Category Archives: Personalization

Phone Calls = Page Views?

Scott Hamilton, president and CEO of VoodooVox believes: “Phone calls are the new page views, and VoodooVox’s In-Call Network is the next breakthrough advertising channel. We strongly believe that most telephony services that consumers currently pay for can be delivered profitably and for less with advertising support. Our In-Call Media represents the new standard by which all voice-based marketing will be gauged.”

The idea is interesting and we will wait and see how consumers react to voice ads, while they are waiting on hold to speak with their bank or pay the utility bills. Meanwhile, Voodoovox has closed $8.1M Financing Round led By Softbank Capital.

Steve Murray, partner, Softbank Capital feels: “The potential for ad-supported telephony extends far beyond directory assistance applications….Over time, we expect VoodooVox to help drive new applications, improve customer experiences, and decrease pricing for consumer telephony services of all kinds while raising profitability for the call publishers that provide these services.” The full news release is on their website.

So what’s the takeaway for you? There are more and more options of advertising, and reach audience at the most suitable time and space. Following the Internet, the telephone services got online, and in a few years, we can have “personalized” digital TV channels (more about that sometime later). So for any product or service that you want to market, consider all possible alternatives – they are increasing all the time.

Google Mobile Search Ads Go-Live

After about a year of trials, Google has announced it will begin including AdWords advertisements within Google Mobile Search results. In an email shared with advertising partners on Tuesday, Google wrote: “We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching Google from their mobile phones.

n the next few days, your search ads will be eligible to run on Google Mobile Search pages (like they currently do on Google.com). We are offering this feature – and any resulting clicks – for free through November 18, so you can experiment with the rapidly growing mobile platform while still reaching qualified customers.” For more info on this, read this Search Engine Land article.

Google Mobile Ads

Now, Mobile advertising has been predicted to be a big market, and while some businesses have taken their positions, others are still discussing over their white boards, and still others are making power point presentations that may not turn into action for another year.

One thing is for sure: mobile advertising is going to benefit from all the wide screen devices that we have been getting, including this Treo (one of our favourites!) You can receive text and images, like menu cards, driving directions, hotel room pricing lists, and more.

So how can you benefit as a business?

As you can expect, there will be a high demand for services while a person is on the move — related to transport, food, medicines, hotels, finance, etc. If you can deliver a reliable service, then there is an opportunity to advertise on the mobile platform, and sell at a better profit margin because the consumer is usually looking for immediate response, delivery, or action. For these services, he or she most probably won’t sit down to prepare a detailed comparison table, and you can get the order if you can deliver in the short time-frames.

But if you can’t you will have more than your share of irate customers!

How to improve Software Technology Sales?




This video is about software solution sales and marketing, but equally applicable to other technology sales. There is a great pressure to achieve results fast by trying to qualify a buyer and trying to move ahead. And to make things more difficult, a Booz Allan Hamilton study found that 85% of a company’s brand value is projected through the interaction between the buyer and seller (so all the previous branding can fall flat easily)- that makes it very challenging to differentiate yourself when you have just about 20% of the buyer’s time.

So one of the biggest challenges facing today’s software sales forces is their ability to have “perfect conversations” with executive buyers. Too many conversations are centered around value propositions that are not aligned and not tailored to an executive buyer’s key business issues and personal motivations.

Chris Deren, CEO of SellMasters, was a keynote speaker at the SLAM (Sales, Licensing, Alliances & Marketing for Software Companies) 2006. He defines “the perfect conversation” and its essential ingredients — and how software companies can align and optimize their sales, marketing and product teams for them. In this video, Deren discusses how to:

  • See the world through the eyes of executive buyers – Avoid being delegated to—and filtered out by—procurement. 90% of all IT vendors are considered non-strategic by buyers. So how do you move into the elite 10% club? Become executive centric to understanding their motivations and their cherished initiatives. Its difficult but that’s the differentiator
  • Turn complex product portfolios into simple value-driven stories
  • Create “last mile” marketing content that salespeople crave
  • Achieve and maintain “trusted advisor” status critical to success

About the Presenter: Chris Deren is the CEO of SellMasters, which offers sales performance optimization (SPO) services. He is a high-tech industry veteran with over 25 years of experience in building entrepreneurial teams, leading world-class sales organizations, and identifying and executing against winning go-to-market strategies for companies such as IBM, Xerox and Dun & Bradstreet.

5 ways to rapidly benefit from MyOrbit.tv

If you are in any kind of business, then based on our experience of helping companies so far, following are 5 ways to rapidly benefits from MyOrbit.tv.
1. Get better response from clients and prospects: With nearly a decade of business development experience, I can confirm that trust is established rapidly when a person is visible, rather than email or phone, but then meetings with decision making executives are very difficult. Now, when you send your pitch as a video, there is a significantly higher chance of it being watched, and you are much more likely to hear back with an okay on next steps.

2. Improve Sales & Marketing while reducing costs:
We all have our favorite ppts and pdfs tucked into various folders on our laptops. These documents are prepared by subject matter experts. For example, a Banking Solution ppt by your product manager, or a SOX compliance deck by a specialist. We usually send out the deck to a client/prospect and seek a time for a follow-up call. With help from MyOrbit, you can prepare packaged videos to do both these in the first shot. With MyOrbit, you also create your own Industry Group. For example, you can create a Banking Industry Solutions group, which you can fully own and control.

3. Break the linear relation between resource and message:
So often, we are trying to get the subject expert to talk about a given product or solution. The problem is, everybody wants to have him in their sales cycle. The solution is to create a set of videos, where this person can describe all his expertise, and then you can use them in discussions, one by one. The organization benefits a lot from this approach. We are helping companies to take such initiative. In addition, there is a specific benefit related to: Foreign Language Presentations: If you are marketing worldwide, and if you want to present your solution in a foreign language, say French of Spanish, then in addition to getting a subject expert, you have to ensure the language too. This is not easy to achieve regularly, and it often results in delays in the sales cycle. It’s best to package such presentations as a set of videos that can be updated once a quarter. Your message will register better, and clients see it favorably.

4. Project Management & Operations Review:
If you have a geographically dispersed team, with clients located in other countries, then for those key status reports and review presentations, which happen once a month/quarter, you should consider using packaged video, where the manager can present, in required also use a white board, and the team members can elaborate on specific points. It needs some preparation and extra time than just getting onto a telecon bridge. But those who are doing this are seeing the success from it in terms of renewed contracts and new opportunities.

5. Resource Training:
If you have to bring on board new resources on a regular basis, then chances are that today, you are repeating the same sessions. With a bit of planning and effort, you can create simple videos and use the on your intranet.


Why MyOrbit.tv?

Well, we are the leading company out there who’s doing the above things, and we have invested in our infrastructure and services keeping you in mind. Now, few companies do the above things today because (a) it’s new and the infrastructure is getting mature and economical, and (b) it takes a team with experience in different industries and business functions to run a channel like this. Our team is our biggest strength. Our focus on business and professional development ensures that we get focused professionals and executives as audience.

What Next?

Click on the above image to open the pdf presentation, or use the link below.

This presentation describes how different companies are benefiting from this innovative Internet business channel. There will always be some questions at the end of any presentation, so feel free to share your doubts with us. Contact us and we will show you at least two ways to benefit within days, not months.

cheers/Shankar AVSB