Transcript The Impact of Technology on Correctional Industries Sales and

The Impact of Technology
On Correctional Industries Sales &
Marketing Efforts
Technology Growth in America
Internet & Email Access at
Work
 What percent of American workers have
Internet /email access or work?
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Estimates say over 90%
Cell Phone Ownership
 What percent of American’s own cell
phones?
A.
B.
C.
D.
50%
65%
80%
90%
 What percent of cell phone users access
the Internet or email with their phone?
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35%
50%
65%
75%
Cell Phone Internet Usage
Cell Phone Usage Facts
 Nearly two-thirds (63%) of cell phone
owners now use their phone to go online
(this has more than doubled since 2009)
 One third of these cell internet users
(34%) mostly use their phone to access
the internet, as opposed to other devices
like a desktop, laptop, or tablet computer
Tablet Ownership
 What percent of American adults own
tablets?
A.
B.
C.
D.
15%
33%
45%
67%
Tablet Ownership
The New B2B Buyer
The New B2B Buyer
 What has all this technology and Internet
access done to buyers?
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More connected
More impatient
More elusive
More impulsive
More informed
 How do we as marketers & sales answer
to these changes?
The New B2B Buyer
 Connected
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Internet is 1st stop in researching products
and services; 92% of B2B buyers start their
search for a solution to their problem online
Process neither starts nor stops at your
website – more likely to start at a major
search engine, industry portal or social
network
If you want your product or service to be
considered, it’s critical that your content
appear wherever the buyer goes online at
every point in the decision making process
The New B2B Buyer
 Publish Deep & Wide about the problems
your prospect faces and the solutions your
product offers
 You must create content for every depth of
prospect interest and attention span
 Remember:
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The basic needs of the buyer remain the same,
only the behavior has changed
Much of the information needed in the process
comes from the Internet
The New B2B Buyer
 Impatient
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If a prospect can’t find the right info on your
website or figure out how to use your free trial
or sample, it’s usually goodbye
Today’s buyer has to be pretty committed to
evaluating your product or service before
picking up the phone
The phones don’t ring like they used to
The New B2B Buyer
 You Must Enable Efficient Self-Service
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Buyers want independence and efficiency
from the internet; if they have to rely on a
salesperson as the primary source of
information, both are lost.
The buyer controls the flow of information;
your strongest strategy is to give the prospect
efficient self-service access to your content
Search and speed rule (want fast web pages,
easily searchable content)
The New B2B Buyer
 Elusive
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The buyer can find your product or service,
learn about it, evaluate it, see what others
think about it, and sometimes even try & buy
it, all without engaging with a salesperson
Process even more complex as the “buyer” is
often more than one person – process is more
organic with different stakeholders doing tehir
own research
The New B2B Buyer
 Measure, Model & Move
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Buyers may be elusive to sales, but not to
marketing
Measure your customers level of engagement
to determine where they are at in the process
so you can provide content or assistance to
help them move through the process
The New B2B Buyer
 Impulsive
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Cheap and easy access to online information
enables flexibility in the buying process
Buyers go in and out of the process, go slow,
go fast, whatever suits their priorities
Email may be waning for marketing
communications, but it is central to the
internal communications of buyers
The New B2B Buyer
 Lifecycle Marketing
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Map your content to the buyer’s needs at
each stage of the buying process –
throughout the entire customer lifecycle
For an active buyer, you are just keeping
things moving along quickly and efficiently; for
the distracted buyer, its about breaking the
status quo and creating a sense of urgency
At a minimum, you are their when the
customer decides to pull the trigger. At a
maximum, you have the potential to
accelerate the purchase
The New B2B Buyer
 Informed
 When does the New B2B Buyer reach out
to a sales rep? When they are stuck!
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If the buyer knows more than the sales rep at
this point – it can be disaster
It’s an information arms race between the
buyer and the sales rep
Today’s sales rep must quickly assess the
purchase knowledge & needs of the buyer
and lead, follow or get out of the way
The New B2B Buyer
 Consultative Selling
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The sales rep MUST know more about the
products than the buyer does
If all your sales rep does is usher buyers
around your website and take orders, then
you are leaving money on the table or your
website isn’t simple enough
Buyers expect fast answers and sales reps
must be purchase experts that can adapt their
expertise quickly and efficiently to the buyer’s
needs
The New B2B Buyer
 Last but not least…. The New B2B Buyer
Is Still Only Human!
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Buyers fear the unknown, public opinion,
failure
It is important to all of us (including buyer) to
feel good about the decisions we make
The New B2B Buyer
 You Must Build Trust
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There is no substitute for the sales rep’s personal
relationship with the buyer, especially when the
stakes are high
Today’s rep must be a smooth writer as well as a
talker – but don’t hide behind email
When it comes to building rapport and trust, chat
is better than email, phone is better than chat,
video is better than phone, and face-to-face is
better than video
You must provide technologies and opportunities
for your reps to engage with buyers at a personal
level
Stages in the B2B Purchasing
Cycle
Traditional Cycle
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Need recognition
Information search
Evaluation of alternatives
Purchase decision
Purchase evaluation
You must tailor your sales & marketing
efforts to each stage in the buying cycle.
Today’s Cycle
Content Marketing
What is Content Marketing?
 Content marketing is using relevant and
valuable information to attract potential
customers to you.
Content Marketing Usage
Challenges That Face B2B
Content Marketers
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Producing enough content
Producing the kind of content that engages
Producing a variety of content
Lack of budget
Inability to measure content effectiveness
Lack of knowledge, training & resources
Lack of integration across marketing
Lack of buy-in / vision
Finding trained marketing professionals
*2013 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark-North America: CMI/MarketingProfs
64%
52%
45%
39%
33%
26%
25%
22%
14%
Content Marketing Tips
 Spread existing content across different
platforms
 Marketers use an average of 12 content
marketing tactics
 Evaluate your budget & figure out how
many you can commit to
 Create goals (brand awareness, customer
acquisition, lead generation, sales)
 Measure the success
Social Media
B2B Social Media Usage
Social Media Tips
 Don’t sign up for an account without
having goals and a strategy to attain those
goals
 Do prioritize the channels you want to
experiment with and spend a dedicated
amount of time to test out what works (and
what doesn’t) - don’t spread your efforts
too thin
 Produce good content & create a schedule
to keep producing it
Social Media Tips
 No presence at all is better than a
lackluster presence
 Keep messages across platforms
consistent but customized to each
community
 Articles with images receive more views
 Social media alone is not enough – don’t
forget about your other marketing efforts
 Track your success
Social Media Tips
 It can’t make up for a bad product or
service
 RESPOND to EVERYONE including
complaints publicly
 Give stuff away – content, webinars and
white papers
 Thank your customers and partners
 It won’t create immediate results
 Tell – don’t sell
Linked in
 Was born and bred to create and develop
business relationships
 Most compelling feature is the ability to
learn everything, on a professional level,
about a target prospect
LinkedIn – Getting Started
 Create a personal profile
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Employment history, upload a profile picture,
input your website and ask for recommendations
 Complete your company profile
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Upload logo, include your mission statement,
have other company employees join and that they
appear in your company listing of employees
 Join groups
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Both you and your sales force
Invite business AND personal contacts to join you
LinkedIn – Sales Tips
 Complete profile (including experience,
reference, hobbies, interests)
 Invite prospects and customers to connect
with you (builds rapport)
 Utilize status updates to share articles and
industry information (prospecting &
networking)
 Join industry groups
LinkedIn –Research
 Use to find contacts at companies
 Prior to customer meetings find out about
the people they will meet with: where they
have worked in the past and who they
might know in common
 Verify person’s title
 DON’T use for initial customer contact;
use to make sure contacting the right
person but make the first contact via email
Twitter
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It’s not all about you
Personalize your Twitter page
Follow people to get followers
Schedule your tweets
Track clicks and retweets
Facebook
 Primarily B2C, not B2B
 Great for on-line promotions and event
announcements
Facebook Tips
 Ask your staff, customers, vendors & partners to “like”
your page
 Upload lots of photos
 Set up a shopping tab to drive traffic to your ecommerce website
 “Like” other pages that your customers might engage
with and comment on posts on those pages
 Give a face and personality to the company
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Employee of the month
Highlight what company or employees are doing in the
community or in support of a particular cause
Post behind the scenes photos
 Encourage your staff to share content
Google +
 “The next big social network” for business
 Business pages allow a person to follow
and engage with your business on a
personal level
 Google+ is a platform for content delivery
more than a way to business network
Why YouTube
 YouTube is the 2nd most popular search
engine
 More than ½ of executives watch workrelated videos on YouTube at least weekly
 Video can engage your audience better than
other media – creates a more personal
connection between your brand and the
viewer
 Video is an effective way to explain product
functions, processes and other concepts that
are hard to describe in copy
Why YouTube
 Video is great on the go – lends itself to
the mobile format
 Your brand will get discovered more
(Google integration)
 YouTube is measurable
YouTube
 Create a branded YouTube channel
 Keep it relevant (product showcases, demos,
lessons, testimonials, how-to, expert advice)
 Develop videos that are quick, simple,
engaging and professional
 Make it easy to find and share
 Share your videos in other places
 Include a call to action (website, special offer,
etc)
 Speak to the person, not the business
Website
Effective Websites
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Simple
Quality content
Blog
Downloadable content / resource center
Encourage collaboration
Form and function
Keep content fresh
Integrate social media
Check out your competition
Create Better Content
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Focus on your audience and their needs
Be clear and concise
Incorporate relevant keywords
Organize your content
Measure the results
E-commerce
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Make it simple
Use images and video
Customer specific profiles
Integrate to both your customer’s and your
own systems
Incorporate the human touch with bios and
photos of sales personnel
Measure everything
Understand your customer’s needs
Easy to administer / update