How to Increase Sales 27% for E-commerce

E-commerce is a great business model.
Low overheads, scale up fast, punch above your weight, and a whole wide world of potential customers.
But it comes with a challenge when figuring out how to increase sales effectively, as there’s a big disadvantage compared to traditional business:
You never get to meet your customers.
Derek Bacharach, owner at the store www.SimplySuperHeroes.com describes how this affects him:
“One of the drawbacks to having an e-commerce store is not being able to see the end result of the shipments you send out. You don’t see the expression on your customers’ faces when they open the packages addressed to them from you.”
That lack of face to face contact means that two of the most powerful and cost-effective sales drivers for a traditional business are much harder to secure for an e-commerce business:

• repeat business from existing customers;

• more new customers for free through personal recommendations.

The two traditional ‘weapons of choice’ for retention and referrals are great service and personal relationships.
And note that although marketing is most people’s default choice for growing sales, marketing is never the answer to keeping a customer.
Marketing’s how you win one for sure.
But what happens after that, whether you’ll get repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals, is all down to their experience of having dealt with you.
In an e-commerce business you can’t count on inter-personal skills to make these sources of revenue work for you. So it’s like having one hand tied behind your back unless you find a way to compensate.
And it’s a bigger problem (or opportunity) than you might think.
Because although all of us in business do our best to leave customers with a good impression, things often go wrong that we’re not aware of.

The surprisingly big impact on revenue

We took a large, anonymous sample of 100,000 responses from our database of satisfaction scores to work out how much business is at risk.
We found that 27% of people were dissatisfied in some way. Which means 27% of customers had a reason NOT to buy again, and they’re not likely to pass on a recommendation to others, either.
Worse, they may even be telling others to steer clear.
So 27% of sales are at risk in companies that regard themselves as ‘good’ at customer service.
Unless, of course, you simply make sure you find and fix any problems to counter the frustrations and unlock those sales and recommendations.
That’s exactly why we have the data – our customers use our product to find out exactly what the issues are so they can fix them.
Let’s have a look at why this makes such a big impact on e-commerce sales…

How to increase sales the hard way.

There’s a steady run rate of sales, but each year some customers slip quietly away. You may not even notice they’ve gone because you’re so busy trying to bring new customers on board.

How to increase sales the easy way.

This chart illustrates the dramatic financial benefit that can be gained from some simple measures to improve customer satisfaction.
Now you’ve solved the revenue leaks:

• There are no more avoidable lost customers;
• Existing customers have no hesitation to recommend you because you’ve dealt brilliantly with any frustrations. In fact the improved service means they’re positively raving about you.

Two simple steps to compensate for not having personal contact.

Now that the problem’s laid bare, the good news is that once you’re alert to the problem, it’s easy to fix.
Even better news – it’s 6 times cheaper to retain a customer than replace them with a new one.
So a bit of time and money spent on guaranteeing that your existing customers are happy delivers a huge return.
Here are two simple things you can do which are both cost-effective and time-effective.

1. Customer Feedback

Facial expressions, tone of voice, gestures, body language, regional or national culture. They’re all ways that customers give signals.
According to the expert research…
Over 60% of inter-personal communication is non-verbal.
Some people estimate it’s as high as 93%.
Either way, it’s a mighty big deficit that online businesses need to overcome if they’re to find and eliminate all their customers’ frustrations, which at the best of times often remain unspoken.
And if you don’t ask for feedback, you’re missing 100% of the signals.
This is what to do to overcome that problem:

i. Set up a simple customer feedback system.

Send a simple request for feedback after the customer has received their order. Do it in a way that benefits them – done right it’s not a request to fill in a survey, it’s an easy opportunity for them to get the service they want. Choose the customer satisfaction system that’s right for you.

ii. Act immediately on what comes back from your customers.

A quick and appropriate response will blow their socks off.
Because hardly anyone does this.
After a while, you’ll find that most of the feedback is praise – and that has a terrific motivational effect for everyone.

iii. Share the feedback with your whole team.

That helps everyone stay tuned in to the things that are most important to customers and it’s far more effective than customer service training (though that can help too).

iv. Spot trends to reduce costs and improve service.

As well as the immediate response back to each customer, from time to time look for patterns and recurring problems in the data you collect.
Here are some tips on how to get the best results:

• Follow the three golden rules of requesting customer feedback;

• Design your feedback form with the customer in mind;

• Use best practice to get high response rates.

2. Exemplary Personal Service

I had a shock recently.
A prospective customer asked me for help designing their customer feedback form. One of the questions they wanted to ask was “Did you receive a response to any queries within 24 hours?”
24 hours?
I wonder if they’d still be in business running a ‘bricks and mortar’ store if they expected customers to stand in line waiting that long for a reply.
This just reinforces the fact that another disadvantage of running an e-commerce business is that you’re insulated from the realities of dealing with customers.
In extreme cases like this, customers become an annoyance. An interruption to making money.
Rather than the paymasters and lifeblood of your business.
There are libraries of books on customer service and how to train and motivate a team of people to deliver it, but in my experience they don’t deliver as much value as customer feedback.
But get these three customer service ingredients right, and you’ll be a long way ahead of the pack:

i. Respond quickly to requests and enquiries.

Clearly you won’t get a sale if you don’t do this (whether it’s a new or existing customer). But the flip side is that if you’re fast, knowledgeable and helpful you increase confidence and make it more likely that people will buy from you and less likely that they will take the risk of going elsewhere.

ii. Keep customers informed.

Poor communication is one of the biggest complaints from customers for any business. Again, because there’s no personal relationship, any problems like this are exacerbated in online trading.
Whether it’s the progress of their order, or an update on how you’re dealing with their problem, it’s better to over communicate rather than under communicate.
And NEVER make promises in an automated email responder unless you will deliver on them. If you automatically promise a reply within an hour, make sure you do it in half that time.

iii. Handle complaints shrewdly.

Wise business owners know the value of complaints.


http://www.customersure.com/blog/how-to-increase-sales/

A Scientific Guide to Writing Great Tweets: How To Get More Clicks, Retweets and Reach

 Last week Buffer had the great pleasure of co-hosting a webinar with Twitter (yes, THAT Twitter!)
During the webinar, I talked with Jimmy Hang of Twitter for Small Business about how to make your Twitter content work harder for your business, focusing on three major areas:

• Writing great tweets
• Timing it right
• Measuring and testing

If you weren’t able to make it but still want to write must-click content on Twitter (and really, who doesn’t?), here’s your guide! (Psst: You can scroll to the bottom to check out the slides or watch the entire video presentation).

What do people want from brands on Twitter?

According to Twitter, there are 255 million active Twitter users generating more than 500 million Tweets per day. Link clicks are by far the biggest way users interact with content, accounting for 92% of all user interaction with Tweets.
Twitter users follow a median of 6 brands on Twitter, looking for things like interesting and fun content, news and updates, discounts and promos and more.

So we know your customers are on Twitter, ready to click some links. They want to hear from you there and take actions that can benefit your business.

Twitter’s research shows that:

• 60% of respondents say they’ve made a purchase from an SMB based on something they saw on Twitter.
• 86% say they plan to purchase in the future.
• 43% of respondents plan to make multiple purchases from SMBs they follow on Twitter.
  

Writing great Tweets

Conversations that you have with your customers every day can also happen on Twitter. And you can approach these Twitter conversations the same way – like you’re talking to a good friend. Here are a few tips straight from Twitter:

• Know the difference between voice and tone.  Voice doesn’t change, but a business’ tone should vary based on a situation.  If a follower did not have a positive experience, a business’ tone may be more sympathetic and understanding.
• Talk with people, not at them. Reply to @mentions and address both positive and negative feedback. It’s a real-time network, so businesses shouldn’t keep followers waiting too long.
• Keep Tweets conversational.  Be professional without being overly formal. Avoid business jargon when possible.
• Think about how your content will be consumed by your followers. Would they want to retweet it or pass it along to others? Incorporate humor, inspiration and newsworthy content to draw followers in.

Here are some great, conversational examples from Twitter’s downloadable #MtgKickstart resource.

 

Viral words and phrases

Of course your own content, written in your brand’s voice, is the main idea to focus on for Twitter success.
But Twitter is particularly powerful at driving “amplification” for brand messages–retweets that share your message. In fact, 78% of user engagement with a brand’s Tweets is in the form of Retweets, according to Salesforce research.

So if you want a little help with that amplification potential, here’s a look at a few different studies on words and phrases that are most likely to help content spread.

Ripenn looked at the most viral words and phrases on four sites that focus specifically on viral content, including Upworthy and ViralNova. On these lists you’ll notice:

• Imperative words that tell you to do something, like see, make, look.
• Visual words like video and photos point to the importance of multimedia content.
• A lot of superlatives like “the most” and “the best” and “blow your mind.”
• Audience-referencing phrases like “make you,” “when you,” and “you see.” If you’re talking to “me,” I am more likely to feel strongly about the content.
• How-to phrases that explain a process or teach a skill.

Specific to retweets, social media scientist Dan Zarrella of Hubspot compared common words and phrases in Tweets and ReTweets to isolate words that occur in ReTweets more than they occur in normal Tweets. From that research, he pulled out this list of the top 20 words and phrases most likely to get retweeted.

 Similar patterns appear here. Again, lots of audience-referencing, like “you,” and “Twitter,” another mention of “how to” and a lot of imperative words that tell you to do something, like retweet or share.
In fact, Salesforce found that tweets that specifically ask followers to “Retweet” receive 12X higher retweet rates than those that do not. When “Retweet” is spelled out, the retweet rate is 23X higher than the average. When using the shortened version, the letters “RT,” instead, the retweet rate is 10X higher.

Zarrella also found that tweets that contained more adverbs and verbs have a higher click-through rate than tweets with more nouns and adjectives. So the general rule that action words make for stronger, more compelling writing is also true for Tweets.

 

 Formatting: Optimize for your goal

Different tweets can be used to achieve various marketing outcomes. For example, if you want to drive more direct response start by simplifying your Tweets.
Start with a compelling offer and then communicate a sense of urgency. Next, include a strong call-to-action with a link to your website. Finally, avoid using hashtags or @mentions.
Here’s the anatomy of a great “direct response” Tweet—you’ll notice that everything is focused on one goal: click the link.



If you’re sharing any blog posts, Conductor polled people on headline format and found that people prefer title case (shown here as “sentence case”) – basically the first letter of every word in the headline capitalized, more than lowercase or all caps.

This formatting can help set off content and signify that it’s something special that your followers will want to read and share.

Hashtags: How to choose the right ones

Consider creating a hashtag that is short, recognizable by followers, and allows them to easily follow along. If you’re using an existing hashtag, ensure you’re adding value to the conversation.
The volume of hashtags is important as well: one or two hashtags can get you up to two times more engagement than tweets without hashtags, according to a study by Buddy Media/Salesforce.



But when you use more than two hashtags, your engagement actually drops by an average of 17 percent. So make sure you’re choosing your hashtags carefully and focusing on the ones where you can add the most value for Twitter users.

Length: Around 100 characters is the sweet spot

While there may not be a foolproof “perfect length” for a Tweet, research by Track Social on 100 well-known brands popular on Twitter found that the sweet spot for Tweet length is right around 100 characters.

Their analysis saw a spike in retweets among those in the 71-100 character range—the “medium” length tweets column in this chart.

This research makes sense when you consider how we use Twitter—a tweet at this length is long enough for the original poster to say something of value but still short enough for the person retweeting to add their commentary as well.

If you can veer toward the shorter side, it might be worth a try for your clicks as well. Tweets shorter than 100 characters get a 17% higher engagement rate, according to Salesforce.

Photos and video can make content twice as engaging

With Twitter, you have more than characters as content. Equip your marketing arsenal with rich media like photos and Vine or YouTube videos to drive retweets—it can double engagement with users.

Late last year Buffer took a sample of 100 tweets from our own account and compared the engagement averages of tweets with and without images included using Buffer’s built-in analytics.

The results? Tweets with images received 18% more click-throughs, 89% more favorites, and 150% more retweets.

 

Try a Twitter promotion for special content

Beyond your average Tweet, Twitter also offers a number of special promotion opportunities like these:

• Twixclusive: An exclusive offer on Twitter that your followers can’t find anywhere else. Use unique coupons to track your results and reward your customers. If you have a brick and mortar location, Tweet a discount code for customers to redeem at the register. For online stores, direct message followers with a discount code that you can track at checkout.
• Flock to Unlock: A concept to help incentivize followers to spread your message by retweeting (i.e. sharing) your Tweet to unlock exclusive content i.e. a sale, special product, an early release, etc.
• Lead Generation Card: These cards (which require you to add a few lines of code to your website) make it easy for potential customers to demonstrate interest in your business. When someone expands a Tweet that contains a Lead Generation Card, they will see a description of your offer. Then the user simply clicks once to securely share their contact information with you. Finally, easily download all the leads to use in your email marketing efforts. Here’s an example:

Timing it right

Try weekends for B2C, weekdays for B2B

Every business and audience is different, so it’s best to test multiple days of the week to see what works for you. If your brand speaks directly to consumers ,Saturdays and Sundays may have a higher engagement rate as that is when most people are not at work and therefore have more free time.
A study by Salesforce discovered that Twitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to weekdays, but that only 19% of all brand Tweets are published on weekends. Weekend engagement rates are particularly high for sports brands, fashion, entertainment and publishing brands.

And you don’t have to give up your weekend to take advantage of this–there are a lot of solutions like Buffer and others available that will schedule your tweets in advance (though  you will want to keep an eye on your replies and participate in the conversation.)

For those working with business-to-business brands, you may want to stick with weekdays or start with a smaller experiment on weekends. An Argyle Social study says that weekdays provide 14% more engagement than weekends for B2B.

The best time of day to tweet: Daytime and afternoon

There is a 30% greater engagement rate when Tweets are published during the day (between 8AM-7PM). This makes sense if you consider the majority of news, store hours and activities happen during the day.


Specifically, the afternoon and early evening tend to be good time to see more engagement and clicks.
These stats from KISSMetrics say retweets have been shown to be highest around 5pm and that noon and 6pm are the best times to post for a higher clickthrough rate. (These findings are in the Eastern time zone, so adjust as needed for your location).

 

Another study on optimizing for clicks from bitl.y showed that 1–3pm is the best time to Tweet (once again, Eastern time zone).

Although some of the advice is conflicting, it all stays in the afternoon to early evening range, which may be worth a test for your brand.

Mobile users have their own patterns

There are also lots of Twitter users who primarily use a mobile device. These folks are very likely to be on Twitter during their commute as well as during school or work hours.



And these users just might be the ones you’re looking for for your business – they’re 44% more likely to click on links and 66% more likely to retweet than an average user. They also tend to follow more brands and they’re 53% more likely to recall seeing an ad on Twitter than the average Twitter user.

While all these different timing findings for different users can get complicated, the main idea is to put yourself in your followers’ shoes and consider the patterns of your own audience. What’s their day like? When are they busy? When are they bored? When do they have a few minutes between meetings? When are they most likely to want to hear from you?

If you want to know something a little more specific to your audience, you can also try a tool like Tweriod, SocialBro or Followerwonk that analyzes your account and gives you some key times to shoot for. You can then integrate those times right into your Buffer account.

Frequency of Tweets

More posts=more engagement

You’ll come across businesses that tweet 2x per day and others that post 20x per day. What’s most important is to develop a regular cadence of tweeting—your followers should know that they are going to get regular updates from you.
It’s generally OK to tweet as often as you have content to support it. Twitter is a high volume channel, and it helps to Tweet enough to get noticed in the stream.
Track Social studied 100 well-known brands that are active on Twitter and found that as brands tweet more, the total number of Retweets increases.

The general rule here: Make the most of the time you do have. If you’re a small business owner with a million things to do, you might be better off trying for 4-5 tweets per day to make the most of the time you do have. If you have the time and the content to post more often, Tweeting regularly helps you establish yourself as an authority on Twitter.

The more you tweet, the more opportunities you have to engage with fans, and the more total response you will receive. Greater volume should generally correlate to greater total response.

Try spacing out your links for more clicks

However, you might want to try to space your link posts out throughout the day. Social media scientist Dan Zarrella found that the higher the number of links an account Tweets in a given timeframe, the lower the click-through rate on each individual link. 

 

To combat this potential effect, you might try experimenting with your posting rate by mixing up “conversation starter” tweets—where you ask question or post “inside scoop” type photos—with your more salesy posts with links so each link gets a little more attention.

A content calendar can help keep it together

Twitter often gets asked what small businesses should be tweeting about, so they put together a few content themes to help get the words flowing in this handy downloadable content calendar.

For example:

• On Monday, you could launch a Twitter-only promotion for your followers. Tweet an online offer code or a secret word for customers to use when they visit your business.
• On Tuesday, tweet a behind-the-scenes tour of your business. Highlight how your products are made or where they are sourced from.
• On Wednesday: Create a regular series of Tweets that are informative or surprising such as tips.
• On Thursday, retweet a few positive customer reviews. Or tweet some industry-related news your followers might find interesting.
• Finally on Fridays, give customers a glimpse into your workplace culture. Tweet photos or Vine videos of your colleagues and employees hard at work or having fun.

Measuring and testing

Metrics to explore: Growth, reach, engagement, clicks and conversions

Measuring your progress is key to growing your business on Twitter. Start by asking yourself what you want to achieve. From there, track your results on a weekly basis using a tool like Buffer. Here are a few key metrics worth a look:

• Follower growth: How many new followers you get every day, week or month.
• Follower quality and engagement: How many users interact with your account.
• Reach: How many users favorite or retweet your Tweets.
• Clicks: How many users click on your links.
• Conversion: How many users sign up for your service or buy your product.

Testing: How to test headlines, hashtags and more

The more you tweet, the faster you will learn about what works and what doesn’t.
You can test different headlines, days and times, types of media and more to isolate what resonates most with your followers.
All you need is a way to track the metrics of all the Tweets you are sending. You can do this either through a URL shortener like bit.ly or with Buffer’s built in analytics.
For example, we test timing at Buffer by taking one piece of content and choosing 3-4 different times to test it on the same day. Buffer will always generate a different URL so it’s super simple to do a quick A/B test. It works best to keep the posts simple tweets with a headline plus a link each time (interspersed each time with other types of posts that are perhaps more conversational in tone).



The following day, check your analytics and see how the tweets compare for clicks, favorites and retweets. From there, update your schedule to optimize for your metric of choice. Repeat this process as your content changes and you get more followers to make sure you’re always tweeting at the most optimal times.
You can also do this with headlines. At Buffer, we test headline variations by Tweeting out the article 3 or so times throughout a day with a different title each time. We track the results in Buffer analytics to see which headline performed best in terms of clicks, shares, and favorites. Then we re-write the post’s headline depending on the winner of the test.

http://blog.bufferapp.com/writing-great-tweets-scientific-guide?utm_source=CustomerSure&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=Top%20100%20list

Add a Human Touch to Your Website through Live Chat

This is the fourth article in a five-part series on structuring your website for conversion.
Part 1: Product Grouping
Part 2: Upselling and Cross-Selling
Part 3: Maintaining Visitors’ Attention
Automated website conversion is a tricky process. You lure visitors to your website using the latest SEO practices, and once they land on your pages, you have to compel them to stay. While there are a lot of great things to say about sophisticated website software that automates the conversion process, the reality is that real human interaction often makes the difference between a bounce and a conversion.

In this article, we’ll look at the implementation of human interaction on your website through the use of live chat. Live chat works best when it is woven into the structure of your website in a way that keeps it invisible until it’s really needed. Think of live chat as a store clerk that offers to assist you at the precise moment that you have a question. Indeed, a good clerk won’t interrupt you when you’re just browsing, but by watching your body language, she will know exactly when to approach you and offer help. Live chat is your virtual store clerk.

Background
Wells Fargo was one of the early pioneers of live chat. They originally started the service over a decade ago (way back in 2002), and though the results were not initially encouraging, they stuck with it. By 2008, they were seeing a double-digit increase in their conversion rates due to live chat.
Clearly, live chat has caught on with consumers, and businesses are beginning to sit up and take notice. A recent Forrester Research paper proclaimed that 38% of respondents who purchased online indicated that live chat was directly related to their purchase decision. In other words, human interaction during their decision-making process directly resulted in the conversion. Furthermore, 62% of respondents said that they are more likely to purchase again from the merchant who offered live chat.
There should be little doubt that live chat can have a direct and powerful influence in your conversion rate.

Best Practices
While the above information may tempt you to rush out and install live chat on your website, understand that it’s not something you simply fire-up and forget. Live chat is a highly interactive feature that requires planning, resources and training. Your website structure must be capable of supporting live chat in a way that delights your visitors and, for the most part, remains invisible until it’s needed.
Below we’ve outlined a number of best practices that will help you implement live chat on your site.

• Allocate resources. An understaffed live chat feature is worse than not having the feature at all. You don’t want your visitors to click your live chat button, only to have nobody available to answer the call. Ensure management has set aside a budget to support a staff of chat agents.

• Train your chat agents. Your chat agents are on the front lines, so they should be trained to be courteous, proactive, positive and professional. Additionally, don’t overlook the importance of proper grammar. Remember that your agents represent your company, and they will be communicating through the written language. If they cannot express professionalism through proper mastery of the written language, they have no business communicating with your precious visitors. For example, if they use expressions like, “Me and Kim had coffee at lunch,” they are in severe need of training on the English language!

• Be proactive, not intrusive. There’s a fine line between being helpful and being a pest. Carefully analyze your site’s traffic patterns to determine the precise moment to offer a proactive chat session. Many live chat services, such as Comm100, offer fine-tuning in this area. For example, a customer who spends more than 1 minute on a particular page may have some questions, and he may appreciate a slide-in tab that offers live chat. Another thing to watch is the cart abandonment pattern. For example, from what page does a customer usually leave the site after having put products in the shopping cart? Perhaps there may be a structural problem with the page, and an offer to chat might help assuage that issue. Many merchants have a policy to initiate a live chat session with visitors as they complete their purchase, just to answer any last minute questions or to look for upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

• Ensure every page on your site features a chat button. Offer to speak to your visitors whenever they need help. The chat button should appear in a location that is consistent from one page to the next. Many sites choose the upper right-hand corner for this feature. Other sites implement a clever “slide-in” tab that visitors can access along the left or right margin.

• Respond immediately. When a customer hits the chat button – indicating she needs help – how long does she wait until a chat agent answers her request? Focus on minimizing this number. Many companies have a policy of 10 seconds maximum. This could present a problem if you’re understaffed. Track your response time, and if it starts to exceed some minimal amount, raise the issue with management. You may need to hire more staff or outsource the overload to an outside firm.

• Establish chat service hours. You may not need to staff your live chat service 24×7, so make sure your chat button indicates: A) the hours that your chat service keeps, and B) whether the service is currently active. If all your chat agents are currently busy, your chat button should indicate that the service is either unavailable or that there will be an extended wait period.

• Follow up. After a chat service has concluded, offer to send a copy of the entire session to your visitor. Additionally, ask a percent of your visitors to fill out a quick survey form indicating their satisfaction level with the service and what might be done to improve it. Your website developer should automate this follow-up process.

• Do not spy. Although many live chat services provide the ability to see what pages the visitor has viewed prior to the conversation, do not tell them that you have this information. This information should only be used to provide context to the chat agent. Nobody likes to be spied upon!

• Do not guess. Chat agents should be honest, and if they do not know the answer, they are obligated to find the answer. If the process of acquiring the answer will take a lot of time, your chat agent should offer to email the answer to the visitor.

• Review. Management should perform periodic quality audits to ensure excellent service to all visitors. Survey results and direct customer feedback should be analyzed for potential issues with the live chat service.

Summary
Live chat allows you to implement the human element directly into your online customer interaction, dramatically increasing conversions. However, there are many structural and procedural issues to consider as you implement this feature. The set of best practices in this article will help you implement live chat on your site.

In the fifth and final article in this series, we’ll suggest ways you can structure your website to address customer pain points. This is an important sales tool in live sales environments, but you can incorporate the same concepts online as well.


http://www.comm100.com/blog/website-conversion-2/add-a-human-touch-to-your-website-through-live-chat.html 

How To Generate Leads From Competitors (Via Social Media Monitoring)

I’m beyond frustrated, I will never use your product again – There it is, those are the golden words which can be wonderful triggers for new business. Social media has enabled customers to communicate their likes, dislikes, preferences and more. This provides an opportunity to generate leads via competitors monitoring through social media.

Intent to Switch – Legally steal your competitors’ customers

One of the key indicators of a potential customer is when customers are frustrated and complaining about a service or product. Traditionally it was very difficult to observe and know when your competitors customers are intending to switch. Most customers would typically vent by calling into customer service via a phone call, making it impossible for you to know if they are facing issues.

The Social Media Advantage

Social media has turned the tables in your favour completely. Social media networks are common grounds where customers can directly speak their minds out about a product or service issue. It also enables you to connect with the customer directly.

So is this really possible? Do companies do this, especially enterprise companies?

Nokia versus Samsung
A classic example of this is the case where a Samsung Blogger was complaining about an activity done by Samsung. Nokia jumped in publicly contacted the blogger and offered to help him. What do you think the blogger did?

The bigger advantage

Not only did Nokia show the agility which is needed, it also created a large amount of positive buzz for itself.

Is it really this simple?

In order to generate potential lead from your competition you need to be monitoring them. Social media makes it simple to monitor however, the challenge often is that the volume of conversations on social media channels can be overwhelming. Especially when you monitor multiple competitors.
The problem is further multiplied if you’re an enterprise organization with multiple lines of products and services.

There is another challenge

Don’t run off to open your competitors social media pages and handles right away hoping to find possible leads. You’re most likely going to be disappointed as you won’t find customers necessarily complaining at the moment in time when you visit there. It might be a longish wait.

Lead generation monitoring approach

Without a lead generation monitoring approach you’re going to get frustrated pretty soon. An effective lead generation monitoring and execution approach needs to take into account a number of external and internal factors in order to be successful.

CCC KIT

1. Competition – Who all are you going to be monitoring, and across which social channels.
2. Conversation topics – What topics aligned with products/services
3. Contact and engagement rules – How to approach the potential lead.
4. Keywords – What are keywords which can trigger intent.
5. Integration with sales and other teams– A work flow to ensure the appropriate teams are flagged and assigned tasks.
6. Tagging – A system for recording opportunity area and probability.

Though the above are stated as single line items, you need to give considerable thought to each. (I’ll cover these in another article)

Other advantages

There are some other advantages of monitoring your competition.
E.g. Customers speaking about the competitors product problems can be turned into showcases of your product strengths.They can be brilliant testimonials.
E.g. Customers speaking about things they like about their products can be used to enhance your products and be valid direct feedback to your product teams.

What are the common points of failure?

1. Wrong keyword selection is often the first point of failure. For e.g. if you search for I want a new xyz product or service name. It’s quite unlikely that people express this. People are often talking about a challenge or issue they are facing with a product, not so much as expressing a desire for a product. So keyword selection for monitoring involves first looking thru the kind of conversations people are having and then deciding probable keywords. Keyword selection is a continuous process and not a one time process as different people express their desires, frustrations in different ways.

2. How to connect with the customer: So you see a customer complaint about your competitor, how do you approach the person, do you make a direct contact and sales pitch? The risks being a) the competition does the same back to you, b) the customer getting irritated. You need to work out a clear approach plan, based on the context, and need to have different types of conversation starters to avoid a backlash.

Summary

Social media has enabled one to legally view your competitors and their customer interactions. The potential of lead generation via your competitors is huge. You need to clearly define your CCC KIT for lead generation and be aware of the points of failure.

http://www.business2community.com/marketing/generate-leads-competitors-via-social-media-monitoring-0880251#!bigsek

3 Simple Tips for Social Media Success in E-commerce

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, Tumblr, Instagram and the list keeps growing. Social media is now the number one activity online, with almost three-quarters of online adults using social networking sites. You can’t ignore social media as a part of your marketing mix.

So you make a choice. Do you want to simply exist on social media, or do you want to use it to make a difference – to your customers, to your culture, to your bottom line?

“Social media allows you to find your potential customer in a much easier way,” says Matt Kreikemeier, founder of Leverage New Age Media, a creative and tech agency based out of St. Louis, Missouri. “Not only can you target and search specific demographics and interests across these platforms, but you can go one step further and analyze the interests of current customers and learn where you should next promote your product – fan pages, tech forums, blogs, and other similar outlets.”

According to research by Deloitte, 75 percent of online Americans say product information found on social channels influences their shopping behavior and enhances brand loyalty.

You sell digital products, so 100 percent of your customers are online, and they are most tech-savvy consumers out there. Whether you have a large budget with a team of experts or you are tackling social media with limited resources, you’ve got to know what you’re doing. We’ve put together some simple tips to help you make the most of your social media presence.

1. Have a Strategy

Whether your social media is produced in-house or through an agency, it’s imperative to have a real plan. Social media can be the most visible part of your marketing mix, so you want to make sure it’s well thought out and impactful.

Companies no longer have interns running their social media campaigns. They have skilled experts who not only know social media, but also understand analytics and reporting, as well as the company’s strategy, brand voice and message.

“A true social media strategy makes a world of difference, but can be one of the most difficult aspects of your marketing strategy to maintain because of its ‘always on’ nature,” says Kreikemeier. “Have a strategy and stick to it. Develop a brand voice or content pillars to ensure your message is consistent and on brand. Be responsible and promote brand safety – don’t let just anyone tweet on behalf of your brand.”

A number of variables affect your strategy, like company size, culture, product lines and budget. Dell Software has a very specific social media strategy that includes training and certification to ensure any employees representing Dell on social media know how to appropriately present the company.

“For a company like Dell, it’s important that all employees represent the company fairly and accurately,” says Mark Dykstra, senior manager of Internet marketing at Dell. “Social media certification ensures that Dell employees know the rules around social discussion of their employer and know how to promote our products and services effectively.”

Whether your strategy is extensive or simple, the important thing is to have one.

2. Don’t Use Every Platform

Find out which social media tools your audience uses the most and make sure you are there. Research each social media platform and choose the ones that make the most sense for your goals and target market.

Each social channel is unique and can deliver different types of benefits. For digital products, being active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ will give you a well-rounded social media presence. “Know your audience, and know how to write content specific to each channel,” says Dykstra. “Each channel is a different in terms of demographics, styles, etc.”

Facebook

With more than one billion users around the globe, your customers are looking for you here. Facebook provides the largest opportunity to communicate with your customers. Check out companies you admire and see what they are doing on Facebook to connect with their audience.

Twitter

With 5,700 tweets per second, Twitter requires constant monitoring, and can be overwhelming. But if you take the time to delve in, it can serve you well. “People love Twitter because of its easily digestible content,” says Kreikemeier. “You can leverage the ‘instant gratification’ we all crave, and allow users to take action in the moment – greatly increasing your conversion ratio versus a website sign-up form.”

LinkedIn

As the largest business-focused platform, LinkedIn attracts key decision makers. More C-level executives are on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. Users may not be as “active” on LinkedIn as compared to the other big social media sites. So you may get fewer eyeballs, but make more meaningful connections. LinkedIn could be a great place to schedule regular posts, but you should probably look elsewhere when looking for active participation in a product launch or contest.

Google+

“Google+ has a fairly substantial tech community made up of early adopters and other tech enthusiasts, which makes for a great environment for targeting users who are eager to support new products and ideas,” says Kreikemeier. “However, it can be a slow process to build a community on Google+ so it wouldn’t hurt to mirror your Google+ strategy over to Facebook as well, since they are so similar.”

3. Always Be On

Instant gratification is why people love social media. Your customers expect a quick response. Make sure you give it to them.

“People are going to talk about your product whether you are there or not, so you might as well be there listening, engaging, learning and refining,” Kreikemeier says. “Social media allows you to put a ‘face’ to a company or product, humanizing your brand and building a reputation you control. You are then free to communicate with your customer base in a more natural way.”

Staying on top of your social media accounts can be intimidating and time-consuming. Lucky for you, there are a variety of tools to help you. From scheduling posts to compiling metrics, there are plenty of useful tools to help you master your social media accounts – like HootSuite and TweetDeck – and many are free. So take advantage.

Keystone

You can’t ignore the possibilities for social media success in e-commerce. “Social media drives traffic to our sites, resulting both in increased search engine presence and in direct lead and revenue generation,” says Dykstra. Be willing to put in the work to research your audience and the different social media tools. Then create a strategy and stick to it. Use the tools that benefit your company the most and stay active.

http://blog.cleverbridge.com/2014/05/3-simple-tips-social-media-success-e-commerce/ 

4 Signs You Should Fire Your Boss and Become an Entrepreneur

Are you ready to fire your boss? Perhaps you should and it just never occurred to you. The great irony is that many born with the freelancing spirit become shackled to their 9-to-5 jobs by golden handcuffs — and never realize their own potential. As a serial entrepreneur I deeply support freelancers’ brave quest for autonomy. But, as the fierce battles commemorated by the Fourth of July remind us, independence never comes easily.

To succeed in transitioning from full-timer to entrepreneur, everyone must work feverishly and make huge sacrifices. Yet some are more cut out than others to take the plunge. Are you proactive, fearless, and organized enough to make a go of it? Here are four signs that you already have what it takes to clock out for good and achieve financial independence:

1. You have a track record of networking with total strangers.

Are you connected to people you barely know on LinkedIn ? Solid start. Communicate with them regularly? Even better. Happily make cold calls and in-person visits to drum up business for your company? Well, that merits a gold star. Social courage isn’t taught in school, but it should be. It’s absolutely essential for every aspect of successfully hanging your own shingle, from enrolling potential investors in your vision, to turning hot prospects into long-term clients.

Entrepreneurs who define their network strictly by the people they know — and the connections of those connections — are seriously limiting themselves. Forget six degrees of separation. Many times there is no traceable path between you and the people you need most and the establishment of a relationship will rest squarely on the shoulders of your own chutzpah and icebreaking skills.

2. You work all the time, but never talk about how much you work.

People who enjoy what they do don’t feel the need to play the martyr. And if you plan to shed blood, sweat, and tears to start your own business, you better love it! Plus, no client wants to hear their independent contractors complaining about working through the weekend.

So if your hard labor requires an audience, you should forget any thoughts of freelancing. Along with office politics, face time is one of the first things that evaporate when striking out on your own. Take a look at your own reputation and if there’s any chance that your success is even partly dependent on your boss hearing about your exhausting schedule, you best stay put.

3. You understand the details of your 401k, health insurance, and pay stubs.

Being your own boss means being your own professional caretaker. You must have full command over all the pesky details that your company takes care of now. Filling out your weekly timesheets will seem like a breeze when confronted with issues of incorporation, billing, past-due invoices and the tracking of tax-deductible expenses. If you’re the kind of person who has full command of your compensation and benefit package, you’re more than up to the challenge.

4. You take so much vacation time that some of it is unpaid.

To the un-enterprising eye, this may sound like a negative. However, taking the time off you need proves you value freedom over money and love new experiences. These are both important qualities in any successful entrepreneur.

With the ability to make their own schedule and work wherever they are, freelancers are emancipated from the predetermined, and often miniscule, allotment of vacation time that has become the norm. If you’ve already broken beyond those bounds, and happily accepted the consequence of a reduced paycheck, then you’ve already begun the transition to working independently.

Make no mistake, becoming your own boss is a promotion. And as anyone who has successfully climbed a corporate ladder can tell you, promotions are only granted to people who already proved they can do the job. Are you qualified to be your own boss? If you fearlessly network, truly enjoy hard work, stay on top of a world of details, and value your freedom, then you’re already acting like a successful entrepreneur. Meaning your leap to freedom won’t be nearly as risky as you think. So what’s stopping you? Your boss’s pink slip is waiting.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michakaufman/2014/07/02/celebrate-the-fourth-by-firing-your-boss/?utm_campaign=forbestwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social