Economics Rap

Since I was an Economics major at UT, I do believe that there is no such thing as a “market failure.”  Only the failure of badly run companies with lots of political connections, bailed out at? taxpayer expense.  That’s not a “market failure,” that’s standard government operating procedure.  Market interventions always distort the market.

In “Fear the Boom and Bust,” John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek, two of the great economists of the 20th century, come back to life to attend an economics conference on the economic crisis. Before the conference begins, and at the insistence of Lord Keynes, they go out for a night on the town and sing about why there’s a “boom and bust” cycle in modern economies and good reason to fear it.

\”Fear the Boom and Bust\” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

Get the full lyrics, story and free download of the song in high quality MP3 and AAC files at Econstories.

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Measuring Loyalty of Social Media

We know that companies that engage their customers online gain a unique ability to build loyalty beyond what is otherwise possible. Social media sites teem with activity between brands and consumers, and these online interactions often present opportunities for building engagement and loyalty unavailable in any other channel.  However, they also present a challenge because social customer relationship management requires new methods of measuring impact, particularly in the case of loyalty.

Companies are exploring ways to link activity on blogs, social networks, private communities, microblogging sites (e.g. Twitter), and forums to increases in loyalty using new and established measures.  In the brick-and-mortar, email, and e-commerce channels, specific behaviors often indicate loyalty, whether attitudinal or behavioral.  These behaviors include actions like purchase frequency, survey completion, and loyalty program participation.  However, in the case of social media, since most social sites aren’t transactional, the increased interaction often linked to behavioral loyalty doesn’t necessarily equate to a stronger, more loyal relationship.

Clicks and visits aren’t always a reflection of engagement.  More accurate measurements are number of postings, completed profile percentage, participation in polls and surveys, or service-related questions asked or answered in a forum.  These activities make attitudinal loyalty more measurable within the social realm than in other interaction channels… and closely correlate with success or failure of a brand’s blog, community, or other social initiative.

In fact, “listening” to customers via social media helps companies to measure customer loyalty, and delivers the added benefit of helping to build loyalty.  Social media is an instantaneous addition to emotional loyalty because customers see a different side of the company… one that cares about you.  So, if part of your company’s strategy is to create emotional loyalty and lifetime customers, giving customers a great experience through Facebook or Twitter is one step closer to that goal.

Community breeds loyalty.  (Think Dell’s Idea Storm)  Customers who participate socially remain customers longer and repeat customers longer and repeat purchases more often.  And, most important, you’re able to recognize when customers say something about you… you’re actually able to respond.

Advocacy (like ratings) strengthens loyalty and brand perception.  Whether customers post positive or negative comments, the ones who participate are the brand’s core customers.  The end-game isn’t just messages on a wall.  Use these tools to drive traffic and build repeat business.  The average Facebook user has 180 friends, which translates into a lot of impressions.

In the recent report “Social Brand Strategy,” Forrester Research principal analyst Lisa Bradner outlines how to best integrate a social media strategy into a multichannel marketing initiative.  Here’s three steps for success:

1. Do not require opt-in: Registration is essential to understanding customers and their social behavior, but it should be optional for most social media access.  Encourage registration (via your newsletter or by offering discounts), but the site should be freely available to anyone.
2. Understand the number of advocates: Measure how many people are already engaged with your brand online, like how many people opt in via a social site to receive a newsletter or who comment frequently in a forum.  Knowing these numbers are especially important in the planning stages to gauge interest and determine how extensive a social media initiative should be.
3. Integrate loyalty programs: The same people who join loyalty programs are likely to participate on social media sites.  Companies can encourage participation using such means as creating a private customer community for loyalty program members or giving members additional points or rewards based on their level of activity in the community.

Trade Show ROI

The World Wide Web may have profoundly changed not only business, but the business of marketing, yet the face-to-face interaction of the trade show endures… in fact, it’s thriving.  In many industries, attendance is practically mandatory (think CES).  If you’re not there, you’re nowhere.

For many seasoned companies, however, trade shows are less an opportunity to book new orders than a chance to strengthen existing relationships because everyone is so busy with the normal day-to-day.  However, for those two, three or four days, you’re all gathering in one place which can draw a lot of industry media attention.

Because of this attention, along with the draw of potential customers, companies often use trade shows to unveil new products, to show the marketplace that they are improving their business, and make a bigger/broader impression.  Still, the trade show is a costly marketing tactic… sometimes the single most expensive medium choice a company can make.  So, to make a commitment to maximize your investment months before the opening day.  The worst thing you can do is show up at the show, set up your expensive booth staffed by even more expensive employees, and wait for the people to show up.

1.  Lay the Groundwork: Set specific goals to acquire qualified leaders that can be converted to sales.  Decide in advance how many prospects you want to acquire. If publicity is your aim, set targets for media interviews.  Make appointments in advance by sending out advance invitations for key prospects and/or media to the show.  Train, train, train your booth workers.  Avoid wasting time with visitors who aren’t serious and complete the interaction with a true prospect in 10 minutes.  Take a few moments at the end of each day while at the show for a staff huddle.  Review the successful (and not-so-successful) interactions with an eye on making improvements the next day.

2.   Look Your Best: A small company at a major trade show can be easily overwhelmed by the competition.  The trick is to become “a show within the show.”  For starters, consider upsizing from a 10-foot booth to a 20-foot booth.  You double your billboard space and it looks like you could spend more than the minimum to get in.  You then have enough room to divide the space between direct selling and relationship building areas.  The rule of trade show design is that a person should be able to walk by your booth and in five or six seconds have an idea of what you’re selling and whether or not it applies to them.  Consider freebies… a smartly designed tote bag, for example, may actually get attendees to advertise for you… all day long!  However, tchotchkes can be an expensive waste so at shows where much of the audience may be unqualified/unknown, keep the extras behind the desk and use them as a thank-you gift after a meaningful conversation.

3.  Always Follow Up: The trade show encounter is just the beginning of the sales process.  Immediately after the show, compile a register of everyone whose badge you scanned or who otherwise expressed interest.  For those most promising prospects, consider sending out a personalized package with a small gift.  Finally, be sure to track the results of your trade show efforts:  how many leads resulted in sales worth how much and how long it took to close those deals.  Not only will the data give you a sense of the return on your investment, but you can also use them as a benchmark against next year’s show.

How do I make MONEY from Social Media?

Cashing in on social media… it’s the question of the moment facing companies’ marketing departments because all C-level executives are asking them “What is the return on investment for all this creativity?”

Until now, the companies that have ventured into unproven territory and experimented with blogs, social networks, and related technologies did so without a clear revenue model behind them.  However, thanks to their efforts patterns are emerging and research is connecting the dots that spell out how to calculate the ROI of social media.

The most crucial aspect is to not treat social media as an experiment, but rather like any other business initiative with a comprehensive plan and organizational goals.  Then, tie that plan into metrics from other channels so everything is integrated from a technical standpoint.

Standard social media metrics are:

General Social Media Sites:

• Unique visitor counts
• Cost per unique visitor
• Page views
• Visits
• Return visits
• Interaction rates (number of conversations)
• Time spent
• Actions taken (contest entries, videos viewed, downloads, invites sent, etc.)

Widgets and Applications:

• Installs
• Active users
• Audience profile
• Unique user reach
• Growth rates
• Influence (friend installs, “forward to a friend,” etc.)
• Longevity / lifecycle

Blogs:

• Conversation size (links to and from posts, monthly visitors)
• Site relevance
• Author credibility
• Content freshness and relevance

Make ‘Em Pay

“Women do two-thirds of the world’s work.  Yet, they earn only one-tenth of the world’s income and own less than one percent of the world’s property.  They are among the poorest of the world’s poor.” Barber B. Conable Jr., former president of World Bank

A theme I’ve seen countless times over my years… a theme I myself have fallen victim to in the past:  professional women who are complacent about earning far less than the marketplace will bear for their level of skill and expertise.  How about this for a mantra?

I DESERVE TO EARN MY WORTH.  I WILL TAKE CONTROL OF MY OWN ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT.

Let this be the touchstone message you tell yourself, whether you’re still in high school looking at colleges and career options; whether you’re a young woman in her twenties just starting out in a career or looking for the right career; whether you’re in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and beyond; single, married, divorced, widowed, with or without children; in your dream career, between jobs, going back to school for an advanced degree, still figuring out what you want to do when you grow up.  Whatever life phase you find yourself in, I want your mind-set always to be:  “I deserve to earn my worth and to feel independently in control of my financial situation and security at all stages of my life.”

But, in order to earn our worth, we have to feel entitled to make more money, and we must feel good about it when we do.  This is a hard concept for many women to wrap their minds around.  Would you answer true or false to the following statements?

• You’ve never visualized yourself as being wealthy, financially secure, and fully in control of your money, assets, and investments, no matter if you are single or partnered, and no matter what stage you are in your career.
• The idea of earning a lot of money… as much as the highest earners in your industry earn, or maybe more… makes you cringe.  It makes you feel greedy, or morally bankrupt, because money is tainted with incorrect values.  Or, you feel you aren’t qualified to earn that kind of money.
• You don’t know what the highest earners in your industry or profession earn.
• You have no clear sense of what the range of total compensation packages is for people with your training and expertise… including performance incentives, stock options, early salary reviews, and signing bonuses.  You don’t know how to go about finding this information.

Women constantly tell me they leave money on the table when negotiating, including backpedaling on a demand or point they’ve basically already won, or would have, if they’d kept their mouths shut.  That’s if they negotiate at all.  They tell me all the time that they accept less money than a man doing an identical job, don’t negotiate salaries, and are afraid to ask for more.

Why is this so?  Because women are raised to believe that we’re all equally deserving, and thinking that you’re better than someone else, including that you’ve worked hard and should be paid well for the level of expertise you’ve achieved, is conceited.  We want it, but when we get it, we back off out of guilt or fear.  We then don’t fully partake in the spoils of success; we don’t hold ourselves out as experts, taking advantage of the publicity, marketing opportunities, and the higher salaries and fees that goes with success and reflect our true worth.

My challenge to women is to recognize where you’re stronger than anyone else and make ‘em pay for it.  To paraphrase George Orwell, all people are equal, or should be in certain regards.  But, in business, in the marketplace, some are more equal than others.  That some includes YOU.

Excerpted from am*BITCH*ous, by Debra Condren, Ph.D.

The New Power Couple? Sales & Marketing, Part 3

Fast forward to a vision of the singularly focused, well-aligned sales and marketing organization focused on both short-term and long-term goals.  The team is reaping the benefits of communication, interaction and collaboration tools and technologies that are prevalent in businesses today. 

THE FOCUS	THE GOAL	THE SOLUTION:  What do you need to get there?
Success criteria	Business profitability	Full visibility into results/ KPIs (key performance indicators);  Predictable pipeline and accurate forecast to allow earlier insight for adjustment
Vision of the ideal customer	Customer profitability	A join definition of the ideal customer that looks at revenue and costs to serve over the lifeime of that relationship
Relationship quality (outlook)	Long-term	Needs-based and collaborative—as a result of capturing knowledge over time
Process	Collaborative and easy to use	Joint planning, shared customer database, connects all users in a single customer lifecycle
Technology	Integrated CRM	Holistic view of the customer; Best practice workflow is created and improved over time

The answer is a single mission-directed plan, crafted by stakeholders in both marketing and sales that shares the same success criteria, vision of the ideal customer, relationship outlook and process.  The plan is supported by a strong technology foundation comprised of a set of applications that are flexible, scalable, familiar, and easy to use. 

In this ideal state, marketing becomes a sales multiplier, making all front-office processes more definable, repeatable, and friction-free.  Sales becomes the confidante to marketing, sharing customer insight and best practices.  Together, they focus on what customers need and when they need it.  They learn together and get smarter together over time. 

 

The New Power Couple? Sales & Marketing, Part 2

Today, both sales and marketing operate in a vacuum.  It isn’t any particular individual’s fault.  It’s the result of their company’s structure and culture.  Their organization has designed their departments, responsibilities, access to customer information and rewards systems to function as separate entities.

The New Power Couple? Sales & Marketing

You know the story.  It’s the end of the quarter and the sales numbers are below target.  The sales team is pointing fingers at marketing because they aren’t “bringing in enough qualified leads,” and marketing is responding by saying sales is at fault because they “don’t know how to follow up on a lead.”  Sound familiar?  Like your two kids at home?? 

Today, many businesses lack synergy between the sales and marketing organizations due to a variety of reasons which I will explore this week.

• Success in the sales and marketing departments is measured quite differently
• Sales and marketing have a different vision of the ideal target customer
• Actionable customer insight sits in dozens of disconnected databases
• A lack of a 360-degree view of customers and their buying preferences exists widely
• Broken processes make it impossible to track what is working
• The technology is too hard to use so that there is limited adoption

This disconnect is making it difficult for organizations to make the most of the marketing expenditures and sales opportunities.  When companies are unable to provide the right offers to the right person at the right time because insights live in disparate locations, businesses should begin to turn to applications and personal productivity technologies to help them build a cohesive sales and marketing alliance.  Over the next several days, let’s discuss the obstacles to making business development a team sport and explore some options for best practices to align the sales and marketing organizations. 

Something to Hmmmmm… About

Over 93% of executives could not answer a handful of questions with complete confidence:

1)  Can you name your top 10 customers by profitability?
2)  What is your strategy to sell inventory over 180 days old?
3)  What is the ROI on your marketing efforts in the past 3 months?
4)  How much time did your staff spend on the phone/email with your customer that was not sales related?
5)  Who are the prospects/customers that have your 5 highest profit quotes in hand as of today?

Do you know exactly how profitable your company was yesterday???

 

What Nobody Tells You About Selling

I hear clients say to me all the time, “I hate selling.  I don’t know what to say and how to say it, and I don’t want people to think of me as a salesperson.”

Here’s a secret… A few years ago I said the same thing to myself.  In fact, many, if not most, people who aren’t in sales feel the same way.  What IS it about selling that most people don’t like? 

Ask yourself what exactly do you associate with “sales people?”  Do the words pushy and tricky and manipulative come to mind?  Mention the word SALES and the stereotypical used car dealer used to pop into my head, too.  I’m sure such people actually exist… and I hope not.

Now, imagine for a minute that you didn’t have to be pushy, tricky or deceitful to sell.  Imagine that you could be honest, direct, and enjoy the sales process.  I know… it’s a big leap, but how about this…

Do you like helping people?  Do you enjoy seeing people go away happy with the proper solution to their problems?  If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you’re born to sell because selling isn’t about forcing people to buy.  It’s about:

• Helping prospects get what they want
• Helping prospects get what they truly need
• Helping prospects get what they deserve
• Helping prospects feel safe and secure with their buying decision

Imagine that you work in a restaurant, you’ve got a customer at your table.  How would you behave?  Do you launch into a pitch about the “special of the day” and tell them that they should order that and only that?  Of course not, you mention the specials of course, but you ASK them what they are in the mood for; are they celebrating a special occasion; does anyone at the table have a food allergy you should be aware of; would they be interested in viewing the wine list; etc.  While selling products/services can be more complicated, basically, everyone is hungry and selling is about satisfying that hunger the right way.

Your prospects not only want a problem solved, they want help in identifying the best, most economical, fastest, sexiest, most extravagant, most glamorous, quickest, slowest, etc. way to do it.  And, when you do, they won’t see you as pushy or sneaky.  They’ll think you’re the best thing that ever happened to them to help them get what they want. 

 

 

 

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