic, and said this heralded an era in Indian politics that was dominated by the BJP, with all other parties pushed to a distant second as "others".

"This is an unprecedented, historic moment. Although Janata Party secured a majority in 1977 and ousted the Congress, it was a conglomeration of various parties. The BJP is the first party which has achieved this feat on its own," Singh said and added they have made inroads in states such as Kerala and West Bengal where it had been a non-entity in the past.

Singh said he was "happy and thrilled", and described the day as the fruition of party ideologue Deendayal Upadhyaya's dream of a "strong, self-dependent, and free" India. IANS

Monday, 19 May 2014

How to Clean Large Email Contact Lists for Email Marketing Campaigns


Step 1 : -
- Know current health of data, match with your ideal prospect profile; filter out what you don’t need
- Set priority and segment data : as per your email campaign plans
- Use in-house research team or outsource to a data vendor to verify existing email ids; or source new email data as per your filter criteria (company size – revenue, employee; Industry/ Line of Business, Geographic location,  Prospect profile (job role, seniority, decision making authority, etc.)

Step 2:
- If you want to be doubly sure; use a test domain and test email server to check validity of email addresses before running your actual campaigns. It reduces the problem of hard bounce
- Once data is cleaned-up, monitor on-going email deliverability; remember email data, specifically Business-to-business (B2B) data gets obsolete periodically. So the tracking the state of database and refreshing periodically is required

How to Clean Large Email Contact Lists for Email Marketing Campaigns
How to Clean Large Email Contact Lists for Email Marketing Campaigns



Step 3
- Specific to Business-to-Consumer data; the regulations are stringent in many countries as it deals with personal data. Best way to build b2c email list is through ‘opt-in’, applying various channels like social media, PPC, Point of Sale (POS) marketing, etc.
- For both B2B and B2C; it’s utmost important to maintain a suppression list (list of email ids you don’t wish to contact) as well to honor opt-out/ unsubscribe requests (and maintain a similar list)

How Tackle Competitor with Marketing Plans - Some Market Buddy


How Tackle Competitor with Marketing Plans - Some Market Buddy
Customers are Ignoring You (Photo credit: ronploof)
Some Market buddy who help for " How Tackle Competitor with Marketing Plans " for best ROI on sales and Grow business with Respect of  market condition.
  • Who Are You Writing For?
  • What is Your Customer Avatar?
  • How Can You Make Your Customers Lives Easier by Solving a Common Problem They Face?
  •  How Do You Keep Your Audience Engaged?
  • Are You Providing a Call to Action for Readers? Will They Feel Compelled to Get in Touch?
  • SEW -


Entrepreneur  - 
Normal has left the marketing arena - What do customers love about your business and what one change could make them love it even more? Example: Disney is replacing its popular decade-old FastPass, which allows visitors to skip long lines, with an RFID-encoded MagicBand bracelet that unlocks the resort experience with a flick of the wrist.

  • What aspects of your customers' experience cause annoyance and what one change could eliminate that point of irritation? Example: Starbucks addressed public pressure to reduce trash by rolling out $1 reusable plastic cups, along with the incentive of a 10 percent discount each time the cups get used.  
  •  What attributes or values make customers choose your business over others and what one change could deepen or reward their commitment?Example: Nearly a million small businesses have started using Square card readers, enabling them to complete purchases on the spot while also responding to customers' preference for a charge payment option.


Little-Known Article Marketing Strategy for Attraction Marketing - peterjtonkin

What Is Needed for a Well Written Article

Your visitor need to not be confronted with something that resembles a dissertation, by having a couple of parts that are devoid of words (white space) it’ll aid make your article content appear quicker and simpler to read. Don’t put links for your internet site or any other products inside the primary body of your article, it could be declined.
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