Group items tagged

The fancy systems at KISSmetrics are working to send you your bundle! ===================================================================== Email newsletter......................................................100% confirmed Premium content.........................................being sent to your inbox now KISSmetrics free trial.......................needs details [95% complete, see below]

Final details needed for your 14-day free trial.

Your name * Email * Company name * Company website * Company size *Choose one…201 or more51 to 20026 to 5011 to 256 to 101 to 5 Phone number * Password * Why KISSmetrics is a must-have tool for any Facebook marketer: Finally determine the ROI of your Facebook marketing efforts, unlike other analytics tools. Easy ROI reports. No spreadsheets required. Human-powered support from the experts behind the KISSmetrics blog. Joanna Lord, SEOmoz KISSmetrics has been a primary tool for the SEOmoz marketing team for almost a year now.

1. Customers Care More about Service Quality and Attitude than about Service Speed

A recent Gallup study reveals that when it comes to memorable service people tell their friends about, it’s more important that the service provided feels “thorough” and friendly, rather than quick. This was especially true for service in premium or prestigious markets, such as customer support at a bank.

Not only that, in a Customer Experience Report by RightNow, researchers found that the #1 reason customers would abandon a brand was due to poor quality and rude customer service, which were cited 18% more often than “slow or untimely service.”

Create case studies If you really want to show the value in what you offer, you have to create case studies. The simple ones won’t cut it, you have to give detailed ones… ideally with the exact things you provided and the results. To legitimize the case studies, make sure you put in testimonials from customers. This can be done in the form of video or text and if you happen to go the text route, make sure you include: Their full name Company name Their picture Title at the company If you want to see an example of a good case study, check this one out from Conversion Rate Experts.

Offer a free trial One of the easiest ways to handle price objections is to offer a free trial. Remember, just because you are offering a free trial doesn’t mean you can’t take a credit card up front. With Crazy Egg, one of our biggest objections from people is that our prices are too high. We created a “free trial” offering in which people had to put in their credit card up front. That offer converted at 59% higher than our 30 day money back guarantee offer. Keep in mind that you will get a lot of people who will cancel your service before their free trial is up, so when you a/b test this you have to also include cancelations into your calculations.

Explain the value The easiest way to demand a high price point is to explain how much money you are going to either make a company, or how much money you will save them. If you can explain this in an easy to understand fashion and provide case studies to back it up, it shouldn’t be hard to demand a premium price. A great way to do this is through sales copy. And don’t worry, your copy doesn’t have to be sleazy. I do this with Crazy Egg, NeilPatel.com and I also used to do it for my Quick Sprout Traffic System. You could even spice up your sales copy by including a video incase people don’t want to read your copy.

The best will be in contact all the time (or at least well before they have a news story to pitch) in an attempt to figure out how to maximize the chances of something being picked up. It’s a wonder there aren’t more of them.

Sadly there aren’t and 80 - 90 percent of pitches I received followed the tired format of "Hi X, Company Y is launching a product next week and we thought it would be of interest to publication Z."

So here's an idea to try when getting media coverage for your startup - don't start by pitching the product. Start by pitching nothing.Clearly showing that you understand that a journalist doesn't just exist to publicize you is one of the fastest routes to his or her heart.

Which questions are the most important for your company? That’s a question only you can answer. To give you some ideas, these are the questions that I use: Name – This indicates who filled out the form. Website – This documents which website was worked on. What service did you have completed? – This records which service the testimonial is for. Are you happy that you had this service completed? – This indicates whether or not the customer was satisfied with the service and provides a lead in to the next question. If yes, why are you happy that you had this service completed? – The answer to this question provides the first paragraph for the testimonial. Instead of asking someone to simply “write a testimonial or recommendation,” I ask a specific question prompting the answer that I’m looking for and leading the customer down the path I want them to take. Wufoo forms also allow you to provide explanation text on the right side as another way to lead customers down the right path. I like to use this text to provide a sample of the kind of content that I’m looking for. (An example of this can be viewed here.) On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to recommend this service to a friend or colleague? – This question provides the most relevant customer satisfaction data, according to a post from KISSmetrics.com titled “Why Customer Satisfaction Surveys Aren’t Useful and What To Do About It.” It also serves as a lead in for the next question. What would you tell them? – This question once again leads customer to provide the content that I’m looking for in a customer testimonial by asking a specific question. Once again, you can also use Wufoo forms to provide a sample testimonial for this question. What suggestion(s) would you give as a way to improve our service? – This question is the most helpful for customers who were dissatisfied for one reason or another, but the answers have to be taken with a grain of salt. Sometimes dissatisfied customers won’t be satisfied no matter what you do. It’s best not to make changes based on every answer given to this question. It’s necessary to ignore some suggestions because you can’t keep everyone happy and can’t implement every suggestion.  However, in some cases the answer to this question could lead to valuable insight on improving your offering. Do you mind if your name and website are shared on my customer testimonial page? (i.e. Do you mind getting a free link back to your website?) – This question asks for permission to share the customer’s testimonial, and it’s always a good idea to get permission before sharing something like this if your privacy policy doesn’t already include it.

p.s. If you’d like to check out my form to see how it works, you can view it here.

I personally prefer to ask as few questions as possible for any survey I create.

Among tech entrepreneurs, there is a strong bias toward the single lifestyle for the sake of focus and an obsession pride in working 80 hours a week. But the data suggests this bias makes companies worse, not better.

The pundits proposed the mid-20s as the optimal age to start a company: At 25, entrepreneurs can give “everything to their company,” one pundit opined, suggesting that founders should not be “hamstrung” by families and non-business related commitments.

The Kauffman Foundation surveyed 550 successful entrepreneurs across multiple sectors, determined by profitability and being named a “high-valued” business by their peers. Their data suggests that most successful founders are in their mid-30s and married with children:

To ensure that you get results, you might want to give your clients that nudge at specific times, such as when:you’ve solved their problemthey’ve achieved success through your offeringthey express that they’re happy with your workthey thank you profuselyyou successfully deliver a product on time

Of course, most of your clients will be busy people who don’t have much time set aside for tasks like this. That’s why it’s your job to make it easier for them. One way to do this is to provide them with a few sample questions in your testimonial request email. Here are a few that you might want to put to use:What prompted you to seek [your/your company’s] services? What situation or problem did you need to solve?Why did you specifically select [you/your company] for this project?What made you believe that [you/your company] was the best for achieving your desired result?How did you benefit from working with [you/your company]?What are the two most significant improvements that have resulted from your work with [you/your company]?What exactly did [you/your company] do to contribute to the outcome you wanted?What were the results of working with [you/your company]?Describe why you feel that working with [you/your company] was successful.In the future, what type of businesses would most benefit from working with [you/your company]?If a potential client was on the fence about whether to work with [you/your company] or not, what would you say to them?

Letter to a client whom you’ve asked to write a testimonial:Dear [Client],Working with clients like you makes my business a great joy. Thank you for agreeing to provide a testimonial. Your story will help inform our potential clients why it’s good to work with us and how they can benefit.To help you get started, I’ve included a few questions, but please feel free to write whatever you like.[Include two to four questions, using the above list as a guide.]Thank you for your time and kind support. We value your business and look forward to working with you again in the future. Please let me know if there is anything further I can do for you.[Your preferred closing],[Your name]

The question The main question in play here is: How thick should clients be? Let me define my terms: I define the Client as the thing which is used by exactly one user, which interacts directly with that user, and which is probably physically close to that person. I define the Server as the thing which is shared by multiple users, which interacts directly with the Client, and which could be physically located anywhere. I define the Pipe as the connection between the Client and the Server. I define the notion of a Thick client as a relative term. Thicker clients have more app-specific code and are less dependent on the Server. Thinner clients leave more of the app-specific work to be done on the Server. There are two main variables in decisions about the thickness of clients: The quality of the Pipe: This includes bandwidth, latency, availability, reliability, and cost The Client side costs: This includes cost of hardware, software development, deployment, upgrades, and maintenance. And, there are two laws which apply: As the quality of the pipe goes up, the client can get thinner. As the client side costs go down, the client can get thicker.

This issue is not new Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when we only had mainframes and minicomputers, there was a distinction between smart terminals (thick clients) and dumb terminals (thin clients). In the 1980s, we got workstations (really expensive thick clients, purchased by people who perceived them as cheap compared to the mainframes and minis) and microcomputers (far less expensive thick clients, purchased by people who previously didn't have a computer at all). In the early 1990s, the high cost of workstations gave rise to X terminals, thin client devices which couldn't do much more than display the graphical user interface. My manager bought one of those fancy new 19.2k modems and actually tried doing Motif widget development from home. In the mid 1990s, web browsers appeared. For a very brief time, this technology was regarded only as a way to collaborate on hypertext documents. This phase of the web lasted for most of an afternoon. Meanwhile, back in Champaign, Illinois, the Unsung Hero and His Eminence were busy building a web browser which had more "stuff" in it. What kind of stuff? The sort of stuff that made web browsers into a platform for delivery of apps. And the technologies of the web have been moving primarily in that direction ever since. Java applets (developed a fatal disease called Swing) ActiveX (declared dead seven years after it went missing) Flash (murdered by Steve Jobs) Silverlight (murdered by HTML5) In the late 1990s, people (Oracle, I think?) tried to sell something called a Network Computer. It was a little PC with a video card, some RAM, an ethernet card, a web browser, and no hard disk. Thin.

HTML5 arrived. Actually, the spec is still a long way from being finalized, but nobody knows that. People needed a name, so they started saying "HTML5" before it was fully cooked. Common usage of the term "HTML5" is actually fairly accurate, at least compared to the way telecom companies use the term "4G". And now, this war has moved to the battlefield of mobile. Smartphones and tablets.