The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

The other day I was talking to an old friend of mine whose experience is in traditional media. The integration of digital marketing into an overall marketing plan does not come naturally to him. He explained to me that he knew it was important to stay relevant to his customers, but he just didn’t quite understand the potential impact of what he was missing.

I wrote him the next day and shared the following five digital marketing trends to give him insight into the various audiences he is missing out on.

1. Social Media Is Booming With Boomers

The fastest growing demographic on Facebook and Google+ is 45-54; on Twitter it’s 55-64. With business users and the older demographic adopting social media, the marketing opportunities are greater and so are the costs of ignoring social. After all, baby boomers control 70% of the disposable income in the U.S.

It drives me nuts when I see a social media site that’s little more than a Facebook version of a company’s website. Social marketing must be social before it can effectively serve as marketing. Your social presence should inspire topics that are conversation-worthy and related to customers’ needs and the business you are in. It should offer ideas worth talking about (from your customers’ point of view). 

Google me by my former last name (Kim Willoughby) or search me on YouTube and a former Olympic volleyball player arrested for assault is a top search result. There's also an attorney who seems to have a great reputation in Denver, but let's be honest, you'll remember the Olympic Bully first.

For many of the clients you serve, digital media and technology tools have become an important and obvious part of the marketing equation. But just as there is a digital divide in device adoption and ownership among consumers, there can be dramatic differences in the levels of sophistication from one client to the next when it comes to technology. While some of your clients have already been using things like responsive website design and behavioral targeting for years, there are almost certainly some clients you work with who still have trouble opening an email on their cell phone. 

The total-revenue budget is historically a media property’s single most important measure of success. If that number is hit, the pressure to make some of the lesser targets is greatly relieved. But that pattern has been changing in recent years.  

Today, the digital-revenue budget is often the one that gets the most scrutiny—from the boardroom all the way down through the organization to the newest seller on the team. It’s not only because the total-revenue number is getting tougher and tougher to hit, but because everyone knows that revenue related to digital offerings represents the future, and most everything else is part of a past that is destined to decrease over time.

My 7-year old daughter loves frozen yogurt with toppings.  She loves going to one of those self-serve places where she can pull the lever for her yogurt and then create an artistic and culinary masterpiece from a wide variety of toppings. Typically she gets vanilla and chocolate yogurt and goes for a variety of toppings, including gummy bears, sprinkles, gummy worms, Oreos, chocolate chips, coconut, and kiwifruit. The other day I asked her which frozen yogurt she liked best and then which topping she liked best. She looked at me quizzically and said “Daddy, they only taste good together! Why would I eat a gummy bear and then some kiwifruit?!”

Over the past couple of months, I have read numerous blogs and articles regarding the increased focus from marketers on proving ROI in 2014. The stories have ranged from specific advertising platforms to overall marketing efforts.  The demand to prove a positive return on investment is high and difficult. Part of the challenge is that while marketers are looking at individual metrics for each platform they are utilizing, the consumer is typically being influenced and engaging with multiple platforms in their path-to-purchase. 

So how do you help to prove ROI in a world where consumers are more connected than ever? 

As we welcome the New Year, a few of us at The Center for Sales Strategy were discussing some of our favorite blog posts from 2013.

We thought a great way to capture this information was to survey several of the contributors to The Center for Sales Strategy blog and asked them to provide their top posts from our blog as well as their favorite post from other blogs.  It was a difficult decision as we blog 4 to 5 times per week and cover multiple categories: Digital, Inbound, Management, Sales and Talent.

We would like to share these results with you so that you can see what’s on our mind and what we think will be important heading into 2014.   

Happy New Year and thanks for reading The Center for Sales Strategy blog.

As 2013 comes to a close and we reflect on the blog posts that we have posted throughout the year, it’s always enlightening to see which were the most read and shared. Since we blog regularly about digital, inbound, management, sales and talent there are a lot of blog posts that could make this top 10 list, but of course, only 10 could make our list of top viewed blog posts of 2013.

If you work for a media company that sells digital advertising, you no doubt are following the buzz around Native Ads. There is an important point for all salespeople related to Native Ads that I don’t want you to miss. The dictionary shows several definitions for the word native. A few that are relevant for this conversation are; belonging to a person since birth, living or growing naturally in a particular region.