"[Sales] Lions and Events and Facebook, Oh My!" The IMPACT Show Ep. 35 [Show Notes]

2018 is already moving fast and furious for us.

This week, Marcus, George, Kevin, and Zach (or as I like to call them, the artists formerly known as The Sales Lion) joined us for their in-office onboarding and a little team bonding.

Even Nick drove down from Boston to join in the fun (and of course, film The IMPACT Show).

In this week's episode of The IMPACT Show, Bob and Nick talked Facebook and YouTube changes, how everything is going with The Sales Lion merger, and some lessons learned from promoting our recent webinar and IMPACT Live 2018.

Just in case you missed us live (or if you want to relive the magic), you’ll find the episode’s show notes below as well as the recording.

Enjoy and make sure to share with your peers! 

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Have feedback or questions? We’d love to hear it. Comment on this blog or email us at show@impactplus.com

What Marketers Be Talkin' 'Bout

Where we go over what you're saying in IMPACT Elite.

IMPACT Elite is a community of passionate marketers looking to help other marketers succeed. We’d love for you to join us! Go to impactplus.com/elite or just search the IMPACT Elite Group on Facebook and request to join. 

1. Marc Bekolay asked: "I am revising our personas in HubSpot. Is it better to start with a couple/few and build more later or create a thorough list to start? How many personas do you typically identify for a business?"
   • The general consensus is to focus on 2-3.  HubSpot has 3.
   • Kevin Elison: This totally depends on your business needs, resources and how you prioritize your audience. Take a look at your largest audience or which one you can positively affect your business. Segment your efforts based on your internal resources to set yourself up for success.
   • John McTigue: I would create a list of companies or consumers that are or are likely to be your best customers, figure out what they have in common and make one or more personas that fit them. Prioritize based on fit, not size. Then tailor your marketing strategy around them.
   • Ryan Litwiller + George B Thomas: both reminded us to create negative personas!
2. Nick Bennett asked: "What's up IMPACTers!? Back with another loaded question of the week. This is about the clashing of cultures and when businesses don't work well together. A major part of qualifying a b2b relationship is the culture fit. We want to do business, with the right business. So, how do you and your team qualify for culture? Have you ever declined a business relationship because of cultural differences? Have you ever started a business relationship and ended it down the line because a change resulted in a cultural difference?"
   
   • John McTigue: When I was doing sales, I made a point of letting them know that it was a two-way interview. I would let them know what we were looking for (a partner) in a relationship, and that there would be expectations for both sides. That's why I pointed out in the Impact LIVE discussion that NPS could be a should be both ways. To know what to look for, I asked our client teams about the good, the bad and the ugly. What did an ideal relationship look like? Then, before submitting a proposal, I asked them about the fit. Did we always do this? Unfortunately not, but we did learn from our mistakes.
   • Morganne Hatfield: A colleague of mine who owns a digital agency has all his employees vote on every potential client before deciding whether or not to accept their business. He has a great explanation of it here.

Digital Marketing News

Where each week, Nick and Bob share one thing from the world of digital marketing that caught their eye.

NY Times: Facebook is Changing. What Does That Mean for Your News Feed?

• Facebook has overhauled how it ranks the posts, videos, and photos that appear in its users’ News Feeds, introducing major changes on Thursday designed to put what friends and family have to say first.
• In short, you’ll see more posts from friends that have spurred lively debates in the comments. And you’ll see fewer cooking videos from brands and publications. Prioritizing what your friends and family share is part of an effort by Facebook to help people spend time on the site in what it thinks is a more meaningful way.
• This is nothing new… it’s been happening for years.
• HubSpot did an article in April last year… “The Decline of Organic Facebook Reach & How to Outsmart the Algorithm” 
  • 2012 rolled around, Page managers learned that only a fraction of their Facebook fans -- 16% on average
  • A study from Edgerank Checker found that between February 2012 and March 2014, organic reach for the average Facebook Page dropped from 16% to 6.5%. Research from Social@Ogilvy, meanwhile, suggests that for Pages with more than 500,000 Likes, organic reach could be as low as 2%.
  • An adjustment in late 2016 made this number even lower.
  • Today, you can expect it to be closer to zero.
• Adweek and other FB experts I spoke with don’t believe this will affect paid 
• What you can do...
  • Create content worth talking about / sharing. This will still breakthrough
  • Encourage your followers to star “see first”
  • Consider groups… and of course, we’ll be monitoring this with Elite
  • More video and Facebook Live

Recode: YouTube is Kicking "Tens of Thousands" of Video-Makers Out of Its Advertising Program

• YouTube is trying to clean itself up by making it much harder for small video makers to make money
• YouTube’s responses to a year of criticism it has generated for a series of scandals involving questionable and offensive content that has appeared on the site.
• Every single video in Youtube’s Preferred Program (most advertiser-friendly content) will be reviewed by a new small army of humans
• YouTube’s new rules require anyone who wants to generate ad dollars on the platform to first generate 4,000 hours of “watch time” over a 12-month period and to attract at least 1,000 subscribers. That replaces a lower hurdle of 10,000-lifetime views, which the site instituted last spring, after the first wave of negative stories about rogue content.
• If you’re serious about creating content and a following and making money, no problem.  It’s a lot of the smaller fringe creators who make less than $5/month from youtube who are automatically getting booted out until they can meet the new thresh holds
• Making it hard for people who upload hateful, offensive content to make money from YouTube without tripping some sort of quality control scheme. As your partner channel expands, greater regulation and quality control become important - not just to protect the brand of the platform, but those of other quality providers as well.  HubSpot’s own Agency Partner channel has gone through this evolution as well.
• Like with Facebook, it all goes back to creating really good content. If your YouTube content is really good, these changes shouldn't be that big of a deal.

Updates on TSL / IMPACT Merger

• George, Zach, Kevin, and Marcus were in the office this week!
  • We're doing our traditional onboarding process with them:
    • Set 30,60,90 day goals
    • They learned about our culture
    • Got to meet people from every department at IMPACT
• They're officially on our team page
• What we're focused on:
  • Figuring out the changes we need to make at our organization so that our clients have access to all of the services we offer at IMPACT.
• Marcus joined us for our Leadership Team meeting on Wednesday
  • Marcus' feedback was how passionate everyone is.
• If you're interested in seeing the merger for the TSL perspective, check out George's daily updates on Facebook. 
  • Day 1 Recap
  • Day 2 Recap
  • Day 3 Recap
  • Check out his page to see more

3 Key Things We Learned From This Week's Databox Webinar

1. We did Facebook ads, with the help from our friends at THINK Creative
   • We had 528 registrants for the webinar, and 193 of those were new contacts
   • From those registrants, 145 came from Facebook Ads. And, 74 new contacts came from Facebook Ads.
   • The Facebook Ad cost was about $9 a registrant.
   • 11 people who registered for the webinar went on to buy tickets to IMPACT Live '18
   • Had 2 people since they registered the webinar become IMPACT clients.
2. Webinars are still very effective. Had a consistent 150 people on the webinar, and more watching afterward.
3. Our future webinar program
   • Todd Hockenberry will be joining us on Tuesday, January 30th at 11:00 AM EST. And, he'll be talking about how to use inbound principles throughout your business to achieve extraordinary results.
     • Register for the webinar here

How We're Marketing IMPACT Live '18, What We're Learning:

• IMPACT Live 2018: Join over 500 members of the IMPACT Elite community in person for our very special 2-day event. Speakers include Dharmesh Shah, Ann Handley, David Meerman Scott, Marcus Sheridan, and more still to be announced. 
• Event Date: August 7th and 8th
• Click here to register or learn more 
• What we've learned:
  • A lot easier the second year
    • Understood that we were going to take a financial loss from last years event
  • Happy we invested so much in photos and videos that can be used to promote this years event
  • Early bird worked well

Next Steps:

We would love your comments! Feel free to send us an email or comment on the Facebook thread. 

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We're going to IMPACT Elite to ask what you want us to talk about, so jump in on the post there.

Join Us Next Week! 

We'll be back again next Thursday, January 25th at 1:00 PM ET.

Until next time... get out there and make it happen.