For Sale! Prices Slashed!! Marked Down!!! People have used many of the same tactics for centuries to focus potential customers on the value they’d receive if they were to buy now. But here is a question for you: Would your customers rather a product be marked down from $203 to $192, or would they prefer a markdown from $199 to $188? Either way you slice it, they get an $11 price reduction. For you, it changes your final price from…
I’ve been speaking at Search conferences since 2001 and have spent a ton of time getting to know who is who in the industry. Every day it seems that there are another dozen experts to follow on SEO. But, who should you really be paying attention to in 2014? For starters, solid SEO’s need to have a proven track record in the ever-changing world of search – remember, search engines like Google frequently update their algorithms. Another criteria is the…
Marie, the VP of Marketing, predicts that she can increase conversions to sales by at least 40 percent. She wants to conduct a series of disruptive experiments that make everyone nervous. Scott, the VP of Sales, is especially on edge. The lead-to-contract rate is already a respectable 7.1 percent for this not-so-new marketing technology B2B SaaS. If Marie is right, it’s a homerun. But if she’s wrong, Scott is predicting a debacle on an epic scale. You’re in charge. Would…
News of a Google algorithm leak has surfaced, unveiling a wealth of documents that shed light on Google Search “signals.” These records reveal an astonishing number of over 14,000 ranking factors or signals. As the community delves into these documents, conducting their own research and testing, a flood of insights is bound to emerge in the coming days. The biggest issue with this new documentation is that for years, Google has insisted that factors such as Chrome data, clicks and…
The last couple of years have been difficult for many people. People struggled with all kinds of issues. Some publicly and some privately. I was in the later group. I tried my best to keep a happy appearance, but honestly it was easier to withdraw and focus the little energy I had on my family. I don’t regret it at all. My friend Alan Stein Jr, author of Raise Your Game & recently Sustain Your Game, shared an incredibly powerful…
Every company has to make choices when it comes to how it markets and sells and, in some cases, who it is and what it sells. In an e-mail exchange, Tom Grimes, a great and brilliant friend, shared with me what he’s thinking about in terms of business choices. Based on his list, here’s my own list of many of the high-level choices businesses typically make every day. It may help you make some more conscience choices of your own:…
Amazon almost killed Best Buy. Then Best Buy learned to Be a little more Like Amazon and it is doing great. You too can Be Like Amazon while not being like Amazon. Any business, retail or services, online or brick and mortar can learn from these principles. Build relationships, help people buy instead of focusing on selling them, understand your employees & customers’ motivation. Find ways to remove the friction in the experience through innovating your current processes.
Do you want to get paid less for any value you bring to your customer? Obviously not! Do you prefer to pay more for products than they are actually worth? Today Payless announce they are closing all their stores. I want us to step back too late November/December of last year (yes only a couple of months back) and take a look at what we can learn from the PayLess disaster to understand how we need to adapt to stay…