Authors:
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Francois Karstel is the founder of Sound Idea Digital.He worked as a professional musician (bass guitar player) for the early part of his career and has a National Diploma in music. He founded Sound Idea Digital in 1992 and has a passion for content marketing and eLearning. When he's not irritating the team at Sound Idea you'll find him sailing his Finn or riding his mountain bike with a very intense look on his face. Connect with him on Twitter @soundideadma, LinkedIn or via e-mail francois@soundidea.co.za |
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Video is the way forward. If you need to promote yourself, your business or your website, this is how you should do it. There is a nearly infinite amount of information being communicated in the form of video
In a company it can often be seen that 13% of the top sales people will bring in 87% of the revenue. Much has been written about what it takes to be a good sales person.
Just as we use employee engagement as a part of employee retention, we ought to retain our suppliers. . To understand supplier engagement, we must first understand what employee engagement is.
We have finally reached a time of life in which consumers are officially tired of empty promises. This is the era of authenticity. This era pokes fun at the old TV infomercials, complains about ‘fake’ Photoshoped models in commercials and they disregard your claim to be the best in business.
Once we get into the swing of compiling an analytics report, it is easy to forget or misinterpret the various fields you are filling in on said report. These statistics are so vitally important, because they are the truest indicators of your website’s performance.
There may be many reasons for casting your thoughts back to old blog articles. Perhaps you notice that they are dated, perhaps the topic has become a hot trend once more, perhaps it’s a good article that has been forgotten, or perhaps you need inspiration for a new post.
Marketing in this day and age is about relationship building, not selling. Why? Well, because relationships last longer than once-off sales.
This does not refer to a cave-dwelling creature, but rather to online trolls. A troll is an individual who feeds off of havoc and arguments on website forums. 
What makes inbound marketing tick is the focus on providing your audience with good quality content and infographics are an excellent way of displaying information in an engaging an creative manner. 
Web design is a tremendously stressful process. It requires a vast amount of attention to detail on a number of different levels and when you have done it once, you are very keen on never entering that ring again.
“Customer support is the very rare opportunity to connect to your customers on an emotional level. You can’t do that in any other way.” Buffer COO, Leo Widrich.
We all have a built-in perception of either our own value or that of our business’. We also have a perception of the value we offer to our customers or employers.
A high-end project will require more crew, equipment, and time to produce than a low-end production. The planning phase is also much more intensive, as all filming locations are visited before the actual shoot. 
You may have encountered it on your Google Analytics page, but most of us pay no heed to the bounce rates tab. A bounce rate of 50% is not necessarily bad – anything much higher than that should attract your attention.
What you do after a meeting, is just as important as your preparation and presentation during the meeting. Here are six vitally important steps to take following your sales meeting.
In a previous article we discussed how to prepare yourself for a sales meeting. Now that you have prepped, it is time to implement these preparations, and here’s how:
The sales environment has changed a lot over the years – the sales consultant used to be a source of information, but now they are just a representation of the company, there to close a sale and fill in any gaps of information that the client has. 
Some marketing methods are quite dated and drastically less effective nowadays than they were ten years ago.
Attracting people to your blog requires captivating content that is both interesting and creative in its presentation. 
The basic concept of the Live Help system is this: a system that allows consumers to interact with a company directly and immediately. The public is looking for instant gratification, and what better way to instantly gratify your website visitors.
It is my belief that the human brain is story-orientated, rendered as such by evolution. Long before the rise of the printing press, people communicated using the narrative. Through a visual approach, people shared ideas, news and stories. Effective digital marketing is just that – the telling of a story.
Customers find you through inbound marketing, but in some instances inbound marketing simply doesn't work. This article explains why.
This article covers the advantages and risks when allowing others to contribute to your blog.
Customer Experience, also known as CX, according to Wikipedia is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods and/or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier.
In a world where content is readily available in bulk, the aim is to create content that gets shared, linked and mentioned – as much as possible. 
As a marketer it is essential to understand what makes people tick and the following books will help you to do exactly this.
A company website used to be the centre point of the online universe. In recent years this changed and social media (of which blogs are the most integral part) took the number one spot.
Another exciting type of content is VR (Virtual Reality) Panoramic Imaging. This photography technique enables your camera to “see” the world beyond peripheral barriers.We’re all used to text based content, videos, podcasts and photos – so what’s next? Introducing the gigapan.
Most of us have already realised how important video marketing has become in today’s instant gratification, digital age, so now might be the time to take it a step further and step away from what is becoming common ground.
According to a press release by American Express, 78% of customers have backed out on an anticipated transaction because of poor customer service. 
As a business it is important to see things from the client’s perspective. This is difficult but should be emphasised to become a way of life when dealing with potential clients. 
It is common for sales people to be expected to do their own prospecting, but maybe the expectation is placed on the wrong department.
Once you gain a potential client’s contact details that person becomes a cold lead and this is where lead nurturing comes into play. If you don’t nurture your leads, the probability of you making a sale is slim to none. 
Marketing, just like mathematics, is something that must be practiced and mastered. You have to push yourself relentlessly and make every second count.
According to the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by research psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and science writer John Tierney, successful people use their willpower to modify negative habits and to develop new positive habits. This is interesting because habits are stored in a different part of the brain, called the “dorsal striatum”, which uses less energy. You benefit from these new positive habits, month after month, year after year, without depleting you precious daily willpower quota. 
According to Baumeister you can indeed increase you own willpower because it works like a muscle, the more you use it, the more you have.
As humans, we are a social species. We need each other in order to survive because we trade, arrow heads for food, for example.
A person’s value is determined by the society in which he or she operates. Success is then again determined by these value judgments and structures. The social perspective of value is most prominent in situations of trade. 
Are you the lucky recipient of a grant or a subsidy? You may not be aware of it but your grant was not funded by the government. No, it was funded by the single most unappreciated group in South Africa, the tax payer. 
A brief blog philosophy on the future of film "renting" and purchasing in our shiny, digital age. 
Old school marketers use the word branding in nearly every sentence but what is Branding?
To motivate your sales force you need to eliminate demotivating factors.
However amazing inbound marketing is, there are times when it’s simply not enough. 
