Friday, September 30, 2016

Cracking the More Vs. Less Content Conundrum: 3 Questions to Point the Way

Cracking the More Vs. Less Content Conundrum- 3 Questions to Point the Way

Author: Peter Bell

Running, in some ways, is a lot like content marketing.

For one, I love running, I really do. I also like to research its benefits (or otherwise)–am I running too much or too little? Some articles say a walk would be healthier, while others extol the virtues of regular running. It can be hard to know where you stand!

Content marketing can sometimes feel the same. You’ll read headlines about the power of having a lot of content–we need to produce more of it, as quickly as possible! But then you’ll hear about plenty to temper that like the recent survey from The Economist Group which states that 3 in 5 global executives admit to sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the volume of content they encounter. This very concept was explored at the Marketing Cloud All-Stars Debate I took part in at Technology for Marketing (TFM) in London this week. The debate was chaired by the content marketing visionary, Joe Pulizzi, who has a very sensible take on the more vs less content debate. (You can check out Joe’s podcast for his thoughts on this subject.)

We covered much ground during the debate, and the more we discussed, the more I realized that our approach to the amount of content we create needs to be the same as our approach to running–it needs to be tailored each individual. In some cases, you may need to create more content to drive growth, but in other cases, the volume of content may not be the issue; rather, it’s the quality or promotion that needs to be addressed. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of more or less content.

Do you find it hard to determine whether you need to produce more content or should consider producing less? The following questions will help you understand what your answer should be to the more vs. less question:

1. Can you meaningfully measure the performance/impact of your content?

When you consider your marketing mix, the programs you run and channels you use typically have well-established metrics. Over the years, the subject of content marketing measurement has been discussed widely and yet, it still feels like there are no clear or standard metrics to measure the impact of your content investments.

While an organization’s approach to metrics can certainly vary based on company size or industry, there is always a way to measure your content performance—and it starts by understanding your goals. Maybe you’re using content to grow organic traffic on your website and increase your social media following–these are both very measurable objectives. Some organizations, particularly B2B companies and consumer companies with considered purchase products, measure the pipeline impact of content–essentially, how it’s driving prospects through the customer lifecycle. Regardless of the metrics that are right for your organization, you need to establish some way to measure or the question of whether you have enough content is impossible to answer.

2. Do you have a content promotion process that supports the specific objectives of your content?

A content promotion plan ensures that, both internally and externally, the right people are aware of the existence of your asset. When we launch one of our big Definitive Guides at Marketo, we assign a dedicated project manager who is responsible for the promotion plan. The plan covers how the content will be shared across our different channels, including social media, and how the guide will be promoted through advertising on different platforms to reach the right audience. The promotion plan is absolutely critical and no Definitive Guide launch is complete without one.

The key takeaway from our Definitive Guide example is that you need to put as much focus on your content promotion plan as the content creation itself. Only by ensuring the promotion plan supports the asset’s objectives can you fairly judge the content’s performance or compare it against others. Promoting your content is very different today, with all of the opportunities that native advertising, for example on social platforms, present. Reaching new and highly targeted audiences is incredibly easy nowadays through digital advertising.

3. Does your content have relevance AND resonance for your intended audience?

Over the years, the well-known mantra of “content is king” has evolved into “content is king and context is queen,” which recognizes that content alone is not enough to truly engage your audience. Success comes from sharing relevant content at the right time with the right individual. But is there something beyond relevance? Don’t get me wrong, relevance is great, essential in fact, but what about resonance? Relevance will get you attention, but achieving resonance can get you action. Joe Pulizzi put it most succinctly in this tweet:

Joe Pulizzi Tweet

The three questions above will help you evaluate some fundamental practices for measuring your content marketing investment. If you answered ‘no’ to any of the questions, it’s time to take stock before you go off and create more content.

What’s your take on more vs. less? I would love to hear how you decide whether to create more content in the comments below.


Cracking the More Vs. Less Content Conundrum: 3 Questions to Point the Way was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Thursday, September 29, 2016

Hubcast 111: #INBOUND16 Breakout Sessions, Fat Elephants, & Author Analytics

Hubcast Podcast

Welcome back to The Hubcast, folks: A weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below, including some new HubSpot video tutorials ...

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5 Brands That Won the U.S. Presidential Debate

6 Brands That Won the U.S. Presidential Debate

Author: Marissa Lyman

Stateside, it’s election season, and this week viewers were treated to the first presidential debate between candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. There was a lot of sniffling happening on screen, but even more happening on other screens: it was the most-watched and most-tweeted debate in American history!

Naturally, brands from every industry were watching–and responding–to capitalize on #debatenight issues and antics.

Missed the debate? Couldn’t care less? Want a good laugh? Eureka! I’ve captured some of the best examples of brands who jumped into the conversation.

Pre-Debate

I’m a planner. I believe it’s important to leave room to be nimble and react as issues arise, but plan your strategy around big events and make solid message arcs that you can map your campaigns against. That’s precisely what some brands did for this election year, creating high-production ads with an election theme to draw attention.

Bud Light started this trend around the Super Bowl, with tongue-in-cheek spots featuring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogan as the “Bud Light Party,” tackling important issues like equal pay and labels. And Bud Light’s message arc was strong, with spots announcing the party and others that mapped to election events like the debate. On a scale of 1 to presidential, I give this campaign a 9 because it’s well-thought out, multi-faceted, multi-channel, and effectively leverages star-power, something that not all brands do correctly.

For the week of the debate, two notable car brands took a similar approach, but with standalone spots. First up, we have Jeep, which is using the election as a chance to remind people that no matter how different Americans are (vegans vs. BBQ-lovers, Republicans vs. Democrats), everyone is “free to be,” and drive a Jeep, of course. I give this one 1.5 votes out of 3. I’d also like to see the real political breakdown of Jeep car owners…kidding.

Next up was Audi. From a creative perspective, the German automaker really knocked it out of the park, just as the two valets in the commercial tried their best to knock each other out. They’re fighting over a valet parking ticket (Get it? Like the presidential ticket. Isn’t symbolism the best?), urging consumers to “choose the right driver.” This gets a 6.5 on the presidential scale, due to artistic creativity.

And don’t forget beer-maker Tecate, who chose to pre-make its commercial but air it during the debates on major news networks. The concept? Turn Trump’s proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico into something that actually brings people together. I give #TecateBeerWall 1.5 votes as well. The wall feels a little tired and highlights one concern of pre-planning themes: make sure you choose a topic that will still be evergreen once it goes live.

During the Debate

There was plenty to laugh (or cry) about over the course of the evening. One of my favorite moments came during the discussion on cyber security, during which Trump alleged that a “400-pound person” could be behind some of the recent computer hacks.

The folks over at Bark Box, a monthly subscription service for dog owners, responded with this gem below. This is proof that brands from all industries were not only watching, but responding with their best paw forward. Social rating on the presidential scale: 8.5.

**BREAKING** We found the 400 pound hacker and he is indeed sitting on a bed #Debates2016 pic.twitter.com/t1ySXASPmw

— BarkBox (@barkbox) September 27, 2016

Final Question

No matter which candidate you support, brand creativity around a heated election cycle is something we can all get behind. Everyone needs a little humor and a reminder to put it all in perspective.

Did you see any other brands capitalize on debate night in an interesting way? Has your company done anything to get in on the action? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!


5 Brands That Won the U.S. Presidential Debate was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Wednesday, September 28, 2016

The 4 Things That All Well-Connected People Do

The 4 Things That All Well-Connected People Do

Author: Alexandra Nation

June 2009, UCSD graduation. I sat in the crowd, typing on my Blackberry (I know), and wondering when I could leave to finish emptying out my apartment in San Diego. I couldn’t wait to start work in just two short days, as a bright-eyed and bushy tailed management trainee at Nordstrom.

Then our graduation speaker asked the crowd a question that made me snap to attention: “How many of you have a job lined up for after graduation?” About a quarter of the crowd raised their hands–a sobering sight on graduation day at a top university.

When I graduated, it was the tail end of what is now known as The Great Recession. In these unfavorable circumstances, I had to find work and support myself–or hang my head in shame and move back home (in my mind, absolutely not an option for this millennial).

At the time, my network was small–primarily family, friends, professors, and classmates. Since then, I’ve been blessed with meeting wonderful people across the world and have observed some consistent patterns and habits across well-connected people.

If you’re looking to expand your network and build genuine, meaningful relationships, read on for four things that well-connected people do:

1. Attend the Right Networking Events

I thought I was crazy for hating networking events. Turns out, I was just attending the wrong ones.

No matter where you are in your career, traditional networking events are usually a waste of time. You know what I’m talking about–those generic “Business Professionals Networking Luncheon” events that involve a room full of strangers, often those who aren’t even in the same field as you, practically flinging their business cards at each other. Everyone is on edge about putting their best foot forward, and most people are just there for the free appetizers and wine. It’s a perfect formula for an awkward night that could be better spent at home (where I keep all my good wine and food anyway, let’s be real).

That being said–networking events that are focused around some sort of interesting educational topic can be fantastic, especially if you go with the pure intention of learning and view any connections you make as a bonus. Whether it’s an event focused around women in tech or start-ups, real networking happens naturally when a connection is formed between two like-minded people. From there, the relationship is thoughtfully maintained by both sides.

2. Educate Yourself Constantly and Be Careful with Your Introductions and References

Speaking of learning, the most well-connected people I know are also boundlessly curious. They spend a lot of time investing in their own knowledge and education, then share enthusiastically and generously with others.

To adopt this curiosity, check out one of my favorite books right now How to Be a Star at Work. This book offers a framework for being a top performer with “knowledge” at its center: what you and your network know. The premise is simple–give a top performer and an average performer an identical task. The top performer will complete it in a fraction of the time because the relationships they’ve built with other top performers enable them to take the most efficient, highest quality route to completion.

Bottom line: The best in every field take personal responsibility for keeping their brains sharp and never growing stagnant. Invest in yourself and create significant dividends.

3. Respect Your Connections’ Time

“The harder I work, the luckier I get.” – my dad

In college, I used to skip class because I preferred working–which should give you some idea of my hustle. I had the good fortune of having some incredible individuals take a personal interest in my career path, including the president of one of San Francisco’s top commercial AM radio stations. This led to a valuable internship that cracked open the door for future job opportunities.

Now that I’m in a position to pay it forward, I feel incredibly lucky, but I’m keenly aware that any introductions or referrals I make are a direct reflection of me. Connecting someone I wouldn’t resoundingly endorse to a deeply valued colleague would waste everyone’s time–and there’s nothing I dislike more than wasted time.

When considering any request from your professional network, remember this: building your network is a delicate balance of give and take. Give more than you take, express gratitude abundantly and often, and remember that time is our single most precious commodity.

4. Give with No Strings Attached and Express True Gratitude the Old-School Way

One of my favorite people at Marketo (hi McKenzie!) recently gave me the most thoughtful gift–a perfectly chosen card and bracelet.

Thoughtful Gift

In choosing this gift, McKenzie perfectly demonstrated the habits of a well-connected person by showing that she pays attention to her colleagues as people. In this case, she knew exactly what to gift a Harry Potter and Golden Retriever-obsessed individual. Her lovely note was completely unexpected and meant the world to me.

Well connected people make sure that every touchpoint is thoughtful and relevant. They’re always thinking of ways to help their network in any way, genuinely care, and are not transactional. In other words, they’re just like McKenzie. Be like McKenzie.

There are scores of books written on the subject of meaningful business relationships–I’m sharing the ones that have worked best for me over time. If you have anything you’d like to add to the list, I’d love to hear it. Leave a note below!


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Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Facebook Expands Canvas Marketing Opportunities

Canvas is Facebook's mobile marketing platform for companies wanting to present a more immersive experience to potential customers. It's a full-screen mobile ad that Facebook touts as loading nearly instantly and is designed specifically for Android and iOS devices. Using the same technology for loading photos and video quickly in the Facebook mobile app, Canvas can load up to 10 time faster than the mobile web.

When Canvas launched back in February, advertisers had to have either a web click or website conversion objective. Making Canvas even more versatile for advertisers, especially for marketers looking to seriously gain brand engagement, marketers can now choose brand awareness or video view objectives. "This means brand marketers can use Canvas across their range of goals for their campaigns," noted a Facebook post.

The future of Canvas

Facebook is seeking to make Canvas an extremely robust marketing tool, especially for companies looking for new branding and customer relationship opportunities. "The future of Canvas will include many more features designed to make this immersive, attention-grabbing format accessible to any business, regardless of size or creative resources," said Facebook. "Recently, we introduced new metrics for Canvas to help marketers understand the performance of each component—videos, photos and buttons—within their Canvas. Marketers can now learn from each Canvas they run, determining which designs work best to achieve their campaign goals."

They plan to make Canvas simple for any brand to implement by providing advertisers with templates that immolate how other advertisers have used the new platform. Facebook says that the templates will be available over the next few months, but they provided one as an example:

screen-shot-2016-09-27-at-6-31-59-pm

360 Videos Coming to Canvas

Facebook wants to make Canvas its most immersive ad format in order to attract the Madison Avenue brands. Soon they will be offering 360 videos that provide advertisers a unique way to engage people on mobile and interact with a brands advertisement. According to Facebook, ITAU, a Brazilian bank, used Canvas with 360 video in it to tell an immersive story for children, in order to let people know about the banks outreach and charity in the area of education.

They are also offering the ability to link Canvas ads to one another via linked buttons and images, instead of just linking to a website. The allows advertisers to create a multi-Canvas experience. "By linking Canvases, Beats by Dre could invite people to explore differently colored versions of its iconic headphones, designed after different countries' flags," noted Facebook. "When people tapped on their different Beats options, instead of being driven to a slow-loading website, they got another Canvas, loaded quickly, that they could explore. Beats saw an average of 39 seconds spent in the Canvas, and 73% of the Canvas was viewed on average."

Brand Success on Canvas

Facebook released some statistics from a couple of brands that have recently tried the Canvas marketing platform. Royal Caribbean used Canvas to promote a contest to win a free cruise where the last Canvas screen provided an access code and a link to enter the sweepstakes. Their cost per action was $0.17 and the average time potential customers spent on their Canvas as 72 seconds.

They say that Canvas works for smaller localized brick and mortar businesses too. A company (Edifica) built a new condo complex (also called Canvas) in Peru and was looking to find buyers using Canvas. According to Facebook, they saw a 50% lower cost-per-click, a 15% lower cost-per-thousand impression, and a 2.3X click-through-rate versus their other link ads, and got a 46-second average time spent in their Canvas. It's unknown how many of these clickers turned into condo sales.

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The 2 Keys to Helping Employees Become Great In Front of a Camera (Video Marketing)

video-employees

With video becoming such a focus for more and more companies in 2016 and beyond, the need to learn *how* to create these videos in-house is becoming ...

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3 Core Functionalities for Multi-Channel Marketing

3 Core Functionalities of a Multi-Channel Marketing Platform

Author: Patrick Groover

Marketing communications continue to evolve as audiences interact with brands through an ever-increasing number of channels. Since campaign success is largely tied to consistently getting the right messages in front of target audiences, a single or even dual-channel approach to marketing is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Buyers now encounter both B2B and consumer brands across multiple touchpoints within the same sales cycle or purchase evaluation. For example, a search for products and solutions may originate with a web search, leading to initial research on company or partner websites. This initial search may complete, then reinitiate later with a mobile application search that continues on social networks.

This research may need further prompting and nurturing through multiple channels of communication to help encourage a decision (e.g. through SMS text, email, and even direct mail). Finally, to cement large purchases, it may be necessary to follow up through your sales or customer care teams. And these are just a few examples of existing communications channels–new channels continue to emerge each year.

Traditional Marketing vs. the Future

Traditional marketers have largely considered campaign execution to be a series of micro-campaigns rather than a cohesively connected and self-directed buyer journey. This is often evidenced in the way we divide up the workload on the marketing team with specializations in email, website, mobile marketing, and more. While these specializations may continue to provide value, the future of successful marketing organizations will largely depend on creating a connected, personalized, and cohesive customer experience across multiple channels.

As the number of channels for communicating with our target audiences continue to increase, so do our opportunities to capture their attention. At the same time, it’s important to be able to automate these interactions at scale, without drowning in all of the potential channels for communication.

So what does it take to execute multi-channel campaigns without adding additional stress or workload to your already highly-leveraged marketing team? Is it even possible to communicate through so many channels or will you have to make compromises between staffing and content distribution?

A sophisticated marketing platform makes centralized multi-channel marketing automation a reality. The same changes in technology that have enabled us to experience self-selected, digital journeys are also delivering opportunities that simplify and scale multi-channel communication.

Here are three practical functions supported by a forward-thinking marketing automation platform that will set the stage for current and future marketing success across channels:

1. Audience Management

Rather than defining audiences each time a campaign is launched, a leading platform allows users to set up automatically updating lists that refresh membership based on real-time interactions and field-level criteria. By listening for changes in status, you can properly identify a buyer’s preferred channels of communication and the most relevant topics, rather than using a traditional ‘batch-and-blast’ approach.

By decoupling audience definition from program execution, you can more effectively influence when, where, and how buyers experience your brand. For example, instead of building individual lists that only support a specific campaign, it’s possible to think more holistically and reuse these audiences over time to drive increased results based on user-defined communication patterns.

In the past, many marketing automation platforms were unable to consistently pass these audiences to all of the channels that supported multi-channel communication. But now with strong APIs, pre-connected campaign-to-audience functionality, and intuitive interfaces, a sophisticated platform allows the marketing team to execute their audience strategy from a centrally managed and completely connected hub.

2. Connected, Multi-Channel Marketing Automation

Defining reusable audiences is the first step in a connected customer experience. The second step is being able to orchestrate a desired experience based on buyer interactions. To accomplish this across channels, a marketing automation platform must support trigger-based responses across channels within the same automation flow.

While on the surface this concept sounds simple enough, the technological alignment needed to support this sophistication requires careful and deliberate design. Pre-programmed back-end frameworks must do the heavy lifting for the standard non-technical marketer and simplify the logic for deciding when to direct users from one type of communication to another. The complexity of simplifying the user interface while maintaining technological sophistication is one of the core reasons many automation platforms still have a long way to go before truly integrating multi-channel marketing within a central automation engine.

The benefits of connected, multi-channel automation are profound. Systems that truly support omni-channel communication free up marketers to plan their campaigns without having to change their approach to match their systems. Logic and workflows within these platforms enable program managers to easily add and remove different types of communication from the same flow and on the same screen, and greatly reduce the number of times they have to leave the platform to set up components in other systems.

An example multi-channel flow would include the ability to initiate an immediate response via email, then send out a direct mail piece within a certain timeframe if the customer has not moved forward within their buying criteria. Today, there are companies that can print and personalize direct mail messages within the first 15 minutes of real-time activity, placing them in the daily mail for immediate delivery the same day.

Another option would be to integrate SMS text messaging within the flow (direct mail may be bit slow for e-commerce decisions) or add/remove individuals from remarketing audiences within your ad networks. And for those managing mobile app strategies, a solid marketing automation platform must be able to align ongoing in-app messages with the most important and current interests of your target audience.

3. Personalization at Scale

Finally, beyond general audience and channel management, a truly centralized marketing automation platform will allow marketers to scale these attempts across all channels. It is now possible to customize the individual user’s experience on your website based on their attributes and activities that are happening in real-time using web personalization. This same personalization should be echoed within the other marketing channels without overwhelming your team.

To make this level of personalization a reality, your marketing efforts need to be scalable across across the entire platform and repetitive activities must be dramatically reduced or eliminated. For instance, if you’re setting up multiple versions of the same email just to personalize the message for each of your target audiences, it may be time to look toward newer technologies that can automate across multiple channels, at scale.

A sophisticated marketing automation platform leads the way in personalizing and connecting the customer experience across channels, without burning out the marketing team. It’s time to get onboard or get left in the dust with siloed, irrelevant communications.

Have you started executing multi-channel campaigns? Please feel free to share some of experiences below.


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Monday, September 26, 2016

The Art of B2B Sales: How Sun Tzu’s Ancient Wisdom Can Help You Close More Deals Faster

Sun Tzu and the Art of B2B Sales- How Ancient Wisdom Can Help You Close More Deals Faster

Author: Chris Gillespie

Sure, you look pretty great with a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War on your office bookshelf, but have you actually read it?

You wouldn’t be the first to admit that it’s a tough slog, and the terminology is no doubt dated. Plenty has changed in the past two centuries, right?

To quite the contrary, nothing has changed. Sure, we don’t spend much time thinking about how horsemen fare against spearmen anymore (outside of Game of Thrones, that is), but the fundamental principles that Sun Tzu teaches are really about human nature, and when you strip away all of the “things” and look at the “who,” you’ll realize that people haven’t changed a tick.

Sun Tzu talks about outmaneuvering competitors and strategizing for success, and his wisdom is just as useful to salespeople today as it was to generals then. In fact, with minor substitutions, we unearth phrases like “The art of sales is of vital importance to the company, a road to either safety or ruin!”

And so it is that sales is the lifeblood of your organization for when it ceases, so does business!  So let’s wage war (so to speak), and help you fight and scratch your way to sales victory! Here are some instructions laid out by Sun Tzu and translated for the modern B2B salesmen and saleswomen: 

1. “If words of command are not clear and distinct…the general is to blame.”

Sales translation: If there’s a miscommunication, it’s the salesperson’s fault.

Ever meet a salesperson full of excuses? If the deal blows up, the customer was crazy. If the demo goes south, the client “didn’t get it.” If the leads aren’t coming in, it’s marketing’s fault. What Sun Tzu prescribes here is to take some responsibility. All you can control in the world is your message and how you’re saying things. If there’s a trend that situations keep going wrong and you’re at the center of it, it’s time to do a little introspection!

It could be your delivery, your tone, or your subject matter, but whichever it is, an openness to receiving this often-ignored feedback from prospects and customers and then changing your message is the only way to truly improve. At the end of the day, you’re responsible for your sales number, not your buyers, and if you want the right outcomes, that’s on you!

Tip: Have colleagues listen in on your calls to provide you with feedback and then try your hand at Improv comedy to improve your delivery.

2. “Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”

Sales translation: Sell value, not discounts.

What Sun Tzu is talking about here is winning by strategy rather than by force. In sales, this means winning by selling the value of your product and explaining how it helps your prospects solve their problems better than anyone else’s. Do that, and you don’t even have to talk about price.

However, more often than not, salespeople fall short of this. They get lazy and try to conquer battles through brute force, throwing out discounts and hoping for a quick close. This inevitably leads to price wars with inferior competitors where they cleave their own commission and devalue their products all because they failed to educate their prospects on how they aren’t a commodity.

Teach yourself to be patient and sell value, and you’ll win practically without fighting. There’ll be less back-and-forth “battle of the dueling demos,” which means a shorter sales cycle. And of course, less discounts means bigger deals, which gets you to your quota faster.

Tip: Use the PCSB format for presenting your product as your prospect’s solution:

Problem: Here’s the challenge you’re facing

Cause: Here’s why it’s happening

Solution: Here’s how our product fixes that

Benefit: Here are the result of having that fixed

3. “The highest form of generalship is to foil the enemy’s plans.”

Sales translation: Lay landmines for your competition.

What’s a sales landmine? It’s something that you offer to your prospect to trap your competitors into saying predictable things and dissolve their credibility. Here’s how it works: Study your top competitor’s materials (always be on their email chains, watch their demos, and become a prospect of theirs) and learn what they each commonly say against you.

Perhaps it’s something like, “They’re too expensive.” Warn your prospects what they’re about to be told word-for-word; you can even arm them with tough questions to ask that vendor. When your predictions prove true, your competition’s advice to the prospect will blow up in their face.

This has the beautiful effect of making the buyer immediately skeptical of the other salesperson, and while their stock plummets, yours will rise. You’ll ascend to the level of trusted advisor.

Tip: Try using the phrase, “Oh, that competitor is great at (something unrelated to the client’s needs), but you’re probably going to hear X, Y, and Z from them, and they tell everyone this, but it’s just not true. Just be prepared to hear that.”

Now, on to waging sales!

Are you feeling electrified by the possibility of what these ancient wisdoms can do for your deals? They’re powerful and they’ve been practiced not only by me, but by Chinese generals for millennia, for Sun Tzu’s cunning observations of human nature transcend the ages and ring true even to this day.

You’ll become a more strategic salesperson if you take responsibility for your communications, educate and sell based on value, and foil the competition’s plans. Do this, and you’ll have mastered the art of sales!

What other ancient (or modern) wisdom do you apply to your sales strategy? Share in the comments below!


The Art of B2B Sales: How Sun Tzu’s Ancient Wisdom Can Help You Close More Deals Faster was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Friday, September 23, 2016

One of the Largest DDoS Attack Ever Seen Kills Krebs Security Site

One of the largest Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks ever seen on the internet has caused Akamai to dump a site it hosted, KrebsOnSecurity.com. The DDoS attack was apparently in retaliation for journalist Brian Krebs' recent article about vDOS, which is allegedly a cyberattack service. According to BI following Krebs reporting two Israeli men were arrested. and the site was taken down.

One Twitter post noted the irony in a security expert having his site taken down because of a DDoS attack. "Brian Krebs, the man who gives cybercriminals nightmares, has been hit with a Godzilla-sized DDoS attack," noted cybercrime researcher, blogger and speaker, Graham Cluley, "Sad news, hope he's back soon."

The Attack Was Huge

Holy moly. Prolexic reports my site was just hit with the largest DDOS the internet has ever seen. 665 Gbps. Site's still up. #FAIL

— briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 21, 2016

Before his site was take down Krebs posted about the attack on his website saying that KrebsOnSecurity.com was the target of an extremely large and unusual distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack designed to knock the site offline. "The attack did not succeed thanks to the hard work of the engineers at Akamai, the company that protects my site from such digital sieges. But according to Akamai, it was nearly double the size of the largest attack they’d seen previously, and was among the biggest assaults the Internet has ever witnessed."

It's looking likely that KrebsOnSecurity will be offline for a while. Akamai's kicking me off their network tonight.

— briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 22, 2016

Later Akamai did take down the site and Krebs was understanding:

Before everyone beats up on Akamai/Prolexic too much, they were providing me service pro bono. So, as I said, I don't fault them at all.

— briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 23, 2016

"The attack began around 8 p.m. ET on Sept. 20, and initial reports put it at approximately 665 Gigabits of traffic per second," writes Krebs. "Additional analysis on the attack traffic suggests the assault was closer to 620 Gbps in size, but in any case this is many orders of magnitude more traffic than is typically needed to knock most sites offline."

Krebs said that Martin McKeay, Akamai’s senior security advocate, told him that this was the largest attack that they had seen. Earlier this year they clocked an attack at 363 Gbps, but there was a major difference: This attack was launched by a "very large" botnet of hacked devices, where typical DDoS attacks use the common amplifying technique that bulks up a small attack into a large one.

Krebs last tweets about the attack:

So long everyone. It's been real.

— briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 22, 2016

there's no place like 127.0.0.1

— briankrebs (@briankrebs) September 23, 2016

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How to Create Content for Your ABM Strategy [Infographic]

How to Create Content for Your ABM Strategy [Infographic]

Author: Ellen Gomes

You’ve probably heard of account-based marketing (ABM) by now…and you may be considering if it’s right for your organization, or already be implementing an ABM strategy. But whether you’re just starting to evaluate ABM or are a well-trained expert, you still have to drive awareness and engagement with today’s bombarded buyers. And that’s where content comes in.

Content is a way (in my opinion, the best way) to offer value to your larger audiences and your targeted audiences, and value is what will break through the noise. You may have used content in other marketing initiatives or for your broad-based marketing strategies, but with a few key techniques, you can create scalable content that supports your ABM programs across the entire customer lifecycle.

Let’s take a look at a few ways you can create scalable, personal, and relevant content to support your ABM strategy and engage your target audiences:

Do Your Research

Good content starts with understanding your audience, and that’s even more important when your audience is a specific set of people in target accounts. A wonderful thing about ABM is that the strategy basically requires you to have a deep understanding of your target accounts and their pain points. This is the same foundation, albeit maybe with a bit more detail, that you need for creating interesting and relevant content for your target audience. A few key questions to ask:

  • Who are your key personas?
  • What do they care about?
  • Where do they consume information?
  • When do different types of content work best?

You may find that within a specific target account you have a few different types of audiences—executive and practitioner, technical and strategic. Documenting these for your specific target accounts is important, but so is understanding whether there’s a trend across your target accounts.

Understand What Exists

Creating original content takes resources—time and money. Before you start to create brand new content, make sure you take a look at what content you already have, which will help you use your content resources more effectively. You may already have a comprehensive list of content with details about the date it was created, which audience it was for, whether it’s early-, mid-, or late-stage content, etc. But, if you don’t have that, it’s probably worth creating, at least as it pertains to your target accounts. This will help you identify content that already speaks to your target audiences and still works, needs an update, or needs to be retired; it will also help you identify content gaps.

Create a Plan

Once you have an understanding of who you are creating content for, what content you already have, and the gaps that exist, you can start building a content strategy for your target accounts. Use a content/message matrix to map what content or message you will use to reach your target accounts across the entire buying journey.

Here’s an example from our ebook, A Recipe for Lean ABM ebook, that shows mapping content to the buying journey of a Higher Education target account.

ABM Content Creation

Personalize at Scale

Before you get overwhelmed, realize that the personalized content you’ll need for each stage of the buying journey doesn’t need to be created from scratch. Repurposing your existing content is a great way to create personalized content at scale. Revisit your content library and determine what can be tweaked to resonate with your target audience. For instance, can you personalize a general ebook for your target accounts by adding in more industry examples and changes some of the terminology? Can you up-level the messaging on a whitepaper to speak to an executive versus a practitioner? There are different ways to spin your content to speak to a specific company or industry. That being said, you should still consider creating fresh content that is tailored to your key accounts and the individuals within them, but this way, you can save your resources for those bigger efforts.

Like anything in marketing, you can map out audience attributes, analyze their behaviors, understand your existing assets, and create a plan, but you must be ready to iterate. Build testing into this process. If a specific visual, message, or content asset does not work for your target audience at a specific stage of their buying journey, test something else. The best ABM, including content for ABM, adapts to your target accounts’ needs to ultimately deliver value.

Want more tips on creating content for ABM? Check out our infographic, Operation ABM: Top-Secret Tricks to Creating Content for Your Target Accounts.

If you’re interested in an account-based marketing strategy or solution check out, our now available, Marketo ABM.

View the infographic in a new window here.

Please use the HTML code below to embed this graphic

<a href="how-to-create-content-for-your-abm-strategy-infographic"><img alt="Operation ABM: How to Create Content For Your ABM Strategy[Infographic]" src="http://blog.marketo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Operation-ABM-Create-Content-For-Your-ABM-Strategy.png" width="100%" /></a><br><p><small>Brought to you by <a href="http://www.marketo.com/marketing-automation">Marketing Automation Software by Marketo</a></small>

How to Create Content for Your ABM Strategy [Infographic] was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Hubcast 110: Collaboration, HubSpot Projects & Custom Links

Hubcast Podcast

Welcome back to The Hubcast, folks: A weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below, including some new HubSpot video tutorials ...

The post Hubcast 110: Collaboration, HubSpot Projects & Custom Links appeared first on The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan.



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