Do you struggle with objections or sometimes find that objections you never expected or planned for pop up and cost you sales?
Well you’ll be glad to hear that there is an effective way to quickly become skilled at handling “any” objection whether you’ve heard it before or not.
So how’s it done?
Simple, all you need to do is “reframe” the objection in your mind into a question from the prospect using this simple phrase “show me why…”
For example a prospect says “It’s too expensive”. Simply rephrase the objection in your mind so you hear it as a request i.e.
“show me why I should spend that much”, or
“show me why it’s worth me spending that much”.
Now, instead of an objection you have “reframed” it into a request for you to prove your case, which you can do by listing the benefits that justify the price.
Another example: “We already have a supplier”. Reframed in your mind into
“show me why I should switch over to you?”
And now prove your case by listing all the benefits of you over their current supplier.
What are your worst objections?
So what about the ones that seem to stop you in your tracks?
For instance you take two weeks to deliver and the prospect says they want it by Monday. Reframe this to “show me why I would be better off waiting for two weeks for your product rather then getting one from somewhere else now”. At least now, if this is a “want it by Monday” and not a “need it by Monday” you have a shot at stacking the benefits of waiting in your favour.
Play around with this, it works for any objection and once mastered makes your objection handling smooth and flowing and so much more effective.
Paul Foley runs Noodle Coaching.
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This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
Over the past seven weeks I’ve covered six steps that can transform your search marketing campaigns into lead- and revenue-generating machines. We’ve come to the final step:
Step 7: Do it all over (and over) again!
SEO and PPC are ongoing endeavors. The more you put in, the more you get back. To see continuous improvement, you need to commit to continuous effort in the areas of:
- Keyword Discovery and Negative Keyword Discovery
- Keyword Grouping and Organization
- Keyword and Keyword Group Analysis
- Content Production, Content Optimization and Prioritization
- Search Campaign Refinement
It sounds overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. With one robust platform that handles all these keyword management tasks, you can create large-scale, high-performance search marketing campaigns without sacrificing productivity or blowing away your advertising budget.
If you want to start taking steps to build a better search campaign, contact us today to set up a live demonstration with one of our customer service representatives, or start a free, 14-day trial to see what WordStream Keyword Management can do for your business.
]]>This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
He is outlining seven highly effective keyword research tactics that will help you generate more leads and sales from your search marketing campaigns.
Step 6: Clean up your Research with negative Keyword Discovery
Last week’s email covered the importance of prioritizing workflow based on your top-performing keywords. Now we need to talk about the keywords that aren’t working in your campaigns.
Focusing on top keywords is important, but it’s just as crucial to your long-term success to identify keywords that are hampering performance and filter them from your research.
This will save you time and money on both the paid and organic fronts. For PPC, negative keywords reduce wasteful spending on irrelevant impressions that drag down CTR and irrelevant clicks that don’t convert, ultimately boosting your Quality Scores. Eliminating those same keywords from your SEO research prevents time and money being wasted on optimizing content for the wrong audience.
So how do you go about finding negative keyword candidates?
- You can start by brainstorming. For example, if your business is cabinetry, your negative keywords should include “cabinet members” and other queries that reference the U.S. Cabinet. In addition, you can find negative keyword lists online for your industry.
- You can look at your search query reports and identify negatives on a case-by-case basis. This will help you catch negative keywords that wouldn’t have otherwise occurred to you.
- You can set up rules, or filters, that actually learn from your behavior and eliminate irrelevant PPC or SEO keywords from your research before you use them in your campaigns.
WordStream’s smart negative keyword tools do just that—it’s faster and easier than identifying negatives keyword by keyword, so you can start saving money faster. To try out our keyword tools with your own data, sign up for a free trial of WordStream Keyword Management for PPC or SEO.
Next week you’ll receive the last email in our “7 Steps to a Better Search Campaign” series. There’s just one more element that will bring everything we’ve talked about together for high-performance search marketing.
]]>This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
He is outlining seven highly effective keyword research tactics that will help you generate more leads and sales from your search marketing campaigns.
Step 5: Focus on your top Keyword Performers
Web analytics are a window into your search campaigns’ performance, and integrating analytics with your keyword workbench enables you to act on that valuable data, as we discussed last week. The next step, of course, is to actually start taking action!
There’s no end to the number of activities you can carry out in search engine marketing. The trick to finding continued success lies in being able to determine where best to spend your time (and your money). The most powerful way to prioritize workflow? Use analytics to ensure you can closely follow your best performing keywords and recognize opportunities you’re not currently capitalizing on.
There are a couple of ways to approach this:
- Focus on the groups of keywords that drive the most traffic and spend. Remember, your top-performing keyword group may not be the same as the single top traffic-driving keyword. Target your ad campaigns and organic content at these groups first.
- Identify gaps in your PPC and SEO campaigns by analyzing them side by side and against potential traffic gains. With keyword source analysis, you can easily compare the performance of keywords from paid and organic search to each other and to traffic estimates from a keyword suggestion tool.
A great way to start identifying your most important keywords is to take advantage of a free trial of WordStream’s PPC Management Software or WordStream’s SEO Tools depending on your search focus.
All this positivity is good, but for fully optimized search campaigns, we need to spend some time on negatives too. Next time I’ll talk about how identifying negative keywords can reduce wasteful PPC spending and even save you time and money on the SEO side.
]]>This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
He will be outlining seven highly effective keyword research tactics that will help you generate more leads and sales from your search marketing campaigns.
Step 3: Build a smart keyword infrastructure.
A segmented list is smarter than a disorganized mess of keywords. Even smarter than that is a flexible, dynamic keyword structure that makes it easy to expand and improve on your list. This means taking your keyword list and transforming it into a keyword database.
A keyword database has a number of advantages over a keyword list:
- It’s private and proprietary, unlike lists generated by third-party tools.
- It’s easier to organize and manage than a static spreadsheet, supporting smart relationships among data sets.
- It’s easier to update, encouraging expansion over time so your campaigns can grow.
- It’s actionable, so you don’t just analyze your keywords, you take steps to get better results.
- It’s collaborative, so multiple members of your team can work simultaneously toward common goals.
We offer three great tools to help you create such an infrastructure:
- Our keyword management white paper (as mentioned in the first email in this series) provides you with 10 effective steps for building a better keyword list.
- If you’re trying to create a strong keyword foundation for paid search marketing, you’ll want to look at WordStream Keyword Management for PPC.
- If you’re interested in getting better SEO results, you can take WordStream Keyword Management for SEO for a spin for free.
Once you have a strong keyword infrastructure in place, you need to start monitoring your campaign performance.
Next week we’ll talk about tracking your search marketing success to the keyword level, and how it can help your bottom line.
]]>This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
He will be outlining seven highly effective keyword research tactics that will help you generate more leads and sales from your search marketing campaigns.
Last week we covered the importance of keyword grouping for more efficient, organized keyword research. We’re getting closer to optimized search campaigns! What’s next?
Last week we talked about the importance of starting broad with your keyword research. That’s a tactic which allows you to evaluate a number of opportunities and determine which keywords truly have the potential to drive profit on your website.
Step 2: Refining Your Keyword List
However, keyword analysis will be a chore if you don’t impose a meaningful order and organization on your list.
The next step to better search campaigns is to segment your keyword list into small, tightly related groups. This will allow you to efficiently target a group of keywords with relevant PPC ads and landing page copy, as well as helping you determine the groups of keywords you should target via organic search (and how you should structure your site).
This means improved Quality Scores and increased conversion rates for paid search, as well as better rankings and more and better qualified organic (SEO) search traffic.
So what’s next? We know breaking down a large keyword list can be daunting. Here are three tips to get you started:
- Start with large, high-level groups. Some characteristics of good top-level keyword groups: usually one word (a noun), often corresponding to a product or service provided by your business (such as “cabinetry” or “pies”).
- Next, segment your top-level groups into narrower subgroups. Second-level groups often include a modifier that specifies the offering in question.
- Keyword grouping tools, like our Free Keyword Grouper and Free Keyword Niche Finder, can make quick work of what would otherwise be a cumbersome manual process.
If you want to dig deeper into keyword grouping best practices (and start getting more return from your SEO and PPC campaigns), we offer a free white paper that walks you through four simple steps to creating keyword groups that work for PPC and SEO. Also, our WordStream Keyword Management for SEO product offers powerful grouping functionality at a low price (available to try free for free, starting at $49 a month).
Next week, we’ll talk about going beyond high-level keyword groups to create a smart keyword infrastructure that can scale along with your search engine marketing campaigns.
]]>This is a guest blog by Larry Kim, Founder & VP of Product Development.
Over the next seven weeks, he will be outlining seven highly effective keyword research tactics that will help you generate more leads and sales from your search marketing campaigns.
Step One: Start Broad.
Whether you’re launching a new website or optimizing the one you’ve got, it’s a good idea to start broad and develop an extensive keyword list.
This puts you in a position to target a variety of keywords, so you can see which terms actually drive the most traffic and revenue for your business. Generally, the most critical part of keyword research is refining your targets, focusing your time and paid search spend on the best performers. You’ll never know which pocket of keywords works best if you don’t start broad!
So how do you generate an extensive list of keywords? Look to your company’s:
- Past – You can use a free analytics package like Google Analytics or a custom keyword analytics package to get a better idea of the way people are reaching your website and which keywords perform best.
- Present – Talk to friends and colleagues. Look at your competitors’ sites. Find out what your customers are saying when they talk about you.
- Future – You can also use free keyword research tools like Google’s or WordStream’s to get an idea of how much traffic a potential keyword opportunity might drive to your site. To dig deeper into a series of queries and export thousands of keywords for your research, you can leverage a WordStream Free Keyword Tool account to really broaden your research.
A strong keyword base is the first step to building a better search campaign.
What’s next? Now you need to refine your keyword list and to make it actionable. The next email in this series will deal with effective keyword grouping, filtering, and organization. But if you can’t wait to learn how to better manage your keywords, you can get a hold of our free white paper on the benefits of profitable keyword management right now.
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This is a guest post by Kath Pay from The Email Academy. She will publish another 3 articles over the next few weeks.
For most companies, your database is essential and list growth is one of your key aims. Ideally the subscription process needs to be as easy as possible – my mantra for building a quality list is: ‘Make it easy – and they will subscribe’ (with thanks to the movie, Field of Dreams for inspiration). So let’s have a look at some of the most common barriers which can prevent your list from growing at a healthy rate.
1. Assuming that your all signup procedures are still working and in place. When was the last time you actually went through the entire signup procedure? Not just to reassure yourself that all the links work correctly (it’s surprising how many sites I’ve visited that have this problem), but also to check on the ‘Friendliness’ of the procedure. It’s advisable to schedule a 3 monthly check up with all of your points of subscription and make sure all function as they should.
2. Only advertising your signup on your website. Don’t forget there are many other places and mediums which lend themselves to promoting your newsletter or email sign up. Some of them include:
- Social media pages such as Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc
- Company blog
- Transactional process
- Customer Service/support
- POS (Point of Sale) customer forms
- POS registration by salespeople
- Events, Trade Shows, Networking Events, Webinars etc
- Also – Don’t forget to add FTAF (Forward to Friend) and SWYN (Share with Your Network) tools to your email communications.
3. Not having explicit permission. Ok -so legally you may be covered (depending upon the legislation of the country you’re sending from and mailing to) and your list growth may zoom, but using methods such as pre-ticked checkboxes and ‘conjunction’ acquisition (subtly adding a clause to your T&C’s or Privacy Policy) methods will generally only result in a short term list growth and possibly cause deliverability problems due to the number of spam complaints you receive.
4. Not stating the benefits. Why should they sign up to receive email communications from you? State these benefits clearly and up front. Write the copy with the subscriber in mind. They will be looking to see ‘What’s in it for me? Think of it as a value exchange. What are you giving them in exchange for their valuable data? If you don’t have the available room to do this at the point of subscription consider linking to a page which provides you with more room to fully state the benefits.
5. Not providing enough value within the value exchange. If your subscription form tends to look like an insurance form, chances are that you’re asking for too much information. If your aim is to grow the list, you may have to consider which is more valuable to you – fewer subscribers with more data or more subscribers with less data? A nice compromise is a two-step form. On the first page you simply ask for their email address and possibly their name (or whatever data is absolutely essential) and then after they click subscribe, they are then taken to a landing page which could be their Preference Centre. Using some wonderful copy i.e. ‘ in order to enhance your experience, we’d love to find out some more about you….’ you then incentivise them to fill in the empty fields – however, make it clear that this is not compulsory and that it is for the subscribers benefit and you may be surprisingly pleased with the results.
6. Using a stereotypical, bland Call-To-Action (CTA). What’s wrong with standing out in a crowd? The below example comes from www.whichtestwon.com, with the results being that Version A increased signups by 23%. Test your CTA and find out what works best for you and your product/offering.
7. Not asking the subscriber to whitelist. Requesting that the subscriber whitelist you or add you to their contacts used to be beneficial, but now with the Gmail’s Priority Inbox and Hotmail’s inbox changes and with the other ISPs soon to follow suit, it will soon be an essential element to your subscription process. Ideally it should be requested on the Thank you page after subscribing, the Welcome email, as well as within all future emails. The trick is to make it easy for them and give them full instructions on how to do it (taking them to a landing page). It could look something like:
Please add name@companyname.com to your email address book or safe senders list. Click here for instructions how to do this.
8. Not setting expectations. What are you going to be sending them? Can you show them an example? How often will they be hearing from you? These are all questions the subscriber will be looking to find answers for. Again – if space is limited, link to a page which outlines all of these, along with an example of an email they can look forward to be receiving and/or past archives if it’s a newsletter.
9. Hiding the subscribe form on your homepage and not having the subscribe form on every page of your website. We all know that the website’s homepage is prime real estate and you have to fight for space within it, however, having the subscribe link/form below the fold isn’t doing anyone any favours – least of all your aim to grow your list. Ideally the subscribe form/link needs to be placed above the fold on the homepage and don’t stop there – add it to every page. Remember our mantra – ‘Make it easy – and they will subscribe’.
10. Not flaunting your Privacy Policy. Reassure your potential subscribers. Spell it out in plain English. Be transparent. If you aren’t going to share their data with a third party – then flaunt it! State this right next to the email field. It could look something like this: ‘Don’t worry – we respect your data and won’t share it with anyone else. Read our Privacy Policy’. Be sure to link to your Privacy Policy again on the Thank you page as well as within every email that is sent.
11. Not optimising your Landing/Thank you Page. Your landing page is an often neglected afterthought in the subscription process. However, it can make or break a relationship with a new subscriber. Continue as you started – make it easy. Have everything your subscriber needs for a wonderful experience with your brand within reach on this landing page. Don’t let it become a dead end. Where would they like to go next? Suggest something to them. Maximise this opportunity to delight and help them.
12. Not testing. Testing is essential for your subscribe form(s)and landing page(s). Don’t just accept that the ‘norm’ works for you and your company. Your company’s subscribers are the best people to judge as to what works. Test factors such as; placement, copy, number of fields, one page form VS two page form, landing page elements etc. This can be easily achieved by using Google’s Optimizer which allows you to set up multiple forms/landing pages and will disperse the different pages to your readers. You can then check the reports to see which form/page succeeded in more conversions.
T: @kathpay
E: @ kpay @ theemailacademy.com
Image via Wikipedia
Well a major brand is rocking the OTL boat – Coke 'suggests' that agencies get rewarded based on value .
Traditionally, defining the value of an assignment has been the job of the agency, which tells its client how many people and how much time it'll need to accomplish a given project. Under its new model, Coke will determine the value of assignments based on a range of factors including the work's strategic importance, the talent involved and whether other agencies could duplicate the work — if they could, it's worth less.
After those factors are used to set the value of a project, the agency's performance and the business results that follow determine what, if anything, the agency deserves to be paid beyond its upfront costs (which, in practice, are sometimes inflated). If all targets are hit, the agency could make as much as 30% on a project; if all targets are missed, the agency won't make any profit at all.
However later in the article ittalks about P&G and their approach – which seems different
Procter & Gamble Co. is moving more brands toward a model that makes a single agency lead contractor over the rest of a brand's far-flung marketing-services roster, which includes maintaining control over hiring, budgets and payments for other agencies.
Now this is completely different – a new skillset of management of sub contractors. This is not the traditional core skillset of an agency. BUT it could be a new business model for agency groups – and a nice new revenue stream if you have project management and cost control skills.
This should have some knock-on effects
- Budgets migrate to direct channels and digital
- Pitches more tightly managed
- Procurement more closely involved in existing agency relationships
- Pricing reviews (and possible knock-on to media buying…?)
- Agencies tracking internal costs
- Improved job-bag systems
- Cost management jobs being created at agencies
- Lead agency role moving from OTL to digital agencies
What else?
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Steve Moore has launched a new breakfast event, called One Morning, the launch was yesterday at the glamorous One Alfred Place business club.
Steve asked me to help out by chairing the three fabulous presentations – each one answering the question "What Happens Next?" for TV, book publishing and newspaper publishing. I love doing this stuff… and being in the front row for three articulate and very persuasive presenters was a blast.
I will summarise their arguments below – but for the New Biz Development readers of this blog, here are some short sharp actions
1 – Have you got any clients in publishing or broadcasting… send them here to read about what key organisations think will be happening in the future
2 – Do you ever put out campaigns on TV, newspaper or book publishing? Send your account teams and planners here to think about what you will do in the future when those campaign methods no longer work.
3 – come to the next event. They are due monthly. The sign up for this one is here … presume it will be updated.
Jeremy Ettinghausen is Head of
Digital Publishing at Penguin
The publishing world is polarising, books online and videos are leading the charge for technology versus traditional methods. The scientific/technical/academic press is further along than consumer fiction.
E-books started in 2001 and they still haven't really taken off 7 years later… but it may happen this year that they join the mainstream.
Books in print are not redundant yet. But paid for digital content is increasing – the question is how much people will pay. What is clear is that if your content is entertaining, valuable and drives a good user experience, there is an audience who will pay for it.
However, reading habits are changing and how we view web pages affects our reading habits. This is a non-linear process.
Looking forward, what is a publisher? Are they book makers and marketers and book distributors? No more they are disseminators of entertainment and ideas.
A quote from Chris Heuer of the Conversation Group (at SXSW) "the Best stories will win".
The vision is for the "integrated" book delivering image, sound, vision in multiple media. I read, I get into my car and continue the story in audio….
Kevin Anderson is the Blogs Editor
at The Guardian
We are taking the tools that are disrupting our business model and applying them to our business.
New media does not support the traditional business model for newspapers because the young do not read newspapers. We are not replacing old readers.
A news company needs a new vision and positioning and new audiences – not just for newspapers.
Industries need to identify their core market and focus on new markets in order to survive, Open source tools enable editorial experimentation. This is really important because at present it takes us 6 – 12 months for new product development. We need to lower the cost and time of innovation.
The business model is eroding advertising and uses outdated distribution and delivery methods. WE need to innovate frequently and fast and 'fail forward' when the innovation cost is £0.
Delivering into a community with connection is possible future for newspapers.
Matt Locke is a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4
Befreo the mobile phone device we had more divisions between our public and private spaces. Compare a phone box (private) with a mobile phone conversation (private or public?).
ATMs are the ultimate – a private transaction within a public space. We develop body language to communicate our intention to be private while outside at an ATM.
The personal and social have replaced the private and public. These are more fluid and the gestures and etiquette is different. We need to understand this in broadcasting.,
What young teens find hard to understand about the world in 1990 is not the paucity of channel choice, it is the fact that in order to speak out publicly in 1990 you needed permission. This is not needed today. Talking in public is easy now.
Key issues:
Data – being misused or mis-released.
Playfulness – find how technology can help your life and find play within it
Vernacular – what is the new language of who our relationships are with?
The goal for technologies that allow us to make the shift to personal and social. And do it simply.l
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