The harder a document is to read due to the fonts being used, the better people can learn it according to this study by Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel M. Oppenheimer, and Erikka B. Vaughan

The simple font tested was Arial; the complicated ones were Comic Sans Italic, Monotype Corsiva, and Haettenschweiler.

Study 1 found that information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than easier to read information in a controlled laboratory setting.

Study 2 extended this finding to high school classrooms. The results suggest that superficial changes to learning materials could yield significant improvements in educational outcomes.

So your website should be hard to read by using “disfluent fonts” in order to be remembered long as it requires ‘deeper processing’ and thus a better recall?

a) If you use a easy readable type face then people scan it quickly and they think understand it:
- They might forget it almost as fast due to fast processing
- The have gotten the wrong message due to the scanning: missing the point

b) If you use a difficult to read type face it will take longer to decipher it and read it – requiring reading every word and imposing more time to your brain to understand it

As the study was done on students the average website visitors might not have the same reaction: if your font is hardly readable at all people will probably just use the back button and look down on in the search results page for another link.

Note: you should remember the Italics better. Not ?

High bounce rates are bad

All webmasters and Internet marketers detest bounces as all their efforts of SEO, SEM, online and offline marketing lead to just a bounce. The higher the bounce rate the higher their personal failure as they become obsessed with bounce rates.
We all are convinced that high bounce rates are bad. Which is true compare to people visiting multiple pages, but not all bounces are that bad.

Bouncing is not that bad

However a bounce is better than nothing: not finding your website is even worse as you didn’t catch their attention at all.

Three types of bounces can be defined:
- Visitors that bounce after finding the information required quickly
- Visitors that bounce after reading a large part of the page
- Visitors that bounce almost instantly

The quick
Those that enter your website and found the searched information have quickly and happily left your page, but they do have a positive feeling about your website. A positive feeling will make them remember your website, brand name or even what your product is for.

The readers
Those that have read your page have at least found information relevant to what they were looking for. Unfortunately they didn’t stay on your website to investigate more about your company or solutions. However they sure will remember your brand and the solution you provide.

The immediate
The immediate bouncers have at least seen a glimpse of your website as they had to decide stay or leave. They might even remember your company name or products as they had to make their decision to leave or not.

In most cases something like an impression or a feeling will remain: it will stick in their memory for a longer time. Just make sure the memory and the website experience is positive by short page load times and a pleasing usable layout.

Branding bouncing actions

Two actions for brand naming:
- On every page you should indicate what the company or product is all about or the problem it solves. Then the chance exist the bouncing visitors at least remember your brand name and relate it to the solution or problem it solves.
- In the website description visible in the search results it should clearly state brand name and the purpose of solution you provide as after returning to the search engine page it is likely they will read the description of the last clicked link before scanning the rest of the search page for interesting links.

Of course high bounce rates should be decreased by all means. However bounces are not all that bad and at least they have found your page.

What kind of bounces has your website ?

Content marketing is it ! No doubt about that.
However there are some new jobs and tasks you will be facing in order to orchestrate the content creation and publishing as not just any content will be interesting enough to carry your marketing forward.

As a Marketing Director you have to change your job focus from a marketer to a:

1. Publisher:
Instead of being a buyer of ad-space or trade show floor space you are now a publisher.

2. Creative director
Just like in the movies as the creative director you are overseeing all aspects of your content product.

3. Executive editor
Besides of being creative you also need to make sure about the completeness by overseeing all the work of other creative people and having the final saying about what is to be published or not.

4. Innovator
The same informative content over and over again won’t help spreading the word about your products or solutions. You need innovation and innovative over and over again.

5. Targeter
The content you produce (can be by someone else) is not about you or your company. It has to appeal to your target market: their problems, their hassles and their required solutions.
You have to aim at it carefully and avoid talking about you or your company.

6. Entertainer
If your content is not entertaining then the boredom and lack of interest will keep interested parties away.
Your content needs to be entertaining.

7. Politician
As content marketing will be handling much more aspects and revealing much more information than conventional marketing about the products, views, takes and insights in business of the company, much more resistance by Executive management, Board of Directors and even manager will be encountered. This will require your political skills to get the content published.

The change for Marketing Director

This is quite a change for the average marketing director of any company – probably most are not up to the task as you change from a buyer of services to a leader of a creative team.

Maybe you better stick with conventional marketing as content marketing will become a challenge and hassle too early too soon too much.

What will your future be? marketing director or Content marketing director ?

Budget half is wasted in marketing

William Hesketh Lever (Lord Lever), Rance Crain, John Wanamaker, Walt Patrick, Henry Ford all stated that half of any marketing or advertising budget is wasted, but they all wondered which half of the budget or money.

Sales wastes even more

In sales much more than half of all expenses are wasted if you count in all the sales trainings, cold calls, emails, appointment setting, trade shows, meetings, travels, lunches, presents, demo’s, presentations, …
Only a fraction of all efforts from a suspect over a lead to a prospect, lead to a customer – and then the customer still needs to pay.
The only difference is that the wasted part can be calculated for sales as all efforts for each paying customer can be tracked.

Marketing and sales applications

For marketing many applications and services exist for helping, managing, streamlining, tracking and proving the efforts and expenses of marketing.
From demand generation, lead generation, CRM, social CRM, social media monitoring tools, SEO, SEM, advertising optimization to press release submission software tools and services exist.
The range is enormous making the choice difficult.

On the other hand barely any solution or service for sales exist besides a Rolodex, an electronic Rolodex (Contact management system) and a CRM.
So little support for salesmen and sales managers for a process which is much less effective than marketing (or any other business process in the enterprise). Business spend more money on a process that is less well managed.
Hence the need for a serious and effective sales tool.

A tool for sales

This is where LEADSExplorer can fill in some of the empty space by providing suspect and lead generation information, re-targeting, customer and ex-customer follow-up.

LEADSExplorer is based on the fact that buyers, influencers, decision makers from both potential customer, clients and ex-customers will visit the company website during their B2B purchase process in search for information on the products, solutions and company information.
The service provides business important customer intelligence information by supplying the names of the companies visiting, additional company information, the visit data and scoring of level of interest and the effectiveness of the communications exchanges.
So for both newly to be acquired potential customers (suspects or leads) the company provides the useful data for salesmen as well as for clients and ex-customers.

The benefit is in the use of the information to:
- Address potential customers or customers with messages or information that matches their interest and need for a solution
- Alert when a customer or a leads visits again
- Re-target visiting companies using email.
- Monitor the nurturing and communications with the lead or customer regarding their increase or decrease of interest.
- Feedback for having an indication of the progress of the purchase process and it’s status or probability to win.

LEADSExplorer is a key and useful tool for sales (and marketing) and includes a CRM and emailing feature.
It is your sales and marketing assistant.

What do you use as sales tools ?

Patience in life
In life you wait a lot:
- In the hypermarket to pay
- At the traffic lights
- Queuing at the gate in the airport
- Your PC to boot
- …
Patience is a part of life.

More patience in sales
In sales you might have to wait even more:
- The booth duty
- The suspect to pick up his phone (instead of the voice mail)
- The prospect to call back
- The prospect to invite you to a meeting
- The traffic jams on your way to the customer
- The meeting to start
- The communication of the short list
- The testing or trial to start
- The testing or trial to finish
- The all important meeting with the decision maker
- The availability of the decision maker
- The purchase decision
- The newly developed products to become available
- The products to land after being shipped from the factory
- The payment for the goods or services delivered

Life and sales both consist of number of sequences of waiting but in sales you need to have even more patience.

Quite different from departments that are able to order and have their goal executed: like marketing, operations and finance.
As you can’t push the customer being a salesman is a tougher job than any other – not solely for the patience needed.

Outsourcing lead generation and appointment setting

If you are outsourcing your lead generation and appointment setting then what’s left of your business ?
You are just supplying products or services while the most important part of your business as it relates directly to your revenue is outsourced.
You could as well start looking for OEM partners or become a shipping warehouse.

Why not to outsource

Why would you outsource one of the most important parts of your business ?

1. Learning curve
It is well known that it takes 6 months before a sales rep. has acquired enough knowledge and insight to start and close any deal. How can a lead generation and appointment setting service become effective and efficient almost instantly ?

2. Interpretation
The employees of the outsourcing company interpret your information. During their lead generation they interpret the messages from the suspect which they have to communicate to you. It is evident there will be a loss in translation.

3. Relation
The people to contact are found and the initial contacts are made by the outsourcing company. The first lap of any relation is outsourced and will be missing for taking the next steps.

4. Common relations
Over the years in business a sales rep. has build up his relations and contacts in the business. Even during a first contact these relations and references can play an important role in getting more information and setting the appointment.
The operator of the outsourcing company misses all of these relations and references making it harder to set the appointment.

5. Market noise
Sales reps. know what is happening in an industry and can chat about it with the suspect as he has also his view on the industry. This is interesting for both parties.
As the people working at the outsourcing company have no knowledge or insight in the industry the chances to engage in a conversation is minimal.

6. Scripts are static
An outsourcing company requires a script for their telephone conversations. However as they are dealing with humans having a certain responsibility a script might turn out to be too rigid.
When a salesman calls his messages, questions and pitch will change during the conversation in order to adjust to the needs, requirements or views of the callee.

7. Information loss
As the initial contact is being made using a conversation or communication by a third party the exact messages and questions from the potential customer are lost.

8. keep the conversation going
How can the operator of the outsourcing company keep the conversation going on his call or first contact ?
The experienced sales rep. will be able too.

9. Lead qualification
Each lead is an investment in time, money and resources. Hence the requirement of lead scoring. If the leads are generated and the appointments are set by the outsourcing company then you make your investments of limited resources based on the lead qualification by a third party.

10. Appointment setting
Appointments require agendas to be shared between the sales rep. and the workers at the appointment setting company. The agenda needs to be updated all of the time causing overhead for the sales rep. as he needs to update his agenda online almost immediately.

11. Trust
The probable customer has a form of trust with the person generating the lead or setting the appointment. Hence a possible disillusion when he meets the sales rep. who is probably quite different. This can wipe out the initial trust.

12. Market changes
During lead generation and appointment setting process you will learn about the requirements, demands and changes in the market. If you use a lead generation or appointment setting service you will miss all the changes in the market too late as it not included in your script or standard questions.

Core business

Why outsource such an important part of your company as lead generation and appointment setting as that is part of the core business of the company?
Outsource your IT or accounting instead as they are not key or core business.

Do you outsource lead generation or appointment setting ?

Social Media Marketing as the promised land

Marketing guru’s, renowned Research Institutes and famous bloggers are preaching about social media, tribes and virtual social communities as the promised land for marketing.
Marketing people are encouraged to embrace all kinds of methods and tools to stimulate and engage customers, potential customers and to aim for followers and advocates by their newly appointed social media consultants.
Software development companies imagine and rush to market all kinds of possible web services and tools to support the marketing guru’s.
Even the President of the United States Barack O’bama has used a social media strategy in his campaign to show the way.

However how realistic is this social marketing ?
The people who have most time to kill on the Internet are not the decision makers or influencers you need for your business as these social media participants are:
- People wasting their time on the Internet instead of working (if they have a job)
- Vendors trying to sell their stuff to your audience
- Your competitors trying to steal audience away from you

It is feasible to follow, track and even score your social media marketing using all kinds of tools or even a social CRM.

The reality of business is different: crapola

If you have a small mom and pop store in B2B you will know every customer thus no need to engage online with virtual individuals.
If you work for a medium sized company the knowledge of your customer group will be lesser and your leads are already visiting your website (you just need to know the companies visiting)
If you work in a large corporation engaging into social media will be even more cumbersome due to all the hurdles of communication limitations and required approvals before publishing any content.

Buyers, decision makers and influencers in businesses are not into social media for following your company and supporting your company as they might do for their new gizmo from Apple or a new web app for personal ego. However they will use the Internet for searching new solutions and information how to solve or avoid problems.

Social media marketing might turn out to be Social Crapola for you in B2B:
- No audience
- No followers
- No conversation
- No engagement
- No advocates
As nobody really cares about your B2B products or solutions as they are reliable, valuable, beneficial and come with proven technology. Nothing exciting – Boring as it just works fine !

Still Social Media Strategy can play a role in getting found or getting found before your competitor by ranking higher or in more occasions in searches on the Internet.
The more they view your brand name the more likely to create interest and trust.

The business of social media

In the meantime marketing guru’s, research institutes, bloggers, consultants, software and web developers have found a new source of income: a self supporting revenue generation method. Allowing them invoicing you by guiding and leading you into the unknown promised land of social media marketing using a lot of crapola.

Referrals are the best leads

We all could use referrals as these leads are the best because your customer or partner removes the main hurdle from buying from a new vendor: the fear of risk of your potential customers.

Referral engines

Some people tend to make getting referrals seemingly simple like “How to build a referral engine” or “The referral engine: Teaching your business to market itself” as if you can get referrals by the dozen by just following the 4 steps:
- Strategy: analyze customers and partners that refer already and find similar
- Education: give customers and partners guidelines for referrals
- Creativity: getting customers and partners involved
- Follow-up: review referral process

Referral rewards

All great on paper, however in real business you have can address customers and partners and try them to persuade into getting referrals for your business. But what’s in it for their business ?
Hence the need of rewards.
Rewarding customers can be achieved on the next purchase they make – if your business is recurrent.
Rewarding partners could be achieved by giving them referrals to, but how can you weigh referrals and how often should referrals be exchanged ?
So in both cases you end up with a commission scheme.

Individual referral rewards

Companies consist of individuals having a different goal, plan or future than the companies they work for. They look for more income, future job possibilities or career.
It are the individuals that get into contact with their customers, leads, partners and relations. Not the company.
Thus in order to get referrals you need to approach each individual of a customer or partner directly and independently in order to find out what they want or what their goal is or their fear.
This is where and how you can present the reward for each individually.
As commission money can be forbidden by company rules the best is to find other means of rewards matching their needs or removing their fears which can have more value than just money.

Referral reward changes over time

Not exactly a referral engine, but hard work on relational, social and psychological aspects of each person. Moreover you need to keep track of:
- Their rewards for referrals
- Their changes in life (business and private) that can change their goals or needs and thus their reward need too

Building a referral engine is a wet dream.

What do you use as referral reward ?

How to poach customers of your competitor

The goal is to hold an event on the day your main competitor holds its’ yearly congress for its’ customers.

First you publish a website tagged with keywords related to the event and product of the competitor.
Then you issue a book of songs (Carolers) with a spectacular offering for your product (-50%) if they migrate.
On the day of the event you hand out the booklet and place singers in front of the building where the congress is taken place.
And let the audience (customers and partners) decide.
In any case you will be noticed.
And of course publish video’s on YouTube and Tweet about it for social media marketing.

SugarCRM on Dreamforce event of Salesforce

These Christmas Carolers of Sugar CRM in front of the congress center where Salesforce is holding its’s Dreamforce event are singing songs like:
* Are you feeling squeezed by salesforce?
* Would having workflow help you automate your business processes?
* Do you need full mobile access?
* Are you being pressured into a costly upgrade to Enterprise?
* Do you feel $125/user/mo is just too much?

The 12 Days of Dreamforce:
“On the first day of Dreamforce, Marc Benioff (CEO Salesforce) gave to me: An overpriced subscription fee.”
“On the second day of Dreamforce, Marc Benioff gave to me : Two hours of downtime, And an overpricedsubscription fee.”
“On the third day …”

The benefits of poaching

One of the questions is:
How can SugarCRM afford such an expensive counter event as it is based on Open Source ?

Would you dare to hit on your competitor in such a fashion ?
Would you dare to trespass into the territory of your competitor ?
Would your customers approve it ?
Would you win any customers ?
Could you loose any customers ?
Would you be afraid of his direct counter attack ?
Is poaching customers ethical ?

Would you poach customers from your competitor or not ?

In the future instead of selling products and services for a one-time fee you will be selling subscriptions.
Not just for services but also for investment goods and consumables.

The customers’ benefits for subscription

These subscriptions mean for your customers:
- No high entry start-up costs or investments
- Just a monthly fee that changes upon their needs
- A variable subscription fee
- Less hierarchical involvement in decisions
- A simpler pricing model
- A higher service level thanks to the monthly payments
- The possibility to change vendor over a short time

The vendors’ benefits for subscription

These subscription bring:
- The recurring revenue exceeding the initial investment of the product over time
- Shorter sales cycles due to lower budget
- Monthly contact with the customer possible
- Up-selling and cross-selling possibilities

You better start preparing your company for this change in marketing, sales, support and even operations. Once you have finished your internal preparation it is time to inform and prepare your customers as the change to a subscription business model is tremendous change of mind for all involved.

When will your business change to subscriptions ?