8 Mistakes That'll Totally Derail Your Business Pitch

In the last six years, I've done more than 100 pitches all across this country.

I've enjoyed many victories, including raising $30 million in venture capital from institutional investors. But I've also suffered some defeats -- it would be just awesome if I never see another rejection letter.

Needless to say, my successes and failures have taught me several important lessons that I'd like to share with you. You can use these lessons to help you craft a stronger overall pitch -- whether that means pitching your business idea to a room of investors or simply pitching a blog post idea in a meeting with your coworkers.

Whatever the case may be, here are eight mistakes you'll want to avoid at all costs.

8 Mistakes That'll Totally Derail Your Business Pitch

Mistake #1: Not Doing Your Research

Pitches are won and lost long before the actual pitch even takes place. To avoid wasting your audience's time (and your own), you should spend some time getting to know the people you're pitching to.

If you're pitching to a room of VCs, you'll want to:

• Look at their past investments. Do they invest in SMBs? Generally, investors focus on companies of a certain size. Pitching your small or medium-sized business to a VC who only invests in larger companies is a mistake.

• Make sure your potential investor isn't investing in one of your competitors. It's unusual for investors to make two bets in the same industry or niche. If they do take a pitch, it might just be they're trying to find out what the competition (you!) are up to. Avoid this huge mistake.

If you're pitching to your coworkers, boss, or a different department at your company, you might:

• Customize your presentation. Find out what their goals are. Check out their latest tweets. Pull some information from their social profiles. Finding a way to incorporate some of their interests into your pitch will help you grab their attention and keep it.

Mistake #2: Failing to Address Concerns

If the people you're pitching to address a concern, it's not the end of the world. If they mention it twice, it might just be a coincidence. But hearing about the same issue three times? Uh oh, we have a trend.

If you hear the same objection three (or more) times, stop pitching immediately and address those issues. Continuing to pitch with known issues is just wasting the time and patience of your audience.

Mistake #3: Being Too Defensive

It's important to think of every possible reason that people could reject your pitch. And while stopping to address concerns is important (as I mentioned above), figuring out how to address them in a non-defensive way is also crucial to your success.

When someone disagrees with you, your first reaction might be to say something like, "I don't agree with you." Saying this out loud, however, is one of the worst mistakes you can make when delivering a pitch.

Instead, put some thought into your response. Try to see things from their perspective before you start justifying your perspective.

Mistake #4: Being Boring

Most pitches are super boring and forgettable. That's why for every successful pitch presentation there are probably 50 to 100 that fail to win over a reluctant audience.

When making a pitch, try to be more memorable. Use content marketing tricks to help your pitch be remarkable in some way.

Mistake #5: Projecting the Wrong Image

You can tell people a lot without saying a word. So always be intentional about what you're projecting when you pitch, whether it's through your body language or what you wear.

When I was pitching, my strength was software engineering, so I dressed the part. I didn't want to project, through what I wore, that I was some kind of financial wizard with years of experience.

If you want to sabotage your chances, projecting the wrong image will surely lead to failure.

Mistake #6: Not Reporting on Your Progress

Your pitch failed. Your idea got rejected you. And you kept getting the same type of feedback. Eventually, though, you got past your own ego. You finally understood why you failed, and you decided to do something about it: you acted on their recommendations.

Now it's a year later. Failing to follow up with investors or those you share your idea with to report on your progress is a mistake. Following up tells people two important things:

• You're able to listen and valued their recommendations.
• You're a dedicated, hard-working person who can get important things done.

Mistake #7: Relying Only on Formal Pitches

Let's say you're pitching an idea to an investor. Believe it or not, not all your funding will come from formal business pitches. In fact, you can raise quite a bit of money by talking to investors informally -- and using just a little bit of reverse psychology.

For example, when meeting with an investor you might say, "Hey, I have this idea. I'm not really looking to raise money, but I need your advice." Or, maybe you could say, "Hey, could you point me in the direction of an investor who likes to make big bets on proven idea with high risk and high returns?"

In both of these cases, the goal is to make the investor think, "Hey, I want to do that! What about me?"

Mistake #8: Not Addressing Deficiencies

Failing to be honest with your audience will only lead to rejection. If you know your idea has obvious deficiencies, be up front about them in your pitch.

By addressing any issues, you'll basically inoculate yourself from any criticism. Or, at the very least, show that you're open and willing to discuss them.

Think Before You Pitch

Now you know the reasons why your pitch will fail, and what it will take to help get it right next time -- whether you're standing in an office with your boss or on a stage before a panel of judges at pitch-off event, like the one taking place at INBOUND this year.

Yup, that's right: Real startups. On stage. At INBOUND.

I'll be there (speaking about content promotion hacks for Facebook and Twitter), and I can't wait to see what the startups bring to their live pitches. I hope to see you up on that stage, or taking notes in the audience. I've got a feeling it's going to be super valuable.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published on Inc.com and has been modified for republishing here.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2aLZnIW

15 Creative Examples of Branded Pop-Up Shops

Marketers spend a lot of time trying to nail down abstract concepts. They're tasked with turning brainstorming sessions and comments sourced during focus groups into campaigns that sum up everything about a brand's identity in a neat, tidy, and most importantly, interesting way.

But what if a consumer could walk into a room and fully experience your brand with all their senses? Pop-up events offer just that -- the chance for consumers to get up close and personal with their favorite companies in a truly immersive setting.

In their simplest form, pop-up events are temporary retail spaces that give companies the opportunity to sell their products in an environment completely designed and controlled by them. Since they're temporary, they offer a relatively low-cost and low-commitment way for companies to take creative risks, generate buzz, and introduce their brands to new audiences.

Consumers love the lure of exclusivity, and brands love the unmatched opportunity for experimentation. To inspire your next branded experience, we've curated a list of 15 innovative and visually stunning pop-up events.

15 Examples of Next-Level Pop-Up Events

1) COS Los Angeles

Experimental architecture firm Snarkitecture was inspired by mirrored surfaces and simple silhouettes when designing this temporary retail space for LA-based fashion label COS. The folks at Snarkitecture transformed an empty industrial space into two identical, monochromatic rooms -- one white and one pale pink -- leaving the focus on two racks of minimal clothing. The reflected space "creates an unexpected and altered world for visitors to experience and share."

Image Credit: Snarkitecture

2) BarkShop Live

Shouldn't your dog be able to shop for his own toys? Bark & Co, the ecommerce company behind BarkBox, certainly thinks so. For one week in June 2016, the dog-centric retailer set up shop in Manhattan, inviting dogs and their owners to try out their squeaky, bouncy, and chewy offerings in-person. The lucky pups in attendance were fitted with RFID-enabled vests, which tracked the toys they played with the most. Owners were then able to view and purchase their dogs' favorite playthings directly from the event's custom mobile app.

Video from Digiday

3) Glossier Summer Fridays Showroom

In Summer 2015, online makeup and skincare brand Glossier styled a floor of its Manhattan headquarters as a temporary retail showroom -- the closest thing to stepping into its beautifully curated Instagram feed. The space offered Glossier products for sale, but as founder Emily Weiss explained, selling tubes of moisturizer and lip balm wasn't necessarily the pop-up's top priority. "It's not really just a store," Weiss said in an interview with Racked. "It's almost like this is a giant mood board for the company we're hoping to build."

Created under the direction of set designer Marguerite Wade, the penthouse featured custom floral arrangements by Meta Flora and an installation by multi-media artist Grace Villamil.

Image Credit: Glossier

4) Fast Food Aid

Creative directors Ikkyu and Junya Sato of Kaibutsu design studio noticed that young adults in Harajuku had a serious fast food problem -- and they decided to do something about it. To promote organic food chain Dohtonbori, they launched Fast Food Aid, a pharmacy-inspired vitamin pop-up that offers a selection of health supplements aimed at junk food lovers. And all it will cost you is a receipt from a fast food place.

After a guilty indulgence, exchange your receipt for a customized bottle of supplements that will replenish the nutrients missed at your last meal. Each canister is aimed at a particular junk food -- ramen, pizza, hamburger, etc., -- to make sure your system gets what it needs.

Although Dohtonbori isn't actually selling anything for profit at the shop, its been able to educate visitors about health and wellness, hopefully driving them to opt for healthier food options in the future -- like Dohtonbori's own restaurant.

Image Credit: Fast Food Aid

5) Pantone Café

What does color taste like? If anyone knows the answer to that question, it's Pantone. The world's most well-known color company has been running a pop-up café in Monaco for the past two summers, selling a minimal menu of pastries, lunch options, coffees, and fresh juices -- all branded with Pantone's signature color swatches.

So does this mean Pantone is permanently branching out into cuisine? Not quite. The seasonal eatery is perfect Instagram-bait, and it has successfully generated a ton of buzz in the press. It's a perfect example of a pop-up event enabling a company to take creative risks with its brand by stepping outside of its typical business model.

Image Credit: Pantone Café

6) Real Life At Work

To offer passersby a glimpse into its world, London-based ad agency Wieden+Kennedy invited graphic artist Emily Forgot to transform the front window of its office into an imaginative, cartoon-inspired pop-up workspace. Using exaggerated monochrome imagery, Forgot crafted a whimsical office scene from paper, complete with a typewriter and a clock that ran backward.

For a few weeks, real agency employees took turns "working" in the window. The whole thing was then broadcast live via webcam on the agency's website for anyone who was curious enough to watch. The pop-up was a unique way for W+K to shrug off the stereotype of the ad agency that takes itself too seriously -- plus it was a creative chance for the team to engage with the community.

Image Credit: Wieden + Kennedy London

7) Früt

How do you make inexpensive, packaged underwear appeal to high-end consumers? Just create a "luxury" lingerie pop-up with a fake, fancy-sounding name. CP+B Boulder helped client Fruit of the Loom open up an intentionally pretentious and ludicrously over-priced boutique for its underwear, complete with colorful intimates hanging from over-the-top tree displays. Früt sold only Fruit of the Loom undergarments, but shoppers who usually wouldn't deign to buy the brand were lured in by the high-end guise.

Image Credit: Wieden+Kennedy London

8) Organic Valley Coffee Shop

In a clever shot aimed at the artisanal coffee movement, creative branding agency Humanaut opened up a pop-up cafe to promote its client Organic Valley's new coffee creamer. The temporary Manhattan storefront adhered to all of the typical hipster tropes -- a minimal logo featuring arrows and X's, modern glass mugs, and trendy sizes -- Lil Bit, Double, and Lotta. And they cast a real Organic Valley farmer as the shop's folksy proprietor.

There was one catch: The shop only sold measured portions of half-and-half. You ordered your creamer at the counter from a barista and added your coffee separately. The spoof was a major success. Unperturbed by the irony, New Yorkers lined up to order shots of plain cream for $2 a pop. "No one had a problem paying $2 for a pour of organic half-and-half," said Humanaut's creative chief David Littlejohn. "In the end, the idea wasn't as crazy as we thought it was."

Video Credit: Organic Valley

9) 5-Minute Internship

Solve, a Minneapolis-based creative agency, wanted to re-vamp its summer intern hiring process to attract recruits who can really think on their feet. So naturally, they created a portable, small-scale replica of their office -- complete with a receptionist-staffed micro lobby -- and set off on an epic college-campus road trip.

Students at participating campuses were given a 5-minute challenge based on their area of interest -- and those who performed the best were invited to interview on the spot. The pop-up event tripled the amount of applications the agency received to its internship position.

Image Credit: Adweek

10) The Picture House

Capitalizing on the Instagram food photography craze, Birdseye opened up a temporary restaurant in London where diners could settle their bill with an Instagram post -- all they had to do was take a snap of their meal and add the hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations. The event was a creative social media experiment that helped generate free publicity for the frozen food company's Inspirations line of products. Branding agency Slice was behind the world's first pay-by-picture pop up.

Image Credit: Slice

11) The Period Shop

For one weekend, Kotex launched a pop-up in New York aimed at alleviating negativity and spreading love for women during their periods. The store, which was developed by ad agency Organic, featured ice cream, manicures, chocolate, comfy clothing, and Kotex U products for sale. Women were invited to browse the brightly colored offerings and share their experiences. And it was all for a good cause, too. Proceeds were donated to a women's homeless shelter.

Image Credit: Adweek

12) Birchbox's Tour

Pop-ups give online retailers the chance to show off their goods in person, interact directly with their fans, and take their brand to the next level. Birchbox -- which sells subscription boxes of curated beauty products -- went on a national tour in 2015, opening up temporary brick-and-mortar stores in multiple cities. In addition to selling beauty products, they offered manicures and astrology readings to entice beauty-lovers inside.

Image Credit: Racked LA

13) Fendi Spring/Summer 2016 Flower Shop

The mobile flower shop that botanical designer Azuma Makoto created for Fendi is proof that not all pop-ups need to be large scale productions. The artist adorned a three-wheeled Italian vehicle with an intricate floral display and outfitted the side of the truck as an open storefront. The vendor/driver sold limited edition Fendi bags and vases of Makoto's floral arrangements to promote the fashion label's 2016 Spring/Summer collection.

Image Credit: My Modern Met

14) Arnsdorf

What's a designer to do when they're facing a tight budget? Experiment with creative materials. This pop-up retail space for Australian clothier Arnsdorf was created by using 154 pairs of neutral-colored pantyhose, and the effect is otherworldly.

Image Credit: Fast Company

15) The Poundshop

This design collective is a recurring pop-up platform for artists to offer their goods for affordable prices. "The aim of The Poundshop is to spread design to a wider audience by making it accessible through price and engagement," the website explains.

The pop-up shops are just as visually interesting as the art they sell.

Image Credit: The Poundshop 

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2aLRHGX

3 simple ways to avoid making big mistakes as a teen using social media

How to Win More Proposals by Interviewing Your Prospects

I’ve been writing proposals for over a decade, and it’s probably fair to say that I loathed the entire process for the longest time. I worried that I was just “making it all up.” I’d second guess every word I wrote, and of course, I was petrified of the inevitable rejection. Unfortunately, many creative folks feel the same: “If I’m not a veritable Shakespeare with the quill and ink, then I don’t stand a chance”.

Fortunately, this simply isn’t true.

Over time I came to realize that my writing prowess wasn’t the deciding factor in winning projects. Actually, 90% of my proposals were accepted because of something much simpler: prospect interviews. 

Proposals Start Way Before You Propose

I still remember getting those “dear designer” emails. You know the type: The ones where the sender swaps out your name before sending to another 20 agencies. Upon receiving one of these, I’d get over-excited and jump straight into proposal mode. After all, I had all the information I needed in their initial email: They needed a website!

Of course, this is a poor way to find great clients and an even worse way to win meaningful work.

To consistently win projects, you need to invest time in learning about your clients and their problems. But this creates a dilemma: Should you invest time upfront before writing a project proposal? That all depends on if the payoff will be worth it.

If you're going to spend the time writing the proposal, then you should commit to spending the time to discover what your clients really want. 

Why You’re Not Winning Enough Proposals

So let’s take a quick look at some of the reasons a project proposal might fail in the first place:

• You were one on a list of many, and the client was just looking for the best price. (This is not a good client anyway.)
• You only spoke about your skills and all the great things you’ve done with them. You failed to mention how you can specifically help the client. This can loosely be seen in many proposals as: web design = $15,000. Where’s the value?
• You sent off a veritable novel of a proposal. No one is ever going to read your 50-page masterpiece. Ever. During the past two and a half years of growing Nusii, we’ve seen that more than 80% of accepted proposals contain between 5 and 8 sections or pages. That’s a quick read in anyone’s book.
• You wrote a shoddy proposal. It happens; you’ll get better.
• You didn’t relate to the client’s business. To them, your services just seemed like "total costs,” not added value.

Anyone with a decent command of language and the desire to work with better clients can write a winning proposal. 

Why You Should Interview Your Prospects

Instead of jumping at the next email from a random prospect, take the time to build a relationship -- even just a minor one -- before even thinking about a writing a proposal.

Some say you should never do anything for free. But you’re not going to work for free, and you’re not going to tell your client how to move ahead without you. You are going to find out as much about their business as possible to see whether you can actually help. Why? The more you know, the more value you can provide, and the more value you can provide, the greater your chances of winning that project.

But before you set up an interview with a potential client, you should do your due diligence by qualifying them as a lead. You don’t want to jump on a call with any Tom, Dick, or Harry. You want to talk to someone at the company with the power to make decisions.

Once you’re convinced that your potential client would be a good fit for your services, ask them if they would like to set up a time to chat -- either in-person or using a product such as Skype. If they’re not keen or they downright refuse, then your decision on whether to move forward with a proposal has just been made for you.

So what questions should you ask your prospect to determine if they’re a good fit? Here are a few suggestions based on a typical website redesign, which you can adapt to suit other project types as well.

1) Why do you need your website redesigned?

Fail to ask this question, and you will most likely fail to write a compelling proposal. You should dig deeper, and get to the root of the website redesign request. Personal insecurities -- such as the launch of a trendy new competitor -- are not the same as deeper operational issues, e.g., “We’re losing sales to a poor checkout system that was designed 10 years ago.” 

Best case scenario? You win the project, but leave the client disappointed because all they got was a sharp looking website. This is not a long-term win if you want to build a name for yourself. None of your client’s personal or business goals can be reached if you don't know what they are.

2) How will not working with us affect your business?

This is kind of a presumptuous question, but let's put it another way: If your client was to leave their website as it is, what would it mean for their business? The answer will give you an idea of how much value you can potentially provide.

Many clients will be a little vague with their answers: “We’ll continue to lose money,” or “Sign-ups will continue to drop.” That’s OK. Once they give you the glossed-over version, dig deeper. If sign-ups are an issue, ask where they’re dropping and by what amount. Do they have any thoughts on why this is happening?

You can be sure that very few agencies will be as thorough. Asking this question can set you up as a serious contender for the contract.

 

3) How will you know if working with us has been a success?

More ego-inflating questions, right? Wrong. One way or another, everything you do for your client needs to be quantifiable. Why? Because you both need to know whether you were a cost or investment. Let’s face it: Sometimes creative services are seen as a risk.

Ask about their goals for the project. What will a home run look like? An increase in trial sign-ups? More time spent on page? A reduction in email bounce rate? The more specific the better since you can focus on their specific goals in your proposal.

Knowing what a win looks like will give you something clear to aim for in your proposal, and at the risk of sounding icky, it will also give you something to sell.

4) What do you like about your current website design?

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Designers like to leave their mark (I’m allowed to say this). This is normal. However, sometimes in our desire to tear everything down and make it pretty, we fail to take into account that sometimes certain stuff already works. You may be here to fix a poor checkout experience, but that doesn’t mean that everything else is garbage.

Ask your potential client if there’s anything about their current website that works well. If they can give you an example, ask why it works.

I’m sure you can see a pattern emerging with these questions -- what initially seems like a broad question can lead to another more focused one (and another, and another).

It’s very hard to do this sort of thing via a written questionnaire or a form. You’ll miss out on facial expressions, specific language used to describe a problem (that you can later use in your proposal), and of course, the hope of any kind of relationship. Email isn’t the best place to make friends.

5) If your website could only do one thing, what would it be?

This is all about priorities. No doubt your client will have an idea of how they want their business to improve. But by asking this question, you are asking them to -- once again -- dig deeper.

If your client doesn’t have a primary goal for their project, this question will help them define what's important and what’s not. This will help you make informed design decisions down the line.

Interview to Win More New Business

Client interviews are an important but often overlooked part of the proposal process. To make sure you’re winning the maximum number of proposals, go the extra mile and discover what your client really needs to improve their business. Ask questions that others are afraid to ask, and don’t work with people whom you can’t truly help. Discuss design as a vehicle for solving problems, not the solution. And remember to keep your proposals concise and based around how you can provide value to the prospect and increase trust. 

You won’t always get what you need from one conversation with a prospective client. If after reviewing your notes and listening back to your interview, you decide you still need more information, jump on another call. Don't write or send the proposal until you are confident there's no better choice than your agency.  

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2aqDbC6

Sales And Support: Why Everyone On Your Team Should Have A Role In Both

There are 15 people on our team at Drift.

Like most businesses, we all have different roles and responsibilities -- there are frontend engineers, backend engineers, designers, marketers, a product manager, a customer success manager, and a sales rep.

And while each one of our roles is very clearly defined, there are two things that we all have in common regardless of what our job descriptions say on paper: we all do sales, and we all do customer support.

The Power Of 1:1 Conversations With Prospects And Customers

This might seem counterintuitive, right? An engineer probably isn’t going to be great at sales and a marketer won’t make the best support rep. But here’s why we do it anyway:

In order to really understand what our customers want, we need to hear their pain, see their frustrations, and understand their challenges first-hand.

An internal wiki post with notes from a product manager who just spent all week talking to customers is great. But reading that feedback can’t compare to having a real-time, 1:1 conversation with someone on our website who can’t figure out our pricing. Or talking to a new customer that’s lost inside of our app -- while they’re lost inside of our app.

Getting this 1:1 feedback outweighs any lack of sales or support experience that any one of us might have.

And because this feedback is so powerful, we don’t want to relegate talking to customers to one person or one department. Talking to customers should be part of everyone’s job today.

This is especially important in today’s world. There’s a fundamental shift happening in business right now: helping is the new selling, and customer experience is the new marketing. As a result, whoever understands the customer best will be the one that wins their business and earns their money. At Drift, we call it the customer driven revolution. All of the power in business has shifted into the hands of the buyer.

Still not convinced that everyone on your team should have a sales role and a support shift? Here are three reasons why this can have a huge impact on your company’s growth.

How All Hands Sales And Support Will Help You Grow Faster

It keeps everyone close to customers. Everyone says they are customer-driven. Everyone knows the importance of talking to customers. But here’s the standard line you hear from most companies when it comes to actually doing it: “I know. I know. I need to make the time to get out there and talk to more customers. I’ve just been so busy.” This will always be the case until you make it part of everyone’s job. When you give everyone on your team a dedicated shift, this guarantees that people are spending time that week talking to customers. We set up a shared Google Calendar and the whole team gets reminders in Slack about their support shift each day to help hold everyone accountable:

Problems get solved faster. Problems. Bugs. Unclear copy. Whatever it is, it gets fixed faster when the people with the power to fix those problems are the ones talking to customers. A few months ago, we launched a new integration with Slack on Product Hunt. As a result of being on Product Hunt, hundreds of people signed up within the first few hours. But shortly after launch we kept getting the same question: “Hey, where do I connect Drift to Slack?” Even though we had a step in the onboarding flow to hook up Slack, it wasn’t obvious to most people. One of our UX designers was working her support shift during this launch, and instead of generating a support ticket, creating a new Trello card, or adding something to a future roadmap, she just grabbed one of our engineers and within two minutes, shipped a quick fix -- a link to take people directly to Slack. Giving everyone on your team a support shift will help make UX, design, product, messaging, and pricing issues painfully obvious -- and that’s a good thing.

You create real relationships with people. Putting everyone on the front lines ensures that your team is always having one to one conversations and connecting with people -- from people who are thinking about buying from you, to people who are already paying customers, to people who just wanted to write in and say that they enjoyed that blog post you wrote.

How You Can Make 1:1 Work For Your Company

Now that we’ve talked a little about the value of 1:1 conversations, here is the ultimate question: how can you make it work at your company?

There’s one question that comes up anytime someone talks about the topic of 1:1 conversations with prospects and customers, and it goes something like this:

“I like the idea. And I get the value and the power of having 1:1 conversations, but it doesn’t really scale.”

And I totally hear you.

Smaller companies or early stage startups like Drift can make 1:1 work because we need to talk to everyone at this stage. But traditionally, 1:1 conversations have been designated for support.

Sales and marketing don’t want to waste time dealing with support questions and talking to leads who aren’t qualified. That’s why marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) were created in the first place.

But here’s the truth about 1:1 conversations with prospects and customers: this approach doesn’t require as much change as you might think. You don’t have to completely overhaul the way you do sales and marketing today or give everyone a support shift like we do at Drift. Here are a few small changes you can make right now to start having more 1:1 conversations with your prospects and customers.

Just ask. This one is the most obvious and the most effective. Sometimes, you just have to ask. One of my favorite examples of “just ask” comes from Groove CEO Alex Turnbull. In 2014, his team started to notice a spike in customer churn, and they weren’t really able to figure out why by just looking at the data. So Alex got right to the point -- he sent a personal email to every single customer and asked for 10 minutes of their time to talk. And here’s what happened:

As a result, he spent more than 100 hours talking to 500 Groove customers and ended up with feedback that helped him right the ship and fix their churn problem.

100 hours to change the course of your business? Seems worth it to me.

Now in Alex’s case, he decided to reach out to everyone at once -- and that produced hundreds of responses. If you don’t think you’ll be able to block off the time to address that many responses, then it’s easy to approach this differently. You could simply create an on-going campaign that is designed to get customer feedback one by one so you don't have to find the time to manage it in huge chunks. Sending an email blast to every customer is certainly one way to get feedback, but you can also use your customer data to create relevant segments.

And often times, talking to just 15-20 customers will give you the majority of the feedback you need (venture  capitalist Jason Lemkin has something called the 20 interview rule that is similar to this). You’ll notice that after you start talking to five, six, seven customers, the same issues keep popping up. Alex chose to talk to everyone because it had been a while since he went in-depth on customer feedback.

Switch up your welcome email. While every business might not be having 1:1 conversations with prospects and customers right now, there is one thing I’m confident that everyone business does have: a welcome email. Whether it’s an email that gets triggered after someone signs up for your newsletter, requests a demo, or starts using your product, you’re probably already sending a welcome email. But there's a huge mistake that most people make with those welcome emails -- they don't send them with a purpose.

Too many people treat their welcome email as a throw away, or something that gets written at the last minute as a finishing touch to onboarding. And the reason that's a huge mistake is because your welcome email is the single most important email that you will send to your customers and subscribers.

These people are brand new. They just signed up. This is when they are the most engaged. It’s rare that you’re ever going to get this level of attention and engagement from someone again without putting in a ton of effort, so make sure to write your welcome email with a purpose.

Yes, it should be smart, funny, and welcoming – but it should also be designed to get a response. Ask new users why they signed up, what they are looking to accomplish, what they’re struggling with, or what brought them to use your product or service. This is the best opportunity you will have to strike up a conversation with a new customer or subscriber. We recently switched up our welcome email at Drift to this:

And the result has been nothing short of game changing: over the course of 12 days after making the change, we received 75 direct replies from real people telling us how they found Drift, why they signed up, and what they're working on.

But does it scale? The truth is, I can’t think of a better way to spend the first hour of every day than having conversations with real people who are interested in our business -- and that’s now how I start my day off every single morning.

Start showing your face. On our quest to automate everything we can in marketing and sales over the last five years, we've started to forget about the most important aspect of doing business in the first place: people. And because the majority of businesses operate this way, there’s a huge opportunity to stand out by showing your prospects and customers that you’re a real person. One of the easiest ways to do this is by giving everyone that comes in touch with your business a way to say hello (think of it like showing your customers that you’re always open for business) -- and putting that person’s real face out in public.

One of my favorite examples of this is what Jon Westenberg does with the articles he writes on Medium -- he shows his face and gives his email address to every single reader:

This can also be as simple as showing your face on your website’s live chat. Go to any business’ website, and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to chat with them -- but are you talking to a real person? Putting your face on live chat is one of the easiest ways to show you’re a real person -- and as a result -- start having better conversations:

You’d be surprised at how many deals you can win and customers you can delight just by saying hello, making small talk, and proving you’re a real person. It works in real life right? So why wouldn’t you take advantage of that for your business on your website.

At the end of the day, having more 1:1 conversations starts with a change in philosophy and a commitment to being more human. And from Slack to Trello to Buffer to Shopify, this is something that the best modern businesses all have in common today.

And while this change might not happen for you overnight, there are a few small changes that you can make right now to start having more conversations with your customers and people who are interested in your business.

If your company can make this work in one form or another -- even if it's only for a few hours a week manning live chat -- the impact being this close to your customers can have is one of the best things you can do for your team, regardless of what stage your company is at.

This is what we’re focused on at Drift -- helping your business have 1:1 conversations with prospects and customers at scale.

Learn more about leveraging sales and support tactics from Drift.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2atXbBq

How to Be Creative When You're Not Naturally Creative

"Everything’s already been thought of."

"I don't even know where to start."

"I’m just not a creative person."

We've all had those frustrating moments when when we're expected to come up with a brilliant new idea, but no matter how much we squint at our computer screens, we just can't seem to think of anything good.

That's when we tend to look over at our peers who are "creative types" and wonder why we didn't inherit any creative genes ourselves.

But it may be that were looking at it wrong. In fact, many psychologists argue that creativity isn't something people are born with; it's actually a skill that can be learned. And, as with any other skill, you can only get better at it with practice. The brain is like muscle that needs to be developed -- in this case, using cognitive exercises.

So what can we do to exercise that creative muscle when we're struggling to come up with new ideas? Everyone has their own ways they like to get "in shape." To get you started, here are 11 different ways to jog your creative thinking.

11 Ways to Jumpstart Your Creativity

1) Start with a morning freewrite. 

We all have days when walk in to the office in the morning and all we can think about is all the stuff we have to get done. But this can stress us out and cause us to lose perspective on our own thinking.

On days like this, one way to refocus is by doing a morning freewrite. According to a study from Harvard Business School Professor Teresa Amabile, regular workplace journaling allows you to rediscover your perspective and become more productive.

So instead of jumping right into your projects when you get into the office, block off ten minutes for a digital detox and grab a notebook and paper to just write. Unlike a blog or some other public-facing piece of content, a physical journal is your own personal compilation of thoughts that don’t need to make sense to anyone but you. Writing in a more freeform style will allow your creative juices to flow, while also forcing you to put your thoughts into written words.

Don't know where to start with freewriting? Check out Twords' prompt library, or subscribe to Daily Page to get a writing prompt emailed to you every morning, which you can share or keep private. Here are some more prompt ideas from my colleague Megan Conley:

• Recently, I’m struggling with ...
• If I had more time in the day, I’d use it to ...
• Today, I’ll relieve stress by ...
• I feel out of my comfort zone when ...
• My work is motivated by ...
• This week, I’m thankful for ...
• Today, I should avoid ...
• I feel fulfilled at work when ...
• From my team, I’m proud of ...
• I work best when ...

2) Take a creative course.

If you're the kind of person who prefers more instruction, taking a creative course could be the right way to guide your creativity.

Creative courses could be anything from creative writing to photo and video to music, art, or design. Regardless which course you take, you'll be exposed to different ways of thinking and approaches to working that you can apply to your own work. Plus, it may help you uncover some of your strengths and work on your weaknesses.

It'll also surround you with other people who have a similar goal of developing their creative skills. You can learn from your peers and have the chance to review each other’s work to get a fresh perspective on your own ideas. And if you’re someone who is too nervous to ask for help in the office, a classroom setting could give you the opportunity to open up to others in workshop style critiques. By sharing your ideas with others, you’ll be forced to find ways to formulate your thoughts into words and visuals, while learning to handle critique from others.

A few free online courses to start with include Creative Live, MIT OpenCourseWare, Creative Writing Now, and Stanford OpenEdEx.

Courses may not be for everyone -- especially if you feel like structure is a hinder to your creative flow. But if you feel like you're lacking direction in your thinking, it may be worth a try.

3) Brainstorm while you exercise.

If you feel like you’re working your brain hard and coming out empty-handed, try pushing yourself physically for thirty minutes or so. Research shows that exercise can be linked to more creative thinking. One study that focused on how moderate exercise influences participants’ performance on different thinking tasks found that exercising regularly may train your cognitive thinking and creativity in a healthy way.

“Much more of the brain is devoted to movement than to language. Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement,” says Neurologist Oliver Sacks.

So take 30 minutes out of your day to go for a run, do an energizing yoga flow, or practice some deskercises. It’ll benefit both your body and mind.

4) Travel to other places.

Since your creativity is related to how your brain is wired, it’s important to keep your mind stimulated by new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and experiences. Keeping your sense sharp allows the synapses in your brain to think in new ways. Expose yourself to an entirely different point of view through a new cultural experience.

“Foreign experiences increase both cognitive flexibility and depth and integrativeness of thought, the ability to make deep connections between disparate forms,” says Adam Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School, whose research focuses on the cognitive connection between international travel and creativity.

He emphasizes the importance of not just going to different places, but also immersing yourself into their culture. By engaging with the local art, cuisine, and people, you allow yourself to really learn new ways of thinking that you can apply to your own ideas.

5) Channel your inner child.

Children are considered "naturally creative" only because they know no limits to their creativity. Since children are willing to go in any direction with their creative, they don’t hold back. Channel this mentality, especially when it comes to taking a completely different direction with your work. Instead of being concerned or self-conscious that your work isn’t good enough, be willing to take risks to push your creative limits.

Most importantly, have fun with your work. A child sees everything as an adventure and makes the most of every moment. Instead of being concern about all your responsibilities at once, focus all your energy into one project at a time so you can put your best foot forward. 

6) Join a coworking space.

A study at University of Michigan found two key ways coworking spaces create unique opportunities for creativity: flexibility and autonomy. A lot of it has to do with the physical setup of the space: The flexibility to control your space to suit your personal preference encourages creativity. Some studies have shown that have the ability to customize your workspace leads to higher levels of productivity. Your creative funk may be because you’re not in an environment that is conducive to your personal style of work.

Plus, the proximity to others means ample opportunity for collaboration. Collaboration can be a catalyst for innovation, and coworking spaces are great ways to throw yourself into a new environment with like-minded, innovative people.

Not sure where to find coworking space near you? Start by entering your city into DeskSurfing.net to do a local search.

7) Incorporate breaks into every work day.

Ever noticed that some of your best ideas come to you at the most random times, like the car or the shower? There's a reason for that: These breaks allow your mind to continue to work on these ideas without getting stuck in a funk where you can’t organize your thoughts.

Adrian Furnman, Ph.D describes in a Psychology Today article, Adrian Furnman, Ph.D says it’s important to give your thinking "incubation time" once you’ve been actively working on an idea for some time.

Brian Halligan, HubSpot's own CEO and co-founder, is a big advocate for naps at the workplace. He actually finds his best ideas come to him when he just falling asleep or just waking up. In an interview with the New York Times, he said he pushes to make the office into an environment where employees can "work less and think more" by providing nap rooms to encourage folks to take a break. This, he says, will help spark creativity.

Make sure to allow yourself to block off designated break sessions in your calendar so you don’t lose that time after being scheduled for endless, back-to-back meetings.

8) Connect with creative people.

When you’ve hit a wall with your own ideas, it may be time to tap into the creativity of others. Surrounding yourself with people with whom you can share and get feedback on your ideas and opinions is not only good for your creativity, it's good for your career. These different points of view can act as fresh perspective on a project you’ve been staring at for too long.

Not only can creative people give you feedback on your projects, their own drive will keep you motivated to do your best work. A healthy dose of competition could be just what the doctor ordered when you need to force yourself to really channel your inner creative spirit.

This rings especially true when these connection challenge your way of thinking. If you surround yourself with like-minded people, you could fall into the trap of confirmation bias where you never see the faults in your own work because everyone already agrees with you. Although it could be hard to take this critique, it’ll force you to think in ways you never thought of before.

To start networking with other creative minds, you can explore people’s work in platforms like Behance or Instagram. If you’re looking to connect with people in person, attend conferences and networking events related to both your industry and your interests.

9) Keep a doodle journal at your desk.

Are you a visual thinker? If so, you might find it hard to find a direction with your ideas when you’re limited to the four corners of your screen. Change your routine and grab a pencil and paper to let your ideas free form in a more physical outlet. A blank sheet of paper or whiteboard may just be the best outlet to allow you to organize your thought process into one space.

According to Sunni Brown, author of The Doodle Revolution, “Even if you’re just scribbling in the margins, you’re lighting up different networks in your brain and when you do that, you’re engaging different information."

Creating visual maps of all your different thoughts allows you to see the relationship between your ideas. Physically writing it down takes your ideas a step further and forces you to put them into words and physical shapes. If you can see your thought process, it will be easier to understand the direction you’ll want to go in.

10) Unwind by watching funny content.

Have you hit the point in your creativity block that you’re spending hours watching cat videos? Good news: This may actually be a good thing. Research shows there's a strong correlation between humor and creativity. A laugh can actually bring you closer to those moments of inspiration. Humor also puts you in a better mood, allowing you to think more freely and better solve creative problems.

If you look at your project from a more lighthearted perspective, you’ll allow yourself to have a fresh perspective on the problem at hand. Start with this list of funny tweets and social media posts that real brands have posted for inspiration.

11) Listen to music while you work.

Need a way to hone in on your work without zoning out? Although there's been a lot of debate over whether listening to music will actually increase your intelligence over time (a theory often called the Mozart Effect), there are still productivity benefits to tuning in. Listening to music can help you focus on whatever task you're currently doing. It can also put you in a better mood, and even calm your nerves if you're feeling anxious.

Certain forms of music can help channel your creativity better than others and tune out the noises of the office. While music with extreme changes of pace or lyrics can be distracting, ambient music can help increase processing levels and and promote creative thinking.

Everyone has their own taste in music, but some of the most work conducive genres include classical, electronic, and even video game soundtracks. Be sure to check out HubSpot's own list list of recommended productive playlists.

One new practice can work for you differently over time if you start to get bored of it. If you ever start to feel a practice has become too routine for you, revisit this post to try out another idea.

What else do you do to channel your inner creativity? Share with us in the comments.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2apIeCC

How to Use Social Media at Every Stage of the Funnel [Free Guide]

Consumers turn to social media when making a purchase -- that much we know. They might search for information prior to purchasing and then again, post-purchase, for customer service and company updates.

Knowing this, it's imperative that your company is there, providing them with the resources they need to choose your product over your competitor's.

The best way to do this is to break down the customer lifecycle into four stages: Attract, Convert, Close, and Delight. This makes it much easier to create content according to each customer's mindset. For example, you might focus on shareable, engaging content to attract new customers, or you might try out a loyalty program for delighting your current customers.

No matter what stage your customers are in, social media is a great tool to nurture them through the funnel. That's why HubSpot and Bitly joined forces to bring you How to Use Social Media at Every Stage of the Funnel.

Download this free guide to receive:

• A high-level overview of the inbound methodology as a whole.
• A breakdown of the buyer's journey and the different lifecycle stages a customer goes through when making a purchase.
• How to use social media to attract, convert, close, and delight customers.
• The different metrics to measure your success with social media at each different stage of the funnel.
• Real examples of companies using social media successfully.
• Much more about using social media to nurture customers through the funnel!

Download your copy today by clicking here.

via HubSpot Marketing Blog http://bitly.com/2aIDR88