Working hard this holiday month? You may be one of the few
By mid-December, workers say their productivity falls off, with some feeling overwhelmed or distracted by the holidays
Sales Renewal’s insight:
How do you balance your customers’ needs and employees’ lives over the holidays? Would higher productivity and better work quality be a good trade for more time off for your workforce?
Read Original Article
Libraries Demonstrate How Data Can Supercharge Low-budget Marketing
Libraries may still be analog institutions, but their creative staffs are finding ways to leverage both data and their traditional expertise-information sharing-to adapt their marketing for modern communities
Sales Renewal’s insight:
We love marketing, data-driven decisions, and happy endings. This article has all three elements. Happy reading!
Read Original Article
The Hidden Player Spurring a Wave of Cheap Consumer Devices – Amazon
Numerous electronics brands have sprung up offering inexpensive gadgets. Here’s how Amazon enables them, and how other brands may copy that success.
Where to go next with your Google My Business listing
So, you’ve set up your Google My Business listing but still aren’t seeing results. What’s the next step? Columnist Brian Smith lays out some suggestions to further optimize your listing for better local search visibility.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
In case you thought your Google My Business listing would sort of take care of itself, think again. In case you’d like help managing your listings, contact us.
Read Original Article
58% More Shoppers Called Businesses on Cyber Monday 2017 — What Should Marketers Do?
DT University at DialogTech uncovered inbound call volumes were 58% higher on Cyber Monday 2017 than average daily call volume. Learn more about the research.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Timely reminder from our partner Dialogtech: “What starts online…doesn’t always stay online!” Regardless of your business, phone training for your frontline staff is fundamental to your success. This article offers a detailed insight based on recent data (from last week and this week!) and compares it to last year’s consumer calling behavior. It’s a highly recommended read – but if you’re too busy too read it (hey, ’tis the season) here are the 3 things we think most important now:
1- MAKE IT EASY FOR CUSTOMERS TO CALL! (If you don’t have click-to-call enabled on your site, get in touch with us, we can help!)
2 – FOCUS ON PRICE, SAVINGS, THEN VALUE – in that order. Holiday shoppers are more concerned about money than ever; but they called you, remember? So, they’re ready to buy…well-trained employees can close the sale when they understand the shopper’s needs, mindset AND the unique features and benefits of your products and services AND the advantages of doing business with you.
3- TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ALL YOUR DATA – if you’re watching your web and phone analytics, you can respond to trends and opportunities by making minor adjustments (even now, next week, and the week after) that will increase your Holiday sales THIS Holiday season.
We wish you a very sales-filled 2017 season!
Read Original Article
Designing Content-First for a Better UX – GatherContent Blog
Why design content-first? Because content is UX. If the primary purpose of websites is to deliver valuable content to an audience, we should be designing content-first for the best possible UX. But we frequently miss the opportunity to validate and iterate our UX designs with content insights, instead waiting until the final stages to unite …
Sales Renewal’s insight:
In our experience developing websites for B2B and B2C companies and non-profit organizations, what we find we really love about Gather Content is its ability to show the relationship between the design and the content from the very earliest stages of web design.
While we all get along pretty well, the fact is that designers, writers, and the internet-using public don’t always see eye-to-eye when it comes to designing (and navigating) websites and creating content for those sites. So while we’re all on the same team, individuals often approach the site design (or redesign) process from different perspectives. Gather Content helps everyone understand how visual concepts, technical interfaces and editorial content come together to create the user experience. The result is a shorter development phase (good for our clients), a more robust site, and improved user experience (UX) for our clients’ customers – which in turn is good for sales (for companies) and engagement (for non-profits).
Not a Cookie-Cutter Solution
Unlike some agencies that standardize on one program or tool and insist that it fit each of their clients’ needs, we use a lot of different tools, and evaluate others continuously, because we know one tool – or one system – definitely doesn’t serve every client’s marketing goals.
That said, we’ve used Gather Content enough to say with certainty that the company’s product is a good fit for many of our clients, and the Gather Content’s blog post (excerpted above) on the subject of UX, content development and design is spot-on.
Specifically, we’ve found that Gather Content helps everyone communicate better in the design (or redesign) process. As a result, we – our Sales Renewal team and our clients – all work together more efficiently. Ensuring that a website design project is completed on-time and on-target requires more than one good tool. The good news is that Gather Content is one good tool – and we’re always happy to share those with our clients.
If you’re considering a web design (or redesign) project in 2018, contact us for recommendations.
Read Original Article
Consumers May Be More Trusting of Ads Than Marketers Think
A study surveying 400 participants regarding 20 common tactics used in TV and Digital ads found that 13 of the tactics elicited favorable responses – which surprised even marketers and has top ad agencies focusing on the Authenticity factor.
For anyone concerned with the believability of marketing today, this is a must-read article. Sales Renewal whole-heartedly believes that we all need to focus on ‘proving’ not ‘selling’ brand values.
Read Original Article
10 of the Best Small Business Marketing Studies Published This Year | AllBusiness.com
Why should you care about small business surveys? They can show where you stand compared to your peers, and what strategies and tactics are working best for them.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
It’s November, so let the onslaught of year-in-review articles begin! Most of the reports on small- to medium-size businesses are positive – but the most important data is YOURS. We hope you can take some time (perhaps by NOT reading every analysis of 2017) and consider your business growth, strategic direction, and plans for the New Year. And we hope you can do that before Q1 2018.
We are already planning with our customers for Q1 2018. If you’d like to see what kind of growth is possible when you partner with an integrated marketing firm that specializes in working with small to medium-sized businesses that are determined to grow, contact us.
Read Original Article
Twitter officially enables 280-character limit for all accounts, including brands
Since Twitter started testing the doubled character count in September, only 5 percent of tweets have exceeded 140 characters.
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Double the characters, double the fun? What difference if any will longer tweets make in your marketing messages – and more importantly, in response rates? Will prospects respond better to those brands who keep their Tweets short and sweet? We’re urging clients to first, stay true to their messaging, and second, to carefully consider how the longer character may affect channel activity.
Read Original Article
Creating a B2B and B2C overlap strategy
How should you structure paid search accounts when your targets include both businesses and consumers? Columnist Justin Freid discusses how to develop an ‘overlap strategy.’
Sales Renewal’s insight:
Overlap strategy is smart marketing, but what if your B2B/B2C business doesn’t have two websites? A thorough understanding of the market and competitive landscape, sales cycle(s), and the various customer profiles/personas must be considered when designing the optimal UX for your business website. Lead tracking and careful analysis are also important. If your B2B/B2C business could use a little marketing help, get in touch. We work with many small-to-medium size businesses expanding from B2B to B2C and vice-versa.
Read Original Article