How to Transition Into the Big Business of B2B

How to Transition Into the Big Business of B2B
New Asus Android Tablet Will Retail for Under $150
Monitoring Your Social Media Channels From One Place is a Good Idea
Vine App Now Available for Android Devices
Google Local Plus “101″ Primer With Local Search Expert Mike Blumenthal

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 04:00 PM PDT

b2b

For a fledgling entrepreneur, there’s no greater feeling than building a strong customer base. But after collecting repeat business and expanding to new demographics, what’s the next client frontier?

Almost any customer product or service can be repositioned to tap into the business of business-to-business, and the big risk can reap exponential rewards.

We asked members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invitation-only organization comprised of the country's most promising young entrepreneurs, the following question about the cubicle clientele:

“What’s your best sales tip for B2B companies?”

Here's what YEC community members had to say:

1. Focus on Existing Clients and Relationships

“In a B2B business, your best clients and relationships will come from networking and referrals from existing clients. Maintaining your visibility at industry events, get-togethers, parties and trade shows is key. The highest-quality and most loyal clients will most often come from personal relationships, rather than traditional advertising.” ~ Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands

2. Realize Buyers Are Not Always Users

“B2B sales are exciting because of the scale — one order could be worth 1,000 B2C sales. However, there is one major difference: Often, the buyer is not the end user! While the benefits of your product to an employee are critical, an equally important part of your story must be explaining to the buyer how your product is going to make his or her life easier.” ~ Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches

3. Leave the Building

“Y Scouts, an executive search firm, was recently written up in Social Media Examiner as a B2B sales and marketing case study. The premise of their approach was to get out of the building to develop long-term relationships with their target audience. They did this through a photo tour around their value proposition.” ~ Brett Farmiloe, Markitors

4. Add Value Outside Your Product or Service

“Help build continual value by asking questions, listening and making valued recommendations for other vendor partners that can help your prospects and clients. Even consider making a sheet with your logo that lists other vendors, as these businesses might need a trusted introduction to them (bankers, IT consultants, accountants, health benefit brokers and commercial insurance). “ ~ Darrah Brustein, Finance Whiz Kids | Equitable Payments

5. Stress the Value in Your Product/Service

“Businesses place an extreme importance on value over anything else. If your product or service can make their lives easier or improve their business, then they'll see the value in it. During your sales meeting, don't worry so much about "wowing" them; instead, present a simple and straightforward value proposition that makes their decision easy.” ~ Charles Bogoian, Kenai Sports, LLC

6. Stop Thinking Like a Marketer

“When I first launched my B2B software startup, all of my financial modeling included marketing activities that would generate amazing results. As it turns out, it is much harder to market to businesses than consumers. The best tip I can share based on experience: Invest in outbound sales prospecting. I built a call center that makes hundreds of calls a day and have achieved incredible results. “ ~ Justin Spring, BringShare, Inc.

7. Have Numbers on Hand

“Any B2B sale is based on your client wanting to improve his own company. If you can show numbers, particularly numbers reflecting the bottom line, you’re going to make it clear why a new client should work with you. Numbers won’t be everything in the sale, but they’ll provide an easy way to clear out the more common objections.” ~ Thursday Bram, Hyper Modern Consulting

8. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

“If you want the universe to work in your favor, you've got to do something different than what you're already doing. Meet people, talk to them, share ideas, write, blog, exchange ideas and speak at conferences. Create conversations and let them foster. Most of business life is routine, and that is what you need to break from for serendipity to embrace you.” ~ Rahul Varshneya, Arkenea

9. Don’t Sell; Instead, Educate Your Buyer

“So you’ve got an amazing product and would be doing the world a disservice if you didn’t do everything in your power to get it out there, right? But here’s the thing: No one likes the “hard sell.” Instead, find people for whom the product is a fit by asking key qualifying questions. After that, offer them something free (e.g., an eBook) that gives value but also shows your product’s benefits.” ~ Matthew Ackerson, Saber Blast

10. Hook More Prospects With Bait

“Copywriting legend Bob Bly says simply adding a free bait piece to your offer (e.g., a free white paper, free special report, free software, etc.) can double your response rates to ads and mailings versus using the same copy without the free information offer. Our experience confirms Bly’s statement: The more you emphasize the offer, the greater the response.” ~ Charles Gaudet, Predictable Profits

Businesss to Business Photo via Shutterstock

The post How to Transition Into the Big Business of B2B appeared first on Small Business Trends.

New Asus Android Tablet Will Retail for Under $150

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 01:30 PM PDT

asus android tablet

Asus is planning to introduce an economical Android tablet that could rival the Google Nexus 7 tablet, and keep the company trending upward in the tablet market. The new Asus Android tablet — the Memo Pad HD7 — was announced at an event in Taiwan earlier this week.

Probably the most attention-grabbing feature of the Memo Pad HD7 is its price tag. An 8GB model will be sold for $129. A 16GB version will sell for $149.

In keeping with newer tablets, it will have two cameras. InformationWeek reports the Memo Pad HD7 will have a 5 megapixel rear camera in addition to a 1.2 megapixel front-facing lens to complement its 1280 x 800 screen.

DigitalTrends reports the 8GB model will likely only be available in “emerging markets.” But the more stocked model is still a bargain at its price. The Nexus 7 with 16GB sells for $50 higher than the expected price for the comparable-stocked Memo Pad HD7.

The Memo Pad HD7 comes in four body colors: black, white, shocking pink, and lime green.

Tablet makers have been focusing on camera technology and early reviews tend to agree that the 5 MP add-on from Asus is better than the camera situation of the Nexus 7, one the best Android tablet deals last year. In addition to the other products Asus expects to launch in July with the Memo Pad HD7, the company is likely pitching for a bigger share of the tablet and other device markets, and doing so by keeping its prices competitive.

Asus made a big splash in the tablet market in 2012, and while it did not have the top-selling device like Google, its sales of these devices jumped more than 400 percent, according to AndroidCommunity. Asus was the fourth-leading seller of tablets in 2012.

The 7-inch tablet size has proved popular for its obvious advantages. It’s very mobile — light weight and small enough to slip into a coat pocket or ladies’ purse. The price is nice, too, with some available under $200. Yet, the screen is easier to read and use as a touchpad keyboard, than a typical 4-inch smartphone.

Small tablets are not the best choices for doing heavy-duty work such as creating documents and manipulating spreadsheets. But they are handy devices if your tablet budget is low and you just need something to keep your business flowing (i.e., deal with email, messaging and use some apps) while out of the office for a few hours or even a couple of days on a short business trip.

This video of the Memo HD7 shows how compact and portable it is:

Image: Asus

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Monitoring Your Social Media Channels From One Place is a Good Idea

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 11:00 AM PDT

Social Media Photo via Shutterstock

The social media landscape and its importance in the larger marketing strategy of business are growing all the time. It's not just the Big 4, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, that are acting as branding mouthpieces of B2B and B2C brands. Other social media channels are also making their presence count. Case in point being Pinterest, YouTube and Instagram.

The number of active users across different social media channels boggles the mind. As of September 2012, Facebook had 1 Billion active users and a relatively new social media phenomenon like Pinterest has over 20 million active users and counting. You know where I am heading. Businesses can no longer afford to pick and choose from the various social networks available. Each one of them has its own unique selling proposition.

While Twitter is a great platform for professional branding using personal communication, Facebook helps businesses provide a comprehensive social media message replete with pictures, videos and all kinds of textual content. If you want to directly take your brand to industry professionals, a presence on LinkedIn is a must and Google+ is a coming together of tremendous benefits that Google brings to the table. If you are looking for sales ready users, Pinterest is the platform to beat.

Monitoring Social Media Channels

Use Multiple Social Media Channels

Today you can't do without well-rounded social media presence. All channels are interrelated and each of these channels is a touch point in your customer conversion funnel. There are social media channels that support traffic generation, while there are others that manage your business's reputation, and there are still others that help you identify potential leads.

You can't afford to ignore any one of them. The mix of social media channels that you prefer to work with can differ depending on your business's niche but there is no doubt that you can't ignore the use of multiple social media channels to drive business profitability.

Social Media Overload Photo via Shutterstock

Problem of Plenty

If you want your social media presence to deliver value, you need to be able to make sense of all the turbulence and frothiness associated with social media. Social media can offer incisive customer insights, identify critical buying behavior patterns, improve customer services and increase customer retention. But only if you are able to monitor social media and track all your social media channels and analyze and evaluate their results. You must be able to organize and manage your social accounts seamlessly to ensure the continued success of your social media presence.

The idea is to control your social work flow, identify the actionable intelligence from the word clouds and automated reports that are more of distraction than anything else. This is a huge challenge.

It's a challenge because your business's presence is spread across diverse social media channels. Your presence on different social networks like Facebook, Twitter etc. will be tracked using diverse metrics and will yield different results.

For example, if you are evaluating your YouTube presence, performance metrics like video views, audience retention (amount of video watched by target audience), number of subscribers, ratio of views to number of user interactions come into play. On the other hand, the performance of your Twitter presence is dependent on metrics like follower count, number or retweets, comparison with peers and others.

The sheer diversity of metrics makes monitoring a real challenge.

Does the Answer Lie in Social Media Monitoring Tools?

The simple answer is that it does.

But, there is a problem here. No, the problem isn't the quality of the available tools but the sheer number of different social media monitoring tools available in the market. Most of us end up using different tools for different social media channels. In such cases, what we are essentially doing is using different dashboards to track different results, a recipe for disaster, if there was one.

To keep track of all the results and social data pouring in from different dashboards is a situation made in hell and something that cannot be kept up with for any amount of time. So should we use them or shouldn't we?

Of course, we should and this isn't a debatable point but the focus must be on using a single dashboard for keeping track of all your social media channels and monitor social media from one place.

Social Media Hub Photo via Shutterstock

Benefits of Following the Single Dashboard Strategy

Monitoring social media business metrics from a single command center allows you to take control of all your business data from one place. You don't have to access different tools every morning to see how your business is doing. You can simply create a customized dashboard to track all the information you want.

A business analytics tool like Cyfe is a good example of a one-stop dashboard that helps you track business performance form a single place. Apart from getting brand-specific Facebook Insights data you also get access to YouTube Analytics, Twitter Analytics, Google Trends information and a range of other social and search data and all this from a single location.

As the assimilation, evaluation, and analysis of all information about your brand performance on different social channels takes from one place, you get a clearer picture of your brand presence and its engagement with its target customers at various levels. You can make better sense of all the actionable intelligence at your disposal. You spend less time monitoring social media results scattered all across the Web, and more time using this data to improve your social media presence.

It Just Makes Good Sense

You don't have to be a genius to realize monitoring social media data using a single dashboard is way better than using different social media monitoring tools to track your social media presence. It just makes better sense.

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Vine App Now Available for Android Devices

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 08:50 AM PDT

vine app android

Prepare for an invasion of six-second video clips. The Vine app is now available for Android.

Vine is the very popular app launched by Twitter at the beginning of the year. It allows users to record short videos and post them to Twitter. And until Monday, only iPhone and iPad users could get Vine.

A post on the Twitter blog announced Monday that the app will now be available for Android devices. If iOS users are any indication, it will be a hugely popular download for Android too.

Twitter says 13 million users have downloaded the Vine app for iOS and that 12 million Vine video clips are posted to Twitter every day. As users become more familiar with the concept, offerings have gotten better and more creative. The app is already being touted and used by many as a marketing tool.

The introduction of the Vine app for Android will have its hiccups. Already, some users have logged negative reviews for the Android app, specifically that a device’s front-facing camera does not work with Vine and that the audio is not in sync with the video. Some features available on the Android app are not currently on the iOS version, and vice versa.

In its blog post, Twitter says, “Over the coming weeks, you'll see frequent updates with new features — including front-facing camera, search, mentions and hashtags, and the ability to share to Facebook.”

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Google Local Plus “101″ Primer With Local Search Expert Mike Blumenthal

Posted: 06 Jun 2013 05:00 AM PDT

Ever since Google introduced Google Maps, Mike Blumenthal was there to study its impact on small business. He is one of the world's top experts on Google Local Plus (Places), a blogger at "Understanding Google Maps and Local Search, founder at LocalU and an all around good guy.

Remarkable for the fact that he spent thousands of hours helping small business owners with their listings on Google’s Places for Business. If local search was hockey, he would be Wayne Gretzky. We are grateful that he found the time to answer some questions for us.

* * * * *

google local plus

Small Business Trends: A lot of small business owners are confused about Google Local (Places) Plus and Google+ for Business. What’s the simplest way to make a distinction between these and what does it mean for their success in Google's local ecosystem?

Mike Blumenthal: Google has totally confused the branding of their local products. In the end, everyone will have a Google+ Page for local that will be either social or not. For the most part, the page will be managed from the new Google Places for Business interface.

One of the issues is that most businesses do not understand that their listing at Google is a search result. And that Google gives the business the privilege of adding some trusted data to that listing from either the Places Dashboard or from Google +.

Sometimes Google doesn’t trust the business provided data (or rather their algorhythm doesn’t) and they change it. But in the end, the result is the same regardless of where the data is given to Google. And the result will show up wherever Google wants to show local results; the main search results page, the Plus environment, Maps, Apps, Google Earth… wherever.

It is a time of great transition in both the product and the branding. Essentially the name Places is going away and being replaced for the consumer with local Google+ Pages.

Small Business Trends: You have seen everything that can be seen in local search. Where do small businesses usually fail? What about corporations?

Mike Blumenthal: It is amazing to me that the most common failures I see at both levels is a failure to consistently brand your locations. Google essentially respects and honors brands at a local level with their search product. Brand is the strategy.

Google needs to see a consistent footprint for each business to highlight the brand properly. To do that, they use what we call NAP – name, address and phone – to accurately track, review relevance and ranking information about each location. Businesses both big and small seem to have a hard time keeping their NAP the same everywhere. One name, one phone number and one address always presented the same. It seems that there is always this desire to somehow improve on your NAP by using call tracking numbers or futzing with the business name.

My advice: Don’t do that.

What is shocking is that I see this with national brands, as well, and they should know better.

Small Business Trends: If you had a business that was underperforming in local search, but had no obvious issues, what 3 things would you do?

Mike Blumenthal: 1) Look for violations that would cause the listing to be de-listed or ranked lower.

2) Check for duplicate listings.

3) See if Google has changed the area being shown in the search results.

4) Determine whether the issue is organic or local in nature.

Small Business Trends: We have noticed Google giving small business owners more support recently and even opening up phone lines. Is this another experiment or their new strategy?

Mike Blumenthal: Google seems to have come to the realization that getting the last few details correct in local can not reasonably be done by machine. I think we will see a stronger commitment going forward to providing businesses with answers to their questions.

Small Business Trends: How do you see local changing in the future? What can small businesses do to prepare?

Mike Blumenthal: Well, the obvious change is happening now. Or at least the trend is clear now. Both couch surfing with the iPad/tablets and true mobile with smartphones are changing local. The best thing that small businesses can do is to upgrade their website with responsive design so that it handles both tablet and phone screen sizes well.

Context is everything and Google will be able to tell a lot about a person that is using their phone. If you look into the near future, I see things like universal geo fencing…. that is the ability of folks like Google to know when a person crosses into their physical space.

As for preparation for that? Be sure that you are doing local search – great website, great citation building, keeping customers happy and getting reviews, figuring out how to earn links, etc.

Small Business Trends: Do You See Google trying to monetize local outside of PPC (pay per click)?

Mike Blumenthal: Absolutely. Their new Google for Business Dashboard is set up for them to easily add new billable functionality. Some of that has already been added in beta form like Offers.

But I see that Google could easily move into very sophisticated couponing, loyalty programs and much, much more.

Small Business Trends: What would be your advice for small businesses with more than one location?

Mike Blumenthal: First, build a great website and get it ranking well. Second, be sure to create dedicated and well optimized landing pages with rich snippets for each location that you reference at Google and across the Web. Third, find citation opportunities that scale. That is easier said than done.

Small Business Trends: Any advice for ranking in more than one city with just one location?

Mike Blumenthal: Google local search is all about geography. Having a location in the city of search is critical. If a nearby city is so important, then you have two choices.

1) Open a real location in that city;

2) Really optimize your local pages organically for that location/keyword combo so that they show ABOVE the pack results. That isn’t easy and it’s roughly akin to playing to an inside straight in poker.

Small Business Trends: How do you play safe with reviews? Every article about reviews advises some sort of solicitation. Google says you shouldn’t do it. What do you say?

Mike Blumenthal: Google has loosened up their definition of solicitation.

Don't set up a computer or tablet device in your place of business for customers to leave reviews on site. Consider printing out a QR code or sending a reminder e-mail so customers can review on their own time.

Google has made it clear that you can use email to communicate to your customers and ask for a review. But Google is funny and they are not showing a lot of reviews that trigger their new review filter. It is not inconceivable down the road that they would look at speed or volume of reviews as a trigger for a review take down. So you want to modulate the rate at which you get Google reviews.

I do think that businesses need to rethink the “metrics” by which they measure their success in this area. It really shouldn’t be about getting the most reviews, it should be about having the happiest customers.

A process that I like to recommend to business owners is the Survey/Review cycle. You ask every customer to go to some sort of online survey about how satisfied they were with your services on a 1 to 5 scale. If they respond with a 4 or 5 they are sent on to being asked to leave a review. If they answer 1,2 or 3 they are referred to customer service and an attempt is made to increase their satisfaction. Once they are happy, the process starts again.

This may reduce the total number of reviews but it has several very real benefits:

1. Unhappy customers are caught early in the post sale cycle, so you can intervene before they leave a scathing review online.

2. You are able to track and measure customer satisfaction over a period of time and make improvements if necessary.

3. The happy customers will be the ones that ultimately leave the reviews.

Small Business Trends: Mike, thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions.

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