Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

Why Free Trials & Loss Leaders increase Sales & Customer Loyalty

Free or Low-Cost Trials

When creating a new offering, I would offer a free or low-cost trial of your product to the end-users and industry experts. Consumers look for social proof before they buy a product. Now if the product is new, none exists. To lower buyer resistance, you need to make it low risk and feel safe.

In addition to market research and product testing; the free or low-cost trial is a great way to build trust and get feedback. Surveys can be created to ask potential customers about their experience.

If your product helps to solve a customer’s problem they will be more than happy to share it with others; converting to paying users! The product will earn testimonials and endorsements. Testimonials and endorsements will address product reliability creating: loyalty, brand recognition, and Sales for your product.

Loss Leaders

In place of a free or low-cost trial, a loss leader can be an option. A loss leader is when you offer a product at a loss or break-even point to gain business in the future. Supermarkets do this all of the time when a new product is rolled out.

Another place I saw loss leaders was when I was in Field Sales. I was selling Dental equipment at the time. Certain customers were loyal to certain types of equipment. When I ask why they stated that these were the tools that they had used in school. When I called on Dental schools and Hospitals, I found they were locked up with large contacts. My larger competitors sold the equipment at cost practically giving it away. Why would they do this? My competitors were creating life-long customers who were trained on certain tools and refused to switch.

Connection, trust, and advocacy are essential for customer acquisition. It is your job as a brand to turn your customer base into evangelists.

The decision on developing and implementing offering free, low-cost trials and/or loss leaders will be different for each product.

Free, low-cost trials and loss leaders help to Increase Sales and Customer Loyalty.

How have you used free, low-cost trials and loss leaders to create Sales and Customer Loyalty?

Comment and share.

Posted 268 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

Advertising Week Turns 20: Highlights from Advertising Week 2024

This week, I covered Advertising Week in New York. Advertising Week is celebrating its 20th Anniversary this year. Advertising Week offers insights on many topics beyond advertising, including marketing, e-commerce, media, retail media, AI, Generative AI, technology, creativity, and beyond.

Smokey the Bear celebrated his 80th Birthday at Advertising Week.

The conference was held at the Penn District in New York City. Panels were held on different stages that were centered on the themes of scaling up, innovation, creativity, the marketplace, technology, media, great minds, podcasting, CMOs, excellence, and women’s empowerment.

There were many great exhibits as well. I enjoyed using Meta’s AI which turned me into Super Man and Iron Man.

Meta had great AI Ray Ban sunglasses that enabled me to use the internet for many tasks.

Attendees also had a chance to make their reels on Meta. 

Advertising Week looked back and looked to the future as well. The founder of Advertising Week Matt Scheckner, shared how he started the conference with an idea. He shared his story from the parade in Times Square in 2004 to today; describing how Advertising Week grew to have a presence with conferences across the globe. Matt Scheckner assembled a panel of leaders from business and entertainers On a panel he shared with Susie Essman of Curb your Enthusiasm, Tim Armstrong, Kim Kellehner, and Claudio Romo Edelman. The panelists shared their journeys and their keys to success: embracing change and growing.

There were many panels about using AI, Data, Storytelling, Global Marketing, public speaking, pitching deals, and selling advertising. Additional panel pictures can be found on Instagram.

I learned so much. If you are interested in trends in advertising, marketing, AI, and beyond, attend Advertising Week.

I want to thank the organizers of Advertising Week for having me as their guest. 

Posted 39 weeks ago

Sales, Marketing & Social Media Today

I write about the three topics that I am most passionate about; Sales, Marketing and Social Media. These topics are covered from my experiences in outside sales and marketing. My objective is to use my expertise to help business and the individual.

Insights from Product Marketing Community

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I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.

Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.

The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging, content, and sales enablement.

Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event.

Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.

Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.

It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.

Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.

Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

What is Product Marketing?

Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragmatic Framework.

Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.

Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.

I covered the Product Marketing Community event in New York. Product Marketing Community was founded by Product Marketers for Product Marketers.

Attendees of Product Marketing Community events take interactive workshops led by product marketing leaders and network with their peers.

The event covered how to: build and execute: go-to-market strategy, buyer insights, messaging and content and sales enablement.

Product Marketing Community founder Rowan Noronha kicked off the event. 

image

Currently VP of Product Marketing for Zix, Rowan has led product marketing for North America (Office of the CFO) at SAP and Cognizant. He also serves as an Advisor to SAAS startups.

Here are takeaways on go-to-market strategy, developing buyer insights, and sales enablement.

image

Marketers need to develop and deploy a buyer-centric go-to-market strategy.

It is time for marketers to ask better questions about buyers.

image

Businesses should identify their ideal audience for their offering. Data from this analysis can be used to target better prospects and improve go-to-market results.

image

Only certain target customers will buy due to internal and external factors.

image
image

To grow revenue, businesses need to develop and use better competitive insights. Developing these insights entails examining everything about the competition to identify: strengths, weaknesses, competitor priorities, growing, and under-served markets.

image

Product Marketing involves more than just supporting the Marketing and Product Management teams. Product Marketers serve Marketing, Sales and Product teams. Each team has different needs and responsibilities. However, they all play a role in growing the business and serving customers.

image

Product Marketers serve as market experts and translators for teams from across the organization.

image
image
image

What is Product Marketing?

image

Product Marketing is the discipline of bringing a product to market and nurturing its success. Businesses need to create and market products people want to buy. To do that, they need to use the Pragamtic Framework.

image
image

Product Marketers are taking on some Product Manager responsibilities.

Product Marketing needs a separate brief.

image

Johnathan Hinz of Seismeic shares his insights on sales enablement and its role in marketing.

image

The lack of Sales and Marketing alignment is due in part to the inadequate amount of customer value mapping relating to the number of buyers types.

image
image

Product Marketing Community New York was a great event.

Posted 300 weeks ago