Alina McComas, on March 29, 2018
Product-focused training and sales skill training - both are important to increase the knowledge and expertise of a sales team, but which is more important? Which has the larger impact? Before I answer that question, let me define the differences between the two to make sure that we are all on the same page.
Alina McComas, on January 29, 2018
Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several account managers ask me questions surrounding a digital client needs analysis. Everyone wanted to know those three or four questions that would magically give them everything they needed to put together a fool-proof digital solution. The truth is: there are no magical questions.
There is nothing special about a digital client needs analysis. When selling digital advertising, you need to learn about your prospect's business, their competition, and their primary business challenges.
Alina McComas, on January 18, 2018
Personal recommendations are a powerful thing. Good or bad, they have the power to persuade us in one direction or another. Think about it—when most of us have little to no knowledge about a particular company or product, we typically ask those whose opinions we trust: family, friends or coworkers. As we all become more and more connected, most of us have also begun to rely on digital reviews.
Alina McComas, on July 20, 2017
Yes, it’s a strange question to be asked, but it led to a great conversation. I remember the workshop so clearly. Someone once asked me what I felt was the easiest way to lose a sale.
Alina McComas, on May 4, 2017
The average American social media user spends an average of 3.2 hours a day with social networks according to research by Ipsos. With that much time being spent on a social network, businesses who have not developed a social media plan as a part of their marketing strategy are missing out on a lot of opportunity.
What’s the solution? Use social media! Sounds easy enough, and building a page on social media is simple. But posting once a day and tweeting is not enough. To effectively use social media for marketing, marketers need to build an audience and create engaging content that resonates with that audience.
If you are currently using social media to market your business, or you offer digital solutions and are looking to help your clients build and enhance their social strategy, here are five things to consider:
Social networks are not all the same. They all have different audiences that engage with the content in different ways. To understand which social network(s) you should be active in, first identify your target persona. Learn how they use social media, which networks are they most active in, and which content they engage with most on your website.
Kim Alexandre, on March 29, 2017
When digital marketing campaigns fail, typically there's something dirty going on. Marketers and business owners often miss the point of digital advertising. You need to think beyond the inventory being presented and focus on marketing needs and solutions that deliver on set expectations. So I have defined three of the most dirty words I hear used in digital advertising and ways to clean them up.
Kim Alexandre, on November 10, 2016
How you conduct business, whether you are an owner, operator, manager, or sales executive, has become increasingly dependent on social media, but are we beginning to depend on it so much that we don't communicate productively?
Alina McComas, on October 11, 2016
Campaign recaps are the norm when it comes to digital marketing. In an integrated marketing campaign, those results are usually separated out even though we design the campaign to work together. All too often, the digital portion of a campaign recap is simply a beautified spreadsheet or PowerPoint that includes creative images and a handful of metrics like impressions delivered, clicks, click-through rates, and sometimes view-throughs. These types of reports do very little to show how the campaign is actually achieving the goals of the client—and when that is the case, they can result in a cancellation or non-renewal.
The goal of a campaign recap is to sell the results back to your client so that you can retain and grow that piece of business. You want to make it clear that you are driving results—making the connection between the numbers and the emotions of your client. So how do we move beyond the simple delivery of numbers, to effectively sell the results of our integrated campaigns?
Here are three easy steps to get you there:
Dani Buckley, on September 8, 2016
When it comes to digital media expertise, it's easy to feel like an expert and a novice all at once. This is mainly because there are so many advancements in digital that it's hard to know what you should be focused on with respect to digital marketing.
