Sales and marketing terminology
October 28, 2009
Terminology / Acronyms ABC figures: This is the independently audited sales figure for all recognised publications in the UK. By using the ABC figure, you can quickly establish how much the advertising will cost per 1,000 readers.
Account Managers: These are sales people who have great skills in getting repeat orders and maximising revenue returns from existing accounts. It is very rare that a good “Account Manager” will be good at winning new clients.
Blue Bird: This is an unexpected sales opportunity that has a high chance of turning into profitable business.
BRAD: This book lists every UK publication including magazines, newspapers, vertical publications etc. It also contains key information i.e. “ABC figures”, advertising deadlines etc and is one of the most useful tools available if you are looking to place advertising or embark on DIY PR.
Comfort Factor Statements: Also known as credibility statements they show that you can deliver exactly what you say you can. They must not be emotive i.e. include words like “the best”, “fantastic”, “amazing”, “superior” or contain anything that cannot be proven i.e. “high level of customer satisfaction”, “unparalleled support”, unless supported by facts.
Commission Plans: This is how a salesperson is paid for their efforts. It is strongly advised that you include a minimum contribution and ensure that if you plotted a graph of gross margin and percentage of target it would create an incremental curve.
CRM: “Customer Relationship Management” This is software that organises all your sales contacts, schedules activities and is used in targeted marketing campaigns. This is vital to all sales operations and there are many packages to choose from costing anything from £80.00 per user upwards i.e. ACT! Goldmine etc. Previously known as TCM.
Double Bubble: Sales slang for two people being paid out the full amount of commission on a specific deal / incentive or the same person being awarded double the amount of commission.
Elevator Pitch: This term comes from the theory that if you are in a lift on the 10 th floor of a building you should be able to explain what you do before it gets to the ground floor i.e. about 10 seconds. This is often the opening statement of any form of communication and is predominantly used in lead generation and marketing activities.
Farmers: These are sales people who have great skills in getting repeat orders and maximising revenue streams from existing accounts. It is very rare that a good “Farmer” will be good at winning new clients.
Gross Margin: The difference between your buy price and your sell price.
Hunters: These are sales people who are very good at winning new accounts and getting the first order but tend to lose interest when they know that the new customer will continue to buy, this often makes them very bad farmers. Also known as New Business Sales Exec’s.
Kick Back: This is when a company gets an extra soft margin when they buy sufficient numbers / value of a product. i.e. if you buy 10 cars we will give you / or the company free servicing.
Minimum Contribution: This is the account value that all sales staff are required to reach, in gross margin terms, before any commission. This is put in place to ensure that commission is not paid before staff have covered their basic salary plus all other costs i.e. NI, travel, phone, expenses etc.
New Business Sales Exec’s: These are sales people who are very good at winning new accounts and getting the first order but tend to lose interest when they know that the new customer will continue to buy, this often makes them very bad farmers. Also known as “Hunters”.
OTE: “On Target Earnings” This is how much the sales person will earn if they hit their sales target. Please note that when the person has achieved 50% of target they should not earn more than 30% of their OTE. By using this method it creates a further incentive for the salesperson to hit the their sales target.
Over Ride: This is the term used when a sales person over achieves his target and hence is given a large bonus. Remember the bigger the “over rider”, the bigger the incentive and hence this increases the motivation to over achieve the gross margin sales target.
ppc: “pay per click” This is a much-targeted method of advertising and enables sponsored links to be placed at the top of search engine results when your particular key words or phrases are encountered. For each sponsored link placed you are charged from as little as 10 pence upwards.
Prospect: A company / person that you know will require your services and they are looking to purchase. Particularly if you have been asked to bid for the work
RTR: “Ready to Run” This is the term used mainly by advertising agencies or company’s for an advert which is ready to be placed. It is then common practice to place the advert on the deadline in order to get the lowest possible price.
Sales Forecast: The system that sales people and managers use to look at how much business is likely to be won each month, unfortunately these are often misleading due to sales processes that minimise inaccuracies not being implemented.
Sand Bagging: This is a tactic used by sales people who hold back orders so that as many as possible fall in the same month or quarter and hence they over achieve the target to win a large Over Rider. This is not only expensive because extra commission is paid but can also have very negative effects on cash flow. By having a properly implemented Sales Forecast it is very easy to establish if this is occurring.
SEO: “Search Engine Optimisation” This is the method of making sure that your website gets lots of traffic and enables your company to be listed higher in the search engines for specific key words and phrases i.e. car hire Newcastle, buy discount fishing rods, mortgage advice etc. The downside of this methodology is that it takes several months for your website to get a good position on the major search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo etc.
Soft Margin: This is most commonly found in the reseller market and generally provided by the manufacturer in form of marketing assistance i.e. for every £10,000 of product x sold we will provide you with y amount of money that must be spent on promoting our product / service.
Suspect: A company / person that you know will require your services but nothing else is known.
TCM: “Time Contact Management” This is software that organises all your sales contacts, schedules activities and is used in targeted marketing campaigns. This is vital to all sales operations and there are many packages to choose from costing anything from £80.00 per user upwards i.e. ACT, Goldmine etc. Now known as CRM.
TMUP: “Target Market User Profile” this is the type of company / person that would be a prime target for your business i.e. single male 30 – 40 and divorced or SME services based companies with staff of between 3-10 people based within 5 miles of central London etc. Finding and Targeting your prime TMUP will reduce the cost of sales and increase marketing and new business efficiency’s.
Tyre Kicker: This is a company / person who pretends to be interested in your product / service. This term comes from the motor trade when customers would kick the tyres to fain interest when they had no intention of buying a car and were just browsing / looking for a test drive. Sales people who are not performing and wish to give the impression that their sales pipeline is strong often put this type of prospect on their sales forecast.
USP’s: Unique Selling Points i.e. what makes your company different from its competitors. This is used predominantly in lead generation and marketing activities and therefore is a MUST HAVE for any sales strategy to work
Dave Ashton
http://www.articlesbase.com/sales-articles/sales-and-marketing-terminology-3823.html
Introduction to Yahoo! Search Marketing
October 28, 2009
Formerly known as Overture, the brand’s paid search division became Yahoo! Search Marketing on March 1, 2005. Yahoo! Search now serves more than 100 million searches every day. Today, Yahoo! is a 27 per cent piece of the whole US search pie, and is considered to be the major Search Engine worldwide. The proportion places Yahoo! on the same level as Google and MSN. Search engine marketing was a $5.75 billion industry in 2005 and it will nearly double to $11.1 billion in 2010, according to SEMPO’s (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) latest industry survey. Consequently, by doing marketing on Yahoo! Search, your business stands a good chance of succeeding.
Yahoo! Search Marketing is a pay-per-click product under Yahoo!’s management. If you use Yahoo’s pay per click program, your site will appear at the top of the search results pages for Yahoo!, AltaVista and many more search sites. Yahoo! Search Marketing is primarily a manually-edited pay-per-click search provider. Here is how to advertise with it.
1. Write ads for your web site.
2. Submit them and have them approved by Yahoo! It is best to submit a landing page that is obviously and immediately relevant to the keyword.
3. Place bids for search terms you want. If you place the highest bid for a specific keyword or set of keywords, then you rank number one in these paid listings. Ensure you target your keywords properly and do not get in bidding wars. Bid on keywords that are less popular. Do not bid high prices for exceptionally broad or generic phrases, or make sure you use negative words to block terms you are not interested in.
4. The ads appear in the search results on Yahoo! Search Marketing partner websites. The service comes with a $5 deposit which is converted to click credit. There is no monthly minimum spend. You should take the time to set up your own account and complete the process yourself since you know your products better and are more interested in your own success than some service providers.
Yahoo! believes that a combination of human review and mathematics works better than just mathematics alone. Yahoo! Search Marketing Solutions offers sponsored search and submit products, providing one-stop search marketing resource for businesses, which includes the following products:
– Sponsored Search Listings, the flagship search advertising product – Content Match, Yahoo!’s contextual advertising listings – Local Match, Yahoo!’s local sponsored search offering – Site Match Self Serve and Site Match Xchange, Yahoo!’s search URL submission products – Yahoo! Product Submit, the Yahoo! Shopping URL submission program – Yahoo! Express, the Yahoo! Directory URL submission program – Marketing Console, which enables advertisers to track campaign performance across multiple online channels – Search Optimizer, which allows advertisers to improve their campaign performance and reduce the amount of time spent managing their listings
Benefits of Yahoo! Search Marketing
– You can set your own daily budget – You only pay when your site receives traffic, which is very targeted traffic since you can pick the keywords you want your site to show up for – Extensive reporting tools – Great research tool that shows what keywords people are searching for – Free conversion tracker to see how your traffic converts into sales
Jatupol Tanaruthai
http://www.articlesbase.com/sem-articles/introduction-to-yahoo-search-marketing-68261.html
What Do You Want To Pay Today? Pay Per Click Overview
October 14, 2009
In the sphere of advanced Pay Per Click (PPC) strategies it is possible to compartmentalize your tactics to enhance overall performance while minimizing costs.
What that means is you can decide how you want to use Pay Per Click and when you want to use it.
Pay per Click is a feature of two companies, Overture and Google Adwords. These firms allow you to bid on targeted advertising. The more money you are willing to spend in PPC advertising the more often your advertisement will come up on higher ranking websites. The price you bid is the price you pay for every visitor to your website that was directed through pay per click.
You could pay for the management of your PPC advertising, but with a little research you should be able to manage your own account without too many difficulties.
When you sign up as a client for PPC you fill out information about what keywords or phrases you are seeking to target. You also devise a brief advertisement generally consisting of text only (this text can be altered at any time). You also include the web address you need the PPC link to send customers to.
Strategies for experienced users of Pay Per Click allow you to place your bid based on the Return on Investment (ROI) performance. This allows for ad price adjustments based on the purchasing performance of your visitors.
Some PPC clients will maximize certain time frames and turn off advertising during other parts of the day. By doing a little research and conducting some initial micromanaging many PPC customers are finding they are better able to increase their ROI.
If you are concerned that there may be more potential clients that will use PPC it is possible to place a cap on the maximum clicks you are willing to pay for in a day. When that click count is reached the ad is removed from circulation.
If the idea of PPC is new to you it is possible you may wonder where these ads are placed.
Your PPC ads will show up on potentially hundreds and even thousands of websites that provide information or services on the keyword or phrases you’ve chosen. These sites have elected to place these ads in exchange for a commission on any ppc that originates from their site. This commission is managed by the PPC company you are dealing with and is not an added expense to you.
For many web owners this is a win-win situation. They are confident your product has a tie to what they offer and when someone clicks on your link the web owner gains some residual income. In some cases that income more than pays for the costs associated with operating their website.
Scott Lindsay
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/what-do-you-want-to-pay-today-pay-per-click-overview-57385.html
What Do You Want To Pay Today? Pay Per Click Overview
October 14, 2009
In the sphere of advanced Pay Per Click (PPC) strategies it is possible to compartmentalize your tactics to enhance overall performance while minimizing costs.
What that means is you can decide how you want to use Pay Per Click and when you want to use it.
Pay per Click is a feature of two companies, Overture and Google Adwords. These firms allow you to bid on targeted advertising. The more money you are willing to spend in PPC advertising the more often your advertisement will come up on higher ranking websites. The price you bid is the price you pay for every visitor to your website that was directed through Pay Per Click.
You could pay for the management of your PPC advertising, but with a little research you should be able to manage your own account without too many difficulties.
When you sign up as a client for PPC you fill out information about what keywords or phrases you are seeking to target. You also devise a brief advertisement generally consisting of text only (this text can be altered at any time). You also include the web address you need the PPC link to send customers to.
Strategies for experienced users of pay per click allow you to place your bid based on the Return on Investment (ROI) performance. This allows for ad price adjustments based on the purchasing performance of your visitors.
Some PPC clients will maximize certain time frames and turn off advertising during other parts of the day. By doing a little research and conducting some initial micromanaging many PPC customers are finding they are better able to increase their ROI.
If you are concerned that there may be more potential clients that will use PPC it is possible to place a cap on the maximum clicks you are willing to pay for in a day. When that click count is reached the ad is removed from circulation.
If the idea of ppc is new to you it is possible you may wonder where these ads are placed.
Your PPC ads will show up on potentially hundreds and even thousands of websites that provide information or services on the keyword or phrases you’ve chosen. These sites have elected to place these ads in exchange for a commission on any PPC that originates from their site. This commission is managed by the PPC company you are dealing with and is not an added expense to you.
For many web owners this is a win-win situation. They are confident your product has a tie to what they offer and when someone clicks on your link the web owner gains some residual income. In some cases that income more than pays for the costs associated with operating their website.
Scott Lindsay
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/what-do-you-want-to-pay-today-pay-per-click-overview-57385.html
The Pros and Cons of Pay Per Click Marketing
October 7, 2009
Are you considering whether to run a pay per click marketing campaign for you company? Maybe though you are not quit sure what you might be getting into. Then it is in your best interests to know both the pros and cons that come with such a campaign.
With any type of business idea a person likes to look at the benefits first because they want to see the positive side. So that is the place to start. What exactly are the pros of running a pay per click campaign for your business and product.
1. Anyone can do it. Pay per click marketing can be used by anyone. You do not necessarily need deep pockets to get started. Yes you need some start up funds. But you get to set your own budget. Whether it is a $100 or $500 or $5000 you get to determine the amount of money you want to spend. You have the control instead of someone else. Pay per click marketing is available to everyone. And you do not need to be a genius to get started.
2. The results of a pay per click campaign can usually be seen immediately. It does not take weeks or months to know whether your campaign has been successful. You are able to track the results of your campaign as it is happening. This gives you the ability to make quick decisions about your campaign as well. If your campaign is going well you can increase your budget and if not you can cut back. You’ll know how to react when it matters instead of after it is too late.
3. Your website doesn’t need to follow all the SEO rules. Organic search engine results rely on websites being well optimized. But with a pay per click campaign you are buying placement at the top of the search engine results page. You get to automatically go to the head of the class.
4. You can bid on any keyword or phrase that you want. Most businesses and products have all sorts of keywords related to it. And you can have a piece of as many as you would like for a price. All you need to do is keep your bidding competitive.
So now that you know what some of the pros are it is important to know a few of the cons as well.
1. Pay per click fraud. Not every visitor received is a legitimate prospect. Some clicks may come from competitors that are looking to cost you money. It does happen at times. So it is important that you take the time to analyze your click traffic periodically. That way you might spot illegitimate clicks. If this does happen and you can prove it you can often get your money back.
2. Effective pay per click advertising can be expensive over the long run. And you have to spend the time tracking your campaign so that your costs do not get out of hand. You can easily lose thousands if you think you are going to set up a campaign that will run itself.
3. You have to pay the bill each month. If you don’t your campaign can get cut off. Once again this emphasizes the point of active management being needed. Having the time and resources set aside before you begin is important to a successful campaign.
Pay per click marketing has been the single biggest breakthrough in advertising since the invention of the TV. The dollars being spent on this form of advertising are only getting bigger each year. If you need to reach a large audience and the internet has the single largest audience you are ever going to find then pay per click marketing might be right for you.
Cash Miller
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-articles/the-pros-and-cons-of-pay-per-click-marketing-755071.html