How to Drive Revenue Through Retention Marketing & Sales Enablement

 In a pandemic, it’s more important than ever to focus on retaining and expanding current customers. So, how can sales and marketing support the retention effort?

Join Ruth Stevens as she dives into this fast-paced session to review the 7 key strategies for current customer marketing, to enable sales and expand customer value.

ing this webinar, you will learn:

Why retention marketing is worth your attention

The 7 key levers that drive repeat sales from business customers

How personalized content marketing provides extra leverage for customer retention

10 tips for how to reactivate dormant or lost customers

August 18, 2020 at 11 am PDT, 2 pm EDT, 7 pm BST

Use B2B Marketing Zone and Sales Pro Central's webinars to earn continuing education credits! Our CEUs count toward the American Marketing Association's Professional Certified Marketer (AMA PCM®) program. Attendance of this webinar will earn one CEU toward your PCM® Digital Marketing, PCM® Sales Management, PCM® Content Marketing, and PCM® Marketing Management recertification.

Read more »

 In the deluge of advertising, marketing gimmicks, and multi-sensory content all of us are exposed to daily, establishing trust between your brand and your customers is an uphill battle.

How to build trust and humanize your brandWhile technology has certainly made our lives easier and (generally) more enjoyable, it has also made us more granular targets for advertisers—many of whom won’t hesitate to use invasive online tracking or other dodgy tactics to make a sale and get that all-important conversion.

How can you prove that your company is not like them and that you care about more than just a sale? That there are real humans with ethics and genuine feelings behind the brand? Here are six key practices for building trust in your brand.

Tell a story, and make it resonate

Storytelling is a powerful tool. It can help you reach more customers, boost your conversions, and most importantly, build trust.

The aim of storytelling is to establish a connection between a brand and it’s target customers. It showcases the values, beliefs, products, services, and attributes of the brand via stories, as opposed to a straightforward sales pitches.

Let’s take the example of Old Spice. They tell their brand’s story through their famous ads—and they use this story across all of their marketing channels, their website, their social media. Even their blog is in tune with their story.

Read more »

Improving Online Marketing Campaigns Influenced by B2B Buyer Personas

 A significant challenge that B2B marketers face is effectively communicating with prospective buyers and target audiences. While there are goals and objectives for brand development, lead generation, and customer experience as examples, the challenge is about making the right decisions.

Goals become extremely complicated to achieve because of continuously evolving marketing technology that promises to create unique customer experiences, even though it provides an opportunity to meet specific targets.

To accomplish the research and development of effective online marketing campaigns, B2B buyer personas can provide a stable foundation to achieve strategic marketing objectives. In coordination with buyer journey mapping, these personas also help marketers conceptualize the way in which target audiences can interact with an organization.

Buyer personas can also provide a direction in campaign development that is channel-specific. Marketers can leverage buyer personas to build more effective programs in B2B content marketing, social media, SEO, and PPC.

Content marketers can better understand critical content themes and specialize content to market-specific environments by leveraging comprehensive buyer personas. Individual motivators help in determining the target buyer persona’s goals within the organization. 

The goal can be increasing sales, higher ROI, or technology advancements; personas help ensure that the content addresses the proper motivators on an individual basis. They can also help in identifying specific business goals. Within each buyer persona, the particular pain points can be defined to ensure content marketing efforts are addressed to the issues and relate them to solutions and products in an effective manner.

There are a few direct benefits that buyer personas provide for social media marketing and advertising alongside the indirect benefits. This includes the titles, roles, and industries associated with buyer personas help to provide a path for user/interest research for organic network development and targeting audience in paid advertising. 

The industry emphasis can also identify influencers on social media, which in turn can be used for direct influencer marketing efforts. Indirectly, the integration of buyer personas helps social media marketers understand the needs and challenges of target audiences, which in turn enables active engagement through applicable platforms and better communication of content marketing efforts.

Keyword research is both a critical and fundamental component of search marketing programs. The key to effective keyword research understanding the way target audiences uses keywords. Applying buyer personas in keyword research helps B2B search marketers create a specific roadmap to determine the applicability of keyword opportunities. 

For PPC, buyer personas aid marketers in creating targeted ad copy, specific landing page offers, and ad settings like geographical focus or time of day.

Buyer personas have the ability to improve the effectiveness of various B2B online marketing campaign requirements. The personas can also be leveraged for online and offline marketing initiatives such as event marketing, webinar development, and email marketing optimization.

Read more »

Real Money Poker Cash Games

 PokerStars is considered to be the ultimate destination for online poker. This is happening because the number of players that join the tables here is just fantastic and at the same time you can also find a very good diversity of games available.

In case you are a beginner player the number one thing that you will want to hit is the cash tables and since you have little to no experience playing you will probably want to stick to the small stakes games, since that is the place where you are given the chance to find beginner players just like you and it's the perfect place to gain real money poker playing experience.

The Texas Hold'em is definitely the most popular game and the cash games are considered to be an excellent way to start your way in the online poker world.

As a beginner you are bound to make many mistakes but at the same time your opponents will also do their mistakes and it's up to you to make sure that you cash in on that.

The micro stakes from PokerStars are a very good way to start playing real money poker. The variety of players that you can encounter is very high and this means that you can find grinders, but at the same time there will be also a very large percentage of players that are beginners or just casual players with little or no poker strategy knowledge.

The micro limits start from as little as $0.01/$0.02 and go up to $0.25/$0.50. Thanks to the fact that there are some really small amounts of money at stake the games that are played are very loose and the average viewed flop percentage goes as high as 65%. Playing at the micro and low limits is excellent since it's easy to beat once you get to use the right strategy.

How to pick the right table

The average viewed flop percentage is definitely the number one thing that is able to tell you how loose the game is. This means that you have to sort the tables based on this percentage and have a look at the tables that are ranking with a higher percentage. After that the next thing you have to do is to open the table and take a look at a few hands how they are played. This way you get a good idea about what type of opponents you are going to meet. In case everything looks good, take a seat and start playing!

Micro Limits Short Strategy Tips:

Play straightforward - This means in case you have a good hand just keep on placing the bets and raise unless there is a player to give you some good reasons not to do so.

Don't bluff - The micro stakes are not a good place to bluff due to the fact that there are many beginner players that usually call everything. This way bluffing or any other type of complex play are both not a good idea.

Respect the others - This means that you have to make sure that you respect the raises of your opponents and fold your cards, unless you have a premium hand.

Read more »

The Rules of Online Poker

 How Do You Win?

Typically, the winner of each hand of poker is the player that holds the highest ranked hand when all cards are shown at the end of the hand – known as the ‘showdown’ – or the player that makes the last uncalled bet, thus winning without needing to reach a showdown.

Not sure whether a flush beats a straight? Can’t remember how to make a full house? You can find all the information you need to know about hand rankings in the table below . The strongest hands are in the top row, running from left to right, with the weakest possible hand being simply a high card.

Getting Started

Poker games typically feature a forced bet, such as the Big Blind and Small Blind in . These forced bets comprise the starting pot in any given hand of poker, which is the first incentive players have to win the hand. Action arising from the subsequent rounds of betting further increases the size of the pot.

Dealing Cards and Betting Rounds

After any initial cards are dealt, players are usually called upon to act in turn, moving clockwise around the table.

Each player can usually take one of the following actions when it is their turn to act:

• Check – To check is to decline the opportunity to open the betting. Players can only check when there is no bet during the current round, and the act of checking passes the action clockwise to the next person in the hand. If all active players check, those players remain in the hand and the round is considered complete.
• Bet – Players may bet if no other players have bet during the current round. Once a bet has been made, other players must ‘call’ by matching the amount bet, in order to remain in the hand.
• Fold – Players who fold forfeit their cards and cannot win or act again during the current hand.
• Call – Players can call if other players have bet during the current round; this requires the calling player to match the highest bet made.
• Raise – Players may raise if other players have bet during the current round; this requires the raising player to match the highest bet made, and then make a greater one. All subsequent players are required to call the raise or raise again (‘re-raise’) to stay in the hand.

Different variants of poker have different betting rounds. Texas Hold’em and Omaha are the two most popular poker games in the world and have identical betting structures, with four rounds of betting known as pre-flop, the flop, the turn and the river.

The pre-flop betting round begins as soon as all players have received their hole cards, before any community cards have been dealt; betting on the flop occurs after the first three community cards are dealt; on the turn after the fourth community card; and on the river after the fifth and final community card.

On each betting round, betting continues until every player has either matched the bets made or folded (if no bets are made, the round is complete when every player has checked). When the betting round is completed, the next dealing/betting round begins, or the hand is complete.

Here’s an example of a Texas Hold’em hand after all the cards have been dealt. As you can see, players may use any of their two hole cards with any of the five community cards to make the best five-card hand they can make - in this case, you can use both your hole cards and three of the shared community cards to make a straight.

Showdown

Once the last bet or raise has been called during the final round of betting, a showdown occurs; the remaining active players must show or ‘declare’ their hands, and the player(s) with the best ranking hand(s) win the pot.

Players often show their hands in order, rather than all at the same time. Multiple players can share a single pot, with the pot divided in different ways depending on the game rules and how each player’s hand ranks against their opponents.

Betting Limits

Betting limits refer to the amount players may open and raise. Typically, poker games are of the following types; no limit, pot limit or fixed limit.

• No Limit – in poker games with a no limit betting structure, each player can bet or raise by any amount up to and including their full stack (the total number of chips they possess at any given time) in any betting round, whenever it is their turn to act.
• Pot Limit – in poker games with a pot limit betting structure, each player can bet or raise by any amount up to and including the size of the total pot at that time.
• Fixed Limit – in poker games with a fixed limit betting structure, each player can choose to call, bet or raise, but only by a fixed amount. The fixed amount for any given betting round is set in advance.

For No Limit and Pot Limit games, the ‘Stakes’ column in the PokerStars lobby indicates the Small Blind and Big Blind in that game, while for Mixed Games, the Stakes listed in the lobby are the betting amounts for Limit games; in Pot Limit and No Limit rounds, the blinds are usually half of the blinds in limit games.

Table Stakes and All-in

You may have seen a poker scene in a movie or on TV where a player is faced with a bet for more chips than they have at the table, and is forced to wager a watch, a car or some other possession in order to stay in the hand. This may make for good drama, but it is not generally the way poker is played in real life!

All games on our site are played ‘table stakes’, meaning only the chips in play at the beginning of each hand can be used during the hand. The table stakes rule has an application called the ‘All-In’ rule, which states that a player cannot be forced to forfeit a poker hand because the player does not have enough chips to call a bet.

A player who does not have enough chips to call a bet is declared All-In. The player is eligible for the portion of the pot up to the point of his final wager. All further action involving other players takes place in a ‘side pot’, which the All-In player is not eligible to win. If more than one player goes All-In during a hand, there could be more than one side pot.

Now you’ve got the rules, what’s stopping you? Download and play!

If you need further help in learning poker basics for all our poker games, please do not hesitate to email .

Read more »

10 Content Marketing Examples And Ideas That Are Perfect For Moving Companies

 Are you looking to create content marketing strategies for your moving business? Maybe you feel a little overwhelmed about finding creative ways to draw attention and attract new business.

Fear no more! You have come to the right place. We have put together an article detailing 10 content marketing examples you can use for your business.

First, let’s look at what content marketing strategies are about.

What is Content Marketing?

Companies use content marketing strategies in order to attract the attention of potential new customers and then retain them long enough to gain their business.

These strategies are not simply producing content but creatively weaving content in a way to make it interesting.

Here is a list of steps you want to follow before you start implementing content marketing in your moving business:

Designate someone to be in charge of your content marketing

Define the mission or purpose of your marketing

Publish daily or at least very regularly

Publish content that is popular with modern culture to gain audience attention

Choose between using a branded or unbranded content hub

Optimize subscriber building

Implement Content Marketing ROI to determine your engagement and reachability

Once you have looked at these steps, you can look at several content marketing examples of techniques to use for your moving company.

Content Marketing Examples

When implementing content marketing techniques for your business there are many ways to creatively draw attention. Let’s look at 10 examples of content marketing techniques you can use.

1. Blogging

Blogging is a great starting point for content marketing. It allows you to draw attention to your social media presence and attract followers. Here are a few blogs of companies that are successful:

Buffer

Hubspot

Rip Curl

Write an article about several things that stand out about your moving company and title it something like “5 Reasons Our Moving Company is Unique.”

2. SEO through Social Media

Social media platforms are incredibly important when marketing for your business. Followers and visitors who share your content generate more traffic for you by indirectly helping your SEO search rankings.

An example of this technique is Lush cosmetics. Lush encourages social media users to post pictures or videos of their products with hashtags for Lush cosmetics which puts their products in front of many more potential customers.

By implementing SEO tactics on their social media platforms, they have generated over 4 million followers!

3. Video Content

Consider driving awareness for your brand through video ads. YouTube is the ideal platform for video ads and a great example of a company that used this strategy is Hootsuite.

They took the popular show “Game of Thrones” and grabbed the attention of viewers to weave this topic into their brand. They titled their video “A Game of Social Thrones” and then proceeded to tell a relatable story.

4. Images

Images with the fewest words possible tend to be the most powerful. Instagram is a great platform example for using images to generate business.

A perfect example of a company that uses top-notch photography techniques when marketing their products is Rolex. This iconic watch brand relays the timelessness of their timepieces through pictures that emanate quality.

5. Pithy Slogans

You want to designate a creative person or hire someone specifically to come up with a creative saying consumers can associate with your brand. A great place to find someone for the job is Upwork.com.

Here is a list of several companies with incredibly successful slogans:

Nike: “Just Do it!”

KFC: “It’s finger-lickin’ good”

Dunkin’ Doughnuts: “America runs on Dunkin’”

Coca-Cola: “Open Happiness”

McDonalds: “I’m lovin’ it”

If you can hire someone to come up with a witty saying that encapsulates your business the way creative writers wrote ones for these successful business examples, then they are worth their weight in gold!

6. Create an App

Charmin has a great reputation of incorporating humor into their ads but that’s not all they have done to build their success.

Another one of their successful marketing strategies is their development of the “Sit or Squat” app. This app allows people to find the nearest and cleanest public bathrooms to their location.

So far, their app has boasted over 100,000 downloads!

7. Resources and Ebooks

Simply Business is an insurance firm located in the UK. Sounds boring right? Wrong. They actually produce ebook guides and resource tips for other small businesses from event planning to local moving companies.

One example they’ve written is “The small business guide to Facebook.” They have generated thousands of shares and likes from their customer audience, boosting their company visibility and driving traffic to their site.

8. Personalization

It’s basically guaranteed you have heard of Coke’s “Share a Coke” campaign unless you have been living under a rock. Coke targeted consumers with a personalization tactic.

The reason this campaign was so successful was that its products incorporated 150 of the most popular names on the packaging. The emotional connection between buyers and the coke products are what made the bottles fly off the shelves.

9. Infographics

People generally are in love with reliable data displayed in a simple manner. These data report images are shared by social media users all the time.

Shutterstock is an example of a company that uses infographics. Since their business consists of images, they have created a resource that anyone can use called a creative trends report.

10. Relatable Humor

Does anyone else watch the Superbowl just for the Geico Car Insurance commercials? Geico is the perfect example of a company that could be considered a boring service but uses humor to make its company anything but boring.

Not only do they incorporate humor in their commercials, but they employ slant humor between their name and their mascot. In some dialects “Geico” can be the pronunciation of the word “gecko” and by associating their mascot of a lizard with their name, they achieve the goal of capturing your memory.

Now that you’ve read about many examples you can implement in your content marketing plan, you are ready to start your content marketing strategy.

Read more »

Seven-Card Stud 8 or Better

Seven-card stud eights or better, also known as seven-card stud hi-low, is a split-pot game, played with two to eight players. As in regular seven-card stud, every player is dealt a total of seven cards, three of them face down, and the other four face up.

Objective

To make both your best five card high hand, and your best five card low hand, using any combination of the seven cards you are dealt. The player with the best high hand wins half the pot, and the player with the best low hand wins the other half. If there is no qualifying low hand, the player with the best high hand wins the entire pot.

A qualifying low hand is made with five cards that are all 8 or lower, an ace counting as the lowest. No pairs can exist in a low hand, but a straight and/or a flush may. The lowest possible hand is A2345. The highest possible qualifying low hand is 87654.

Note: Winning both the high and the low hand is called "scooping the pot".

Forced Bets

Ante
Seven-card stud is normally played with an ante that is approximately 1/5 of the low limit bet size. Every player must ante up before the hand begins. The ante does not count towards any future bets.

Bring in
After the initial deal when every player has 1 card showing, the person with the lowest card must "bring in", which means he must place the low limit bet size in the pot. If two or more players share the lowest card, the one closest to the dealer's left side must bring in. This bet counts as your first round bet, so as long as nobody raises, you won't have to place any more money in the pot to see the next card.

Betting Rounds

There are five rounds of betting. In limit seven-card stud, all bets and raises must be equal to either the low limit, or high limit bet size, depending on what round it is. In the first two rounds, all bets and raises must be equal to the low limit bet size. In the third, fourth, and fifth rounds, all bets must be equal to the high limit bet size. If, for example, you're playing 3-6 seven-card stud, all bets in the first two rounds will be in increments of 3 dollars, and all bets in the last three rounds will be in increments of 6 dollars. A maximum of 3 raises are allowed per betting round.

1. 3rd street - Two cards are dealt face down to every player, followed by another card face up. The player with the lowest card must bring in, by betting 1/2 o the low limit bet. He may choose to raise by betting the full the low limit bet. Play proceeds clockwise around the table, with each player choosing to fold, call, or raise. All bets and raises must be equal to the low limit bet size.
2. 4th street - A fourth card is dealt face up to every player. The player with the highest hand showing (at this point, the highest possible would be a pair of aces) is the first to act. He may choose to fold, check, or bet. If two or more players are tied for the highest hand, the one closest to the dealer's left will be the first to act. Play proceeds clockwise around the table as before. If a player is showing a pair at this point, then he and all the other players have the option to bet either the low limit bet size or the high limit bet size. Otherwise, all bets and raises must be equal to the low limit bet size.
3. 5th street - A fifth card is dealt face up to every player. Play proceeds as in the previous round, with the highest hand betting first, except now all bets and raises must be equal to the high limit bet size.
4. 6th street - A sixth card is dealt face up to every player. Play proceeds as in the previous round. All bets and raises must be equal to the high limit bet size.
5. 7th street - A seventh and final card is dealt face down to every player. Play proceeds as in the previous round. All bets and raises must be equal to the high limit bet size. In the rare event that all eight players remain in the hand at this point, there would not be enough cards for each player to receive another one. If that occurs, instead of every player receiving a card face down, a single card is placed in the middle of the table face up which every player is free to use.

Showdown - Anyone who has not folded after the last round of betting will now have the option of showing their hand in hopes of taking down the pot. The person who bet last is the first to show their hand, and then it proceeds clockwise from there, with each remaining player either choosing to show their hand, or muck it. Often times a player will muck their hand if they aren't going to win the pot, and don't want their opponents to see what they played.

Hint: Most online poker rooms offer the option of automatically mucking your losing hands, so the other players won't see what you played. It's generally a good idea to select this.

Must Have Rooms

Home to the biggest tournaments online, these rooms also have the largest player base, great bonuses, tons of action and the best software. If you don't have accounts here, you are missing out on the best that online poker has to offer.

Read more »