The inherent limitations of the human brain mean we cannot hold lots of complex ideas and connections in our heads alone. To do deep creative and intellectual work, we need to augment our cognition by developing a trusted external system for knowledge and thinking.

Our Minds Are Not Built for Deep Knowledge Work

The act of writing forces us to clarify fuzzy ideas, explicitly connect concepts, identify gaps in knowledge and develop new insights. Writing builds understanding and rational thinking far better than just thinking alone does.

Writing Down Ideas Clarifies Thinking

We can create a future-proof "second brain" to store our ideas using digital notes stored in linked references. This personal knowledge base and library of thoughts can evolve with us over a lifetime.

Build a Digital Home for Your Ideas

For deep learning, take notes in your own words, consciously connect ideas to previous knowledge, summarize periodically and revisit notes over time. This process cements enduring understanding of concepts.

Practice Note-Taking for True Understanding

The real power comes from synthesizing ideas by making connections across notes and concepts to spark new insights. Linking notes creates a web of knowledge greater than the sum of its parts.

Synthesize Ideas by Making Connections 

Organize your notes using tagging, wikilinks, table of contents pages and other structures to make the knowledge accessible when you need it. Curation is key for a functional system.

Curate Your Second Brain with Organization Systems

Building a second brain requires developing daily thinking habits: capturing ideas, connecting concepts, asking questions, synthesizing new insights. Maintain these meta-learning habits over time.

Develop Thinking Habits for Ongoing Growth

The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn deliberately is a skill.

In Building a Second Brain, author Tiago Forte presents a system for knowledge management based on note-taking, organizing, and building a "second brain" to enhance creativity and productivity. Forte draws on insights about the limitations of the human mind and the power of writing things down. He provides practical frameworks for taking better notes, connecting ideas, developing insights and building a robust reference system.

“One of my favorite books of the year. It completely reshaped how I think about information and how and why I take notes.” —Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us. For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx of information. The very knowledge that was supposed to set us free has instead led to the paralyzing stress of believing we’ll never know or remember enough. Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals. Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

education

Learning & Education

books

Books

Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.com.

Tiago Forte

Building a Second Brain

Sales funnels used to be the domain of big corporate. As a small player, you would struggle to break into the market. Today, a well-performing sales funnel can take you to a million-dollar brand.

The World Revolves Around Funnels

<ul><li>Who Is Your Ideal Client? Write out their characteristics and find an actual picture to represent them.</li><li>Where Can You Find Them? What email newsletters and blogs do they read? What other interests do they have?</li><li>What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them?  For example, a physical book, or a recording. Anything that would match what your ideal customer would want.</li><li>What Result Do You Want To Give Your Clients? Once you (and they) understand that concept, then the price is no longer a problem.</li></ul>

The Secret Formula

The value ladder revolves around selling to a customer over and over again. It can help build additional layers of income and provide more ongoing value for your customer. What is the first thing you have to build out before starting working on any sales funnel? The goal is to take the client to a place where you can provide the most value and charge them the most. Then you want to add a good continuity program you can bill for each month. You should give insane amounts of value at each step.

You Need a Value Ladder

A sales funnel is the online process you take someone through to get them to move through the different levels of your value ladder. The top of the funnel is the bait that will attract your dream customers.  The deeper your funnel, the more things you can offer your clients, and the more each customer will be worth to you.

From a Ladder to a Funnel

To find congregations, type “keyword+forum” in Google or search for groups related to your keywords on Facebook. When you’ve found your target audience, ask:<ul><li>Who Is Your Target Market? What are their pains and passions? What do they desire?</li><li>Where does your target market congregate? Where do they hang out online? What newsletter and blogs do they read and what Facebook groups they are a part of? What are they searching for on Google?</li><li>How can you get a customer to leave the congregation and check out your page? Your ads must grab people’s attention.</li></ul>

Finding Your Dream Customers

AC is a person you're sharing with your audience. AC consists of  3 components:Elements<ul><li>Backstory - where you came from. </li><li>Parables - speak about things that happen throughout your life to teach, inspire and sell products.</li><li>Share character flaws so that others can relate.</li><li>Share opinions on hard issues.</li></ul> Identity<ul><li>The leader: The goal is to lead your audience from one place to another.</li><li>The crusader sets out and brings back treasures to share with your audience.</li><li>The reporter.</li><li>The reluctant hero who doesn’t want the spotlight.</li></ul> Storylines<ul><li>Loss and redemption</li><li>Before and After</li><li>Amazing Discovery</li><li>Secret Telling</li></ul>

Build Your Attractive Character (AC)

When somebody joins your list for the first time, it’s important to quickly build a bond between them and the Attractive Character. The key to making this sequence work:<ul><li>Email #1: Set the stage: a thank you note</li><li>Email #2: Open with high drama.  Explain how you hit a wall and then found the answer. But don’t give the answer yet.</li><li>Email #3: Epiphany.</li><li>Email #4: Hidden benefits when using your product: Use parables to demonstrate those hidden benefits</li><li>Email #5: Urgency and CTA. Create a special sale that ends soon or give readers a coupon that expires in 24h.</li></ul>

The Soap Opera Sequence

The secret to keeping your subscribers happy to hear from you every day is using the Seinfeld format. Be entertaining. Every email and each story must be tied back into some type of offer for your audience.<ul><li>What’s going on in your Attractive Character’s life?</li><li>What happened that’s embarrassing?</li><li>Where are you planning your vacation this year?</li><li>What did you buy recently that you regret or adore?</li><li>What made you scream with rage yesterday, that you’re laughing about today?</li><li>Is there a funny thing that happened in your past that teaches a lesson?</li></ul>

Daily Seinfeld Emails

<ol><li>Where Are Your Competitors (Both Direct AND Indirect)? Make a list of your direct and indirect competitors and their landing page URLs. Look for the paid ads.</li><li>What Are They Doing? 	Check SimilarWeb.com to see each of the paid traffic sources that the competitor is using.</li></ol>

Reverse Engineering a Successful Funnel

Don’t be afraid of high-ticket sales. Those who are serious will come on board with your back-end offer. The high-ticket sales are a few select customers who have already bought from you. If they have purchased and are satisfied, then they will like and trust you over the long term.

High-ticket sales are on the backend

<ol><li>Organic content marketing (A slow and long burn can take years)</li><li>PPC spend on social media (Expensive and requires serious skill)</li><li>Using affiliates (Hard to enrol unless you have a converting offer)</li></ol>Essentially, it’s hard to start. It’s even harder to continue going for the long term.

Traffic can be achieved in 3 ways

A manual for how to grow your business and generate more revenue through processes, funnels and scripts.

Master the science of funnel building to grow your company online with sales funnels in this updated edition from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels. DotCom Secrets is not just another "how-to" book on internet marketing. This book is not about getting more traffic to your website--yet the secrets you'll learn will help you to get exponentially more traffic than ever before. This book is not about increasing your conversions--yet these secrets will increase your conversions more than any headline tweak or split test you could ever hope to make. Low traffic or low conversion rates are symptoms of a much greater problem that's a little harder to see (that's the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that's the good news). What most businesses really have is a "funnel" problem. Your funnel is the online process that you take your potential customers through to turn them into actual customers. Everyone has a funnel (even if they don't realize it), and yours is either bringing more customers to you, or repelling them. In this updated edition, Russell Brunson, CEO and co-founder of the multimillion-dollar software company ClickFunnels, reveals his greatest secrets to generating leads and selling products and services after running tens of thousands of his own split tests. Stop repelling potential customers. Implement these processes, funnels, frameworks, and scripts now so you can fix your funnel, turn it into the most profitable member of your team, and grow your company online.

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

strategy

Strategy

business

Business

Master the science of funnel building to grow your company online with sales funnels in this updated edition from the $100M entrepreneur and co-founder of the software company ClickFunnels. DotCom Secrets is not just another "how-to" book on internet marketing. This book is not about getting more traffic to your website--yet the secrets you'll learn will help you to get exponentially more traffic than ever before. This book is not about increasing your conversions--yet these secrets will increase your conversions more than any headline tweak or split test you could ever hope to make. Low traffic or low conversion rates are symptoms of a much greater problem that's a little harder to see (that's the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that's the good news). What most businesses really have is a "funnel" problem. Your funnel is the online process that you take your potential customers through to turn them into actual customers. Everyone has a funnel (even if they don't realize it), and yours is either bringing more customers to you, or repelling them. In this updated edition, Russell Brunson, CEO and co-founder of the multimillion-dollar software company ClickFunnels, reveals his greatest secrets to generating leads and selling products and services after running tens of thousands of his own split tests. Stop repelling potential customers. Implement these processes, funnels, frameworks, and scripts now so you can fix your funnel, turn it into the most profitable member of your team, and grow your company online.

Russell Brunson

Dotcom Secrets

Shopping history never moves in one single direction or all at once. There have always been regional and chronological divergences from mainstream developments.There are also retailing modes that fall by the wayside and then return at a later date in new guises or with new names. They often have every appearance of being newly invented.

The History Of Shopping: A Recurring Cycle

<ul><li>Self-service was the shopping revolution of the 20th century.</li><li>Promoted as a modern, efficient way to shop, self-service entailed both a different type of store layout and new norms of customer and shop-worker behaviour.</li><li>There was no need for counter service if customers were making their own selections.</li><li>All available goods were put out on display, within reach.</li><li>No need to ask someone to fetch them.</li><li>The abolition of counter service meant that their various skills, including their people skills, were made redundant.</li></ul>

The Self-Service Revolution

<ul><li>With self-service firmly established to assist supposedly "time-poor" consumers, the stage was set for internet shopping to promise an even more efficient way of doing things</li><li>You don't have to take yourself anywhere to get to the store, which never closes</li><li>Everything is always on the screen</li><li>There is still a trolley or basket, but not one that you have to push or carry</li><li>The shop assistant is wholly absent from the screen</li></ul>

Internet Shopping

<ul><li>People began to support and use independent local shops.</li><li>Home deliveries were organized by smaller shops, often working together in groups.</li><li>In the media, shop assistants were referred to as “frontline workers”.</li><li>The pandemic had demonstrated what shops were really for, and why we should not let them go.</li><li>Town centres had been dying a much-discussed death for years, as more and more shops were being closed down and stayed unused.</li><li>Some towns were taking action to resist the trend, battling back with collective imagination and sometimes with significant financial backing.</li></ul>

The Impact Of Lockdown And Going To The Town Center

<ul><li>Until the middle of the 20th century, most shops offered home delivery as a matter of course.</li><li>With self-service came the end of most home delivery services.</li><li>The new delivery services offered by smaller, independent stores that started up during lockdown represented a return to local arrangements that were standard before the arrival of Self-Service.</li><li>New technology has actively contributed to the revival of an older form of shopping.</li></ul>

A Return to Home Delivery

From pop-ups to fast fashion to same-day delivery, every retail innovation is reminiscent of one that came before.


The fascinating history of shopping and its influence on how we buy stuff today

A sales objection is an explicit expression by a buyer that a barrier exists between the current situation and what needs to be satisfied before buying from you. 
In other words, it's a clear signal that you have more work to do in the selling process.

Defining a Sales Objection

Sales objections often signal that you haven’t made the value proposition case to the buyer as powerfully as possible.
<ul>
<li>Need: Buyer doesn't yet perceive, or doesn't yet admit, the need to solve a problem.</li>
<li>Urgency: The buyer doesn't yet see why the issue is pressing.</li>
<li>Trust: Buyer feels uncertainty about you, your solution, your company, or your outcomes.</li>
<li>Money: Buyer communicates that money is going to be an issue.</li>
</ul>
While these common sales objections might seem like steep hills to overcome, don’t despair: an objection indicates that the buyer is engaged, which sure beats apathy.

The Most Common Sales Objections

Your first reaction when you hear an objection may be to jump right in and respond immediately. Resist this temptation.
 Instead:
<ul>
<li>Take the time to listen to the objection fully</li>
<li>Don't react defensively</li>
<li>Train yourself to ignore any negative emotions you may be feeling</li>
<li>Stay focused on what the buyer is saying and the business problem you’re helping to solve</li>
<li>Listen with the intent of fully understanding the buyer's concerns without bias or anticipation</li>
<li>Allow your body language and verbal confirmations to communicate to the buyer that you're listening intently.</li>
</ul>

Overcoming Sales Rejection: Listen To the Customer

Many objections hide underlying issues that the buyer can't or isn't ready to articulate. Often the true issue isn't what the buyer first tells you. It's your job to get to the heart of the objection—to fully understand it and its true source.To do this, ask permission from the buyer to understand and explore the issue. From there, restate the concern as you understand it. Sometimes when you restate the objection, the buyer sees the issue more fully, and you get closer to the true source of the objection as a result.

Understand the Objection Completely

After you're confident you've uncovered all objections, address the most important objection first. Once you work through the greatest barrier to moving forward, other concerns may no longer matter as much to the buyer.
You should do your best to resolve their issue right away if possible. The more effectively you can resolve issues in real time, the greater chance you have of moving the sale forward. If you need more information to resolve a specific concern, you may have to look something up or investigate further.

Respond Properly

Once you've responded to the buyer's objections, check if you've satisfied all of their concerns. Just because they nodded during your response doesn't mean they agreed with everything you said. Ask if the buyer is happy with your solution and explain your solution further if necessary. Sometimes you need to go through a process to overcome sales objections, rather than a quick answer or a-ha moment.If the buyer isn't ready, don't try to force a commitment. Be sure not to accept a lukewarm "yes" for an answer though, either.

Confirm You've Satisfied the Objection

As much as you might like to respond, “You get what you pay for,” or, “Those are our fees and we’re worth every penny,” don’t. There's no glib, pat answer to money objections.

Money Objections in Sales: Choose your words wisely

Price is often a “red herring” objection. Work to uncover the real objection. (Refer to the 6 types of money objections below.) Ask questions. 
Find out if money is really the issue with one simple question: “If money wasn’t an object, what then?” This will usually lead you to the root objection to the sale.

It’s Not All About The Money

Communicate a clear picture of the value of the solution you established in the selling process. The right buyer can usually “find” the money if the value is too strong to pass up—if the solution you’ve proposed answers their needs especially well.
Most times when buyers say, “Your price is too high,” what they’re really saying is, “I don't see the value of your solution.”

Get Back To Value

Review the component parts of the solution. This may lead to either a reduction in scope or having the buyer realize the whole package is the best solution.
You’ll end up going down a slippery slope if you start justifying your price by what your costs are.

Ask, “Which Part Don’t You Want?”

If you’re willing to simply drop your price, you’re telling buyers this is the way you operate. Instead, explore new possibilities, change scope, or make a trade that could change the price. 
An arbitrary price reduction can sow mistrust and set the precedent for lower prices for as long as you work with that buyer. Always trade for value.

Don’t Drop Your Price

Don't appear to look upward for guidance at your organization, even if you might have to.
You may be dealing with the wrong buyer who isn't high enough in the organization or isn't the economic decision-maker. Money is certainly an objection for them because they can't pull the trigger even if they wanted to.

Maintain A Peer Relationship With The Decision Maker

What the buyer says: “Wow, that’s a lot. Can we do it for less?”
What it means: This comes from the buyer who always asks for a price reduction because it’s worked in the past. Their philosophy is that it can’t hurt to ask.

Types of Money Objections: Whack Back

What the buyer says: “Oh, I don’t have the money. We’ll need to do it for less.”What it means: The buyer has the money, but doesn’t want you to know that. It’s a ploy to see how low you’ll go.

Types of Money Objections: Bluffing

What the buyer says: “It costs too much. Money is going to be a problem.”What it means: The buyer doesn’t see the value your solution delivers. Perhaps they can’t justify spending more than they did previously.

Types of Money Objections: Value Challenge

What the buyer says: “It’s not in the budget.”
What it means:
(a) It’s true, and they’d like to see what can be worked out.
(b) It’s true, and they’re using that as a bargaining chip.
(c) It’s not true, and they’re just saying it.

Types of Money Objections: Budget Pushback

What the buyer says: “We received other proposals and your price is the highest.”What it means:(a) It’s true, and they’re using that as a bargaining chip.(b) It’s not true, or at least not the whole truth.

Types of Money Objections: Competitor Pressure

What the buyers says: “Too much money. Call me back if you can go lower.”What it means:(a) It’s a bluff, they assume you’ll come back with a lower price.(b) It’s not a bluff, they hope you’ll lower price to do business.

Types of Money Objections: We’re Done

When faced with sales objections, don't lose sight of your end goal: overcome the sales objection and make advances towards gaining commitment from the buyer.In a transactional sale, sellers are taught to overcome objections at all costs. This doesn't work for more complex sales. If you just plough through the objection without addressing it fully, the underlying reason for the objection will usually come back to haunt you.Remember, you have to work with these people once you're done selling to them!

Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize

Objections have merit: they're often a sign that something else is going on. Your purpose is to understand the objection fully, isolate it, and respond to it appropriately—not necessarily rebut, counter, and argue. You may need to build a case for overcoming an objection instead of answering quickly on the fly.

Objections Are Valuable

Expert tips on how to tap into the human psyche and turn potential customers into actual ones

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

How to Sell Anything

Your prospect is not your adversary. Their objections are valid! Here are four proven steps to overcoming sales objections, no matter how complex.

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

4 Steps to Overcoming Sales Objections

Prospects, or potential customers, are the fuel for the sales pipeline. Every prospect represents a possible sale, making it important to grow your base of prospects.
Prospecting is used to expand the size of the potential customer base. Sales reps will reach out to leads and nurture them into opportunities, using techniques such as making calls, direct mail, networking events, and connecting on social platforms.

Sales prospecting

<h4>The sales process moves from cold leads → to warm opportunities → to hot deals. Prospecting is what happens in-between.</h4>
<ul>
<li>Sales and marketing source leads. Leads are unqualified prospects and come from marketing or sales.</li>
<li>Sales qualify leads into prospects. Sales get to know leads and decide if they're a good fit (qualified) to become a prospect.</li>
<li>Sales nurture prospects into opportunities. Sales make prospects more interested in the sale, turning them into "opportunities."</li>
<li>Sales close opportunities into deals.</li>
</ul>

The stages of the sale prospecting process

<ol><li>Follow the prospect before you connect with them.</li><li>Find them in groups. Join and engage in groups where your prospect is active.</li><li>Hype them up. Follow the prospect's activity and help to up engagement.</li></ol>

How to find new sales prospects

We need to study prospects and be relevant when we reach out to them.
Steps to find an authentic common ground that gives traction to the relationship:
<ul>
<li>Lean on customer relationship management (CRM). CRM technology helps to keep all your interactions with your prospects at your fingertips - the email you sent, notes from all your meetings, the pitch deck.</li>
<li>Research your way into their world. If it's a publicly-traded company, read their investor reports.</li>
<li>Find the channel that sticks. If the prospect doesn't answer the phone, try to connect on LinkedIn. Be as relevant as you can.</li>
</ul>

How to approach a new sales prospect

Questions to help you qualify a prospect:
Is this the right person?
<ul>
<li>Does the prospect match your ideal customer profile?</li>
<li>Are they interested in your product?</li>
<li>Can they influence the deal or even decide to purchase?</li>
</ul>
Is this the right company?
<ul>
<li>Is it in your territory?</li>
<li>Is the industry a good fit?</li>
<li>What’s the size of their organisation? </li>
</ul>
Is this the right project?
<ul>
<li>Is the department funded to pay your price?</li>
<li>Will the project be a priority for the company?</li>
<li>Will the team be using the product for the right use case that will create an impact?</li>
</ul>

How to qualify a sales prospect

You won't get far with prospects by repeating the same general information on your company's website. To go deep with them, you'll need to learn their accent and become knowledgeable about their lives at work. Learn about specific industry trends, their companies and their lives.

Moving sales prospects to the next stage in the sales cycle

It's not about closing the deal but about closing every step of the deal. <ul><li>Obsess over the next step. End the conversation with a question. "Can we connect for five minutes after you've taken a look?"</li><li>Advance but qualify. Prospecting is about moving forward. Don't over-focus on a deal that won't be worth it. Ask at every stage if the prospect is still a fit.</li><li>Selling is a team sport. You won't have all the answers and need to lean on those who give you the information you need.</li></ul>

Keep the conversation moving

Grow your customer base by finding and nurturing new prospects with our sales prospecting guide.

How to Do Sales Prospecting the Right Way

Finding product-market fit doesn’t necessarily provide an aha moment, but you can think of it as when the interest from customers validates that your product satisfies a need or solves a problem.  The reason it’s important for you to find a product-market fit for your business is that it’s an early indicator of success. Businesses that achieve product-market fit can use organic marketing or word of mouth to increase their customer base and sales.

The Product Market Fit


A product-market fit is a moment when a startup finally finds a widespread set of customers that resonate with its product.

The difficulty of product-market fit exists on a spectrum—with maximum difficulty products that are completely new at one extreme, and undifferentiated but well understood, products on the other. And of course, there are simply more variables to tweak and adjust in a mobile app than in a coffee cup, which people already know about. To fit your product, simplify your product idea, compare that version with your current plan, and find a version that exists between the two, one that customers will definitely understand.

Finding The Right Fit

Finding product-market fit often means identifying a good market (one that is large and has demand) and molding your product to fit the needs of that market. You could build the best product that solves multiple pain points for customers—but if there’s no market to support it, or the market is weak, your product will fail.

Good Market Vs Good Product

The first step to achieving product-market fit is to actually prove that your product is something customers want to buy. Sounds simple, but until you get your first few sales, you won’t be able to get feedback, which limits your ability to know how you’re doing or what changes you can make to improve.

Proving Your Product Concept

Kickstarter provides a built-in audience already interested in supporting new product ideas. It creates a low barrier to entry to try out your idea and see how the market responds. It is a great way to find and connect with your target audience early on and identify the people who are willing to work with you and spend the time giving you real feedback.

Establishing Proof Of Concept

Using organic marketing channels is free, and it’s a great way to start building an engaged audience early on. If you’re still in the product development phase or you’re trying to prove the concept, consider creating a social media account on whichever channel feels better for your brand before your products (or even your official website) is ready. It’ll give you a direct line to the people most likely to buy your product in the future.

Organic Marketing Using Social Media

Use the jobs to be done framework to better understand if your product solves a problem for your customers: Customers “hire” your product to do a job. You might hire a leash to keep your dog close on walks, or hire an umbrella to keep you dry in the rain. These products fulfill a need. It’s less about what you purchase a product to do (I’m going to use this hammer to put a nail in the wall) and more about the result (I’m hiring this hammer to help me put up this piece of art). When you pivot to think about the end result, the usefulness of an item becomes more clear.

The End Result In Mind: Jobs To Be Done

Creating an open feedback loop with your customers, especially at the beginning, is key to developing something your target audience will love early on. Those early customers are more likely to be invested in your product, more likely to stick with it while you work out the kinks, and more likely to provide honest feedback. They are the best people to lean on as you grow your business, so giving them an easy way to provide that feedback will make the process easier for everyone.

Use Customer Feedback To Mould Your Product

Ultimately, you need to understand your target audience and the problem they need to solve. Elad Burko, CEO of Paperwallet, shares a good example of this during his interview with us on the Shopify podcast.  The message is not, “This wallet is made of paper yet doesn’t rip.” It’s, “This wallet is low profile, durable, water-resistant, and will last a long time.” See the difference? The first message doesn’t actually offer a solution to a problem. The second message speaks to common issues customers might have with their current wallet.

Product Positioning

There are multiple ways to get feedback on your marketing message, like: <ul><li>Meet potential customers in person: Bring your product to farmers markets, trade shows, etc., and get feedback on how you’re presenting </li><li>Your products: Getting a lot or a little interest is even a great way to understand how you’re doing. </li><li>Use social media channels to gauge reception: Establishing a loyal customer base organically is a great way to get product feedback.</li><li>A/B testing: Paid advertising allows you to test different types of messaging against each other to better understand what resonates with your target market.</li></ul>

The Marketing Message: Getting Feedback

Product-market fit doesn’t always mean that every collection you release sells out in seconds. But it does mean that people find out about your store by word of mouth, or that you have a steady stream of customers and sales, or that your product solves a problem within a larger, lucrative market. Let us find out what product-market fit is, how to prove your product concept, and how to use marketing and customer feedback to find it.

What is product-market fit? Here, we’ll demonstrate how to prove your product concept and use customer feedback to find product-market fit.

startup

Startups

product

Product & Design

The Key to Fast Growth is Achieving Product-Market Fit

Content marketing plays a significant role in the success of marketing your business. In order for content marketing campaigns to success you need to plan your content ahead of time. With having a quick content creation process and improving content quality, you can engage your audience in new ways and maximize your marketing budget.

Quarterly Content Plan

In order to create a quarterly content plan you should review your previous quarter's performance metrics for your social media, mailing list, and blog pages. But how?<ul><li>Check everything from traffic on your pages on your pages to direct social media engagement to click-throughs to your website.</li><li>Analyze your content so that you can better understand the kind of content your audience is looking for.</li><li>Have a spreadsheet solely for keeping track of your content's performance eaach quarter.</li></ul>

Review Last Quarter's Content Metrics

Before determining what kind of content you'll publish you must have set goals in mind for your content every quarter. These could be:<ul><li>brand awareness</li><li>customer acquisition</li><li>sales</li><li>customer retention</li><li>engagement levels</li></ul>Every content marketing campaign you run must be designed to accomplish specific goals that align with your future business plans.

Set Content Goals

By defining your content campaign metrics you'll be able to ensure that every single piece of content and every campaign is data-driven which will ultimately raise the chances of success, but how? Your metrics should be tied to the content foals you set for the quarter these can include:<ul><li>Page views</li><li>Time on-page</li><li>Bounde rate</li><li>Social media shares and engagement</li><li>SEO performance</li><li>Newsletter signups and engagement</li></ul>

Define Content Campaign Metrics

It's vital to conduct research to ensure that you're targeting the right audience. Some things that you should note down while conducting audience research and building personas that represent your ideal customer are:<ul><li>their demographics</li><li>psychographics; and</li><li>firmographics</li></ul>By doing so you will better understand your audience and help you create personalized experiences for them.

Evaluate Your Content's Target Audience

Creating a quarterly content plan will increase your output content ten times more by knowing what type of content to create, these can include:<ul><li>social media</li><li>webinars</li><li>how-to guides</li><li>blog posts</li><li>infographics</li><li>videos</li><li>podcasts</li><li>email newsletters and campaigns</li><li>user generated content</li><li>white papers</li></ul>

Decide What Types of Content to Create

You should set aside the time to work out how much you're prepared to spend on the following:<ul><li>content strategy</li><li>content creation</li><li>content promotion</li></ul>But how much should you budget for content marketing? It really depends on several factors: the type of content you plan on creating, the volume of publishing, and the size of your business. However, marketing budgets in general should be between 7-12% of your total revenue.

Review Your Content Budget

A content workflow is a series of tasks that you must perform to ensure that each piece of content is perfectly crafted and created on time. A well-designed content production workflow ensures that content creation runs smoothly and efficiently so ask yourself the following:<ul><li>Did your content production run smoothly?</li><li>What parts of the workflow you feel needs improvement?</li></ul>

Review Content Production Workflow 

Content marketing has two critical stages:<ul><li>content production; and</li><li>content promotion</li></ul>In order to create an effective content promotion plan you can do the following:<ul><li>Understand the platforms where your audience frequents</li><li>Outline the type of campaigns you'll run to track the performance of your campaign</li><li>Define your content promotion KPIs; and</li><li>Create a content promotion calendar</li></ul>

Create a Content Promotional Plan

writing

Reading & Writing

How to Use Quarterly Content Planning to 10x Content Output

<ul><li>Entry into new markets: Local people can sell better by understanding the culture and speaking the native language.</li><li>Competitive advantage over competitors who are only operating in a local market.</li><li>Greater access to talent: You could expand your talent pool.</li><li>Ability to help more people: Expanding your market allows you to provide your solution to more people.</li></ul>

Benefits of an international sales team

You may learn about a country from online research but firsthand experience gives you a feel for what the local culture and marketplace are like.  Most work can be done remotely, but it is also good to plan for the complexities of travel.

Get Feet on the Ground

<ul><li>Hire locals in the country as they know the language and understand the culture. They also understand the target customer. Drawback: they don't know your company and products well, and you may have to invest in added training.</li><li>Hire expatriates within the company. It can help you penetrate a market with people already familiar with your company and products.</li></ul>

Find the Right People

Good training is done during the onboarding process and thereafter at regular intervals.  Locals need more training on product knowledge, while ex-pats will need training around the local market and culture.

Train Your Team

When creating an international team, be aware of the necessity of cultivating an internal team culture. The different languages, cultures, and experiences can increase the strength of your team.

Build a Cohesive Culture

Implement a plan and track the results, then study the results. Keep the principles and processes that work and discard the rest.  There will always be limitations and room for growth, and by setting high standards, you could set yourself up for success.

Iterate to Great

Building a high-performing sales team is difficult. Building a high-performing sales team that’s spread across multiple different countries and cultures is even more challenging.

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