Sales

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 30 jun 2016

E-Commerce strategy once was a source of competitive advantage and differentiating factor in business. But now it is an essential strategy for businesses to connect and engage with their customers and, market and sell their products and services online. AJ Agrawal, Founder and CEO of Alumnify, suggests 4 affordable marketing strategies to boost e-commerce efforts and stand out from the competition - (1) Start Testing More On Facebook: Utilize split testing or A/B testing to evaluate advertising effectiveness and save cost. Continue the process until best results are achieved. One tactic you can implement in your testing is to prequalify leads. (2) Use The Right Influencers: Word of mouth generates twice the number of sales as paid advertising. Invest in reputation marketing and word of mouth marketing. Use the right and relevant influencers. (3) Invest In Your Email Marketing Campaign: 44% of customers click on promotional emails and then make a purchase. Build email list and invest in email marketing campaign. Finally get a group of brand ambassadors from the list and initiate word of mouth marketing through them. (4) Retargeting In The Right Style: Use retargeting to highlight and establish that unique selling point to convince them to buy and not go to competitors. Use data analytics to understand customer behavior. Segment your adds based on user interactions with site. Keep testing advertising effectiveness until best results are achieved. Continuous testing of marketing strategies and improving upon them will help in differentiating from competitors and attract customers. Read on...

Forbes: 4 Marketing Strategies To Take eCommerce To The Next Level
Author: AJ Agrawal

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 apr 2016

Businesses apply different set of strategies and tactics when they market and sell to other businesses or directly to consumers. Daniel Scalco, CEO of Digitalux, provides 5 important B2B (Business to Business) marketing strategies that should be considered to increase leads, ROI (Return on Investments) and finally sales - (1) Dig deeper when targeting your demographic: Use 'hyper-targeting' to narrow down audience. (2) Get feedback: Strategy should be data driven; Use survey process into marketing methods. (3) Extend your funnel: B2B marketing strategy cycle to go from a prospect, to lead to consumer is much longer than B2C; Nurture leads by extending funnel through better content, webinars and social media to engage with target audience. (4) Invest in an explainer video: eMarketer study found that B2B buyers consider video as top 3 most useful content for marking purchases; Inform potential customers through a story-based video. (5) Create goals and milestones: Break down the journey to reach marketing goals into smaller steps or milestones for effective execution. Read on...

Huffington Post: 5 B2B Marketing Strategies You Need To Consider
Author: Daniel Scalco

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 feb 2016

Reviews and recommendations related to products and companies are an important part of consumer buying decisions. Nowadays, technology has transformed word of mouth into word of clicks and taps, bringing consumers closer to other consumers and brands. Online communities around interests, products, and brands have mushroomed. Social media has further brought quality, quantity and speed into the recommendation and review process. According to a study by McKinsey, social media recommendations induced an average of 26% of purchases in 2014, that's up from 10% in 2013. Kishore Kumar, serial entrepreneur and CEO of AllThingsMine, explains how social media networks are assisting cosumers in their buying and purchasing decisions and what companies need to do to effectively utilize these channels for their product marketing and competitive strategies. According to him three aspects of social media influence consumers, and companies have to incorporate them to expand their product sales - (1) Social Referrals: Brands have to encourage and invest in social media referrals. Adweek infographic suggests that 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals. Recommendations from friends and trusted sources are more valuable than product advertisements. (2) Access to Reviews: Consumers research before buying products and reviews are an important source. Companies should provide product reviews and give incentives to those consumers that leave a review. (3) Social Media Accessibility: Social media is freely available to anyone with an internet connection. Consumers can now purchase products directly from their social media feeds when people in their network recommend them. Companies need to effectively tap this potential and reach out to larger public through influencers. Read on...

Young Upstarts: How Social Networks Impact Buying Decisions And The Modern Consumer Society
Author: Kishore Kumar

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 jan 2016

According to a study, pharmaceutical promotional and marketing expenditures, that include direct-to-consumer advertising (like TV ads), promotions to physicians, journal advertising, distributing free samples etc, increased from US$ 11.4 billion in 1995 to US$ 28.9 billion in 2005. But a recent research study titled 'Does Increased Spending on Pharmaceutical Marketing Inhibit Pioneering Innovation?' by professors Denis Arnold and Jennifer Troyer from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, found that the more pharmaceutical firms spend on marketing drugs, the less likely it is that the firm will produce breakthrough drugs that offer major advances in treatment. Conversely, the more pharmaceutical companies spend on research and development, the more innovative are the results in terms of the development of pioneering drugs according to FDA classifications, i.e. drugs that will improve public health. Authors of the study comment that the research has important policy and ethics outcomes. Prof. Arnold says, 'This article is the first using empirical data to demonstrate that aggressive marketing of pharmaceutical drugs and truly innovative new drug development are at odds. The current patent regime, that provides equal patent protection for drugs regardless of their innovativeness, can be manipulated by firms to increase sales and drive up costs for society without improving public health.' According to Prof. Troyer, 'The effects of increased spending on R&D are large for pioneering drugs. For firms producing at least one pioneering drug over the period (1999-2009), increasing permanent R&D spending by 1% results in an almost one pioneering drug approval per firm.' Read on...

UNC Charlotte News: For Pharmaceutical Companies, More Marketing Equals Less Innovation
Authors: Kirsten Khire, Buffie Stephens

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 jan 2016

Product returns are an important part of customer-retailer relationship dynamics. In 2014, customers returned US$ 280 million worth of products across all US retailers. The latest research by doctoral student Ryan Freling (University of Texas at Dallas), Prof. Narayan Janakiraman (University of Texas at Arlington) and doctoral candidate Holly Syrdal (University of Texas at Arlington), conducted the meta-analysis of existing studies on return policies to quantify the policies' effect on consumers' purchase and return behavior. The study challenges the underlying assumption that all return policies affect purchases and returns in a similar manner. The study suggests that this is not the case, as retailers tend to impose restrictions to dissuade returns or offer leniency to encourage purchases by manipulating five return policy elements: time, money, effort, scope and exchange. The study found that overall lenient return policies positively affect purchase and return decisions. According to Mr. Freling, 'In general, firms use return policies to increase purchases but don't want to increase returns, which are costly. But all return policies are not the same...Return policy leniency should depend on the retailer's objectives. If a retailer wants to stimulate purchases, offering more lenient monetary policies and low-effort policies may be effective.' Read on...

UT Dallas News Center: Researchers Examine Effect of Return Policies on Consumer Behavior
Author: Brittany Magelssen

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 sep 2015

'Digital Marketing' utilizes online technologies and provides opportunities to add prospective customers at the top of the sales funnel and nurture them to build a strong customer base for products and services. Advancement in technologies have provided multiple ways and channels through which marketers can connect and engage with the prospects and build strong relationships. One of the most important aspect of digital marketing is the measurability of the campaign through analytics. The availability of metrics provides marketers with clear understanding of the audience, their interaction with the brands and success of the marketing campaign. According to Jamie Turner, founder of 60 Second Marketer and co-author of 'Go Mobile', the 7 essential channels of digital marketing are - (1) Responsive Websites (2) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Paid Search (3) Online Display Advertising (4) Video (5) Social Media (6) Mobile Marketing may include Mobile Website, Mobile Search, Mobile Display Ads, In-app Display Advertising (7) Email Marketing. The action steps required to leverage digital marketing include - Taking the initiative and start using digital marketing; Implement gradually with complete understanding and continuously analyze campaign progress; Use analytics to measure and track campaign results, make adjustments and optimize the process for better ROI. Read on...

Business 2 Community: Digital Marketing - The 7 Essential Channels
Author: Jamie Turner

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 apr 2015

According to MarketingTerms.com, 'Affiliate Marketing' is the 'Revenue sharing between online advertisers/merchants and online publishers/salespeople, whereby compensation is based on performance measures, typically in the form of sales, clicks, registrations, or a hybrid model.' Wikipedia defines 'Customer Relationship Management' (CRM) as 'System for managing a company's interactions with current and future customers. It often involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.' Affiliate managers need to keep track of their affiliate relationships efficiently and they can use CRM tools to stay organized. According to Dustin Howes, Director of Marketing at Marketing Clique, 'Using the CRM creates full transparency of the current state of the affiliate program and the growth in the near future.' He provides the following ways CRM can be effective for affiliate marketing - (1) Document Hot Leads (2) Task Reminders (3) Institutional Memory (4) Predicting Affiliate Performance. Read on...

FeedFront: Growing your Affiliate Program with a CRM
Author: Dustin Howes

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 mar 2015

The pharmaceutical industry in India and around the world is one of the fastest growing industry with a total revenue of about US$ 3 trillion. Indian pharma industry's revenue in 2013 was US$ 12 billion and is primarily driven by exports in the regulatory and emerging markets. India has 20,000 pharma companies and 60,000 distributors and large number of big and small retailers. Marketing is one of the most critical component of pharma industry. Continuously chaning business environment due to strict regulations, policies and guidelines have driven companies to adopt innovative ways to expand their customer base and stay ahead of the competition. Pawan Chaudhary, CMD of Venus Remedies, provides his perspective on the evolving aspects of the pharma industry, marketing strategies to survive in the dynamic and competitive environment and the future challenges that the industry faces. According to him, Patent Act of 2005 has shifted the approach of most pharma companies from merely generics to branded generics and towards R&D orientation. They generally spend 8-10% of their total sales on marketing related activities to properly position and promote their products. Due to highly specialized nature of his company's products, he explains the following tools that are used for effective marketing - Key Opinion Leaders (KOL); Webinars; Expositions; Conferences/Seminars; Social Media; Continuing Medical Education (CME) Programs. According to him the challenges faced by the pharma industry are - Rising costs of research and development with 8-10 years of time and US$ 800-1000 million investment to successfully develop a new chemical entity; Increasing regulations and drug policies like National Pharmaceutical Pricing Policy (NPPA) to reduce prices of essential medicines. He suggests that companies now need more agile, smarter and smaller marketing teams and field staff. They have to focus on new drug development and competitive pricing strategies to provide best value to customers. Read on...

The Financial Express: Art and science of pharma marketing
Author: Pawan Chaudhary

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 feb 2015

The report 'The Sales Organization Performance Gap' by Prof. Steve W. Martin of University of Southern California and Nick Hedges, CEO of Velocify, is based on surveys of about 800 industry participants and dismantles the myth of a lone, star performer, cowboy-type salesman without whom the organization can't generate revenues. According to Mr. Hedges, 'The goal of the study was to identify the differences between a "good" sales organization and a "great" one. When we quantified what made the great sales organizations work, we found the underlying factor was a team process, a team culture.' Prof. Martin says, 'Another differentiator between good and great sales operations is that the latter are quick to recognize a poor fit in the team and rectify it. That usually means terminating employment.' The study also found that, 'The best sales organizations are not a collection of individuals trying to succeed as a team. Rather, they have a high level of morale and camaraderie. They are united for a greater purpose than themselves.' Read on...

CMSWire: No Cowboys Here - Teamwork, Culture Leads to Sales Success
Author: Erika Morphy

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Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 28 may 2014

Companies are utilizing content marketing strategies to attract customers and it is now possible, with numerous analytics tools, to measure and assess the ROI (Return on Investment) on content. But there is a challenge that arises due to lack of cooperation between the marketing and sales and the resulting gap. This gap is further exacerbated when there is one way communication, from marketing to sales, through lead information. According to Hubspot's '2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report', based on a survey of 3300 marketers from 128 countries, only 24% of marketers had a formalized agreement for lead handoffs, implying low level of marketing-sales cooperation. On the other hand, average cost per lead for marketers with a formal sales agreement is US$ 24, versus US$ 49 for those without. Content marketing strategy should further focus on buyer personas throughout the sales cycle and emphasise solving customer's challenges with relevant content. Hubspot suggest SLAs (Service Level Agreements) to ensure cooperation between marketing and sales that finally results in better content results. Author suggests the following content marketing challenges, from most difficult to least - Creating truly memorable content that reinforces brand and expertise; Bridging the sales-marketing gap for accurate personas and better/cheaper lead generation; Establishing content marketing ROI; Building a robust opt-in distribution platform; Measuring/analyzing the success of content marketing campaigns. Read on...

diginomica: Content marketing ROI and that dangerous sales-marketing gap
Author: Jon Reed

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