Sales takes patience. Most companies understand that one must slowly build trust and understanding between the salesperson and customer, and that customer journeys take time.

However, in order to be competitive, it is important for salespeople to be quick on their feet. In Jill Konrath’s book Agile Selling, she teaches salespeople how to become more adept at working with customers and provides insights on winning the sales game without cutting corners. This article summarizes the book and explains the key concepts of what agile selling is and how it can empower your sales team.

What is Agile Selling?

It’s important for every salesperson to master the art of agile selling because there are times when the sale has to be made quickly. Konrath, a sales expert, introduces readers to the concept of quick selling and how it can help salespeople sell better and more effectively.

Agile selling is the concept of learning how to sell quickly. The process starts with learning about the product, its competitors and positioning, and coming up with fast ways to sell the product. While the whole sales process may be long and complex, you can close the deal through agile selling methodologies.

These methodologies help salespeople quickly take in new information, learn new skills, and train their minds to react to any situation. For most salespeople, agile selling will help them be more successful.

Agile Selling Principles

Salespeople are having a hard time with consumers’ new mindset and buying behaviour. Not knowing how to absorb knowledge quickly can put a dent on a salesperson’s performance, but agile selling teaches readers “skills like chunking, sequencing, connecting, prioritizing, reflecting, and practicing.”

It’s imperative to know your customer or boost your customer knowledge. How your customer thinks determines what information you need to bring with you to your sales call. Becoming agile means honing your craft and improving your performance.

Strategies and Tips from Agile Selling

It All Begins Within

That’s where 50 per cent of the battle begins: Agile selling is not just about techniques, but also about a good mindset. Focus on a certain skill and develop it. The techniques you can learn, but the mindset must be developed over time. Additionally, set concrete goals in order to encourage productivity. By focusing on evolving and eliminating distractions, salespeople can get better, faster.

Consumers Have Changed

Technology, including computers and the internet, has changed buyer behaviour over time. In some studies, results show that 70 per cent of buyers have already made a purchase decision before they ever email or contact a company. The internet provides buyers with an avenue to research, so they don’t need salespeoples’ help as often.

In the traditional sales process, one of the first steps is the pitch (features, benefits, and advantages). While this is still applicable, salespeople can’t hustle to close the sale: People are more educated now. Salespeople deal with people who want a conversation about the product or service, and not just a sales pitch.

The Framework for Agile Selling

There is a framework for learning how to learn to sell a certain product quickly: chunking, sequencing, connecting, dumping, practicing, prioritizing.

This framework allows salespeople to organize their thoughts in 30 minutes to get ready for the sales call. It begins with chunking all information in similar bits. From there, you sequence them and connect them with each other. After that, you dump the information you don’t need and start practicing. Finally, you prioritize what is needed for the sales call.

The Concept of MED

MED stands for Minimum Effective Dose, and it’s the concept of taking in only what you need. Many salespeople cram all the product information and sales concepts into their minds right before a call. However, this may confuse you and cause information overload. MED emphasizes researching only what is necessary for a sales call and deleting all other information. This makes things clearer and more effective for your sales call.

The Power of Practice

With agile selling, and selling in general, experts recommend practice — and more practice. Role-playing with more experienced salespeople will vastly help a salesperson’s performance. This practice is key to making your technique more effective over time.

Jill Konrath is an internationally recognized sales expert and author of Agile Sales, which highlights strategies that are helpful for both aspiring and experienced salespeople. When a salesperson practices agile selling techniques, they can adapt to a changing market and cater to what customers want today. Agile sales is a well-respected methodology that helps enable salespeople perform their best.

Learn more tips to being an effective salesperson with our ebook, “5 Secrets to the Most Productive Salespeople.”

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When it’s time to bring in a new addition to your marketing team, finding the right person can be an arduous task. This article discusses what qualities in a marketer help make a marketing team stronger, as well as how to narrow down an overwhelming list of resumes to make the right hire.

Finding the Right Fit with the Right Skillset

Hiring good people is often a daunting task. In fact, an astonishingly low percentage of new hires do well; just 19 per cent succeed in their role, with the majority lacking the minimum level of coachability required of them. Incorrect hiring choices lead to a difficult training process — one that is often costly and, ultimately, wasteful.

Hiring exceptional marketers is imperative: Your marketing department is your brand, identity, voice, and reputation. They are the heart of any organization as they directly connect the consumer to your company. Much is at stake when bringing a marketer on board, so it is crucial to hire the best of the best.

Thankfully, hiring and training exemplary marketers is possible. Focusing on a few key skills can help guide you from the first steps — like sifting through resumes and conducting face-to-face interviews — to the last stages of onboarding and mentorship. It takes quite a bit of work to capture top talent, but if you devote yourself to the process, your marketing department will certainly be rewarded, regardless of today’s KPIs.

Here are the five most important skills to cultivate in your marketing department.

Versatility

The overwhelming majority of new hires fail due to a lack of adaptability. According to Leadership IQ, 26 per cent of them fail due to an inability to incorporate feedback from their bosses and coworkers. The smallest percentage, 11 per cent, were unsuccessful due to technical incompetency. By far, it is most important for workers to possess the unteachable skill of versatility: the ability to learn new things, excel at new tasks, and respond to failure.

Superb marketers aren’t necessarily ones with long lists of qualifications, certifications, or degrees. They have the ability to implement criticism into their work. They assess their own weaknesses and strengths. Most importantly, they are able to pick up new skills and technologies with ease.

Curiosity

In order to excel in the ever-changing, rapidly expanding world of digital marketing, you need an unending love of learning. Again, more important than the number of technical skills listed on a resume or the amount of jargon memorized is the drive to learn. Content marketers must constantly adjust their strategies according to social media trends and changes in Google’s ranking algorithm, for example. A good marketer must be able to track moving targets, which requires training, taking advantage of mentorship opportunities, and self-guided learning through online resources, books, manuals, and guides to stay up-to-date.

Leadership Potential

Everyone on your team should have leadership qualities. A team comprised of self-motivated individuals who effectively cooperate and communicate will undoubtedly outperform those made up of unmotivated ones. Many new hires fall short of expectations because they struggle to manage their own emotions or muster up the motivation to perform at a high level. If you hire self-starters, however, you avoid this problem. It can be difficult to ascertain if someone has the ability to lead, but there are certain qualities to look for when searching for leaders.

Leaders:

• Make promises and deliver on them
• Offer solutions
• Extrapolate specific tasks from larger goals
• Think abstractly but act concretely

Writing Skills

Marketing well means communicating well. Writing is the basis of all your marketing communication. Everyone in your department, whether they are a part of the editorial, acquisition, or monetization team, should understand the basics of copywriting and content creation. A successful marketing department knows how to speak to its target audience. Every pamphlet, email blast and Facebook post should tell a compelling story that encompasses your brand. In order to do this, every marketer needs to be part-author or editor.

Analytics Prowess

Marketing is driven by creativity, but that creativity must be guided by metrics. You need someone who understands how to gather data, extract its meaning, and apply it to increase ROI. They can look at open rates for email campaigns, cross-reference them with previous ones, and adjust headlines, content, and images to increase those rates and drive conversions. They read a website’s Google Analytics dashboard and implement changes to reduce its bounce-rate. The most skilled marketers incorporate market research in their advertising efforts, and can discriminate between meaningful metrics and superfluous data. They use relevant numbers, charts, and percentages to make important creative decisions.

Build a Strong Marketing Team, Strengthen Your Brand

Adding someone new to your team is a great way to embolden your marketing department’s senior members and strengthen your company’s culture. When coached properly, a new teammate can help fill gaps in your marketing strategy by learning from, pivoting with, and contributing to a growth-oriented team.

Versatile, curious, self-driven hires will ensure all your employees are committed to learning, refining, and synthesizing input. Invest in employees who have copywriting skills and understand data-driven analysis in order to guarantee their success down the road. Hiring and training will always be a time-intensive task, but by focusing on these key skills you can help make certain your efforts are not in vain.

Make sure your marketing efforts between your blog, social media, and other channels are coordinated. Watch a demo of our Marketing Cloud platform to see how you can take your marketing to the next level.

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What does it take to be an entrepreneur? Starting a successful business requires more than a good idea: You also need financial backing, support, and a lot of tenacity. It’s not an easy process: About half of Canadian small businesses fail by their fifth year in business.

But you don’t have to accept that fate for your own startup. This article will tell you all about the early stages of building a new business, including finding financial support and how to convince backers that your idea is a profitable one. With some guidance and passion, and a great plan, you should be able to build a business that you’re passionate about—and that’s profitable, too.

Know what you’re up against

When you’re first starting to build a business, it’s important that you understand what is involved so that you don’t underestimate the process. In Canada, about 15 per cent of startups fail within their first year. And 50 per cent don’t make it past their fifth year in business.

To Start Your Own Business, You Have to Be Tenacious

• There are 1.2 billion small business owners in Canada
  • That’s 98% of the country’s employer businesses
• Starting a business is tough
  • 15% of new businesses fail within the first year
  • 50% close before their 5th year
  • 46% say the first year is the hardest
• Most entrepreneurs start with $10,000 or less

That tells you that running a business is no easy task. So even if you have an idea that you’re passionate about and that you think could be successful, you need to work hard in order to make it happen. Even great business ideas have failed due to lack of resources, funding, and proper planning.

Don’t fall into those common pitfalls. Make sure you have a plan for making your idea work before investing all your time and energy into building your business.

Develop your idea

Sure, you need much more than an idea in order for your business to be successful. But having a great business idea can make a big difference for your potential for success.

For an idea to be truly great, it needs to help people in some way. Otherwise, why would customers buy from you? So your product, service, or offering should have the potential to fill a need or provide some kind of value to consumers. If you’ve got a general idea for a business offering, do some research to get specific and build on that idea to continue going forward.

Turn it into a specific offering

Once you have your general idea, figure out what that means in terms of a product or service. Say your idea is to start a company that provides design services to businesses and website owners. From there, you need to create packages of services or produce the products that you can sell. You may determine a few different packages that customers can purchase based on whether they need full web design, logos, or some other branding work. Or you could create web design templates that people can purchase and install themselves.

There are plenty of ways you can format your offerings. You need to decide on exactly what you want that to look like for your own business before you continue building your business.

Get the right skills

If your idea is something you’re passionate about, then it’s likely something you already know something about. However, you may need to hone your skills before launching a business around them.

For example, consider taking a class or becoming an apprentice for an expert in your industry. If you feel confident you have the skills necessary for creating your products or services, then learn the support skills required to run a business. These skills, like bookkeeping and clerical work, are just as important for running a successful startup.

Determine your market

Now you need to decide exactly who you are likely to sell your products or services to. You may think your idea can help people, but if there aren’t customers who are actually willing to pay for it, then you’re not going to get very far.

That means you need to have a very clear picture of your target customer as you get started. Determine who is likely to buy your products or services so you can be better prepared to research your audience, build products around their needs, and market to them when the time is right.

Challenges Every Entrepreneur Must Face

• Know when to take risks
• Learn to delegate
• Maintain a work-life balance
• Overcome any technological insecurities
• Learn to scale up
• Find your niche
• Manage your money
• Keep track of your time

Gather any startup funds

Not every business needs tons of startup cash to get off the ground. But you will likely need at least some funding for basic business expenses like permits, employees, and legal fees.

Since you’ll need to invest in your business before you ever start selling any products or services, you need to find cash. You can fund the early stages of your business yourself, seek outside investors, ask friends, or use crowdfunding. Or you can lower your startup costs as much as possible so you don’t need as much to get started. Then you can fund the growth of your business through the revenue you bring in over time.

Do your research

As mentioned previously, it’s important to have an idea of who your target customers are. But once you’ve outlined the general characteristics of your target market—and created personas—the work isn’t over. You need to find out what your target customers’ preferences are in relation to your offerings.

To illustrate, if you’re a web designer targeting young tech startup founders, find out what the members of that audience think about their current options when it comes to web design.

• Are they satisfied with what’s out there?
• Is there something missing that they need someone to offer?
• What would they be willing to pay for such a product or service?

Finding out those answers early on can help you shape your business into something that’s likely to appeal to customers and, thus, one that is likely to be profitable.

Create a plan for profit

It’s now time to come up with a business plan.

• How are you going to make money?
• How many products or services do you need to sell in order to turn a profit?
• How are you going to make all those sales?

Your plan should include topics like marketing strategies, expenses, and sales data. It’s important to have a good idea of what is necessary to reach your business goals before you even make your first sale. This type of plan may also be necessary in order for you to seek outside investors or supporters for your business.

Title: Small Businesses with a Well-Defined Business Plan are More Successful

• 40% made more than $100,000 last year
• 46% generated more than $250,000 in revenue
• 52% have 5 or more employees
• On average, Canadian small businesses earn $38,272 per year and generate $285,000 in revenue

Pitch your idea

If you do decide you need more funding to get your startup off the ground, then you’ll need to take your business plan and present it to investors. Try to set up meetings with venture firms or secure funding from angel investors. There are also startup accelerators, events, and programs where you can build your ideas and present them to potential supporters or investors.

But you’ll need to be able to show them exactly how your business is going to work and why it would be beneficial for them to invest. If they don’t see the potential for your idea to succeed or don’t see a benefit for themselves, they aren’t likely to show support for your idea.

Create a marketing plan

It’s time to decide how you’re going to market your products and services to potential customers. There are many different routes you can take, from blogging and social media to online advertising, local events, and more.

Depending on the type of business you’re starting, some methods are likely to be more effective than others. If your business is aimed at customers who need internet-based services, it probably wouldn’t be worth the time and effort to launch a local marketing campaign. Online advertising and social media promotions will likely be beneficial.

Employ a few marketing methods to see what works best over time. Create a budget, research and write down a plan based on your business goals and objectives, and then keep an eye on what methods bring you the most paying customers.

Launch your offering

Once everything in place, it’s time to launch. Ideally, you’ll have built up some buzz by this point. And if you’ve secured funding from investors, you should be able to continue getting the word out about your startup while continuously working to improve your business. You’ll also need to focus on things like customer service to make sure your business builds a strong reputation going forward.

Provide good service and create a quality offering that people actually know about through your marketing efforts. Follow these steps and you should be well on your way to building a successful startup that actually lasts.

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One of the biggest challenges is marketing. Because startups have little to no brand recognition and often offer a niche product or service which might be difficult to explain to outsiders, a foray into marketing has to be carefully considered. Whereas other companies may make use of tried-and-true techniques, startups have to be more creative in order to succeed.

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5 Key Steps to Market Your Startup

1. Identify your key audience and influencers

Before you take one step, first identify where you will market your product. A staggering 42 per cent of founders cite a lack of market need as the number one reason for failure. Even if you have an outstanding product or an excellent service, it is absolutely useless unless people actually want to use it.

Of course, that’s not to say you should only cater to an existing audience. Steve Jobs famously said that people don’t know what they want until you give it to them.

For instance, smartphones were adopted extremely quickly, yet few people could have predicted their popularity. Even so, you must understand exactly who your product will be marketed toward so you can create relevant content and marketing campaigns that will actually interest your audience.

How to Choose a Market

• Size
• Wealth
• Competition
• Value Proposition

2. Analyze and plan accordingly

Entrepreneurs often hear that the majority of startups are doomed to fail before they are even conceived, a notion that is supported by hard statistics. In fact, 90 per cent of startups inevitably fail for one reason or another; that’s a fact every person in the business has to face.

The first step is to make a cohesive plan. As any entrepreneur will tell you, plans are also prone to failure. The turbulent nature of business will render a lot of them useless by the time they are supposed to come into fruition.

Even so, studies have shown that setting challenging and specific goals is linked to more effective performance and increased motivation. When you have clear objectives in sight, you work slowly toward achieving them.

Even if you fail in some steps along the way, keep working toward fulfilling your purpose. Hurdles and obstacles in the entrepreneurial world are not just common; they are to be expected at nearly every turn.

Once you carefully lay out your plans, it’s time to make an in-depth analysis of what makes your startup tick. Before you go into market and start promoting your product, it’s vital to properly understand what your startup is made of. It’s only when you can safely answer all the questions that may be thrown at you that you are actually ready to go out and meet the world.

3. Craft targeted and engaging content

Some of the most effective B2B marketers spend 39 per cent of their marketing budgets on content, and there’s a general trend toward creating relevant, targeted content for specific audiences. That’s why ignoring content creation is a bad idea. After all, the majority of consumers learn about a company through content rather than ads. Though this takes into account a number of different services and ways to serve content, as a startup you may be limited on the type of content marketing that you can create and push.

Blogs, however, are fantastic and inexpensive, and the vast majority of companies employ blogs for marketing purposes. Marketers who prioritize blogging see increased search-engine traffic, build their company’s authority in the industry, improve conversion rates, increase leads, and more. It’s not hard to see the benefits of such a practice, particularly because you have full creative control over what’s happening in your company’s blog. It’s a great way to create a brand identity, reach out to potential consumers, and create much-needed awareness for your brand, your product, and what it entails.

Consider the Purpose of Your Content and How Often to Post

4. Make sure you’re on social media (your competitors already are!)

In this day and age, you have no excuse for not keeping up with social media platforms. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other sites provide a free way of directly reaching out to your target audience. They are great places to promote your brand, explain how your product or service works, and keep your startup in the spotlight for as long as possible.

When you first start, social media management can easily be done by one person—often you, the founder. As you grow, you can always delegate social media marketing to other people within your company. Of course, first educate yourself in how social media marketing works. What you may think is simple and obvious might turn out to be a difficult lesson indeed.

5. Maintain engaging and interactive social media presence

In addition to being social, being interactive is of equal importance. If you maintain a social media presence that is faceless and cold, consumers will turn their backs on you. In the digital age, users expect their questions to be answered and companies to interact with them on a personal level.

As long as you respond immediately (or within two hours), 34 per cent of customers are more likely to complete a purchase with your company. In addition, about 43 per cent are much more likely to recommend your product or service to friends and family as well as promote it through social media. On the other hand, failing to respond may result in customers feeling indifferent about your brand, which means you won’t receive word of mouth advertising and a positive image in social media.

A Few Ways to Connect with Your Customers

• Survey them
• Create newsletters
• Blog
• Give them a call
• Go visit
• Respond to emails
• Send a personalized note
• Be active on Twitter and Facebook
• Use Instagram
• Offer webinars
• Empower your salespeople
• Provide exceptional customer service
• Interact through an app
• Monitor review sites

Common Mistakes Made by Founders When Marketing

1. Putting too much trust in the idea of their product, not its real-world applicability. Since entrepreneurs live and breathe the products and services they offer, they often (mistakenly) think everyone will feel the same way.
2. Failing to connect with customers and listen to their feedback. No one can offer a service without customers, and it’s the general population that largely defines the market.
3. Failing to work out a personal, tailor-made plan for the company. Just because something works for another startup doesn’t mean it will work for yours.
4. Managing the budget poorly. Though investments are necessary, they should be carefully thought out and executed since money is tight, especially in the beginning.
5. Failing to identity the actual target market, and thus creating a completely irrelevant campaign. As mentioned before, in-depth research is absolutely necessary before attempting to reach your target market.

Take a Cue from Other Entrepreneurs’ Successes

Shopify may be an incredibly successful Canadian company, but that wasn’t always the case. According to CEO Tobias Lütke, there are some key elements that all startups should take into account when they are trying to launch their business and introduce it to a wider audience.

First and foremost, a startup that fixes an existing problem is much more likely to be successful. Even better, if you create something that you need for yourself, it means that you will be that much more connected to the product. You’ll also have an easier time identifying the right market.

Find the right team. This can mean a number of different things, but in essence it boils down to finding people who share your passion for the product and who are also able to help with its growth. A team of engineers might create a fantastic product, but if no one else can use it, then it has no value in the market.

Expect to do everything at once. When you are just starting out, you may need to conduct a range of jobs that you’re not well-suited for—and that’s perfectly fine. Though you may just want to create a product and leave everything else for other people to handle, you’ll most likely need to address those issues by yourself. This also applies to marketing. No one knows your product better than you do, and creating a brand should and most likely will be your responsibility.

Be visible, both to your target audience and to any potential investors. For example, you may find that the product you offer will do great in another city, but if you’re not prepared to move, you may risk everything else. If you don’t have a presence, users who may have been interested in your product will simply be satisfied elsewhere, with another product.

Stay focused and true to your purpose. Once you start marketing your product, you will face a lot of challenges. You’ll also be confronted by a lot of distractions and failures. Being distracted and inconsistent is a surefire path toward failure because your users need to identify stability in your product. A company that doesn’t know what to do with itself is harder to trust.

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Words matter when it comes to marketing. Even in situations where it seems like two words mean the same thing, they can actually have very different connotations for consumers.

You have a very short amount of time, and often an even shorter number of characters, to get a message across to your customers. If, for instance, you’re putting together a Facebook ad for your company’s new offering, you have to make every single word count. So choose your words carefully.

There are several different types of powerful words you can use to really drive your brand’s message home and evoke certain emotions from consumers. Here are some examples of ways you can use word psychology to improve your brand messages.

Words That Resonate With Consumers

One of the best things you can do when creating copy for your brand is to put things in terms of “you” instead of “I” or “we.” In other words, speak directly to your customers about what they can gain from doing business with you, rather than explaining what your business does.

Amazon does a great job of wording its copy with the customer in mind. If you’re a frequent Amazon shopper or Prime member, for example, you’ll find “Recommendations For You” on their home page. We all know that Amazon has many different product categories, and there are likely certain ones that their marketing or sales department would like to really push. But customers don’t care what Amazon wants. They only care about Amazon when it comes to what the company can provide for them.

So instead of saying “New in Books,” Amazon makes it all about YOU—the customer. And that’s certainly more likely of interest than an ad for whatever product Amazon would like to move on any particular day.

Choose Your Words Carefully

• Focus on:
  • Benefits not Specifications.
  • Value not Price
  • Show not Learn
  • Emotions not Reasons
  • You not I

Words That Grab Readers’ Attention

There are also words like “free” and “discount” that naturally resonate with customers because they automatically make a purchase look more attractive. While any words that describe some kind of promotion or discount can relay to customers that they’re getting a great deal, nothing is quite as powerful as “free.”

As an example, e-commerce companies like Wayfair often use free shipping as a way of enticing customers. The company could easily just charge slightly lower prices and make customers pay for shipping instead. But that “free” word holds power.

Words That Create a Sense of Fear or Urgency

Some words may do a great job of conveying your message to customers, but don’t really do much to convince them to take action. That’s where phrases like “limited time” or “don’t miss out” come in. In fact, fear of missing out (colloquially known as FOMO) has become a wildly popular concept for advertisers to tap into.

For example, popular music streaming service Spotify offers weekly playlists for its active listeners based on their specific tastes and listening habits. The company could easily just create one personalized playlist and update it every so often. But instead, each playlist is only accessible for one week. Then it’s gone. Spotify is able to encourage users to access their Spotify Discover Weekly playlists based on that fear that they’ll miss out on something great if they don’t.

Words That Promote Exclusivity

If you’re offering a deal specifically to your best customers or to a select number of people, you can use words like “exclusive,” “select,” and “limited” to make an opportunity seem more special. When customers feel like they are valued enough to be granted access to products and services that the average consumer doesn’t, they may be more likely to purchase. There are also businesses that create membership programs for customers as a way of playing up that feeling of exclusivity.

American Express is an example of one company that successfully uses this tactic. “Membership has its privileges” and “Are you a Card Member?” are some of its most popular taglines. This creates a sense of exclusivity and success. People hear that and want to be a part of it.

Marketing Words to Express Exclusivity

Words That Position Your Brand

You can also carefully select words that make your brand stand out, either against the competition or to a specific type of consumer. For example, “proven” is a powerful word that can make your brand seem more reliable or trustworthy than others in your industry. Depending on the way you’d like to appeal to customers, there are several different ways you can use careful wording to position your brand.

For instance, Coca-Cola used to call itself the “Official Soft Drink of Summer.” Is there an official governing body that decides which carbonated beverage gets to represent summer? No. But by using these words, Coca-Cola paints itself as the only real choice for families who want to enjoy some fun in the sun. It positioned itself as the real summer brand, which makes its competitors seem like impostors by default. Through the years, the company has also used slogans like “America’s Real Choice” and “Coca-Cola… Real.” Each of these contribute to the same basic message—that Coca-Cola is the only real choice when you want to drink a soda.

Words That Make People Remember Your Brand

No matter how great or powerful your message, it won’t make any difference for your business if people don’t remember who said it. For that reason, some of the most powerful and important words you can include are your own brand name and, if you have one, a tagline or slogan that people automatically associate with your brand.

An APA study cited a car commercial that features a famous model. But even though the ad gained a lot of attention, it wasn’t effective for the brand for one simple reason: Viewers didn’t remember the car. It was a commercial for a car, but people only remembered the model. So while your messages and your words are important, you also have to bring everything back to your brand in a way that people will actually remember.

Three Power Words to Help People Remember You

• Imagine
  • Helps bypass objections
  • Puts the customer in control
• You
  • Placeholder for the person’s name
  • Personalizes the conversation
• Because
  • Satisfies the brain’s natural search for reasons
  • Helps the customer accept what you have to say

Words That Go Over the Top

While there are several words and phrases that can make a big, positive impact on your messaging, there are some that might not work quite as well. For example, you might think that using adjectives like “revolutionary” or “life-changing” can provide powerful emphasis. But consumers have grown wary of words like these, since they’re used so often by companies that have no ability to back up those claims.

Spend time watching late-night infomercials and you’ll see plenty of these claims. But there isn’t a benchmark or set of standards that make something “revolutionary” or “life-changing.” Whereas customers know exactly what “free” means, using hyperbolic descriptions in your copy won’t necessarily mean anything to your customers unless you can prove those words, in this case, are true.

So what does all of this mean for you? If you’re creating sales, advertising, or marketing copy, be deliberate with your word choices to ensure that they’ll garner the reactions you’re looking for from consumers. As you can see, there are several different tactics you can use to write powerful, convincing marketing messages. You just have to carefully consider the goals of your pitch, meeting, or campaign and then select the words that are most likely to have that kind of impact.

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Interest in social media and instant messaging apps continues to increase, which means consumers are constantly looking for niched platforms for more interactive and real-time conversations. In fact, today Canadians spend more time than ever on social media platforms, with 56.7 per cent of adults actively using them.

Since they’re not all a hit for audiences of all ages, some platforms resonate with certain demographics more than others. While some apps are for more personal networking and socializing, others are used extensively for professional and business purposes. Based on the growth in the usage of these platforms, it’s important to dig a little deeper and see which social media platforms are poised to break out this year.

User Numbers for Some Up-and-Coming Social Media Apps

• Yo: 1 million
• Viber: 664 million
• Vimeo: 100 million
• Shots: 10 million
• Snapchat: 100 million
• Yik Yak: 3.6 million
• Periscope: 10 million
• Wanelo: 11 million
• Trello: 10 million
• Vine: 200 million

1. Anchor

User stats: Not available

Notable brands: Radiolab

First on Gary Vaynerchuk’s list of apps to pay attention to right now is Anchor. Podcasters who want to be heard, yet haven’t felt comfortable using other mediums, have found a community on this free iPhone app. It makes it easy to broadcast short audio clips on the fly, in a matter of seconds, to a global audience.

Listeners can provide feedback and join in the action by replying to clips, which can spark instant group conversations. When not recording, users can listen to authentic humor, knowledge, inspiration, and debates from Anchor’s global collective of personalities. Anchor is what might be called the “gen next of broadcasting.” For businesses, Anchor offers a great opportunity to listen and engage in the conversation in the form of collaborative podcasting, as opposed to generic broadcasting.

2. Yo

User stats: 1 million

Notable Brands: Monster, USA Today

Some users strive to cut through the clutter and simplify the conversation with their connections on various messaging and social networking apps. Yo leads the pack of context-based notification; it’s an iPhone app that has been redesigned to be a content notification clearinghouse.

Yo allows users to send push notifications to other users in the app in the form of “Yo!”. Since its launch in 2014, Yo’s user base has grown to more than 1 million, and the app has been downloaded over 3 million times. Over 100 million “Yo”s are sent in one day, including a few from brands such as Monster, which cleverly used the app as part of their “ILOVEMYJOB,” “IHATEMYJOB,” and “INEEDMYJOB” campaigns.

Publishers that have jumped on the bandwagon include USA Today, which used Yo to deliver updates from the November 2015 election. Other possible uses include receiving Yo notifications for pizza orders, shopping deliveries, or when laundry is ready for pickup.

3. Viber

User stats: 664 million

Notable Brand: Buzzfeed

From the simplified “yo” to emojis and stickers, the Millennial generation never runs out of unconventional ways to communicate. Perhaps one of the most prominent instant messaging apps ready to accommodate this trend is Viber. Founded in Israel, it now has 664 million users worldwide.

In addition to being one of Millennials’ favorite instant messaging apps, Viber has paved the way for its users to follow the conversations of celebrities, brands, and sports personalities through its Public Chat feature. Buzzfeed is a great example of a publisher using this app. True to its mission of bringing the content to the audience, Buzzfeed allows followers to get involved in the discussion through Viber’s Public Chat. Brands also have the option to incorporate their own voice in the form of promotional sticker packs.

The Worldwide Popularity of Social Media

• Total number of active social media users: 2.31 billion
  • That’s 31% of the total population
• Total number of social users accessing sites via mobile: 1.97 billion
  • That’s 27% of the total population
• In Canada, an average of 1.4 hours are spent on social media every day.
  • The highest number of hours is in the Philippines: 3.7 hours per day
• Out of 36.11 million Canadians, 17.00 million are active mobile social media users.
  • That’s 47% of the total population of Canada.

4. Vimeo

User stats: 100 million

Notable brands: HP, Honda

Vimeo was the first video sharing site to support high definition videos: Users can share, upload, and view high-quality videos. It has over 100 million users composed mostly of those in the creative industry, including filmmakers, photographers, and marketers who focus in showcasing the production quality of their videos.

Vimeo stands out from its competitors with its customizable branded player, where premium users can replace the Vimeo logo with their own. There’s also the option to customize the URL of the video, which makes it easier for subscribers and viewers to remember it (as opposed to a random string of numbers or alphanumeric characters). Brands like Hewlett Packard and Honda looking to engage with their audience through collaborative storytelling and user-generated videos have managed to tap into the close-knit community of filmmakers through Vimeo.

5. Shots

User stats: 10 million

Notable brand: Backed by Justin Bieber

Backed by Justin Bieber, the Shots comedy app now has over 10 million users and is a great platform to share funny videos, photos, and clips. Unlike most social networking platforms, Shots was purposely built without any direct-messaging option, follower count, or public comments. Those features tend to help spread negativity, something Shots’s founders aimed to avoid. Instead, it wants to entertain people and spread positivity among its young audience—65 per cent of which are 16 years old—by eliminating the usual avenues for bullying. Brands looking to engage with the young audience (who are often glued to their phones) may use Shots to give their fans a sneak peek of upcoming movies or exclusive content in the form of bloopers.

6. Snapchat

User stats: 100 million users, 400 million-plus snaps daily

Notable brands: Audi, the NBA

What started as a hugely popular app for sharing images and videos (which vanish after a few seconds) is now one of the fastest growing social media apps, and it’s loved by Millennials and marketers alike. Snapchat has over 100 million daily active users who share 400 million snaps per day. According to CEO Evan Spiegel, users are racking up seven billion video views per day. Brands using Snapchat include Audi and NBA: Both use the app’s Stories and Chats features to gather and broadcast content.

7. Yik Yak

User stats: 3.6 million

Notable brands: The BBC

Yik Yak, available on iOS and Android, allows its users to pseudo-anonymously create and view discussion threads within a 5-mile radius. Users can contribute to the stream by replying, as well as “voting up” (aka Yakarma) or “voting down.” In other words, it’s an anonymous bulletin board.

Within a year of its 2013 launch, Yik Yak gained considerable popularity among Millennials, reporting 3.6 million monthly active users by the end of 2014. The BBC used Yik Yak as a part of a special week of mental health coverage, asking its audience about mental health issues and taboos people should be talking about.

8. Periscope

User stats: 10 million

Notable brands: Taco Bell, DKNY

Acquired by Twitter in early 2015, Periscope allows its users to broadcast live video to the world and get real-time feedback. It is now being used by brands to stream live Q&A sessions, product demonstrations, webinars, and more. Its intuitive and interactive video streaming capabilities have made Periscope an ideal platform for interactive customer service, exclusive events, and product launches for brands such as Taco Bell, DKNY, and others. As of August 2015, Periscope had a total of 10 million users, with 2 million daily active users. This means about 15 per cent of the top brands on Twitter are using Periscope.

Social Media is Good for Society—and Business

• Society benefits:
  • Helps people stay in touch
  • Serve as a meeting room
  • Keeps users up to date
  • Improves the learning process
  • Increases the reach of service organizations and charities
  • Allows users to market themselves
• Business benefits:
  • Increases brand awareness
  • Legitimizes your brand
  • Increases sales
  • Improves customer service
  • Helps distribute content

9. Peach

User stats: Not available

Notable brands: Asos

The latest social network to emerge is Peach, with elements familiar to users of Facebook, Path, Slack, Snapchat, and Tumblr all rolled into one. This all-new social media app could become as big as the likes of Instagram and Snapchat.

Peach has gained popularity among Millennials as a “space for friends.” It’s a kind of social journaling, with an element of privacy: It is only viewable by friends and friends of friends. According to TechCrunch, Peach currently ranks 120th overall on Apple’s App Store in the U.S. for free apps, and number nine in social networking. Brands that are eager to connect with their younger audiences, like Asos, have jumped onto the Peach bandwagon.

10. Wanelo

User stats: 11 million

Notable brand: Urban Outfitters

Wanelo, derived from the words “want,” “need,” and “love,” has married shopping and social media. It allows users to browse through millions of different products offered by major brands and online retailers, as well as independent artists and producers, such as those on Etsy.

Users can create wish lists, establish connections, and find out what their friends are interested in buying. With over 11 million users, Wanelo could easily rival Pinterest because of its strong visual components and similar demographics. However, it is better poised for online retailers. In fact, Urban Outfitters and 200 others have started selling products directly on the platform because of its convenient wish list and product management tools.

11. Vine

User stats: 200 million

Notable brands: GoPro, Simon & Schuster

Vine is an entertainment network that allows users to capture life stories on their smartphones and create short, six-second looping videos. Simon & Schuster used Vine to ask their audience what books they were reading on the weekend, and gave them visual cues about what they could be reading. GoPro has also engaged with its customers by encouraging them to create Vine videos and upload them with a specific, branded hashtag. With more than 200 million active monthly users, Vine is used regularly by 10 per cent of the top brands to engage with their fans.

The apps and mobile marketing landscape are evolving fast, and they are paving way for context-based conversations. While social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter are home to billions of users worldwide, brands have the opportunity to bring snackable, fun, interactive content to connected consumers through smaller, more close-knit communities.

In a study released by Google, 71 per cent of in-store shoppers who use smartphones for online research say their device has become more important to their in-store experience. Most of them look for reviews and recommendations from a number of sources to help complete their buying decisions. With these apps at their fingertips, consumers can now be part of conversations with brands that they choose to engage with.

Today, connected consumers are in charge of which conversations they want to be involved in and what stories they want to be part of. It’s a question of whether your brand is poised to be among their top choices.

Replace “the highest number of hours…” with “The Philippines has the highest number of hours spent on social media: 3.7 per day”

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