Building Your Powerpoint Presentations for Business Follow This Rule

Building Your Powerpoint Presentations for Business Follow This Rule

   June 18, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Building Your PowerPoint Presentations for Business Follow This Rule

The original goal of a slideshow was to illustrate the presenter’s points with accompanying visuals that hasten buy-in and explain complicated ideas.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the presentation – or as it’s often called today, the ‘PowerPoint’ – became a dumping ground for novellas of information and poor design with the intent of being thorough. That doesn’t work. It’s now time to take back the presentation and make it work for you.

Clarifying the Goals of Presentations

Presentations are meant to show off a brief executive overview of a larger body of documentation. They should introduce your project or subject matter, assess the risks and rewards, and offer a clear conclusion. It’s important to not allow your presentation to suffer from “feature creep” whereby it also includes content that belongs in a handout and the supporting documentation for a given initiative. This may sound like it’s going to be more work, but in reality, it will save you from attendees tuning out your presentation, or reading ahead instead of listening to you. A carefully crafted presentation that leaves your meeting attendees informed and engaged is what your goal should be, not a “kitchen sink.”

Check out My Another Post

New CRM Capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics - InsideView

B2B Marketing Globilization knowledge share with John - Part 3

Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

Inbound Marketing Plans for Understanding Customer Pain Points

Create an Outline for the Most Effective Presentation

It’s very important to do the work upfront by creating a bulletproof outline that guides the content and flow of your presentation. The purpose of this is twofold: first, you want to make sure the outline is a complete listing of the topics you need to cover, and second, it helps you solidify your topics and message in your own mind so you’re not complicating the presentation or repeating yourself.

The Theme

Building Your Powerpoint Presentations for Business Follow This Rule

As you’re going through the outline exercise, a theme should begin to appear to you. Use this to craft a thematic message that will take your attendees though the beginning, middle, and end of the story you will present in the slides. Having a theme helps you simplify your message and make it memorable to your attendees (think about people who might not remember the name of a star or the movie he or she appeared in, but they can tell you what the movie was about). Make your story one that will stick.

The Breakdown

It’s important to be careful to only have one piece of information per slide. This might seem daunting, because on the surface, it might make you think your presentation will be too long if it gets up to 80 slides. But brevity and clarity will help you move through the slides quickly and keep your audience engaged. Consider how it feels to see a slide with 8 point font crammed on it to bolster a point.

Show, Don’t Tell

Look at your outline and think about how you can make your points visual. This doesn’t mean throwing up a graph or a piece of clip art that is tangentially connected to your point. Visual cues work on feelings. Consider actual photography that helps encapsulate the goals of your slides. These are readily available on stock image websites. If you can visually set the stage for your idea, it will translate better to your audience than text.

Use Good Design Principles

Use two to three fonts, separated by the job they will be doing in your presentation: one font for headings, one font for body text, and one font for special cases (like table headings or illustration captions).

Select a color palette, stay within a scheme of two to five colors, and be uniform in the way you apply these colors (for instance, one color is an accent you will use for all outlines, underlines, etc.).

When in doubt, keep your slides clean. Do not use slides with heavily designed backgrounds, because you can’t readily play with the design. It will get too crowded and turn off your audience.

Have a Separate Handout

If you don’t want people reading along with you (or ahead of you in some cases) do not hand out copies of your deck. Your goal should be a presentation deck that doesn’t make sense without its presenter.

You should craft a purpose-built handout instead that outlines the key takeaways that you only give out after a presentation. This will keep the team focused on you and your ideas during your presentation. The goal of your handout should be a shorter, point-form version detailing the concepts you presented to your audience. Make it clear so those who were absent can understand it.

We’ve been acclimatized by a need for speed and endless documentation. And we often think that junky, overly complicated decks are the best way to cover a topic completely and eliminate opposition or questions regarding our presentations. This tactic rarely works. A clean, focused message, well-rehearsed and expressed visually is a key to delivering a presentation that sticks with your audience. A good story well told is your best presentation weapon.

This Article Published On : blog.marketwired

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New CRM Capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics - InsideView

New CRM Capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics - InsideView

   June 17, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 17, 2014) - InsideView, a pioneer in CRM Intelligence, today announced that it is introducing new capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics CRM through its Insights, powered by InsideView feature, (formerly Social Insights). Microsoft Dynamics CRM Insights users are now able to post important news articles and company trigger events into their Yammer feeds within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, enabling work teams to communicate and collaborate more naturally and efficiently about events affecting their prospects and customers, without leaving the solution.

In October of last year, InsideView and Microsoft signed a strategic OEM agreement to include InsideView for Sales™ with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The partnership made InsideView for Sales available to users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online at no additional charge. It was included in all Professional licenses in the U.S. and Canada, and was originally known as Social Insights, powered by InsideView.

"Our partnership with Microsoft Dynamics has helped to evolve CRM beyond sales workflow and management reporting to give sales people the dynamic information they need to be more effective," said Umberto Milletti, CEO of InsideView. "The continued evolution and improvement of the offering reaffirm the strength and success of our partnership as we continue to innovate and provide the essential company and contact information needed by our customers."

Insights is powered by the InsideView CRM Intelligence™ platform and provides Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online users accurate company and contact data, relevant news and social insights, and an extensive network of professional connections that can be leveraged during the marketing and selling process to be relevant, sell smarter and grow faster.

Custom Watchlists and automatic alerts keep sales and marketing professionals abreast of news and events that affect their accounts and give them contextual information so they can make the most of every call or customer visit.

Accurate company and contact data can be automatically synchronized with account, lead and contact profiles in the CRM system, keeping records up to date and accurate as people and companies change.

"The combination of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and InsideView has been incredibly powerful for our users," said Fred Studer, general manager at Microsoft Dynamics. "Expanding Insights to include Yammer posts gives users one more way to get valuable customer insights directly inside their CRM system rather than constantly switching applications."

To maximize the value users get from Insights, InsideView now offers complimentary bi-monthly training sessions. To register for training please visit www.insideview.com/microsoft-insights

About InsideView

InsideView provides CRM Intelligence™ to drive marketing, sales and account management results. We help you find better leads, win more deals and maintain and grow customers. InsideView provides the data, insights, and connections that make every prospect and customer conversation more relevant, valuable and productive. InsideView® is used by more than 450,000 sales and marketing professionals, and in over 19,000 market-leading companies including Adobe, Hub International, Franklin Covey, O'Neal Steel, and SuccessFactors. InsideView is headquartered in San Francisco, California. Follow @InsideView on Twitter or the InsideView Blog. For more information, visit www.insideview.com.

This Articles Published on : InsideView Adds New Capabilities to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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How to Investing in Commodities - Experts

How to Investing in Commodities - Experts

   June 16, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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There are several options now available to the members of the working class to invest their money in. India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world and the volume and varieties of jobs available in the employment sector are evidence of that. Investment has multiple benefits for an investor. One, the money that might have been spent frivolously is safely put away in investments. Two, most investments are good tax deductibles.

In order to ensure one invests in the right place at the right time, he/she approaches an investment banker or reputed stock broker. By enlisting their services, one is assured of good returns, the best MCX tips and minimal or zero losses. If you are one such person, check out the website of one such reputed stock advisory company called Checkmate Trades.

About commodities

While some choose to invest in traditional items such as real estate or fixed deposits, others may choose to invest in intangible items such as shares. These are quite different from the regular trade of shares in a stock market. India is the proud home to one of the largest commodities exchanges in the world, called Multi Commodity Exchange, established in 2003. 

The main categories of commodities are as follows:

1. Energy Commodities – Crude oil, natural gas, heating oil, and ethanol. These commodities are usually hedged.

2. Precious metals – Gold, silver, platinum and palladium. These are sold by the troy ounce in the markets.

3. Utilitarian/Industrial/Base metals – Copper, aluminium, tin, lead and steel. These are usually sold by the metric tonne.

4. Agricultural Commodities – Grains (wheat, oats, barley, flax and rye); fruits (apples and oranges); tobacco; nursery crops and nuts fall under this category.

5. Diamonds

6. Fibre products – Cotton, jute, their variants, etc. fall in this category.

Thus, you will note that this is a wide, complex and interesting market to invest in. When you consult your investment adviser, he/she is sure to include some commodities in your basket.

Benefits of commodities:

As you will have noted, some commodities are always in demand due to the nature of the demand and supply ratio such as energy and agricultural commodities. Others may be seasonal; dependent on political, ecological, social or geographical factors. The reason why you should consider investing them is as follows:

1. They are approved in all parts of the world.

2. Recognized by the major stock exchanges of the world too.

3. Has seen a rapid growth in investments and turnovers in the past decade.

4. One of the easier ways to make a quick profit.

5. Dynamic markets worldwide will never leave you with a dull trading moment a day.

6. Regular tips provided by your adviser help you trade correctly.

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Investing in Commodities

How to trade in them?

Investing in commodities is aided by tips provided by your adviser. They are usually intraday in nature so you can close your deals within a working day. Tips are emailed or provided via text messages usually. The more accurate tips receive, the more reliable you can consider your adviser to be. So be sure to choose a qualified adviser today and receive the best commodity tips in India. Checkmate Trades has been one among them right from the advent of commodities trading in India.

This post already published on Prabhakaronline.com

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B2B Marketing Globilization knowledge share with John - Part 3

B2B Marketing Globilization knowledge share with John - Part 3

   June 16, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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B2B Marketing Globalization knowledge share with John - Part 3

Pricing & Value Research - B2B

There are three ways of increasing profits: sell more, cut our costs, or raise existing prices.  Raising prices, in principle, is very easy indeed - change the price ticket and price list and tell the sales force to raise prices by 5%. Of course, once we increase prices, customers may start to look elsewhere for a better deal.

It is, however, useful to broaden the discussion on price and think about value – the trade-off between the benefits a customer receives from a product or service and the price they are willing to pay for it.

My Previous Post for B2B Marketing to improve ROI

• B2B Marketing Globilization beyond knowledge with John - Part 2

• B2B Marketing Globalization beyond knowledge with Prabhakar - Part 1

• Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

Product Development

No company can survive without product development. As soon as you release a new or improved product or service onto the market, your competitors are ready and waiting to emulate it and improve it for their own purposes. However, product development does not have to be revolutionary. Indeed, most products evolve continuously over time; product development must be regarded as a continuous process, not an occasional event.

The key to successful product development research lies in exploring what the market values. Our job as researchers, marketers and product developers is to convert these issues into a package of benefits that appeals to the market.

Segmentation & Needs

Segmentation is at the very heart of marketing. A segment is a group of individuals or companies with a common attribute that causes them to share similar needs. Marketers tailor their products, services and communications to these common attributes in order to ensure that their offering meets market requirements.

Segmentation is a means of capturing value – customers receive and pay for benefits they value; conversely they neither receive nor pay for benefits they do not value.

Supply Chain & Distribution

As one of the most important parts of the marketing mix, the "place" or route to market of b2b goods and services is vital to understand. Increasingly, products and services are distributed through a complex network of supply chain partners, joint ventures and intermediaries. Accordingly, research can act as a window onto how organisations can better leverage their routes to market for maximum profitability.

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B2B Marketing Globilization beyond knowledge with John - Part 2

B2B Marketing Globilization beyond knowledge with John - Part 2

   June 16, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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B2B Marketing Globilization beyond knowledge with John - Part 2

{{ You seen my previous post B2B Marketing Globalization beyond knowledge with Prabhakar - Part 1 }}

Customer Satisfaction in B2B Marketing for ROI

Most companies lose 45% to 50% of their customers every five years, and winning new customers can be up to 20 times more expensive than retaining existing customers.

Moreover, just a 5% reduction in the customer defection rate can increase profits by 25% to 85%, depending on the industry. Given these claims, it is imperative that customers know what makes buyers and specifiers choose one supplier rather than another.

Employee Satisfaction - Not To SAY

It may be obvious, but high employee satisfaction levels reduce the rate of staff churn.

However, most of us can relay a customer experience when, seemingly "happy" staff, enjoying their place of work, display little interest in serving the needs of the customer or of the organisation. This lies at the centre of the debate about the impact of staff "happiness" at work, and whether indeed, "happiness" is what an organisation should be striving for amongst its workforce.

Global Intelligence - Its Hard

In a highly global business environment, market intelligence is increasingly internationally focused.

As international research specialists, the vast majority of our studies are multi-national in nature. With this expertise and experience comes a great deal of knowledge about how to conduct market research "on the ground" anywhere across the globe.

How To Do Market Research

Lying behind all of our industry sector and research experience is a firm understanding of how to do research.

Often, conducting successful and effective market research studies involves a grasp of two very different demands:

"How do we get this done?" - The practical demands of conducting research in niche and diverse markets.

"What are the best tools for getting the results we need?" - Using innovative and established research techniques to ensure market intelligence delivers real return-on-investment.

This section is devoted to the former: Getting the job done, on time and to the clients' specification.

Report for Market Entry & Assessment

As competition intensifies and markets change more quickly than ever, the need for up-to-the minute research and intelligence has never been greater.

This is particularly so when information is needed to evaluate market size, market opportunities and routes to market. Our market entry and market assessment studies are all geared towards answering some of the most difficult of business questions.

Market Research Methods - How to make successful

Lying behind all of our industry sector and research experience is a firm understanding of how to do research.

Often, conducting successful and effective market research studies involves a grasp of two very different demands:

"How do we get this done?" - The practical demands of conducting research in niche and diverse markets.

"What are the best tools for getting the results we need?" - Using innovative and established research techniques to ensure market intelligence delivers real return-on-investment.

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B2B Marketing Globalization beyond knowledge with Prabhakar - Part 1

B2B Marketing Globalization beyond knowledge with Prabhakar - Part 1

   June 16, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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B2B Marketing Globilization beyond knowledge with Prabhakar - Part 1

What is Acquisition Research - Answer here

When your company is considering making an acquisition, it is essential that you are armed with as much knowledge as possible. Usually, acquisition targets are new to the potential purchaser, making the level of uncertainty even greater.

Acquisition studies form an integral part of the due diligence process. Some of the key questions acquisition research typically answers are:

• What do suppliers, distributors and other market players think about, and know about, the acquisition target?
• How big is the market in which the acquisition target operates, and how will this market develop?
• What are the acquisition target’s routes to market?
• What are the risks that need to be considered?

What is Advertising Research - Answer here

Market research and market intelligence play an important role before, throughout and following the life of a direct mail or advertising campaign.

There is much that market research can do to improve and to measure the effectiveness of promotions.

• When advertising is at the initial development stage, market research can obtain input from the potential target audience through exploratory research.
• As the ad begins to take shape, we capture the reactions of the audience in order to refine the campaign and ensure it is completely ‘on message’.
• And once the advertisement is released, we obtain further feedback as well as measuring awareness rates and effectiveness.

What is Branding in Business to Business - Answer here

Studies have shown that – on average – around 5% of a company's stock value derives directly from the company's image.

Companies with a strong image or reputation attract more customers, retain more customers, and attract better employees. In short, branding is a key means of achieving differentiation. By communicating a clear and distinctive message and delivering against that message, the supplier can increase customer loyalty, sales revenue, prices, and ultimately profitability.

What is Competitor Intelligence in Business to Business (B2B)

Businesses now operate in a world in which information is more readily and publicly available than ever before.

Thanks to the development of the Internet, information on market trends, legislation, customers, suppliers, competitors, distributors, product development and almost every other conceivable topic is available at the click of a mouse.

Despite this trend, it is often the most valuable information which cannot be found online. An example of this is competitor intelligence, regarded by most information users as the most difficult type of information to acquire.

Next Post about  B2B Marketing Globalization beyond knowledge

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Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

   June 11, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Good Content to Increase Engagement for Covert Business

Engagement is the end game for content marketing. Getting people interested in and involved with your product is half the battle in making a sale. When your customers know that they can look to you for stellar insights and advice about the industry, you’ve succeeded. But achieving this goal is not easy. It takes a lot of time investment to create the high-quality content you’ll need.

Below are Some tips on how to use content to increase your audience’s engagement.

• Create Gated Content 
• Run a Live Q&A Based On of a Controversial Piece of Content  
• Include Calls to Action at the Bottom of Content 
• Ask Questions at the End of Blog Posts to Increase Comments
• Be Consistent at Something

Create Gated Content for SE ( Search engine )

“Gated content” refers to information or whole sections of your web site that are only available to people who agree to provide something in return. Gated content creation can be tricky to execute, but when used well, it’s a great way to not only pump up engagement but also to generate leads. For marketing purposes, that “something” is usually contact information, such as:

1. Geographic location
2. Name
3. Email address
4. Phone number
5. Company information

Gated content may also require payment for information, such as whitepapers or exclusive video, but generally speaking it’s just another rung on the sales funnel.

Not every company is comfortable with using gated content. Some are wary of alienating potential customers who are not ready to establish contact, or sending them to competitors who do not have gates. It’s best to reserve gated content for premium information; be sure to leave product descriptions and blogs free to navigate for any visitor.

For instance, a site such as Gate to Garage, which sells a wide variety of furnishings and décor, would not benefit from walling off its product listings to visitors. But it might consider requiring potential customers to submit an email address for future contact if they want to see a how-to video or white paper.

One thing to keep in mind, don’t gate all your content. Leave blog posts and info graphics as free material for everyone. That free material will drive traffic to your site and then special gated content can be used to increase engagement and build an email database.

Run a Live Q&A Based On of a Controversial Piece of Content  

Live chats have a colorful history on the internet. They’re one of the earliest ways that companies engaged with their customers, dating back well before the age of social media. Though they’ve evolved over time, they still remain a great way for businesses to gauge opinions about not only their products but also their industry. The smartest way to draw people in is to play off a piece of content that’s gotten a lot of attention.

This type of content will inspire strong opinions on both sides, which will draw people into the conversation. Be sure to promote the Q&A beforehand, but don’t just rely on live questions to fuel the discussion. Solicit questions and topics beforehand via social media, and keep things open-ended so that you can engage as many people on as many aspects of the issue as possible. If you’re doing the chat on Twitter or Facebook, look over your analytic beforehand to decide what the best time is to hold the conversation.

Last year Paper.li, an online content curation service, sponsored a live Twitter chat to promote awareness for bloggers, who make up the hottest area of its community. The success of the Q&A surprised even the company’s community manager, who personally heard from more than 200 people after the chat via email and on Twitter asking for help and offering their input. The chat also reached people in other countries, a bonus Paper.li hadn't expected.

Include Calls to Action at the Bottom of Content 

Sometimes when you become engaged in a great piece of content, whether it’s a whitepaper, a blog post or a podcast, you’ll forget how you stumbled upon it and your true purpose for looking into the subject. Don’t let that happen to your potential customers. While you don’t need to hammer them over and over with sales pitches, you do need to gently remind them as they reach the end of their time with your content that there’s something they need to do. That may mean registering for something, buying a product or filling out a form.

Whatever it is, make sure your call to action is clear and concise so that you don’t lose your fish from the hook. On the blog for Writers Relief, an author submission service, posts end with reminders that the site can help make writing dreams come true and a link to their submission page, a succinct but effective call to action.

Ask Questions at the End of Blog Posts to Increase Comments

This sounds like an obvious way to increase engagement, but a surprising number of sites do not try to interact with their readers this way. They’re missing out on a huge opportunity. Once you've finished discussing the topic at hand, ask your readers what they think. Many blogs put a daily question at the bottom of a blog post in bold, training readers to look for these queries and answer them, thereby increasing engagement.

Don’t just get people to comment, though. Interact with them in the comments section and see how you can further engage them. For instance, the Gawker network of web sites have perfected this approach. Writers interact with readers, exchanging ideas — okay, and often insults — in such a way that the comments sections themselves have become must-reads.

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How to get Website Conversion Or ROI with winning landing page for Visitors

How to get Website Conversion Or ROI with winning landing page for Visitors

   June 11, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Capturing and maintaining website visitors’ attention can often feel like herding cats. Visitors will wander around on your site, clicking here and there, perhaps converting into customers, and perhaps – just as easily – going elsewhere to find what they’re looking for. Your job as a web designer is not to celebrate your SEO successes, for all you’ve done is brought potential customers to your site. The reality is that SEO is not even half the battle – the real work begins once a visitor has landed on your site and needs to be convinced to do business with you. To accomplish this difficult goal, you need to keep your visitors focused on your site and lead them down a simple path toward the ultimate goal of conversion.

This article presents ideas and examples from Kevin Gao is the founder and CEO of Comm100 that will help you capture and maintain your customers’ attention while they familiarize themselves with your products and services. We will highlight 7 specific website design concepts and offer concrete suggestions on how you can keep your visitors focused on your website.

1. Get clear on your goal. This is perhaps the most important factor in capturing and maintaining your visitors’ focus. You must at all times understand and have clarity of the goal of the overall website, as well as each individual page.

Be warned that your can easily lose sight of your goal, because you’ll often be tempted to implement fancy animation or eye-catching graphics simply for the aesthetic beauty and nothing else. This is not to say that you shouldn’t implement crafty artwork or fancy animations or cool videos; you simply need to review such additions in light of your website’s true goal.

You should break down your website goal into the following three sub-categories:

Who is your target audience? Understand the type of customers you’re targeting. Are they engineers? Accountants? Once you’re clear on this demographic, you’ll have an easier time structuring your content and graphics. 

Engineers, for example, appreciate endless lists of features, whereas car enthusiasts want lots of cool pictures of sports cars.

What is the desired action? This question breaks down in different ways, depending on the specific page being designed. For example, one page may consider the subscription to an email newsletter to be a conversion, whereas another page considers a click on a shopping cart button a conversion. In all cases, you must identify a desired action on each page.

What’s in it for the viewer? Never lose sight of the value proposition to your customer. Each page must provide some sort of take-away for the customer, whether it’s an informative list of suggestions or an instructional video that helps customers understand your products or services.

2. Don’t make your visitors search for your message

This is perhaps the #1 problem with most business websites. How often have you landed on a website only to search endlessly for information on what the company does? If you spend more than 10 seconds searching for the answer, consider yourself in the minority. Most people are not so patient. Your website should instantly convey what it does and make the journey for your visitor simple and fast.

Take a look at the website for F5 Networks below. Is it immediately obvious what they do? The only hint you get is “Applications Without Constraints.” Though this is a compelling statement, it could be argued that visitors won’t “get it” and leave. Imagine wandering into a store, and the first thing a salesman says is, “Applications without constraints.” Immediately you know he’s not going to be of much use, and you’re probably going to turn and leave.

3. Walk your visitors through the website. 

Though it may seem silly, big buttons and an obvious path through your site will yield success. Keep in mind that your visitors simply want a solution to their problem, and if they believe you have what they need, they will follow you. Think about it: isn’t it easier to follow a leader than to forge your own path through the jungle?

As a good example, scan your eyes down the QuickBooks landing page as shown below. You’ll quickly see a placard that says, “Run your entire business with QuickBooks. Track your sales and expenses, get paid faster, and even run payroll with it.” This message gets right to the point, and as your eyes scan down from that message, you see a big button for “Shop and Save Now.” 

This button leads you directly to a price sheet, where you can immediately compare features and the associated prices. But if you want to learn more before purchasing anything, you simply click on the “Learn More” link. You are then taken to a page that breaks out the main features of QuickBooks. And on that page, there is yet another “Learn More” link, which takes you onto the next step in your journey to eventual conversion.

4. Keep It Simple (KIS). 

Keep in mind that visitors don’t come to your site because they enjoy clicking on links. They are looking for information, and your site design – clever as you may think it is – can only get in the way. Be conscious of the clutter on the screen. How many messages are you sending to your visitors? Does each of these messages reflect your website’s goal? Also, understand the simple beauty of white space. Important information will not stand out if flashing banners, clashing colors and inconsistent font styles surrounds it. Surround your most important messages in a “quiet” buffer zone of white space. It will reduce the cognitive load on the human brain and help it focus on the message.

The example below may be a bit extreme, but notice how this clever landing page for cameron.io gets you to focus on a message that’s minimal in size but significant in magnitude.

5. Use concise writing. Get to the point. Quickly.

Keep in mind that website writing is different than print writing. When people want to read a book, they’ll make time for it in their schedule. But they rarely come to your site with the same attitude. They will refuse to read long passages of promotional writing. If you can’t keep your writing short, then break it up with images and highlight the important text with bold letters. Break out multiple concepts into bulleted lists.

Additionally, avoid using company-specific language except where absolutely necessary. Use standard terms to refer to standard concepts. For example, use a button labeled “Learn More” when referring to more text, rather than something like, “Explore.” Use the standard buttons for RSS feeds, Facebook Likes, Twitter, and so on.

Notice how Sugar CRM breaks up different features into small bite-size chunks, each with its own graphic. They use the “Learn More” links to provide more information about each specific feature, so if you want to read more, you can. But if you stay on this page, you can quickly scan the features without spending a lot of time digging through text.

6. Communicate with a clean visual design. 

Suzanne Martin compiled an excellent write-up on this concept. In general, you need to be aware of how the human brain visually perceives information. The main concepts are visual organization and standardization. The graphic below is a sample taken from the Martin’s page. It clearly demonstrates how a chaotic layout can adversely affect visual communication.

7. Maintain an objective perspective.

 It is well understood that creative people lose their objectivity when working on the same project day after day. Web designers in particular can get so enamored with their code that they lose sight of the usability factor. It is therefore imperative that the website get evaluated by stakeholders on a periodic basis, so that a set of objective eyes can provide guidance.

Objective reviewers must not only look at the design with a fresh set of eyes, but they must keep the overall goals in mind as they review each page. This can be difficult, especially when the reviewer has a sense of pride in the company. For example, the reviewer might say something like, “Let’s feature our industry awards on the front page where everyone can see them!” This desire is most likely counterproductive, for the reviewer has forgotten that the web page is for the potential customer, not for employees who are enamored with the company.

in the end, Capturing traffic on your website is indeed a good SEO challenge, but captured traffic does not equal conversion. SEO is only the beginning of the long battle for customer business. To keep potential customers on the site, you need to structure the site to maintain the visitor’s focus and interest. This often involves leading her through a simple path toward conversion. This article highlights some of the challenges in sustaining that interest level and offers specific suggestions to convert visitors into long-term customers.

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Inbound Marketing Plans for Understanding Customer Pain Points

Inbound Marketing Plans for Understanding Customer Pain Points

   June 11, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Part 1: Product Grouping

Part 2: Upselling and Cross-Selling

Part 3: Maintaining Visitors’ Attention

Part 4: Human Element

One of the sad truths of life is that nothing motivates a person like pain. In this context, we’re not talking about physical pain; we’re talking about the emotional pain we experience every day. This pain can be related to time pressures, social issues, work-related problems or family concerns. We naturally gravitate toward products or services that promise us a resolution from that pain. For example, if your daughter is failing at math, you get a math tutor. If you’re struggling with scheduling resources at work, you purchase and install project-tracking software. If you’re too busy to mow the lawn this weekend, there’s a kid down the street who would happily do it for ten bucks. In every case, you sense a problem – a pain point – and automatically search for a solution.

An effective salesperson understands customers’ pain points and positions products to address those points. Website designers should incorporate some of the same thinking in their designs. More specifically, as a web designer, you need to position your solution and product pages in a way that shows you understand your viewer’s pain points. This article focuses on how you can understand and use your knowledge about customer pain points while designing web pages.

Identifying the Pain Points

A well-trained salesperson understands how to find pain points. He accomplishes this task by briefly introducing himself and his company, providing a few anecdotes on how his products have helped other customers, and then – most importantly – he pivots the conversation toward the customer and asks open-ended questions. If the salesperson has done his job well enough, the customer comfortably divulges the pain points and asks the salesperson for help. The salesperson then merely needs to show how his products directly address those points.

Unfortunately, this is considerably more difficult for you, because your interaction with potential customers is limited to online activities. Your website is generally a one-way communication medium, so it is impossible to have these types of two-way conversations. Your search for customer pain points therefore becomes an online information search. Fortunately, there are several ways to acquire this information.

1. Launch a Blog Patrol – Identify a list of blogs related to your products or industry. Google has a blog search engine that can assist you. Create your own top-ten list of blogs and peruse them several times each week. This is an excellent way to find out what your potential customers are saying about their pain points.

Let’s say, for example, you sell camping gear. You search on Google’s blog site and immediately find a site for the American Camp Association. The first article you see is entitled, “Summer Camp: The Social Supplement for Modern Society.” Upon analyzing this blog post, you immediately see a pain point: Kids are not spending enough time outdoors, and their lack of exercise is jeopardizing their health and education. That’s a pain point! So what can you do with this information? Analyze your own product line in light of this pain point and see how it might mitigate the pain. Prepare a story around the pain point and create blog articles of your own.

American Camp Association

Tip: You can help drive business to your site by leaving comments on your target blogs. Be very careful, however, because overt advertising through blog comments can quickly get you banned from commenting on blogs. Learn the proper etiquette for blogging before attempting to blog and / or leave comments on existing blogs.

2. Appeal Directly Online – Similar to patrolling blogs, you can peruse through online organizations and forums. LinkedIn, for example, hosts hundreds of online groups, where each group consists of hundreds – if not thousands – of like-minded professionals dealing with similar problems. The barrier to entry is fairly low, and you can either silently monitor these groups or post pain-point-seeking questions of your own. For example, you can join the Business Analytics group and ask an open-ended question like, “Has anyone experienced issues trying to analyze customer surveys?” Over the course of a few days, you’ll get many responses, each related to pain points.

Tip: You can start up your own online forum, hosted directly from your company, via a third party forum provider like Comm100. A hosted forum allows you to communicate directly with your customers and identify their pain points.

3. Analyze Your Competitors – Is your competition causing pain? Look for online complaints regarding your competition. Make a list of the top 10 complaints. Inevitably, price will be one of them, but price is always going to be a complaint, so don’t be so quick to put it on your list. Instead, look deeper for fundamental issues like customer service, quality and reliability issues. Look for shortcomings in product features, like limited battery life or a confusing user interface. Online, people are especially honest – brutally honest – and you can use that honesty to get an idea of your competitor’s pain points, and then use that information to help position your own product or service.

Tip: Don’t forget to look for complaints about your own products or services as well! You can bet that your competitors are analyzing complaints against your company, and they will try to use those pain points to position their product or service against yours.

4. Talk to Your Salespeople – This may sound obvious, but many companies are so vertically organized that the web designer doesn't even know any of the salespeople. If you have salespeople in your company, make a point to engage with the best ones at least once every quarter. Salespeople are full of front-line information, and after a short interview, you should have a sizable list of customer pain points.

Tip: If your company is big enough to host annual sales meetings, get yourself scheduled to attend. At the meeting, you can run a focus group with the best performing salespeople, where over the course of an hour, the group compiles a top-ten list of customer pain points.

Now What? ---- Now that you've identified the pain points that your products or services will address, summarize them into short sentences. It is very important to compile this summary, because these sentences will form the basis of your website content that speaks directly to the pain points.

For example, one issue with backup power supplies is that they fail silently. In other words, you plug your computer into the backup supply, and you plug the backup supply into the wall power outlet. As long as the power company supplies power, you’ll never know the difference. The backup supply is supposed to kick in and keep your computers running when the power company fails. There is a critical pain point in this solution, however. The power company may be reliable for a year or more, and all the while, the batteries in your backup supply are slowly fading and wearing out, even though they’re not being used. But you won’t know the batteries are failing until that inevitable moment when the power company fails. At that time, your batteries also fail, and your computer will crash. Had you known the batteries were failing beforehand, you would have replaced them and avoided the pain.

So if you were selling a superior backup power supply, how would you use this pain point to position your product?

You can probably make the summary even shorter, but you get the point. You’ve crystalized the pain point and shown – in one sentence – how your products make a difference. This sentence immediately resonates with your online visitors and lets them know that you “get it” and understand the pain point.

These one-sentence summaries constitute the basis for all your solution pages on your website. They should be featured prominently on each solution page, at the top, where people will see them right away and immediately identify with your solution.

See the Taradata solution page for Data-Driven Marketing below. What are the pain points? Loyalty and profitability. The one-sentence summary on this page is deceptively short, but it directly addresses two pain points and sets the tone for the rest of the page.

in the Ends, People are naturally pain-averse and will therefore look for ways to avoid pain. Companies must understand their customers’ pain points and look for ways to address the pain through their products. Locating and understanding customers’ pain points was traditionally performed during face-to-face sales meetings; however, this is not possible online. This article suggests some ways to find customer pain points and briefly discusses how you can use this knowledge to enhance your website.

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What is derivative trading - Simplus Information Services

What is derivative trading - Simplus Information Services

   June 11, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Stock market and speculation are almost synonymous. Many believe that stock market trading is speculation. Some even call it a casino. Stock market prices today are a reflection of tomorrow’s prospects. They rise and fall in tandem with profits of businesses. Indians love to speculate.

The market was introduced to modern ‘derivatives’ trading recently. Stock futures and options or derivatives are used extensively in India for speculation.

Here are five things you need to know about derivatives trading:

1) What are they: A derivative is a security that derives value from an underlying asset. An underlying asset could be an equity share, debt instrument, a currency or a commodity. Derivatives deal with an agreement to trade at a future date or at a certain price.

2) Types of derivatives: There are two types of derivative instruments. Futures and options. Futures allow you to bet on future trends in prices of an underlying instrument at a fraction of the cost of that instrument. Options give you an option to buy or sell the stock, commodity or a debt instrument at a target price. If the price of a stock is Rs 100, you expect it to go up to Rs 110 in a month’s time, then you buy a contract at Rs 100 today and agree to sell it at Rs 110 at the end of the month.

3) Why derivatives: There are many advantages of derivatives trading. Most use it to hedge their losses or safeguarding their investments from fluctuations in the market. So if you have bought Reliance Industries shares and suddenly due to an external event not related to Reliance Industries its share price is likely to fall, you could use derivatives to sell Reliance stock futures and hedge your loss in the equity market. Importers and exporters often hedge their currency risk.

So when they import goods, they pay in foreign exchange. If the rupee value falls against the US dollar, imported goods get expensive. Hedging in currency derivatives helps in cutting these losses. Traders also use the secondary market for arbitrage – buy cheap in one market and sell at a higher price in another or vice versa. There is always a price difference in markets.

4) How do I start: Derivative instruments are available with registered trading members of stock exchanges like brokerage firms. You will have to fill the Know Your Client (KYC) form if you are a first time investor, along with other forms for purchasing the contract you wish. You are allotted a client identification number, after which you must deposit cash to initiate trade.

5) How it works: Trading is a simple ‘buy and sell’ process. 

The only difference is that you will not have to pay the entire sum, but just a margin. For example, if you are buying 100 contracts of Nifty 50 October futures with a value of 5000, and if the margin is 5%, then you don’t have to pay Rs 5,00,000, but just Rs 25,000. All such transactions are settled at the end of every trading day. Investors are not required to hold any stock of the underlying asset for trading in the derivatives market.

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How to Get the Results You Want Using Email Marketing Lists

How to Get the Results You Want Using Email Marketing Lists

   June 09, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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How to Get the Results You Want Using Email Marketing Lists

One really great thing about using Email Marketing Lists is that you are given the ability to track the results of your marketing campaign. You’ll be able to see how many people actually opened the email, how many people actually used any of the links included in the email, and possibly even which links they chose to use. Now you can take these results and use them when it comes time to create your next Email Marketing List.

Email Marketing Lists vs. SEO

According to the Email Marketing Census of 2012, a little more than 70% of business owners that currently use Email Marketing Lists state that their email marketing campaigns have so far proven to be highly effective. In fact, the high majority of these business owners would like to increase their spending on this marketing method for their next year of business. The fact that organic SEO scored a little higher than Email Marketing Lists doesn’t take away from the many benefits that an Email marketing List can, and does, provide for their business.

Why Marketing Lists Work

Marketing Lists work because this type of marketing method is one that speaks directly to those who are interested in any particular business niche. Marketing Lists allow a business owner to directly target their specific audience because the List is derived from lots of intensive and detailed research. By sending out marketing emails to those who are known to have an interest in a specific niche, business owners are not only driving their sales and getting more leads, they are also building relationships with both their current and potential customers. Relationship building is critical when it comes to wanting your customers to trust and be loyal to you, and you only. Find out more by contacting us today!

Tips for Building Email Marketing Lists

Instead of using the typical message, “Join our Email List”, try to get a little more creative and add some extra information that will really grab the attention of prospective customers. For example, “Subscribe today so you can stay current with any and all information about (your niche here)”, or “When you join our email list, you’re going to receive lots of great tips and tricks, as well as valuable coupons!”.

Include a place for people to sign up for your email list in your emails. Offer them some kind of benefit in order to gently persuade them to join, such as a free gift with their first purchase or being able to get all the latest news by simply signing up for your email list today.

Remember, asking permission is crucial! You don’t want people complaining to you that they never wanted to receive your emails in the first place.

Ask everyone you come into contact with if they would like to join your email list. Yes, everyone!

Growing Your Marketing Lists

Even though you may already have a few extensive Marketing Lists, eventually you’re going to need to think about making your List grow so you can get more business.

The following are 5 things you can do that can help your Marketing List continue to grow so you can continually market to new people.

1. Social Media – Join a few Social Media Networking websites so you can add an email subscription form that makes it really easy for people to sign up.

2. Blogging – Doesn’t it seem that everything comes back to blogging? Blogging keeps your website rankings up, which means more people are going to find your website, which means more people are going to see and hopefully sign up to receive your emails using your email subscription form.

3. Offer Incentives – Offer new buyers a discount or free item w/purchase. They will be more apt to buy your product or service, and accordingly are much more likely to sign up for more information using your email subscription form.

4. Mobile Apps – Use one of the many email marketing apps so you can easily enter someone’s information while you’re out and about.

5. Tradeshows – Attend a tradeshow with a goal of collecting email subscriptions. Simply place a large glass bowl on your table to hold all the new leads.

Read My post : Email Marketing Made Simple with Important Tip with Prabhakar

Although these are all completely legitimate ways for you to grow your Marketing Lists, it’s going to take a good bit of time to gather and collect the information you need. When you purchase one of our Marketing Lists, you are given immediate access to hundreds and even thousands of prospective customers so you can start marketing your products immediately. Call us today for more information.

We Specialize in Offering Some of the Best Marketing Lists Available

Business ListsEmail ListsInvestor ListsMailing ListsExecutive ListsDiscount ListsNon-USA ListsCollege Student Lists

When it comes to creating Marketing Lists, remember that quality exceeds quantity.

When it comes to getting Marketing Leads for your business, every single one of them counts. Now, in order to find the right and oh-so-crucial Marketing Leads (from our extensive selection of Marketing Leads Lists, of course) you’re going to first have to know who your audience is. Firstly, so you can choose the right Marketing Leads List and secondly so you can create a marketing plan that’s geared directly to your specific audience. You’re also going to need to know anything and everything there is to know about your particular niche so these potentially new customers will see you as a professional who really knows what they’re talking about so they will trust you and accordingly will be much more apt to do business with you.

Once a Marketing Lead is found, the work is not over. Now this lead needs to be converted into a sale with a goal of turning them into a repeat customer.

Did You Know…

When email marketing is used, the average ROI for every $1 spent is $43.52. Wow!

Email marketing shows no signs of slowing down and in fact is said to grow into a 2 billion dollar industry by 2014.

42% of consumers like receiving promotional emails

More than half of the consumers who receive a marketing email go on to make a purchase because of that email.

Social Media is more and more proving to be a great platform for gathering more leads.

Customer Profiles/How to Find the Ideal Customer

First of all, you’re going to have to know who your audience is. If you don’t, you’ll be wasting your time as not everyone is going to want to buy what you have to sell. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is. In order to find the ideal customer, you have to have an idea of what your customer profiles look like. Otherwise, you’re marketing words will simply be falling on deaf ears.

So what it is exactly that you need to know so you can find your ideal customers? Collecting the following information is a good place to start:

Lifestyle/Hobbies

• Age
• Race/Ethnicity
• Employment Status/Income Level
• Gender
• Location
• Shopping Behavior/Habits

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Email Marketing Made Simple with Important Tip with Prabhakar

Email Marketing Made Simple with Important Tip with Prabhakar

   June 09, 2014       prabhakardalvi

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Using Email Marketing Lists to market your business is not only highly efficient, it can help save you lots of money. Email Marketing Lists have the potential to reach hundreds or even thousands of potential customers very quickly. You get lots of flexibility when it comes to creating your email message by formatting it in any way you wish so that your email can relay your message exactly how you want it to come across.

One of the reasons why using an Email Marketing List work so well is because using a targeted List allows any business to market directly to its target audience. Your time is not being wasted on marketing to people who have no interest in your particular service and/or product because you already know that the people who are on the receiving end of your marketing emails are people that actually have a real interest in what you have to offer them.

Email Marketing Lists work because the Lists are created using data that was derived from lots of intensive research, which helps in the overall construction of the message being sent. This research can be used to formulate the entire email, which the email recipients will greatly appreciate because they are your target audience and therefore look forward to receiving your well-thought-out and well-constructed emails.

The bottom line comes down to the fact that Email Marketing is a highly efficient way of marketing your business that will save you money. And who doesn’t want that? Be sure to contact us today with any questions you may have.

If you are ready to either be or remain competitive in a marketplace where the competition can be quite fierce then you’re definitely in the right place. We are here to help you in your marketing efforts by providing a large number of helpful Lists. Whether you’re trying to target businesses or consumers we are able to offer you some of the absolute best Email Marketing Lists available on the market today.

We’re so glad you decided to visit our website today! If you have any questions we would love to hear from you! Simply contact us by using our simple form to request a free quote or call our toll-free number.

Are You a New Business That Needs Help Generating Leads?

Do you have a great business idea? Fantastic! Do you have a List of people who you’re going to market your business to once it’s up and running? Uh oh. We know that lots of businesses will start out with a look of promise only to fall flat because they weren’t able to get the word out to their target audience about who they are and what they have to offer. That’s why we made this website. We knew that both new start-ups as well as businesses that have been around for a while we’re going to need help when it came to generating the leads they need to either stay in business or grow their business. All you have to do is select one of the many Lists we have available today. Contact us now with any questions you may have.

Email Marketing Lists Are:

• Cost-Effective
• Highly Efficient
• Simple to Create
• Instant Feedback Possibility

My Next Article on : How to Get the Results You Want Using Email Marketing Lists

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