Why Cold Calling Is Not A Numbers Game

June 10, 2015 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

Phone GirlWhat is cold calling?

Cold calling is what you do to meet your weekly sales quota with new prospects and this is not an optional skill. Without doing it you will not hit your sales quota for the week.

The biggest mistake that new sales people do when they first start cold calling happens during the first 20 seconds of a cold call and that is talk about your products and your company. Remember this isn’t about you it’s about the needs of your prospect. When you do that, you’re making the call about me.

What you need to be successful in cold calling.

Do you really need a script? Yes you really need one. Engaging a prospect in 20 seconds, disarming their flight mechanism, is extremely difficult. That’s why so few salespeople can do it. Read more

Where’s The ROI In Social Media?

January 27, 2012 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

Does Social Media Produce ROI?

If your business is going to put the time, effort, and attention into social media marketing, it would be nice to think we’d actually get some sales out of it.

In other words, we want a return on our investment.

Everyone is looking for how to improve the ROI of their social media marketing.

Social media marketing is never going to produce an ROI. No marketing will.

What’s the point of even doing marketing if there’s not a return on the investment?

Organizations create entire processes around the idea of measuring this performance index, all so that marketing professionals can “justify” their activity.

The truth is, marketing will never produce an ROI.

Marketing will never produce an ROI because ROI = A positive gain from investment – costs.
A pure definition of ROI is simple to quantify.

The problem for marketing professionals is that marketing activity is not an investment.
An investment is an asset that you purchase and place on your financial statements. Like an office building or a computer system. It’s something you could sell later if you didn’t need it any more.

Marketing is an expense, and goes on the Profit & Loss statement.

Unless your organization is cheating on its balance sheet every marketing effort you pursue is an expense in time, money, and resources … it’s not an accounting asset.

But the bigger question is why do so many people use the term ROI and marketing together? The answer to this question provides insight into how an organization views the role of marketing.

What is the ROI of email?

Quick, calculate the ROI of using email within your organization. Not email marketing, but just the emails you send back and forth to get things done.

If you are like most, you don’t know. You probably don’t care.

But the absence of email in your organization would lead to more harm than good. Its “gain” is not so much a measurement of return but an implicit cost of being in business.

Unfortunately, this is not the same view shared by people who use the term ROI when they’re talking about marketing.

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  • Back-end analysis, marketing metrics Google Analytics, Market Samuria generates revenue & interest via email marketing, SEO, SEM and social media
  • Can target local business landing pages on Twitter, Facebook, Google Places, Google AdWords and other social networks and track results from coupon offers
  • Accelerates sales by tying email campaign and website tracking to CRM system data
  • Creates and executes marketing strategies that support business goals
  • Lead generation and capture and marketing plan development

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Mobile Marketing

December 24, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

Mobile marketing has benefits, but is new and growing faster than any other type of direct marketing.

Despite the growth in the use of smartphones and tablets, most businesses are still missing the mark with mobile marketing. They lack an understanding on the intensive planning, costs and complexity requirements.

See more on mobile marketing here

Marketers don’t know whether they should invest in a mobile website or mobile app, or how to use text messages or QR codes. While larger companies can afford to test-drive several tactics to see what sticks, 2011 remained slow on the mobile front for the majority of marketers.

But fear not, mass adoption still awaits.

More Articles on Mobile Marketing

Mobile Advertising 2012

December 6, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

2012 is not going to be the year that consumers say screw the coins and wallets when they leave home and just swipe their smartphones, it is going to be the year that major players like Google and MasterCard will actively roll out their cashless initiatives* around the world.

For consumers, the initial lure will be convenience, but eventually mobile payments will create an entirely new data-driven advertising of rewards, purchase history, deals and so on never seen before.See more here

These devices incorporate NFC (Near Field Communication), which allows for encrypted data exchange between two devices in close proximity to each other.

For instance: a reader located next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than using an actual credit card.

Just a few of the CASH-LESS initiatives to keep an eye on in 2012:

In October 2011

Google’s free, NFC-enabled mobile payment system Google Wallet became operational at a selection of retail chains across the US. Licensing MasterCard’s PayPass technology, shoppers simply tap their mobile device on special terminals at points-of-sale to pay instantly. In participating stores, they can also redeem special coupons, participate in sales promotions or gain loyalty points, simply by choosing to pay with Google Wallet.

In June 2011, US online payments processor PayPal demonstrated a mobile payments application for Android devices. Users install the app and activate the PayPal widget, and can then request to send or receive funds from another individual with a smartphone and PayPal account. Using NFC, the two users can then hold their devices together in order to instantly transfer funds. Also read article on Local Marketing.

Square is an electronic payments service which enables users to accept credit card payments by using a card-reading portable device connected to their iPhone, iPad or Android device. Both the Square card-reader and app are free, although there is a 2.75% charge for each payment made. Once the system has been set up, users can accept payments immediately.

In November 2011, Richard Branson and Visa became investors in the venture. In the same month, Square updated the app, allowing for a completely hands-free payment experience by simply saying your name.
Launched in Sweden in June 2011, iZettle is a device that enables consumers to accept credit card payments while on the go. The portable chip and pin reader plugs into iPhones or iPads and uses an iZettle app, meaning that card transactions can take place instantly. Bills can also be paid or money transferred using the device. There’s a facility to tag transactions with images, notes or location data, which users can post to Facebook and Twitter to share their purchases with friends.

More Articles on Mobile Advertising

  • Mobile Marketing – mBlox – If you wish to receive additional information on what we can do for you you can contact us using the link below. If you haven’t embraced mobile marketing yet, now is the time to start. In most geographic regions, mobile penetration is fast approaching saturation, making mobile marketing one of the best ways to reach large numbers of people at comparatively low costs.

  • Text Messaging Most Often Recalled Mobile Marketing Technique – Click Here For More Info! Text Messaging Most Often Recalled Mobile Marketing Technique. Direct Marketing Association Releases First Consumer Survey Research Exploring Mobile Phone Marketing. New York , NY, July 17 …

  • Razorfish CEO to oversee four additional agencies – Direct … – Bob Lord, global CEO of Razorfish, has added Vivaki agencies Big Fuel, Denuo, Digitas and Phonevalley to his responsibilities, he said on Dec. 5. He will replace Laura Lang, who previously oversaw these assets prior to …

Marketing Consulting Services

November 16, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

I recently was involved in Direct Marketing strategic project that was a little bit over my head since it covered a very small universe of debtors in all states with different ages and types of debt.

What they we’re doing isn’t considered direct marketing but instead collecting massive amounts of debt any way that would gross the largest return on investment.

I decided to take the project on since I was hungry for work and had no other clients in retainer and I was offered a very nice salary in return for my direct marketing strategy improvements. This client was arrogant, insecure and managed a group of programmers testing predictive modeling models with SAS.

I should have figured from the start that my client would micro-manage the project and throw me in the ditch when things went south and the takeaway from this is..when being a reputable provider of strategic marketing consulting services and when trying to establish myself as the direct marketing industry never take on projects that are doomed for failure.

Project Management Meeting

Matching marketing strategy with interim marketing expertise. My practice is known for its unparalleled expertise in program management, research and analytics, brand management, marketing communications, promotions and events marketing, and web-based marketing.

Taking into account the differing needs of different clients, this highly-reputed provider of strategic marketing consulting services offers its clients several different packages:

Project-based consultancy:

This option involves marketing experts with specific functional and industry expertise. Such projects are billed on an hourly and project basis.

Remote experts: This option involves the use of expert marketing consultants who would conduct some or all of their work offsite. This can also reduce your costs greatly since you’re not paying for lodging, meals and travel.

Expert specialists: This option involves the use of professionals within R&D, finance, packaging, and change management who specialise in supporting marketing programs. The billing for such projects is done on an hourly or project basis.

Onsite consulting:

These are managed programs involving full responsibility for managing ongoing business requirements and can include management and staff. Such programs are conducted on a contractual basis. This will cost your more since travel, lodging and meals are included in the hourly rates.

The current recession makes it crucial for businesses to review their marketing strategies and adapt them to suit these turbulent times. However, by focusing on execution without revisiting strategy, they risk making investments go backwards.

If your business is looking to work for this reputed strategic marketing consulting firm will help you review your marketing communication practices in light of exponential changes in online and social networking for B2B.

Tim Little-Direct Marketing Consultant


My professional direct marketing experience began in magazine circulation management from this I honed my skills in list purchasing, testing, and analyzing.

I learned the importance of direct response planning and budget forecasting and most importantly, providing a follow-up with back-end analysis, fulfillment of orders and inquiries. I also gained some valuable job experience with Jackson National Life Insurance as Marketing Database/Direct Mail area.

Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

Tim Little
1 (888) 889-0552

For more information on a superior strategic marketing consulting firm, visit TheExpertsBench.

Local Marketing

November 7, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

Google recently announced…

that 20% of all the searches going through its engine are local and that percentage jumps to 40% when a mobile device is involved.

Direct Marketers can fuse local with universal without spending a lot of time or money on the efforts. Even if you are small in scale you can get a huge reach by just by focusing on Google Places.

Make it simple stupid

Something as simple as tagging a video posted on YouTube with both local and more traditional search terms is going to boost search rankings, make sure you’ve created a Google Places profile that includes pertinent information, such as address, phone number and hours of operation; adding content such as a photograph of your building or products is a good strategy as well. One big mistake people make is having incomplete or conflicting submissions, you need to be very consistent in your postings.

Focus regionally

How you target customers may be completely different in different markets, she said. Be creative and do things with weather, traffic and recruitment that’s very local.

Work with partners and distributors.

Partners doing your work locally should have a highly localized search strategy that also takes into account universal search. They might have videos that show their locations or other customers in a particular city and be purchasing local search terms.

About The Author

Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. I will help you develop your business locally for Free with Google Places, Bing and Yahoo call for details about local search strategies. ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection,

    More Articles on Local Marketing

    Mobile Phones Become Mobile Wallets?

    May 31, 2011 by · 1 Comment
    Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

    Today consumers have a few options but with the new technologies like global positioning and data Internet downloads at the speed of sound…. new opportunities are arriving.

    On a smartphone

    users can input credit card data much as they do on the Web. They can also buy apps via Apple’s or Google’s app stores. Or in some instances, they can use “carrier billing” to make purchases that will later be added on to a mobile phone bill.

    Ching, Ching, Ching

    But a relatively new technology (a few months old) and some interesting new Websites present the capability to turn smartphones into easy-to-use payment machines. The addition of e-commerce to the mobile marketing equation may provide big benefits to marketers—even b2b marketers that often trade in bigger-ticket purchases.

    Money in those chips

    NFC chips embedded in mobile devices—and they will be coming to a mobile phone near you soon—make conducting a variety of e-commerce transactions, from making payments to mobile ticketing, as easy as waving a phone through the air.

    Google is one player that has been trying to jump-start the NFC market. The search giant embedded radio chips in its Google Nexus S device. It also plans NFC support in future versions of its Android platform and is expected to begin NFC trials in New York and San Francisco soon.

    Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked about the potential of the technology at a recent trade show, describing the power to “combine an ad and an offer, presumably at the point of sale.” In this formulation, there appears to be an opportunity for mobile devices to become conduits for point-of-purchase advertising messages.

    While Google is big in the NFC technology, Apple has played in it. The company has hinted that NFC may find its way into its upcoming iPhone 5.

    Mobile financial services vendor Tyfone delivered one of the industry’s first NFC banking solutions. The company aims to sell the product to banks and other financial services companies as a turnkey mobile payments solution. And in France, a startup called Think & Go is experimenting with NFC-enabled shopping applications.

    While b2b applications have yet to emerge, business users are already heavily dependent on their smartphones. It is not difficult to imagine b2b marketers using NFC to enable instant payments on trade show floors or for “bumping” information between users in meetings.

    There’s a lot at stake with mobile payments. Juniper Research estimates the mobile payment market will reach about $630 billion worldwide by 2014. Wilcox predicts 20% of mobile phones will be NFC-enabled in the next three years.

    The next question turns to the other side of the transaction equation. Will merchants and businesses—perhaps enabled by payment players like Verifone or Mastercard—have platforms capable of accepting NFC payments in that same time frame?

    *Quotes from Business to Business Magazine Rich Karpinski
    Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

    Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

    Tim Little
    1 (888) 889-0552

    Service Description

    Let me use my researched methods that have been proven to work, implementation know-how, and optimization expertise to boost your company’s marketing ROI and sales performance.

    EXPERTISE

      More Articles on Mobile Phones Become Mobile Wallets

      Local Mobile Marketing

      May 17, 2011 by · 1 Comment
      Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

      Trying to Understand the Local Mobile Market?

      It is a fact that 80% of your local business comes from people who live or work five miles from your location.

      Many other forms of advertising are decreasing in response including telephone directory advertising – since no one uses anymore everyone is accessing from their smart phones or home or office Internet.
      Newspapers – circulation is declining since most people under 50 get their news from the Internet

      Print ads The high cost for printing and long turn around time and low response.

      E-mail list – lower response, high costs and spam filters are lowering popularity.

      TV– everyone hates commercials and cable is much more popular than networks

      Having a Google Places account just become more important – Place search results will begin appearing automatically on Google when they predict you’re looking for local information and you will find a new link for places in the left hand search page.

      The new enhanced listings

      –Will have more information than typical organic results.

      –They sometimes have pictures

      –They sometimes show reviews

      –They are linked to directions and maps

      –In many cases they are above organic rankings.

      20% of the searches on Google are related to locations as maps become the new yellow pages.

      Maps are Mobile

      –The winner will be Google in mobiles, Yahoo/Bing search alliance and Microsoft is in competition with Google.

      –Google has been involved with the development of smart phones.

      Google local is now Google Place Search

      Google has been aggregating local information from the Yellow Pages and reviews from sites like City search and Yelp.

      –Only 2% of those listings have been claimed by businesses in the US and Google is giving away a page on its site. This mean your clients do not have a website to be on the top of search locally.

      This is how to get to the top and stay there

      –Claim place page

      –Have places page complete

      –Picture, Video’s, coupons

      –Citations

      –Reviews

      If you do all of these things in your business today you will be better than 95% of the local businesses out there and the competitive advantage you will have in your market with little to no cost to you. Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

      Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

      Tim Little
      1 (888) 889-0552

      Service Description

      Let me use my researched methods that have been proven to work, implementation know-how, and optimization expertise to boost your company’s marketing ROI and sales performance.

      EXPERTISE

      • Ability to perform all list brokerage duties for clients, including providing thorough list research and recommendations
      • Back-end analysis, marketing metrics Google Analytics, Market Samuria generates revenue & interest via email marketing, SEO, SEM and social media
      • Can target local business landing pages on Twitter, Facebook, Google Places, Google AdWords and other social networks and track results from coupon offers
      • Accelerates sales by tying email campaign and website tracking to CRM system data
      • Creates and executes marketing strategies that support business goals
      • Lead generation and capture and marketing plan development

      More Articles on Local Mobile Marketing

      Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing

      May 10, 2011 by · 1 Comment
      Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

      Measure your Sales and Marketing

      Direct marketing is about being accountable and transparent. You do this by always testing, always improving your control program. The fusion of Sales with Marketing is new, this is because management wants to understand the productivity of each stage, status of key activities, and the emerging issues they need to worry about.

      In managing the revenue cycle, and by default sales and marketing alignment, visibility is critical to helping them temper their instinctive response to the deluge of daily email, phone calls and meetings.

      Direct marketers have known for a long time and are already familiar with, namely KPIs. With the right set of metrics, CEOs can better understand marketing’s effectiveness as well as the impact alignment has on the top- and bottom-line. While there are literally hundreds of sales and marketing metrics that can be used; it comes down to a few that measure alignment and frame that all-too critical joint conversation with sales and marketing about what’s working and what isn’t.

      Making customer metrics real


      Here are a few examples of metrics that both management : End-to-End Conversion, Revenue Diversity and Outcome Profitability.

      End-to-End Conversion Metric

      measures the conversion ratio for the full revenue cycle well as for each of the major stages – from market attraction through sales close and customer lifetime value. Benchmarked over time this metric highlights leakages and inefficiencies between stages, sales and marketing, and enables more accurate forecasting and target performance setting. Aligned organizations tend to have stable conversion ratios and use this metric to discuss how to improve the ratios between the stages and overall.

      Revenue Diversity Metric

      measures the productivity of lead generation. There are hundreds of lead sources like the web, direct mail, physical and virtual events, email, cold calls, eCommerce, other distribution channels, etc. This metric provides visibility into how broadly and efficiently marketing reaches target prospects, which lead sources are most productive and how effective sales converts them into revenue. Aligned organizations manage their revenue sources using portfolio management techniques to balance the diversity of lead channels. The key is to invest eighty percent of resources into high productive lead generation sources. The remaining twenty percent should be consistently invested in a wide and ever changing range of new channels.

      Outcome Profitability Metric

      is applicable to companies that sell complex products or solutions. Since not every sale can have four walls and a roof where the buyer only cares about comparing product features; complex solutions need to link the buyer’s desired outcome, which is often role-based. Used in conjunction with customer-centric methodologies, this metric measures profit attributable to each specific business problem or “outcome” sold to. While this approach is counter to how revenue is typically analyzed, which is by product lines, it gives the CEO great visibility into how well sales and marketing understand the buyers, their business problems and how effective they are in pursuing those opportunities.
      Direct response accountability is the competitive edge that drives direct marketing success. Measurability of each direct mail response helps small direct marketers analyze the cost per response with list coding and to calculate expenses to the cent. Budgets can be forecasted with greater accuracy. I can teach you how to update your promotions both online and off.

      My professional direct marketing experience

      began in magazine circulation management from this I honed my skills in list purchasing, testing, and analyzing.

      I learned the importance of direct response planning and budget forecasting and most importantly, providing a follow-up with back-end analysis, fulfillment of orders and inquiries. I also gained some valuable job experience with Jackson National Life Insurance as Marketing Database/Direct Mail area.

      Allow me to help you implement your next strategic marketing plan focused on your niche. I will make the most of what you already have by analyzing your biggest strengths and exploiting your competition.

      Timothy Little – Direct Marketing Consultant

      Tim Little
      1 (888) 889-0552

      Service Description

      Let me use my researched methods that have been proven to work, implementation know-how, and optimization expertise to boost your company’s marketing ROI and sales performance.

      EXPERTISE

        More Articles on Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing

        • Marketing Metrics: What to Measure in Marketing – Part I – This article is the first in a series calledMarketing Metrics: What to Measure in Marketing. Use this link to read What to Measure in Marketing Part.

        • Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment | SalesBiz – Three Metrics to Measure Sales and Marketing Alignment. Sunday, May 8th, 2011 at 9:31 pm. There are three key metrics that CEOs should start using to achieve this: End-to-End Conversion, Rev. Originally posted from Three Metrics to …

        • Marketing performance measurement and management – Wikipedia, the … – Marketing performance measurement and management ( MPM ) is a term used by marketing professionals to describe the analysis and improvement of the efficiency and effectiveness of marketing. [ 1 ] This is accomplished by focus on the alignment of marketing activities, strategies, and metrics with business goals. [ 2 ] It involves the creation of a metrics framework to monitor marketing performance, and then develop and utilize marketing dashboards to manage marketing performance.

        Dig Deeper Into Database for Marketing List

        June 21, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
        Filed under: Marketing Strategy 

        New technologies allows direct marketers to dig deeper…

        than ever before to find the elusive list.

        Database marketing use to be about pulling a list from a customer or subscriber for a consumer or business to business promotion. Direct marketing usually worked quite well back then but today’s state-of-the-art technology can reach far beyond the old preferences.

        Today’s database marketing

        …is evolving into something with a multiplicity of new channels and behavioral analytics, segmentation and precise overlays.

        Database marketing today is about refining the sales process and list building. This may involve feeding a marketing database into a on demand cloud computing platform that feeds into a CRM prospect list that is appended and enriched with Internet search engines for prospect list titles and e-mails.

        Database segmentation

        Database segmentation will be one of the biggest trends in modern day list building. Some people have a natural feel for the type of list that they need for a marketing promotion. Many marketers use analytics to find the correct segments when building their lists.

        Database segmentation is relying less on age, gender and location and more on segment hoping or moving from one category to another or hopping segments. These are more dependent on society or anthropology and looking at data in a different way.

        The ability to monitor or measure customer interactions on websites at a much deeper level, behavioral information can outperform lists any day. Never before in history have we ever been able to customer behaviors on Websites at such a deep level.

        We are at the place where it is possible to pull data on profiles and transactional data but also on behavioral information and behavioral information is being uncovered by social media, but the effectiveness of social media hasn’t been proven yet.

        Until next time, here is to your continued success!

        .

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        About the Author:

        Tim G. Little has a BS in Business Administration, and has worked in the magazine publication and circulation management for the past 20 years. As an Internet Publisher and Entrepreneur, he has developed a website to help small business entrepreneurs find the best mailing list and marketing programs ps: I would like to recommend a tool to you to help find Boost Sales… Gain Market Share.. . With Focused List Selection, Tips and Tools for Finding the Perfect List.

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