What do you care about most as a marketer? Driving traffic to your site AND creating either great leads or sales, depending on the type of business. And knowing where these people came from and what they are interested in. Then, wouldn’t you love to target offers, content and communications based on who they are?

Well, that capability is now being provided by Hubspot. The company had its Inbound Marketing conference this week, which drew over 2,800 marketers from around the country. In each session I attended, I sat next to marketers that were so excited to purchase and start using Hubspot. There was true excitement in their eyes about the prospect of how this tool can turn them into true marketing rockstars!

Hubspot has made a concerted effort to centralize as many marketing reports and capabilities as possible so you do not need to use separate tools for each component of marketing. It’s a true “all-in-one” marketing solution.

So What is Hubspot and What Does it Do?

The roots of Hubspot stem from the unique value of inbound marketing: provide high quality content for your audience to drive traffic through SEO and social media engagement, rather than the outdated model of cold calls and outbound efforts. “Hubspot 3,” the company’s latest version of software, takes inbound marketing to a much higher level by serving as the ONE centralized dashboard to manage all of your marketing. This database gives you a complete history of every interaction you have had with your leads and customers across channels. Some of the new features include:

• Smart Call to Actions: Enables you to create images and calls-to-action for your website or emails that dynamically adapt to reflect the viewer’s interests, industry, lifecycle stage, or other areas of segmentation. How cool is that?
  
• Smart fields: A long-awaited answer to anyone who is sick and tired of filling out yet another website form with the same information. As you collect more information about your leads, Smart Forms remove any field that has been completed in the past, creating shorter and shorter forms for your leads without sacrificing valuable information.
• Email: Target specific segments, and personalize your sender, subject, and message body content with any field or custom field from your contact profile.
  
• Workflows: Workflows enable you to create dynamically evolving segments and automate marketing actions. More than email automation, workflow enables marketers to trigger campaigns, change contact profile properties, score leads, send notifications, and sync to a CRM.

To learn more about Hubspot, request a demo.

A recent New York Times article entitled “Hello? Is Anyone There?” article pointed out that leading online companies, including Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter, make it difficult or impossible to reach those companies by telephone.

So how are you supposed to get help from such companies? Via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or some other online venue, of course. Which means good luck to you if you have no online access when seeking said help.

Even some companies that aren’t primarily or exclusively online make obtaining human help by telephone…challenging. That’s why sites such as Get Human and Dial A Human are so popular – especially online, ironically enough. They provide tips and tricks for bypassing automated response systems to reach actual human operators and support providers.

This apparent continuing commercial abandonment of telephone support is a potential gold mine for companies willing and able to buck the trend. And modern (or virtual) telephone systems, including those reviewed right here at Comparz, offer features that enable businesses large and small to offer superior customer care easily and affordably. A newly introduced offering, Kazoo from 2600hz.com, delivers enterprise-class features and integrations with numerous applications, devices, and systems, with pricing beginning at free. And it runs in the cloud, which means no hardware or software is required to run at your business to get started.

Despite what online and social media powerhouses and pundits may do and say, telephones are not going away anytime soon. So read the reviews at Comparz, then examine your current telephone services for opportunities to enhance customer care, reduce operating costs, and generate more revenues!

As a professional CRM consultant, I find that many business owners or salespeople say that they simply do not have the time to commit to a CRM system.  There is the design, the meetings, the training, and the other factors that create the downtime when implementing a CRM.  In short, all of this is for lack of a better term, “time that we’re not making money” and it can be a roadblock when deciding which CRM to implement.

When making the jump to implementing a CRM at your company, you need to decide what type of path you want to take in consideration of time.   I’ll use my “buying a house analogy” to clarify.  Consider the house to be your CRM where the data is the furnishings that you need to put in there – and find room for much of the time.  If you want to hold off on moving in to your new house, until everything is perfect (refinishing floors, walls, redoing kitchens, etc.), there are CRM systems out there for you.  You’ll spend a lot of time planning, covering all bases for data, reports, completing all customizations so that all is perfect and ready for launch.  Let’s just say that awkward “where are we going to put all our stuff?” conversation won’t be needed. 

However, some like to just move in, get dirty and fix it as you go (that’s more my style to be honest) which can work very well, allowing for changes as your staff adjusts their techniques and processes to coincide with the technology.  In the beginning, you will end up accounting for the necessary processes and data imports (and customization), knowing that add-on products, other changes and further training will be needed.  This is like storing that extra stuff in the basement until you know exactly there you’ll put it (if at all).  However, as the comfort level of the team increases, the space and time for advanced training and enhancement also increases. 

Then there are the “install and walk away” type implementations.   A little server work, some brief training and away you go on your way to selling and using your CRM.  Customizations will inevitably come later, but at least the initial time spent is very little.  You and your team will need to learn and pick up things quickly, but companies realize that they need something and are satisfied with the out of the box as it is better than what they had before.  Remember moving into your first house and you thought, “How will I fill up all this space?” You had a couch, a bed, and a TV and the house seemed sway too big.  However, within no time you filled it up albeit leaving that dining room empty for a couple of years.   

A quick side note, keep in mind that beyond the initial implementation, you have to take the future enhancements and training into account for time spent.  You’re very rarely “finished” with a CRM implementation as with any sales process that evolves and changes, your CRM system also has to adapt to those changes.  Consider your home – are we ever done changing it, improving it, or renovating?  There is always maintenance which comes with the territory, but keeping the value of any home (or CRM system) requires some upkeep and changes throughout the years. 

All that being said, this time spent during the implementation (training, design, configuration, and testing) as well as future design and enhancements is a cost.  It’s not as easy to calculate, but it’s a cost and something to consider when discovering the best option for you and your company.  As I said in my last post, you’ll never really be ready, but the smart business person realizes they have to invest the money to make the money – consider all this time to just be part of that initial investment.  Find the software and consulting team that will work with you based on not only your budget restraints, but your time requirements, another cost that is often overlooked.

By their very nature, nonprofits have to be extremely careful with their money. That may be a big reason why many of them are moving to cloud-based software for many of their primary tasks—fundraising, grant management, association management, donor management and travel management.

Although there are plenty of general Software as a Service (SaaS) applications that nonprofits can use effectively in their business, there are specialized apps that cater to the specific needs of the nonprofit. One area is association management. SaaS-based tools in this category provide a host of important functions, from membership and event management to marketing, e-commerce and reporting. Some of the most popular are Association Anywhere AMS (www.acgisoftware.com), MemberSuite (www.membersuite.com) and CDC Software’s Association Management System (www.cdcsoftware.com).

Another important are for nonprofits is fundraising. SaaS tools in this category help nonprofits build and manage integrated fundraising campaigns with real-time processing. They also enable organizations to offer multiple gift types and donation processes. Top SaaS offerings in this category include Blackbaud, which recently acquired top fundraising SaaS company Convio and also owns fundraising leader eTapestry; Click&Pledge, MatchMaker FundRaising and Salsa Labs.

Grant management is another big area for nonprofits. Tools like SmartSimple, eCivis and CTK provide tools for searching, developing and managing grants, along with the reporting and compliance to back them up.

Donor management is another important area. With options such as DonorPro, Affinaquest, and Orange Leap, nonprofits can create profile types and segment donors, enabling better relationship management. These tools also offer volunteer tracking, campaign administration and integration with accounting software.

Nonprofits searching for a more comprehensive SaaS-based solutions geared to their specific needs should look at some of the resources available to them. Apricot by CTK, for example, is a SaaS-based suite geared to small and medium-sized organizations that includes outcomes software, donor and volunteer tracking software and non-profit database software in one package. For larger organizations, CTK offers OnlineDataManager, which includes an agency-wide centralized intake system, real-time reports, relationship/household/family linking, the ability to track clients and donors, and program-specific data tracking.

Advanced Solutions International’s iMIS Suites provides the core functions for nonprofits, including interactions with members, donors and other constituents, along with 30 optional modules based on functionality. Serenic is another company with comprehensive offering. Its suite includes an integrated financial management along with grant, budget and donor management.

The insurance industry has always been a mix of somewhat old-fashioned sales and marketing and newer technology. It’s fairly common, for example, for a medium or large agency to have a Salesforce.com or SAP Business ByDesign platform already implemented—less so for smaller agencies.
 
For smaller agencies, which tend to move a bit more slowly toward technology, Software as a Service (or SaaS) is a lifeline they can’t afford to miss. With SaaS, companies can essentially "rent" software monthly instead of having to buy, install and maintain expensive systems.  Agencies simply pay for what they use.
 
The SaaS or "cloud-based" applications available to the insurance industry have exploded in the past few years. For example, Cameleon’s (www.cameleon-software.com) Configure/Price/Quote (CPQ) solution helps agents generate price quotes and sales proposals. iPipeline (www.ipipeline.com), another insurance-focused SaaS solution, offers a quote engine, electronic policy delivery, an agency management system, access to forms from more than 100 insurance agencies for brokers, and a CRM system designed specifically for insurance sales. iPipeline is a particularly good choice for companies that don’t have an existing CRM system. ProspX (www.prospx.com) is another good choice, offering a full array of insurance-based tools.
 
For insurance agencies that have already standardized on SAP’s BusinessByDesign or Salesforce.com, there are even more options. Salesforce.com, for example, integrates fully with Cameleon CPQ, ProspX and several other SaaS-based insurance apps including InsureVue and PolicyTrak.
 
There are other SaaS-based options as well, from larger, well-established vendors with large portfolios. One is SAP Business One, billed as software for insurance providers, which has recently moved to the cloud. Another is IBM's Genelco, which can be used to handle life and health policy processing as well as annuity product portfolios. Accenture also has a life insurance platform suite with a cloud interface that helps identify underwriting risk and enables collaboration, along with much more functionality.
 
There is clearly a SaaS solution for every size and type of insurance company. It’s a field that tends to move more slowly than some, but the benefits far outweigh any potential risk, and insurance agencies that want to move forward, improve customer service and increase profits should strongly consider it.

With web technologies constantly evolving, my job is to stay on top of trends and strategies that can make our clients' websites more effective and competitive, and then filter through that pool of knowledge such that I can explain these trends to our clients in ways they can understand.

"...in ways that they can understand" is the hard part. I write a lot, to the point of it being overwhelming, and it I know it. So this year I started using short video clips using Screencast-o-Matic to explain concepts and offer visual examples of training & troubleshooting, and the feedback we've had has been along the lines of "this is exactly what we needed!"

Example of a Customer Support Video (Screencast)

Below is an example of one I did to show a client (Kate) how to update a section of her website. I've also used video to explain web design concepts such as responsive design, something that can definitely be confusing. 

Benefits to Using Screencasts

There are several benefits to incorporating video into your support mix:

• Reduced keyboard fatigue
• Video forces you to parse what you need to convey into a format that lets clients visualize and retain more, without being as overwhelming as a 5 paragraph email.
• Using video also demonstrates that your company is in-step with the latest trends, and adds credibility which strengthens your clients' reliance on us as a service provider.
• These short, quick-fix/how-to videos are easier to produce than a series of screenshots and narrative.

How "Produced" Should it Be?

One of the goals here is to streamline your own efforts, so taking hours to produce a 1-minute "quick-fix" clip isn't very practical. However, every piece of content you put out there should carry your company's voice and be representative of your brand. So, you should find a balance that works for you.

In the case of customer support videos, it's important to keep the production quality high enough (which includes the narrative) to be able to use it in your support library with other clients. You should set up some standard editing & production guidelines (titles, title screen/end screen text, video dimensions, zooming & tooltip effects, etc.). If the topic is more complex, consider a series of short tutorials covering each step (so you can send off a single video to someone stuck at a certain spot in the process). Then, spend some more time reproducing the tutorials into an in-depth video with a higher production quality (scripted narrative, overlay effects, possibly support material below the video).

When it comes to social marketing and the web, there is always a “latest and greatest” technology or app that seems like a must-have for businesses that want to grow and be seen. The latest is Pinterest, a site that allows individuals or companies to post (or “pin”) items and images that they consider valuable from other sites. You can organize your items on your Pinterest page in a variety of ways, depending on what makes sense to you and your audience.
 
Hobbyists are using it in droves. Where else can you find entire pages dedicated to cactuses, high heeled shoes or the art of complaining? But what about businesses? Is it worth your time?
 
Increasingly, the answer is yes, for three reasons. First, you will look (and impressions are important) old-fashioned if you don’t have a presence on Pinterest. Secondly, it’s becoming influential fast. In the past few months, studies have found that Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Goggle+, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.  And thirdly, it may actually add value. It’s a very busy place these days, with lots of potential customers. Keep in mind that the site doesn’t allow active advertising. That’s fine; there are plenty of other ways to use the site to your business’s advantage.
 
A small business could use Pinterest, for example, to share facts and tips for their customer base, with the goal of driving that traffic to own site. Make sure that you are posting things that your potential customer base will find valuable. Businesses can also put “pin it” buttons on their own sites, so users can post items from your site on their own Pinterest page. Finally, follow your customers, other businesses and fans. This is a great way to increase your presence exponentially.

Expense management software allows companies to enter and approve expenses for employees from a single location. It provides a real time-time view into how money is being spent, and can be used to bill clients and reimburse workers.

Two products that provide this functionality are Replicon's Web Expense and Nexonia's Expense Reports. They are both cloud-based, so you don't have to download anything onto your computer. Both programs are also well suited for small and mid-sized businesses.

How do the two products compare side-by-side?

Features

Nexonia's Expense Reports comes with a lot of great features. It automatically provides digital receipt imaging, email notifications and reminds, multi-level approvals, and supports multiple currencies and exchange rates. The software can also auto-import from credit and bank cards and define custom tax codes as needed. Features is definitely one of Expense Report's strong points.

Replicon's Web Expense has a lot of the same features, but some of them are tied to Replicon's Timesheet, another program by the company. WebExpense is also missing a few advanced features, including ACH direct deposit and the ability to split expenses across accounts.

Support

Expense Reports offers phone and email support on Monday through Friday between 8AM and 8PM (EDT). They also have a live chat team that can answer general questions about the software. WebExpense, on the other hand, offers phone and email support on a 24/7 basis. The quality of the technical support is also well regarded by most of its customers. They do not have a live chat service, however.

Mobile

The mobile capabilities of the two products differ slightly. Expense Reports has a mobile application for the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, and Android. Replicon's Web Expense just has a mobile application for the iPhone and iPad.

Integrations

Nexonia's Expense Reports can integrate with Quickbooks Desktop, NetSuite, Simply Accounting, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP, Oracle Financials, and more. Replicon's Web Expense does not have quite as many integrations available, but can still integrate with Microsoft Project and Quickbooks.

Price

Nexonia's Expense Reports costs $15/user/month. It also charges $20/month for purchase orders and $50/month for customer support. Nexonia also provides a discount to companies based on their overall number of users: 11-20 users grants a 10% discount, 21-50 users results in a 15% discount, and so forth.

Replicon's Web Expense is quite a bit cheaper: $4/user/month. That said, you're probably going to want to purchase some of the other products in the Replicon suite to get access to different functions. Timeoff is an extra $6/user/month, Timeattend is an extra $9/user/month, Timecost is an extra $16/user/month, and Timebill is an extra $20/user/month.

Bottom Line

Both products should be able to serve your expense management needs. Nexonia's Expense Reports has lots of great features, and Replicon's Web Expense provides a more affordable option if you go with the basic service.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the expense management category. Click here to view Comparz' expense management rankings.

Recruiting software offers numerous benefits, but choosing a provider can be a difficult process for an organization. Two products that are well suited for small and mid-sized businesses are MaxHire and Zoho Recruit.

How do they compare with each other?

Features

MaxHire and Zoho Recruit have the same basic features that you would expect to find in recruiting software. You can send out mass mailings, post to job boards, manage duplicate resumes, and so forth. They also tend to lack the same features - neither one has VoIP integration (the ability to make phone calls over the internet) or allows companies to send text messages to candidates. Overall, there's not that much feature distinction between the two products.

Support

Zoho Recruit offers phone support, but only to its paid users. It also provides email support and live chat assistance. Instead of standard business hours, it has a general policy of trying to respond to all requests within 24 hours (with an exception for weekends and holidays).

MaxHire offers phone and email support every Monday through Friday between 6AM and 6PM (PST). If you are a paid user, you receive priority assistance and a guaranteed response time of one hour. It does not provide live chat service for simple questions, however.

Integrations

MaxHire and Zoho Recruit can both integrate with Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. Maxhire can also integrate with Kenexa Provelt and Professional Advantage (PAM), however, while Zoho Recruit can also integrate with a variety of different Zoho products, such as Zoho CRM, Calendar and Writer.

Mobile

MaxHire is the clear winner for this category. It has mobile applications that have been optimized for the iPhone, iPad and Android. In contrast, Zoho Recruit does not a mobile application at this time. Zoho does have mobile versions of many of its other products, however.

API

MaxHire and Zoho Recruit both have an application programming interface available. They also both have a strong community of developers and extensive documentation on how to use the API and obtain authentication for web methods.

Pricing

There is a fairly large distinction between the pricing plans of the two products. Maxhire starts at $99/user/month, with a five employee minimum. The pricing is guaranteed to stay the same the entire time you are a customer, and updates to the software are provided free of charge. A pricing option for 1-4 users will also be made available in the near future.

Zoho Recruit, on the other hand, only charges $19/employee/month. This price goes up, however, if you'd like to include various add-ons. For example, you can get an extra 1GB of storage for $3/month, a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook for $5/recruiter/month, and the ability to parse documents from your computer for $6/recruiter month. Zoho Recruit provides a 10% discount for annual subscriptions.

Bottom line

MaxHire offers a bit more than Zoho Recruit, but it's also more expensive. If you're on a limited budget, you might want to choose Zoho Recruit. If price isn't as much of an issue for your company, you can receive faster support and mobile functionality by going with MaxHire.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the recruiting software category. Click here to view Comparz' recruiting software rankings.

New Coke. Google Phone. Edsel. The annals of business are littered with examples of product flops introduced by otherwise very savvy enterprises but whose resounding failures might arguably be attributed to the chasm between the organization’s sales team and its marketers.

Sure, there was also a disconnect between the companies and their customers, but that just goes to the heart of the problem.

Now, more than ever, your customers and their interactions with your brand are tightly integrated. And so too, your marketing and sales teams must be better aligned than they’ve ever been. Studies show that companies with aligned sales and marketing team increase their revenues by an average of 47 percent compared to those who do not bring these two organizations together.

Consider these steps you can take to close the gap between the yin and yang of your revenue-generating machine:

1. Agree on the goals: Often, one of the weakest links in getting sales aligned to marketing (and vice versa) is agreeing on the goals. Yes, the objective is to drive revenues, but how you get there, which needles, so to speak, are key to getting that done should be one of the first topics for discussion between the sales and marketing organizations.

Is the goal to get more leads (we’ll talk about leads in a moment)? Do you want more subscribers to your blog or newsletter, more names in the email database? Are you trying to cross-sell or upsell to existing customers? Is there a Facebook page where you’re trying to increase engagement?

You will never achieve alignment between sales and marketing if you cannot agree from the outset what the goals are, what targets you need to hit to meet those goals, how long you have to hit those targets, and who is responsible for achieving each of the actions that will get you to those goals.

2. Agree on the starting point: The more specifically sales and marketing can agree on the staring point—whether that’s leads currently in the sales funnel, the number of downloads for a whitepaper or ebook, or even sales to date, the sooner the two will come together in alignment. Reaching agreement on the starting point makes the evaluations you make later that much easier to clearly assess.

3. Implement integrated tools: Sales and marketing will never come together over their progress (let alone a celebratory dinner at the end of the quarter) if the tools the two teams are using are themselves out of alignment.

Marketing’s ability to see what sales sees regarding a customer’s sales history are critical to its success. Likewise, unless sales knows what marketing knows about the Web pages they’ve visited, marketing collateral they’ve downloaded, topics they have shared with friends, family, or colleagues via social media or other means, they cannot understand the customer fully.

The solution—and really, the hub that aligns sales and marketing—is an all-in-one inbound marketing application that connects your marketing initiatives (and all its metrics and analytics) with your customer relationship management (CRM) application (and its customer histories).

Combined, these applications give both teams a 360-degree view of customers and prospects from the moment they engage with your brand and then throughout their lifecycle.

4. Measurement and analysis: Once sales and marketing agree on the appropriate metrics, the two must come together to review those metrics, determine what they mean in terms of the established goals, and decide on next steps.

A proper inbound marketing application connected to a CRM application gives sales and marketing the numbers they need to move the needles in the right direction.

If, for example, one of the goals was to increase subscribers to a blog or newsletter by 10 percent, how did that fare during the latest accounting period? You might want to see how that increase in subscribers affected social sharing and in turn, how that impacted revenues.

Or, you might want to compare the difference between the sales close rate on prospects who downloaded a whitepaper or ebook to those who did not; or, compare the average sale for people who share your brand with others in their social network. These same tools—inbound marketing applications and CRM applications—are the ones you’ll use to find your best customers, those who spend the most and those who evangelize your brand the most—if your systems and teams are properly aligned.

5. Agree on what a qualified lead is: One of the most common complaints salespeople have about marketers is the quality of the leads they’re given.

And, to be fair, in many instances, the complaints are justified. Just because someone visited your website and looked at a page or two doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ready to buy or even ready to be contacted by the sales team.

When sales and marketing work together to find the optimal time to pass along leads, the result is certain to improve the bottom line while reducing friction between the two business units.

The information to do this will come only when the metrics and analytics from the inbound marketing application and CRM tool are connected. Then, you see which leads resulted in sales and when, which actions preceded the sale, and what actions followed the sale and might prompt additional marketing or sales contacts.

6. Put a SLA in place: A service level agreement (SLA) is one of the most effective tools any organization can have to help meets its objectives. While historically, SLAs began as the contract binding an enterprise to its customers and set the level of expectations for both, these agreements also go a long way toward improving the alignment between internal organizations, such as sales and marketing.

Using your definition of what a qualified (or “workable”) lead is and comparing that to the actions sales takes and its success, you will be able to monitor the effectiveness of the sales level agreement as you have defined it.

7. Open the lines of communication—and keep them open: All the technology in the world will not align sales and marketing if the two teams don’t come together to talk and realize they are literally opposite sides of the coin—the revenue coin.

Each enterprise will have to work out for themselves how best to affect this interaction, but the stakes are too high, the consequences too severe, to let anything stand in the way.

Depending on your enterprise, you might try weekly or monthly meetings, you might create a LinkedIn group or an internal wiki to share ideas, successes, and challenges between sales and marketing. You might host a webinar or an offsite to familiarize each team with what happens in the other’s turf. Show sales what your inbound marketing dashboard looks like and how it works while they explain how they use the CRM to close deals.

Align Your Teams

Aligning sales and marketing should come naturally, but all too often it does not.

Whether it’s competition, jealousy, misunderstanding, or something else really is irrelevant. It was Benjamin Franklin who famously said, “If we do not hang together, we shall surely all hang separately.”

The same is true when it comes to your revenue-generating team. Get them in alignment and the Benjamins--those $100 bills every enterprise is chasing—will follow.

In my travels and life as a CRM guy, I hear it a lot.  “We’re just not ready to invest in a CRM package.  We don’t have the time, the money, the staff, [fill in the blank here].”   I’m going to use this opportunity to start a series of articles where I address each of these items and others.  The bottom line here is that you’re never ready.  For those of you that don't know what a CRM is, it is some sort of software tool that allows you to keep track of your customers and prospects in one place visible to all in the company that need to see the information.  Most companies report an increase in productivity when the tool is used correctly.

I equate the jump to CRM to becoming a homeowner – you’re never really going to be ready, but one day it will sneak up on you and you’ll have to find the means as you’ve outgrown the apartment (or your parents place).  As with CRM, these needs jump out at different times, some much sooner than others (was never huge on living at home personally).

This article I will touch on cost, only as I’m always sensitive to budget constraints and there’s no better comparison between homes and CRM – how much can I afford?  Good news here is that you’ll actually see the return on your investment much sooner than buying a house.  Like houses though, CRM’s come in all shapes and sizes, different prices, and needs – can you move right in or do will we need some construction?  This of course allows you to find the home/CRM that works best for you and best fulfills your needs.  There are starter CRM packages out there for the new owners as well as the expert packages that have been saving a long time (yup, I’m going to beat this house theme into the ground).  In either case, after careful analysis (and some help) you should be able to find the package that is right for you and meets your needs.  Consider the experts Realtors for your CRM.

To battle the cost idea, an example comes to mind which happened to one of my favorite clients.  He had some hesitation to the cost of implementing a CRM package, but knew he needed to do something.  The costs were daunting – a new server (which is NOT needed if you use an online CRM tool), software licensing, training time, consulting costs for customization, import of data, etc.  However, we created workflows in his CRM to automate some of the tasks that he was really bad at.  Essentially, he was bad at following up with clients and he knew this – he needed something/someone to do it for him.  We created a simple process to automate an email for those that had an overdue balance, sending out an automatic email in the morning, nothing huge, just a friendly reminder.  He told me two weeks later that the single process of sending an email to those clients had single handedly paid for all of his CRM costs including my time with him, his server, and licensing.  People appreciated the friendly follow up, didn’t realize that they owed a balance, but more importantly, they wanted him to come back out and do some more work for him.  Why I love the follow up with any system is that you’re reminding clients that you’re still there which in further reminds them of other needs they may have.

Will this example above be what happens to everyone?  I wish, but unfortunately no.  However, the returns will come.  Better tracking of sales and what’s coming in the pipeline, never losing track of the communications between you and your customers, being able to market directly to the right clients based on interests, industry, or existing products – all these items may not have a solid dollar amount to track against your investment, but it is there.  As with your old apartment, you’re going to outgrow that yellow pad of paper with all your “to-do’s” and you’re going to simply need something more to move you to the next step.

You probably already know about the cloud and are hearing about it more and more.  Without even knowing it you may already be using SaaS, which means Software as a Service and refers to web-based software that you can use with simply a login on the web.  But did you know that there also may be benefit in moving some of your company's infrastructure—hardware, storage, etc.—to the cloud?

The concept is called Infrastructure as a Service, or IaaS, which is one of the largest current technology trends. If you say it a few times in a row, you may even start to smile. The reason why it is such a significant trend is the significant cost/benfit equation.

With cloud-base infrastructure, you pay only for what you use. In the case of infrastructure, that means you pay only for the computing power, storage or other services that you use. The best example of this is Amazon's EC2 service.  It’s an ideal way to make sure you aren’t overpaying for capacity you don’t need, while having all of the capacity you need to deal with seasonal spikes, unexpected peaks, or test and development.

You are also guaranteed pretty much 100% uptime and ironclad security. Maybe best of all, you don’t have to worry about maintaining, upgrading or buying new servers, because it’s not your problem—it’s the IaaS service provider’s problem.

With all of these benefits, why isn’t everybody doing it? Well, many are. Numerous studies show that the use of IaaS is growing year over year, both for small businesses and larger enterprises.

But it’s not always a good choice. If you have to deal with auditing, compliance or other regulations, think twice. If you do want to pursue IaaS, consider using a private cloud, where you pay for a computing infrastructure dedicated to your business alone.

IaaS also isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. You can easily dip a toe in the water. Start slowly, moving lower priority workloads with minimal security requirements to the cloud first. If it’s working well, that’s the time to consider delving in more deeply.

If you have a physical presence for your business, you think carefully about how that office or shop looked to passers-by and to clients. You dress well, hire competent employees, keep the shop clean and well-lit, make sure the parking lot and grounds are kept up, and you spend money on the best sign for the shop that you can afford. You communicate a sense of professionalism in this way.

However, when it comes to your website, are you doing the same thing?

Your website is your virtual presence on the internet, and your clients and passers-by are making value judgements about you based on what they see there. If your website was a physical presence, would you pick a location in the bad part of town, provide a tiny sign that was faded and hard to find, keep the shop dirty and cluttered, and dress like a slob every day? Of course you wouldn't. So why do you feel it's OK to cheat your virtual presence of the same professional touches?

Many small business owners hire cheap help and congratulate themselves on the perceived "cost savings" of doing so. After all, why hire someone locally for $100/hr from a reputable web design firm when you could get a freelancer, a student, or someone from overseas for $10/hr?

As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. If you hire cheap, I-can't-believe-this-rate web design help, it's likely you'll hire help that is inexperienced. How many times have you heard something is "not possible" to implement on your website? Frequently, that's inexperienced designer-speak for "we don't know how to do that."

Look for a quality web design firm for your site. Some marks of competent help include the following:

• An initial conversation with the designer should cover a range of topics. Don't just talk about technology or features for the site. What problems are you trying to solve with your site? What audiences are you serving? Who are you trying to attract to your business? What do you want site visitors to do — pick up the phone and call, email you, buy something online, fill out a form, something else? How will you drive traffic to your site? How will you measure your site's success?
• Ask for examples of other sites they've built. A designer should have a solid portfolio of work. Ask the designer to tell the story behind the site. Don't let them rattle off technical specifications and mumbo-jumbo. Make the designer tell the story of who the site serves, what goals the client wants accomplished, and how this site is helping to achieve those goals. The designer should have a solid understanding of each organization. Don't expect the designer to have a site exactly like yours in their portfolio. If they take a consistent, thoughtful, logical approach to all sites, you should expect good results for your site — potentially even better than someone who builds sites in your industry, but from a one-size-fits-all formula instead.
• Make sure you understand what hours the designer is working. If they are local, are they working during normal business hours? If so, it's likely this is their full-time job, which adds to the designer's credibility. If the designer is working in the evenings and on weekends, they are either new to the business and holding a day job, or they are doing this work on the side. Either way, it's unlikely you'll get the same level of customer support that you will with a full-time designer, and you should pay less as a result. Remember that designers may not necessarily be in the same physical location as you, so be sure you know what time zone they're in if you need to call.
• Ask for a proposal in writing. The designer should have no hesitation in putting together a written proposal which includes rates, timelines, and a clear list of work to be accomplished.
• Sign a contract. If you are not asked to sign a contract for design services, you are not dealing with a professional. Make sure you read the contract carefully. Who owns the website? What happens if you want to change to another design firm?

I have heard horror stories from many clients about dealing with $10/hr designers. They get bad advice, have badly implemented sites, and they sometimes wait a long time for their site to be built. When they finally decide to hire someone who "knows what they are doing," frequently they are told that the site they have is not salvageable, and they must rebuild from scratch to get what they want. The client does not respond well to this advice, and they may waste more money trying to salvage a bad site.

Get a quality designer to build you a solid site from the ground up, and you should have a site that grows with you, expands gracefully, and will last you much longer than something slapped together in a hurry for a cheap price. Choose your designer carefully, build a solid relationship, and your site will accomplish the goals you set for it, bringing you new business and new income.

Crashplan and Mozy are two companies that provide online data backup services. They both offer a reliable service at a great price. They are also both well suited for home offices, small businesses and backup of your personal computer.

Crashplan and Mozy are both true backup services in that they backup everything on your computer.  Please note that services like Dropbox do not provide real backup, meaning that they allow for file storage online, but they do not backup your entire computer unless you purposely select all of your files from your computer and proactively put them into your "online folder" or Dropbox.

Here's a quick breakdown of their similarities and differences:

Features

Crashplan and Mozy have a lot of features in common. They both allow users to share files, schedule automatic backups of all data on your computer, and backup servers. Both products can also backup open or locked files and provide file history recovery. Crashplan can send out a status notification whenever a backup is completed, while Mozy does not at this time.

Storage Space

One of the main differences between Mozy and Crashplan is the amount of storage space they have available. Mozy limits its users to just 125 GB of storage space, while Crashplan offers unlimited storage capacity on most of its plans.

Support

Crashplan offers phone and email support on Monday through Friday between 7am and 7pm, and on Saturday and Sunday between 9am and 5pm. This service is available to both paid users and trial users. Crashplan also has live chat support on Monday through Friday between 9am and 5pm.

Mozy offers phone, email and live chat support on a 24/7 basis, but only to its Mozy Pro users. If you are a Mozy Home user, you still have access to their online knowledge base and the Mozy community forums.

Security

Both products do a great job of keeping your data safe. Mozy utilizes military-grade encryption and has multiple secure data centers around the world. Crashplan offer 448-bit encryption and similar data centers with secure physical access. If you have sensitive information, it should be protected from computer hackers.

Mobile

Crashplan has a mobile app for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. The app is free to users and can download, view and share files. Mozy offers a similar mobile app for the iPhone and Android, but not the Windows Phone.

Price

CrashPlan has a 10GB plan for $2.50/month, an unlimited plan for $5/month, and a family unlimited plan for $12/month. There are cheaper versions of each of these plans available if you pay for one to four years in advance. Enterprise customers can gain price quotes to meet their specific needs. In addition, the company offers a Restore To Your Door service for $124.99 in which they ship your files to you on a hard drive if you need to restore them locally.

Mozy has several pricing plans that each have diferent options. Mozy Home costs $5.99/month for 50 GB of space that is accessible by one computer, or $9.99/month for 125 GB that can be used by three computers. Mozo Pro is $3.95/month plus $.050/month per desktop computer, and $3.95/month per server. Mozy also has customized price quotes for enterprise customers.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the online data backup category. Click here to view Comparz' online data backup rankings.

Adobe Connect and WebEx are two large players in the web conferencing space that are suitable for businesses that need a wide array of features and are willing to pay for them. While there are a lot of free web conferening options out there now, these products are geared toward users that demand a highly professional experience.  Adobe Connect and WebEx are both web-based and have a wide variety of features and mobile options.

How do they compare with each other?

Features

The feature set for Adobe Conect and WebEx are largely the same. They both have document sharing, polling options, a chat system, and a whiteboard for conference sessions. Adobe Connect and WebEx also both allow companies to record meetings and have audience auditing and tracking functions. Adobe Connect offers content storage and management features, however, while WebEx currently does not.

Support

WebEx offers phone and email support on a 24/7 basis. They also have a live chat service that can provide immediate assistance to users, and an online knowledge base that can answer most basic questions.

Adobe Connect offers phone support on Monday through Friday between 5am and 7pm (PST). The company also provides email support on a 24/7 basis, and has a similar online knowledge base available. They do not provide live chat support, however.

Integrations

Adobe Connect can integrate with Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Communications Server, Microsoft Outlook, and a wide variety of corporate networks and applications. WebEx does not have quite as many integrations, but can integrate with Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, Act-On and Cvent.

Mobile

The mobile functionality of the two products is somewhat different. Adobe Connect offers a mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry. WebEx has a mobile app for the same devices, but you are limited to attending conference sessions. If you would like to create an event, you will have to do so from a computer.

Price

Adobe Connect has several pricing options available. They have a Per Host plan that costs $55/host/month, or $45/host/month if you pay for a year an advance. Each host can hold meetings with up to 25 attendees. They also have a Pay-Per-Use Plan that costs $.32 per minute per user, and Enterprise Plans that typically cost several thousands of dollars per year. In addition, they have special teacher and student pricing available.

WebEx normally costs $49/host/month and supports up to 25 attendees, unlimited meetings, and free phone and VoIP calls. WebEx is also currently having an online promotion at the moment for just $19/month. The functionality for this promotion is limited to a single host and eight people per session.

Free Trial

Adobe Connect offers a free trial of its solution for 30 days. It allows you to host meetings with up to five people and manage event registration. WebEx also has a free trial, though it is only for 14 days. This trial supports up to 25 people in a meeting and includes training and support.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the web conferencing category. Click here to view Comparz' web conferencing rankings.

Whether companies like it or not, their employees are using mobile devices in the workplace. And they are using them not only to check personal email, play games and shop, but if allowed by the company, to access corporate email and, in some cases, productivity apps.
 
It’s a foregone conclusion that this trend—dubbed BYOD (for Bring Your Own Device)—isn’t going away. In fact, virtually all recent surveys and market research signify an upward trend.  This trend is also referred to as the Consumerization of IT.
 
Companies are beginning to have no choice but to allow their employees to use smartphones and tablets for work purposes. The best way to do that is by using web-based business applications with mobile capabilities. That’s getting easier and easier, as more and more web-based business software companies create specific versions for iOS, Android and sometimes, BlackBerry.

The trend may causes a multitude of issues for comanies including security and determing which devices to provide support for.  On the security front, that means keeping track of what devices are accessing corporate resources. That can mean implementing some type of Mobile Device Management (MDM) or Mobile Access Management (MAM) solution.
 
Making BYOD work in an environment where employees use web-based software also means setting up numerous corporate policies. At a minimum, these should include having users agree to install, or have the IT department install, whatever security, monitoring or tracking software the organization requires. Users also should be required to password-protect the devices and register them with the IT department. All devices should support 802.1x authentication.
 
Done right, the BYOD movement can mean greater productivity for companies. Employees can be productive while in transit or at remote locations. They can collaborate with team members in real time. They can submit expense reports and scan restaurant receipts. The possibilities are endless. Instead of fighting the movement, it makes sense to join it.

Hands down the best way to get traffic is through SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  It's not easy, as you are always chasing the search engine's (or shall we say Google's) algorithm changes, but its often worth the effort given the result of "free traffic".

SEOMoz and SEO Book are two solutions that can help with search engine optimization. They are both well suited to small businesses or really any sized business as they crawl ALL of the pages on your site to find out what is going on with all of the technical aspects of SEO.

So, how do SEOMoz and SEO Book compare with each other?

Features

The feature set is quite similar between the two solutions. SEOMoz and SEO Book both include a tool to suggest keywords and provides you with search engine results by keyword. Both products go into great detail on things such as duplicate page titles, missing meta descriptions, overly dynamic URLs and the list goes on.  If your eyes are glazing over, these factors all become really intersting if you understand how they relate to SEO.  The exciting part about these tools is that if you make the suggested changes and use the information as a guide, you can see improved results over time.

There is a small difference between these two tools, however. SEOMoz can monitor existing backlinks and report when there are changes, while SEO Book cannot.

Support

SEOMoz offers phone and email support to its users on Monday through Friday between 9am and 5pm (PST). SEO Book does not provide phone support, though it does have a system where you can submit tickets for technical issues, a comprehensive online knowledgebase, and live chat for basic questions.

API

SEOMoz has an application programming interface that independent developers can use to create integrations and modifications to the software. SEO Book, on the other hand, does not have an API available at this time.

Toolbars

Both products offer a toolbar for Firefox that provides quick access to information like a rough estimate of the number of links pointing to a specific domain or the IP address of the host. SEOMoz has a similar toolbar for Internet Explorer and Google Chrome, while SEO Book does not.

Price

SEOMoz has three pricing plans to choose from. The Pro plan is $99/month and supports 5 campaigns, 300 keywords tracked per account and 10,000 pages crawled per campaign. The Pro Plus plan is $199/month and increases the number of campaigns to 12 and the keywords tracked to 1000. The Pro Elite plan is then $499/month and supports 30 campaigns, 3500 keywords tracked, and 20,000 pages crawled each campaign.

The pricing for SEO Book is much simpler: it's $300/month. The price not only includes the SEO software, but more than 100 training modules and videos, a monthly training newsletter, free trials on various SEO products and services, and full access to the company's private SEO community.

Free Trial

Many companies like to try out software before making a decision. SEOMoz provides a free trial that is good for thirty days. SEO Book offers a free 7-day course for beginners, though it does not have a free trial for the tools.  While a free trial for these tools is interesting, I must admit it is hard to get much benefit out of these tools without using them for a long period of time.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the SEO tools category. Click here to view Comparz' SEO tools rankings.

Looking for easy project management solutions for your business or your team?  LiquidPlanner and AtTask are two great choices for small and mid-sized businesses or for teams within larger companies.

Here's the skinny on how the two products compare.

Features

LiquidPlanner and AtTask both have the same basic features. If you purchase either solution, you will gain access to things like portfolio management, time tracking options, interactive Gantt charts, and multi-project scheduling. They also both have collaborative tools like comment streams and resource management capabilities to keep projects under budget.

There are a few distinctions between AtTask and LiquidPlanner, however. AtTask can import data from Google Apps, while Liquid Planner cannot. They both have email and calendar integration, but with AtTask, it's limited to notifications. Furthermore, Liquid Planner just has an English version, while AtTask has translations for German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese and Portuguese.

Reports

LiquidPlanner has powerful reporting capabilities. The software can automatically generate reports that show the workload for each team member and demonstrate how the project has drifted over time. AtTask's reports are also quite good, and notable in their ability to be heavily customized. Both products can produce reports that show real-time conditions.

Mobile

The mobile capabilities of AtTask and LiquidPlanner are identical. They both have an optimized mobile application for the iPhone, iPad and Android. They also both lack mobile support for Blackberry devices.

Support

The technical support offered by the two companies is quite similar. AtTask provides phone and email support on Sunday through Friday between 8am and 8pm (EST). LiquidPlanner meanwhile provides phone and email support on Monday through Friday between 8am and 4pm (PST).

API

LiquidPlanner has a powerful API (application programming interface), along with a downloadable guide and a specific forum for developers. AtTask also has an API (known as the REST API), a FAQ page, and a dedicated online community. If you want to build a integration for either product, the tools are available.

Pricing

LiquidPlanner offers a monthly plan that costs $29/seat/month and provides unlimited projects and 50GB of storage. They also have a yearly plan for $24/seat/month that includes the same features, though it requires a 12 month prepayment. In addition, large teams can get customized price quotes and volume pricing. Liquid Planner does not require a contract for monthly users.

AtTask's pricing plan is slightly different: it costs $250/user/year to use the hosted service, which is a little cheaper than Liquid Planner in the long run. This pricing plan also supports an unlimited number of projects. It should be noted that AtTask requires companies to sign an annual contract.

Bottom line

Overall, LiquidPlanner and AtTask offer a pretty similar product. They both have great features available, and their reporting capabilities can provide a great deal of information. With either product, you've got product management software that can improve collaboration for a reasonable price.

Comparz has user reviews and ranking of the project management software category. Click here to view Comparz' project management software rankings.

In 2011, Raab Associates Inc reported that the B2B marketing automation industry would reach $325 million at the end of 2011, which was a 50% increase from 2010 (2010 also doubled in revenue from 2009).

Forrester’s B2B Marketing Trends report from Feb, 2012 stated that 19% of B2B organizations are planning to implement marketing automation in 2012 while another 17t% plan to expand their usage.

Why is Marketing automation important even though it isn’t sexy? If you’re looking to move prospective leads into qualified leads, marketing automation should be playing a significant role. Marketing automation at its core, should be set up to send relevant messages to existing leads that are triggered by some type of action. For instance, if an existing lead were to view a page about marketing analytics, that could trigger a personalized email from your marketing analytics expert offering a free eBook on marketing analytics as well as offer to answer any questions.

Gartner Research projects that “by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human.”

With lead interaction becoming less and less personal at scale and more CRM/automation focused, the goal of a marketing automation campaign should be to try and provide the most relevant, targeted and insightful data to each lead as possible, such as the preceding marketing analytics example. Prospective leads aren’t opposed to automation as long as what they are receiving is relevant to them, concise and helps show how you can help solve the specific problem that they have. Identify the pain point, and show how you can help.

Below are a few things to keep in mind in regard to Marketing Automation:

Customer Serving – Relevancy is essential to customer happiness and success. If you see that a lead has an interest in SEO, don’t send content about anything else except SEO. Make the connection and show that you can solve each specific problem that arises, but don’t overwhelm leads by just pushing them into a demo.

Pressure Free – Gleanster reports that 50% of qualified leads are not ready to purchase immediately. An effective way to continue to move prospective leads through the funnel and closer to a sale is to provide them with relevant content. Relevant content shows thought leadership, expertise and an interest in helping to educate leads on a problem that they have, not just push them a generic demo or free trial offer.

Customer support – Just because a sale has closed, that doesn’t mean marketing automation ends. Customer happiness and success will help reduce customer and revenue churn so continuing to provide relevant content, updates and events that pertain to customer goals will help improve long term customer retention rates.

The reason marketing automation isn’t sexy is because it takes time to set up and manage. Post launch, the “automation” element will take over, however the set up process (when done correctly) can certainly be time consuming. Investing the time and efforts though will enhance your sales process. Keep in mind that your marketing automation efforts act as a potential customer’s FIRST view into your company. If you’re automation efforts are lagging or even non-existent, what type of a message are you sending about your company?

Comparz provides user reviews and rankings of Marketing Automation software for small and mid-sized businesses. Click here to view Comparz' business software reviews and rankings.

So, we Twitter users all know that special feeling when get for about one second when we see that RT.  For those of you that are not up on Twitter lingo--and Twitter does have its own lingo, RT stands for "Re-Tweet", which means that someone forwarded a Twitter message intially sent by someone else.

For us Twitter addicts, a RT gives us that one second of satisfaction that our content is appreciated by others.  We also have particular appreciation for the person who sent the retweet.

The Truth About Retweets

But what really happens with that little retweet?  One day I inadvertantly sent out a tweet with a link that didn't work.  I still had 5 to 10 retweets from well-meaning friends.  But clearly they didn't read what I had sent.  And I don't blame them one bit because who has time to read all of the content that is sent over Twitter by those you follow?  If you did read it all, then you most certainly would never get any work done.

There is no doubt that people are reading what is sent via Twitter and that retweets help spread good content and increase follower rates.  But there's a tremendous dropoff between what is retweeted and what is read.  And this matters because Twitter should be driving traffic to your site and contributing to your marketing funnel.  Not just creating those annoying Tweet sounds on your desktop.

Comments?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.  For more statistics on Twitter usage, see this infographic.