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dnangelic · 5 months

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@espectres asked : i’m not stressed , okay ? do i look fucking stressed ? // MEME.

' worse , you look like a liar . ' since when had things come to this ? there's grief in a phantom heart as they stand at opposite ends and seem to defy each other . he loves me , he loves me not . he should love me , but ... the thin , unhappy slits of dark's eyes narrow . tensions pull at every angle , though he nevertheless tries to avoid landing into the net and trigger of something nasty , like the explosive , tripwire wick of his own short temper --- flint to a tender and hidden hurt . he's always known that shou preferred to treat him an excess , tolerating him , perhaps , with some amount of reluctance and cruel , disparaging humors --- despite the pitch depths and hollows of a shared , inseparable longing . dark knows too of the other's vanishing independence ; the habits of an invisible boy who had been weaned off a particular poison , broken plates and split knuckles , violent just desserts that became part of the reason why those small , esper's fists might have curled in front of him --- even him , even now .

and yet , rather than roar or lunge , dark's entirety seems rebuked . his eyes gleam pitifully from behind the weightless strands of his bangs , the small frown on his features uncharacteristic of the hundreds of thousands of great phantom thieves flashing arrogant wink and grin from security camera footage and live , infinitely repeated broadcast . this was different . a lover should have been close , closer than anyone , so as to understand at least two hidden truths , but the glass wall so often effortlessly bridged by his other self has grown thicker into a castle-brick wedge , confusions turning the sword of the knight against what captive beast , red-eyed and black-winged dragon it might have otherwise sworn to protect , only when it had been mistaken for a prince . dark remains where he is , obedient and tender even while suffocating on his own frustrations .

' ... why won't you let me help you ? ' he's going to turn away from me , now . he's going to vanish from my sight . even if he screamed , he'd be left with nothing but an echo . yet even if there was nothing to be done between the two of them , then if nothing else --- ' can't i at least stay by your side ? ' silence and a touchless presence was fine , a fireplace smoulder for his wintry skin and the cavity in his chest that , like fast-cooling ashes , seemed to be growing only colder and colder with each passing second . i don't want to be alone --- but he doesn't know how to confess . wishing they could be weak together , wanting for a warmth in his arms that was presently razing him furiously at the fingertips ; even if it's shou's frustrations , it's surely his own fault too for being inept . ill-suited to anyone's happiness . company of a monster , meddling of a curse --- he suddenly stands , and the twin pair of black wings on his back flare open , a warning of his own leaving first .

' nevermind . forget it . ' if it was shou's wish , then he'd indulge it . if love , too , was letting go and leaving alone , then he would demonstrate absence , forgoing his own jealous-clinging desires . the sole mercy of a thief and a monster , he thinks . ' i didn't mean ... ' to make things worse by his own presence --- he should have known better . ' ... to make you upset , shou . ' even if it was an accident ; nothing more than a simple , innocent , wretched mistake --- there weren't any excuses . ' i'll give you space . ' because at least like this , he , and all his piercing gaze wouldn't look anymore ... and shou , trying to turn himself ; his truths and his feelings invisible if only by sheer intention of words alone , would no longer have to lie .

#*･ﾟ⊰ ANSWERED. ⊱#CANON.#espectres #i give u fluff i give u angst karmic balance remains at equilibrium

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kitchencabinets1 · 5 months

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Best Bar Faucets For Your Prep Sink

Let’s discuss the many kinds of bar faucets that might go well with your prep sink. Every kind adds a special functionality that can improve your kitchen or bar area’s appearance and utility. The following is a summary of some styles that may grab your attention:

1. Pull-Down Faucets

Pull-down faucets are great since they’re so simple to operate and versatile. With their pull-down spray wand that you can place right into the sink, these faucets simplify dishwashing and produce cleaning. They frequently include three spray settings — stream, spray, and pause — that let you effectively tackle a variety of jobs.

2. Pull-Out Faucets

Pull-out faucets, which are more compact in form and resemble pull-down types, are perfect for smaller sink settings. You may use the spout to fill pots on the counter or clean the hard-to-reach corners of the sink by pulling it out towards yourself.

They typically offer the same versatile spray functions as pull-down bar faucets.

3. High-Arc Faucets

High-arc bar faucets, also known as gooseneck faucets, have tall, arched spouts that give them a graceful appearance. They’re perfect for spaces where you might need to fill large pots or other tall containers. The high arc not only looks classy but also provides ample room underneath for all your prep work.

4. Low-Profile Faucets

If your bar or kitchen has overhead cabinets or shelves near the sink, a low-profile faucet might be the way to go. These are designed to fit comfortably under any space constraints without sacrificing style or functionality. They maintain a sleek and unobtrusive look, keeping your space tidy and coordinated.

5. Commercial-Style Faucets

For those who want a professional kitchen feel, commercial-style faucets are an excellent choice. They often feature a robust and functional design with a spring-loaded pull-down hose and spray head. These faucets are not only powerful in performance but also add an industrial chic element to your decor.

6. Touchless Faucets

Embracing modern technology, touchless bar kitchen faucets offer convenience and hygiene. A simple hand movement activates the water flow, making them ideal in a cooking environment where your hands might often be full or messy. They help keep the spread of germs at bay and are incredibly water-efficient.

7. Two-Handle Faucets

For those who prefer more control over the water temperature and flow, two-handle bar faucets are a great fit. These traditional designs allow for separate controls for hot and cold water. They come in a variety of styles, from vintage to modern, adding a functional elegance to your space.

Conclusion:

Feeling inspired? Dive into our collection at BuildMyPlace to explore innovative bar faucets that can transform your bar or kitchen area. And if you’re ever in doubt, just give us a shout — our design experts are here to help you pick the perfect piece!

FAQs

1: How high should a bar sink’s faucet be?

Choose a faucet with a spout height of between 6 and 10 inches. A high-arc faucet works great for filling tall containers if you have enough room.

2: Should I choose a pull-down or pull-out faucet?

If your sink is deep, go with a pull-down faucet for its powerful spray. Pull-out faucets are great for smaller spaces, giving good reach and flexibility.

3: Are touchless faucets a good idea for a bar sink?

Touchless faucets keep things clean and hygienic, especially handy in a space where you entertain. They’re also water-efficient — a double win!

4: What should I look for in faucet durability?

Opt for solid brass or stainless steel for toughness. Ceramic disc valves are a plus for long-lasting performance.

5: How does faucet finish affect the look of my bar area?

The finish can set the tone of your space. Chrome or stainless steel is sleek for modern vibes, while oil-rubbed bronze or brushed nickel adds a cozy, traditional touch.

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clarencenicholsonata · 5 years

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7 Unconventional Lead Generation Techniques for Brick and Mortar Businesses

The whole lead generation process for physical brick-and-mortar stores is not only tedious but also laborious if you’re relying on traditional methods.

Cold emails and cold calls by scraping through local address books just don’t cut it anymore.

But, what if you could still accomplish your lead generation goals using methods that add value to your prospects?

To walk you through some of the different methodologies, we’ve curated 7 unconventional lead generation techniques for local businesses.

1.Embed know-how videos

Video marketing is the future of the internet. Video content improves SEO, increases conversion rate, generates a direct sales lead and more.

Web users spend more time watching videos. This has proven to be highly beneficial for marketers and local businesses.

Videos are an effective lead generation tool. Consider using high-quality, informative content as gated content, adding videos on landing pages, and adding CTAs at the end of the video with a related offer can help to generate leads.

Consider platforms like YoutTube and Vimeo to get millions of views every single day. YouTube is the second most popular search engine as of today.

Users get on to YouTube to find potential answers to their questions. If a video is linked to the answers at the bottom that directs them to your website, that is a potential client in the pipeline.

Forbes predicts that 90% of customers say a video helps them make decisions to buy and 64% of customers say that watching a video makes them more likely to buy a product.

Add dynamic QR Codes at the end of the videos for the potential lead to scan and are directed to your website’s top landing pages or social media handle.

Beaconstac here, for example, leverages know-how videos to educate their users on how to create PDF QR Codes. Videos serve as a great interactive tool and simplify the process on the whole for users.

For more on using video for business, check out our guide on six types of video ideas to supercharge your social media.

2. Leverage app-less marketing

Deploy QR Codes and NFC Tags to generate leads to your local business and automate your marketing strategy.

QR Codes and NFC tags are cost-effective, work out-of-the-box, and is extremely efficient in generating leads.

This allows businesses to analyze, track and retarget their consumers by engaging with third-party applications exclusively meant for analyzing and retargeting by studying their click behavior.

Macy’s, the largest retail chain in the US has deployed beacon and NFC technology to strategize an engaging shopping experience for its users.

By opting for these technologies, Macy’s has amped the customer experience by rolling out loyalty programs, an enhanced customer service, segregating the layout merchandise in their stores, and offering personalized shopping experience.

Using QR Codes and NFC Tags on print marketing medium such as flyers, brochures, OOH advertisements, incentivized coupons and offers can be leveraged to promote the product, and, in turn, effectively increase leads.

McDonald’s used QR Codes on their paper packages after learning that their customers wanted to know more about their food by sharing nutritional information about their hamburgers.

This not only instilled a blanket of trust amongst the customers but also helped the company to highly target and retarget their customers to send out personalized messages and offers.

3. AMA (Ask Me Anything)

One of the most powerful and unique techniques to generate leads to your local business is by reaching out to pioneers in the market industry for their thoughts.

Take advantage of social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and even LinkedIn to post these Q&As. Send out a planned invite to your customers and followers notifying them about the Q&A session.

The questions could either be asked by an employee or you could even leverage consumers in this case with questions to ask the expert.

Awario states that companies who engage in social selling get 199% better ROI.

DataVLT, a data analytics platform ran an AMA session on Twitter by using the hashtag #AskDVLTAnything. By keeping their hashtag unique, the company was able to gather questions from different parts of the world and answered them during the session.

4. User-generated content

User-generated content and review platforms have a powerful foothold in organic search, making them an eminent opportunity to expand your brand name and get noticed by the right consumers.

When a business encourages its consumers to leave a review behind on a third-party platform with strong SEO, they are exponentially increasing the chances of being discovered by qualified prospects in search; without paying a penny.

FinancesOnline is an online B2B solutions finder service that works purely on customer reviews and ratings. The platform segregates companies based on the maximum quality content reviews and helps consumers find the solution they need.

Google acknowledges their independent role in helping consumers what they want and seems to approve review sites in search engine results.

Businesses can also outmaneuver their competitors in high-value keyword searchers. Considering the Google/CEB study found that 71% of B2B searchers start with a generic keyword phrase, this is crucial.

5. Answer questions on Quora

Quora is a Q&A based social networking site that reaches more than 100 million users per month. Quora can be taken advantage of to build yourself as a thought-leader in your particular niche.

Quora is primarily a user-generated content platform. But with that being said, there are ways to get the formula right on Quora. Quora is best used as a method to open up communication threads as you engage and help out users who are looking for a particular solution.

By answering questions related to my niche, and offbeat content, I can categorize myself as an expert on the subject matter garnering more attention to the company. This, in turn, will help the company get more users to at least click on the link, open a loop, and get them interested in the platform.

Quora doesn’t allow overly self-promoting content to generate leads and bring in revenue. The laws of reciprocity come into light and consumers will reach out to you after establishing yourself as a trusted source on the platform.

6. Offer free trials and giveaways

Giveaways, free trials, and sample products are the ideal method for getting potential users excited and letting them use your brand’s product to have an insight into it.

Free trials of a brand’s features can hels to capture potential consumer. If the trial helps them greatly, they are more likely to purchase the product and become a customer.

Sephora offers a plethora of free giveaways and trial products for their customers. In fact, Sephora is hugely popular for its giveaways, coupons, and discounts which get consumers flocking to their website and physical stores.

This lead generation process for Sephora has been hugely successful and has helped the company to retarget their potential customers to turn into qualified leads.

Touchless buying can also be employed for businesses that have an online presence.

In addition to that, consumers who have tried free samples are the most qualified leads because they have actually reached out to try your products.

By offering free trials and giveaways, a brand can do its own selling and encourage people to buy their products in a low-pressure manner.

7. Optimize email marketing

According to a report by DemandGen, lead-nurturing emails get as much as 10X the response rate as opposed to standalone mails.

Marketing automation is one of the biggest trends in email marketing at the moment, thus generating great results for businesses. Marketing automation tools are constructively hybrid email marketing tools that connect with your CRM that automatically pushes you to send highly personalized targeted emails to leads.

Email marketing plays a massive role in content marketing success. It plays the role of the concept of direct engagement. Some of the clues to develop a successful email content to generate leads must include -

Subject line

Concise content

Integrate social media handles in the mail

Include high-quality and lightweight images in the mail to explain the content better

Incorporate a CTA at the end of the mail

There are several tools that integrate email marketing to send out timely emails with highly engaging content such as Drip, Aweber, and Constant Contact to name a few.

Drip is an end-to-end email marketing platform that gives an incomparable insight into the customers’ behavior; right from their click behavior, emails they’ve opened, and purchases made to help build a brand from email to social media.

Most users open emails from businesses they want to connect with. This makes email marketing as one of the best tools for lead generation.

Experiment what’s best for your business

As a recap, the seven unconventional lead generation tactics are -

Embed know-how videos

Leverage app-less marketing

AMA (Ask Me Anything)

User-generated content

Answer questions on Quora

Offer free trials and giveaways

Optimize email marketing

A well-thought-out established process and subsequent focused strategy to generate leads can be wholesome and have the power to grow and sustain a business.

When it comes to businesses, the agenda “one size fits all” doesn’t hold good; what might work for a SaaS company might not work very well for a grocery shop.

Although lead generation is the numero uno challenge in this present day, identifying the bottlenecks in the funnel and tweaking strategies to take a technology-first approach always helps.

About the Author

Apoorva Hegde is a Content Marketer at MobStac. Apart from writing articles and blog posts related to QR Codes and all things related to it, she enjoys simple pleasures of life like going on long walks with her dog, eating carbs all day, and alike.

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theresepattonlove-blog · 6 years

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I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

The subject of today's post might seem a little strange at first, but I hope you'll bear with me. :-) My goal with each blog post is to share at least one thing with you that helps make your life easier. Sometimes that thing takes the form of a useful tip or trick, instructions on how to make something, or a piece of advice. But every once in a while, I come across a product that is so useful, I feel compelled to share it with you.

And that's exactly why today I'll be telling you about my very favorite trash can! I didn't know it was possible to love a trash can as much as I love this one, but here we are! I find myself appreciating it's helpful features multiple times per day, so I wanted to tell you about it in case any of you could benefit from upgrading your trash can too. :-)

Meet my fancy new kitchen helper, the simplehuman 58L Stainless Steel Trash Can. This is definitely a splurge item, but I haven't regretted it once! In fact, I find new things to appreciate about it every day. I'll walk you through some of the things I love most about it!

6 Reasons Why I Love My Trash Can

1. Motion Sensor

Lifting the lid on your trash can gets tricky when your hands are either full or covered in food. That's why I love the motion sensor on this trash can! All I have to do is move my hands over the sensor and the lid will pop up on its own. It's highly convenient, and more hygienic too!

2. Voice Activation

Not only does this garbage can have a motion sensor, but it has a voice sensor too. Just say “Open can!” and the lid pops right open! I don't use this feature all that often, but my boys love it. They love telling the can to open so they can practice their across-the-kitchen garbage basketball skills. (I let this slide because they are well aware that it's their own responsibility to clean up any messes if they miss!) ;-)

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It's so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

The one minor drawback of this and other simplehuman brand trash cans is that they are designed to be used with their special fitted trash bags. (This can takes “Code Q” liner bags.) However, for me this isn't much of an issue. Not only do their bags fit perfectly and never slip, they're also much more durable and leak-proof than other bags I've used!

4. Easy Bag Changing

I had another motion-activated trash can before I got this one, but there were a few things I didn't like about it. One of the issues I had with it was how I had to pull out the unwieldy liner bucket to change the trash bag. With my new trash can, the process of switching bags is much easier!

All I have to do is lift the lid section up, pull out the full bag, and put in a new one. Then I just drop the lid back down, and it's ready to go! The lid both secures the bag in place and hides the edges of the bag, so the outside of the trash can stays looking sleek and clean.

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

Not only does the finish on this trash can look sleek, it stays that way too! I'm not sure how it works, but the finish seems to repel fingerprints and smudges. And when it does get spilled on or splattered, all I have to do is wipe it clean with a wet microfiber cloth. I love having a garbage can that never looks “dirty.”

6. Five-Year Warranty

While this trash can is definitely quite a bit pricier than its standard, low-tech counterparts, your investment is protected by a five-year warranty. It gives me peace of mind to know that if I run into an issue with it during the next several years, simplehuman will replace the defective parts or repair it for me!

Looking For Something Similar?

If you like the idea of this trash can, but not the price tag, I totally get it! I wanted to offer an alternative option, so I did some digging on Amazon and found a trash can with similar features. It's the iTouchless 13-Gallon Touchless Trash Can, and it's listed for just $69.99! Here are some of the features it has:

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

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sniisel-blog · 6 years

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I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

6 Reasons Why I Love My Trash Can

1. Motion Sensor

2. Voice Activation

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It's so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

4. Easy Bag Changing

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

6. Five-Year Warranty

Looking For Something Similar?

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

0 notes

carllmcintyre33-blog · 6 years

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I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

6 Reasons Why I Love My Trash Can

1. Motion Sensor

2. Voice Activation

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It's so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

4. Easy Bag Changing

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

6. Five-Year Warranty

Looking For Something Similar?

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

0 notes

goatofdunking15-blog · 6 years

Text

I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

6 Reasons Why I Love My Trash Can

1. Motion Sensor

2. Voice Activation

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It's so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

4. Easy Bag Changing

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

6. Five-Year Warranty

Looking For Something Similar?

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

0 notes

brianobrienny · 4 years

Text

What is Phygital Marketing? How to Use It and 5 Consumer Marketing Examples

What is phygital marketing? Nope, it’s not a typo. This is a real thing. And we’re gonna define it for you:

Phygital marketing involves merging the worlds (and words) of both physical and digital experiences.

For example, phygital marketing involves communicating with potential customers who might toggle between in-store and online shopping. While mobile shopping continues to rise, customers also use their mobile devices to enhance in-store shopping experiences.

And the experience matters a great deal, especially for those of us in B2B. 86% of B2B buyers say they’re willing to pay more for an awesome experience. Almost half of B2B buyers have completed an impulse purchase after a stellar experience.

Lots of B2B marketers seem reluctant to admit that all consumer trends end up making their way to B2B. But your “buyers” are also “consumers” for the 16 hours they’re not working every day. So let’s keep an open mind.

When carried out with careful planning, phygital marketing is a powerful tool for connecting with and engaging customers.

Quick takeaways:

In B2C, consumers still want certain sensory aspects of the real-life shopping experience despite e-commerce popularity.

Phygital marketing optimizes the experience for B2B customers as well. How you do that depends on your audience and your products/services.

Phygital marketing examples show that the concept can be anything from an all-encompassing business strategy to a few tweaks to improve the experience.

What is Phygital Marketing?

A few weeks ago, I received an email from my good friend James Tennant from Converge that looks at trending keywords and phrases, as well as related questions and propositions from a range of B2B topics. It identified “Phygital Marketing” as an important search trend in marketing.

So I did some research to share my findings with you. (By the way, I recommend signing up for his Converge ‘TrendingUp’ keyword insights email newsletter.)

Phygital marketing takes the best aspects of both real-life and online purchases to improve the experience as a whole.

We’ve all heard talk about physical storefronts dying out, especially with e-commerce accelerating under COVID-19 restrictions. However, people still demand certain sensory aspects of the real-life shopping experience.

An optimized phygital marketing strategy prioritizes sensory experiences you can’t get via an app. In B2B, it seems phygital marketing would be even more important: The stakes are higher.

Phygital marketing can also use digital technology to enhance physical experiences.

How to Develop a Phygital Marketing Strategy

You can follow these few simple steps to build your strategy:

Research Your Audience

If you’re mainly an e-commerce outfit, ask yourself what physical sensory experiences your audience might be lacking.

On the other hand, brands with physical storefronts should ask themselves how digital technology and activity could enhance real-life experience.

Start with your reviews and feedback for inspiration – what issues do buyers give for turning you’re your product most often? Investigate data from unhappy clients – what went wrong and how could you use a phygital marketing strategy to fix it?

Different demographics shop and interact with the internet in distinct ways. For example, 51% of consumers who use mobile shopping apps open them inside the store to access discounts, compare prices, and research reviews. Meanwhile, 66% of Gen Z say in-store availability is important.

In B2B, buyers are younger than ever and younger than most marketers think, so keep that in mind as you develop your marketing strategy.

Surveys are always a smart way to crowdsource ideas for improving your shopping experience.

Consider Your Goals

Some brands find phygital marketing attractive because it helps them scale their in-store operations and overhead. Meanwhile, e-commerce brands might want to use phygital marketing to reach new audiences.

What are you hoping to achieve? Certain types of phygital marketing require heavy investments so make sure you have goals and a strategy laid out before diving in.

Prioritize Emotions and Senses

Physical stores aren’t only about shopping anymore – they’re about creating a sensory experience.

The internet allows us to see and hear. However, our other three senses – taste, smell, and touch – are absent from any online shopping experience.

But there’s another aspect difficult to replicate online: human connection and the emotions associated with it.

Sure, you could create conversational content, use images of real people, implement live chats, and talk to your customers on social media. It still isn’t the same as being physically present in a different environment.

5 Examples of Phygital Marketing

You’ve probably used phygital marketing on countless occasions without even thinking about it!

Keep in mind some of the phygital marketing strategies from the following examples might not be totally workable during COVID-19 measures while others might be ideal. Some may be relevant to B2C but not B2B. But we can learn from all of these. It helps to think long-term.

Pop-Up Stores or Event Booths

Pop-ups at local festivals, craft shows, industry events, or marketplaces are an awesome way to engage with your audience. These phygital tactics are particularly useful for building hype before product launches or promoting high-ticket products.

The high-end audio company, Sonos, partnered with Google and set up isolated sound chambers in select cities where patrons could experience exciting 3D soundscapes. A preloaded iPad let visitors personalize their experience. Sonos could also analyze data from the app to learn about their audience.

youtube

These Sonos popups could double as a B2B marketing strategy for reaching businesses interested in buying superior sound tech for their theaters, studios, or venues.

Create a Real-World Playground or Information Center

Banks face a catch-22: Customers complete most banking online, but 50% of people prefer visiting in-person branches for certain services.

Capital One transformed many branches across major cities into coffee shops with coworking spaces, workshops, and educational/coaching centers. The bank saw demand for human interaction and used it to create a valuable community space.

This strategy is particularly smart for B2B. Despite the WeWork scandal, co-working spaces are still flourishing around the country – especially as professionals working from home need an escape from their house.

Research your audience and consider opening a physical branded café where your largest audience (or biggest market potential) lies.

You could offer spaces for meetings, printing, mail, and general Wi-Fi use. Of course, keep a brand concierge on standby to answer questions.

You might also follow the Amazon Go strategy: Create a touchless experience by letting patrons order from their phone or just take what they’d like and automatically charge them after they leave.

Create a Consumer Product Sample

Today, lots of startups launch as a consumer product with the long-term goal of going B2B. Take Perfect Day – a California-based vegan food startup – for example.

Perfect Day launched their flagship vegan ice cream alternative as a consumer product. It quickly sold out, but the founders had no intention of restocking. Why?

The goal was to market the technology behind the animal-free “dairy” alternative to larger businesses and manufacturers.

Smart move: Perfect Day used physical marketing to show how successful their product was with consumers while using digital tools to market the tech to businesses.

Implement Augmented Reality Features

Amazon, Target, and other major retailers have all launched augmented reality tools for customers to see what furniture would look like inside their home.

B2Bs haven’t fallen behind though.

Medical device manufacturers, aircraft companies, and even food processing companies have all jumped onto the augmented reality trend to blend the physical and digital worlds.

youtube

Incorporate Wearable Technology

Wearables offer a unique phygital marketing opportunity. Take Hilton for example. Guests at the Hilton America’s Leadership Conference each received a wearable device that allowed them to seamlessly exchange contact information.

The device also used gamification to encourage engagement: Attendees earned points for every interaction that they could trade in for merch at the event shop.

It worked!

Each attendee ended up making an average of 31 connections.

Wearable devices can also:

Help attendees navigate the event

Bookmark places or sessions

Allow or deny access restricted areas (depending on their status)

Enable touchless signups

Provide detailed itineraries

Allow staff to communicate

Manage traffic flow and prevent bottlenecks

Conduct secure transactions

Expect wearables to become the norm at events in a post-COVID-19 world as hosts look for ways to go touchless and prevent bottlenecks.

Plus, you get access to previously untapped metrics and analytics.

What is Phygital Marketing to You?

As COVID-19 measures reshape the way we conduct business, expect the importance of phygital marketing to grow.

The surge in online shopping and business surely won’t go back to pre-pandemic levels. However, people will also develop a new appreciation for real-world experiences, realizing they took in-person interactions for granted.

Each brand will need to develop a unique approach towards merging the digital experience and in-store shopping. What will work best for your audience and offerings?

We help companies like yours grow with affordable and effective content, strategy, thought leadership packages, and much more. Check out the Content Builder Services now!

The post What is Phygital Marketing? How to Use It and 5 Consumer Marketing Examples appeared first on Marketing Insider Group.

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toptechgadgetsshop · 4 years

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World’s Safest And Quickest Digital Thermometer - Our Feverpartol Review

At Top Tech Gadgets Shop, in our exclusive Feverpartol Review we introduce you to an infrared touchless thermometer that is said to be the safest and the easiest way to monitor body temperature.

Using the traditional thermometer is time consuming and the person who is ill has to put effort in order to know his body temperature. I started looking for other options. To my surprise, I came across Fever Patrol, an infrared touchless thermometer that is the safest and the easiest way to monitor body temperature.

The Biggest Problem With Traditional Thermometers

After this Feverpatrol Review, you’ll understand why old thermometers aren’t convenient –

They have to be disinfected and sanitized after every use.

They can possibly spread the disease from one family member to another family member.

Old people or children have to be woken up while taking their temperature.

They are time consuming because you have to wait for the results to show up.

They can show incorrect readings if the person has just consumed hot water, milk, tea.

Even Health Specialists Across The World Suggest Fever Patrol

This handy high-tech thermometer makes checking the temperature a hassle-free and quick task. It has some amazing features -

Contact free – Regular thermometers have to be kept under your arms or inside your mouth. With Fever Patrol you don’t have to make any contact. Just point and shoot towards the person whose temperature has to be recorded. No need to disinfect too.

No need to wake the patient – You can measure the body temperature of the person without disturbing his/her sleep. This is very helpful when you need to monitor children or elders.

Simple to use - You just need to hold the thermometer near the person's forehead and press the button to know his/his body temperature. You’ll get accurate results.

Use for different objects - You can also check the temperature of different objects too. Objects such as drinks, food, bath water for small toddlers etc.

From Kids To Elders, Anyone Can Use This Device On Their Own.

There are very basic steps that you should follow in order to use Fever Patrol –

Step 1 - Hold the infrared sensor above the body surface and press the button.

Step 2 – Within seconds, the digital display will bring up the temperature reading that will be accurate along with a matching colour code (Green signified safe, Yellow signifies slight fever and Red signifies high fever)

Step 3 – You can save up to 64 readings in the device. So you can compare the results and progress of your child’s health. You can even compare the body temperature of multiple individuals.

Why Fever Patrol Is The Safest Alternative To Monitor Health?

Fever Patrol not only saves time but it also keeps your surroundings free from germs and viruses thanks to its touch-less feature. It's so affordable yet so efficient and effective -

Colour coded screen – Helps to monitor and understand the body temperature quickly.

Measure all values – Regardless the temperature being low, medium or high, this device can measure every value.

Easy to handle – Fever Patrol comes with a handle that makes it very easy to carry it along. The handle of this device gives it a sturdy grip.

Mode button – The mode button makes it convenient for the user while monitoring different materials or different individuals.

Carry it anywhere and everywhere - The compact design of the product will help you to take Fever Patrol everywhere along with you. It can easily fit into your bag.

What Makes It Worth The Buy? Here Are The Pros And Cons –

Pros -

No need to recharge it again and again - It works with simple AAA battery which consumes less battery.

It is the safest option – Since it is contact free, you can use it many times. Traditional thermometers are infectious and can transfer germs and viruses easily.

They take orders worldwide – They’ll deliver at your doorstep no matter in whichever country or city you might be living right now.

You can select the measuring units – You can switch in between units like Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Cons -

While you are reading this, Fever Portal can run out of stock anytime!

You don’t want to regret this later. So go and order now!

How To Buy?

You can make the payment through various methods such as PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, AMEX or Discover. If you’ll place your order now, you’ll get your package within the next few days.

Why Buy From Us?

If you buy now and get a 40% discount. If you buy two thermometers you will get a discount of 45%. You can get a discount of 50% if you buy 3 thermometers. The manufacturer also offers you a lifetime replacement and protection guarantee for a fee of 10 Euros. This extends your warranty and you can use it for the rest of your life. In case you get a broken one, the manufacturer will send you a new device free of charge.

The Stocks Are Running Out. ORDER NOW!

Where Can You Find Us?

We make sure that when you make an actual purchase, your buying experience stays top notch. No stress, only hassle-free shopping. Click to order now, you can directly visit their website.

Conclusion

Digital thermometers like Fever Patrol promise easy and quick application. The handling is very convenient for parents as well as children. It gives accurate results within seconds. Touch-less thermometer, means you won’t have to worry about inaccurate readings.

All these features make it a ‘must-buy’ deal. You should not miss out on this product because it is worth buying.

Moreover, the readers of our Feverpatrol review will get an exclusive discount of up to 50% off with a satisfaction guarantee. If you are not happy with the product, they will give you a 30-day money-back guarantee too. JUST GO AND ORDER NOW!

#Feverpatrol Review #feverpatrol #review #thermometer #digital

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canadastartupblog · 5 years

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Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition

In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit. Failure to get product/market fit right is very likely the number 1 cause of startup failure. However in all these articles, I have not seen any discussion about what I believe is the second biggest cause of startup failure: the cost of acquiring customers turns out to be higher than expected, and exceeds the ability to monetize those customers.

In case you are not familiar with the importance of Product/Market fit, Marc Andreessen has a great blog post on this topic: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters.

In this blog, Marc argues that out of the three core elements of a startup, team, product, and market, the only thing that matters is product/market fit. I agree with Marc’s view that product/market fit is extremely important. However after closely watching several hundred startups that have failed, I observed that a very large number of these had solved the product/market fit problem, but still failed because they had not found a way to acquire customers at a low enough cost.

Business Model

I would like to propose that in addition to team, product, and market, there is actually a fourth, equally important, core element of startups, which is the need for a viable business model. Business model viability, in the majority of startups, will come down to balancing two variables:

Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC)

The ability to monetize those customers, or LTV (which stands for Lifetime Value of a Customer)

Successful web businesses have long understood these metrics as they have such an easy way to measure them. However there is a lot of value in looking at these same metrics for all other businesses.

To compute the cost to acquire a customer, CAC, you would take your entire cost of sales and marketing over a given period, including salaries and other headcount related expenses, and divide it by the number of customers that you acquired in that period. (In pure web businesses where the headcount doesn’t need to grow as customer acquisition scales, it is also very useful to look customer acquisition costs without the headcount costs.)

To compute the Lifetime Value of a Customer, LTV, you would look at the Gross Margin that you would expect to make from that customer over the lifetime of your relationship. Gross Margin should take into consideration any support, installation, and servicing costs.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that business model failure comes when CAC (the cost to acquire customers) exceeds LTV (the ability to monetize those customers.

A well balanced business model requires that CAC is significantly less than LTV:

Since the above two diagrams are so obvious, you may wonder why I have included them. The goal is give the reader a sense of the balancing act required to create a profitable business. Hopefully the value will become more obvious with the third version of the diagram that shows the different factors that affect the balance.

Another reason for stressing the point using diagrams is that many entrepreneurs have realized that since the web provides some amazing new ways to acquire customers at low cost, several new businesses have become possible. The only thing that you have to consider is can you monetize your customers at a higher level than the cost to acquire them.

The Entrepreneur’s Achilles Heel: Optimism

To be an entrepreneur requires great optimism, and a very strong belief in how much customers will love your product. Unfortunately this same attribute can also lead entrepreneurs to believe that customers will beat a path to their door to purchase the product. This frequently causes them to grossly underestimate the cost it will take to acquire customers.

A common scenario is an entrepreneur that has dreamt up a cool new service that they can offer via the web. As a VC, I have sat through many presentations like this, and in most cases the service is actually interesting and compelling. However in the majority of these presentations there is little or no focus on how much it will cost to acquire customers. As I ask questions to understand the thinking, what usually comes out is something vague along the lines of web marketing, and/or viral growth with no numbers attached.

A quick look around all the B2C startups shows that, although viral growth is often hoped for, in reality it is extremely rare. When it does happen, the associated businesses are usually extremely attractive, provided they have a way to monetize their customers. (For more on the topic of Viral Growth, refer to my blog post on that topic here.)

Far more common is a need to acquire customers through a series of steps like SEO, SEM, PR, Social Marketing, direct sales, channel sales, etc. that will cost the company significant amounts of money. What shocks and surprises many first time entrepreneurs is just how high the numbers are for CAC using these kinds of techniques.

Some examples of CAC calculations

For example, if you are using Google Ad Words to drive traffic to your site, take a look at the following interactive spreadsheet. This example shows a cost per click of 50 cents, and the resulting website visitors converting to a trial at the rate of 5%. Those trials are then shown converting to paid customers at the rate of 10%. What the sheet shows is that each customer is costing you $100 in just lead generation expense. For many consumer facing web sites, it can be hard to get the consumer to pay more than $100 for the service. And this cost does not factor in the marketing staff, web site costs, etc.

One of the more interesting things that this model shows is how rapidly cost of customer acquisition climbs if your leads require human touch to convert them (compare cell B23 with cell B22.) This human touch can be as light as email follow ups, or as much as inside sales people doing multiple sales calls and demos. I have seen this cost vary from around $400 to $5,000 per customer acquired, depending on the level of touch needed.

Another shocking computation is to look at the cost of a direct field sales force:

This shows that it is not unusual for the cost of acquiring a customer to be as high as $100,000. This number is heavily dependent on the productivity of your sales teams. In the model above, this was set to 10 deals per year per team. Given the need to cover R&D and G&A costs, the average gross margin on a deal needs to be at least $150k.

Lessons Learned – Business Planning Stage

My advice to entrepreneurs working on a new business plan is to build a model similar to those above to estimate the cost of customer acquisition. This is going to show you the dependency on several critical variables:

Cost per lead

Conversion rates at each stage of your sales process

Level of touch required

Then compare this to your expected monetization. As a very rough rule of thumb here are two guidelines that you might find helpful:

LTV > CAC. (It appears that LTV should be about 3 x CAC for a viable SaaS or other form of recurring revenue model. Most of the public companies like Salesforce.com, ConstantContact, etc., have multiples that are more like 5 x CAC.)

Aim to recover your CAC in < 12 months, otherwise your business will require too much capital to grow. (Banks and wireless phone companies ignore this rule, but they have access to tons of capital.)

In the early days of the business, you will not be able to accurately predict your conversion rates, and the viability of your entire business may depend on this. So I recommend building an execution plan that focuses on finding out what these numbers will be as soon as possible in the lifecycle of the business. Good numbers will enable you to raise funding easily, and bad numbers may indicate that this is not a viable business.

The good news is that if you can monetize your customers at a higher rate than the cost to acquire them, you probably have a great business on your hands.

Next Generation Business Models

Because a number of smart entrepreneurs realized the importance of lowering CAC, they created new business models such as Open Source, SaaS, Freemium, etc. that directly tackled the problem of acquiring customers. Some of the early B2B pioneers in this space were companies like JBoss (story here), SolarWinds, ConstantContact, HubSpot, etc. Once others started to see the success these companies were having, they started copying the techniques.

These new business models focused heavily on how buying behavior has changed because of the power of the web. Think about your own behavior: if you are like me, you hate having to deal with sales people, and greatly prefer to do your own research starting with search engines, and leveraging free trials, on-line videos, blogs, reviews, and your social network. To adapt to this, the new business models make use of a variety of techniques described below:

Extensive use of the web to drive lead flow. In particular, the best practices include using Inbound Marketing to build traffic, instead of paying for traffic with search ads. (Read Get Found using Inbound Marketing to find out more.)

Use of a free product or service to attract web visitors, and aim for a viral spread as they tell their friends. Examples of free products include Open Source software, services like HubSpot’s Website Grader, free versions of a SaaS service that have limited, but still valuable, feature sets, etc. For more info on this topic refer to The power of Free.

Use of a free trial, where the customer can easily download, or use a SaaS version of the full product to see if it works for them.

Leveraging the power of your customers’social networks to get viral growth where possible.

Use of the touchless conversion to convert trials to paying customers.

Using low cost inside sales when the touchless conversion is not possible.

Extensive use of software to automate all processes such as SEO, SEM, social networking, lead scoring, lead nurturing, CRM, etc.

Metrics on all aspects of the customer acquisition process to find out what can be improved.

These techniques are frequently referred to as the Low Cost Sales model, or as Sales 2.0.

Balancing Monetization with CAC

The way in which these techniques can work together with other techniques to drive up monetization (e.g. recurring revenue) are illustrated in the diagram below:

Lessons Learned – Ways to reduce customer acquisition costs

Conversion rates play an extremely important role in your customer acquisition cost. Anything you can do to improve conversion rates is obviously a good thing. For more on this topic, please refer to the Building a Sales and Marketing Machine part of this web site.

Consider using A/B testing to improve conversion rates. Web traffic can be easily split so that parts are fed to different landing pages with different offers, and the resulting conversion rates measured.

Look at the level of touch required to complete a sale. Some products are easily understood, while others may require a careful walk-through by a sales person. Sometimes, the customer will want a trial with their own data. With certain complex products, this will need an on-site installation by a sales engineer, which sends costs through the roof. Consider every possible way to minimize this. For example:

Create demo videos that answer every likely sales question.

List the common sales objections that come up in the sales cycle, and provide answers to these on the web site.

Try using customer references to avoid the need for a trial

If your customers are going to compare you to the competition as part of their process, consider doing this for them, with a section of your site that has a comparison matrix with appropriate check marks.

If you have a light touch sales model, consider setting yourself the goal of a “Touchless Conversion”, i.e. getting rid of, or minimizing the touch required to close the sale. As shown in the model, this has a huge impact on cost of customer acquisition.

Options for products requiring high touch

The toughest business models are those that employ expensive field sales organizations. The high salaries and commissions for sales people, sales engineers, travel costs, and office costs add up to an extraordinarily high figure. And this is before you factor in the failure rate (the percentage of sales people hired that don’t become productive). It is not too surprising that VCs are not aggressively pursuing these kinds of businesses. There are some ways you can look to address the problem:

If you are currently using a field sales organization that sells direct, look at whether it is possible to sign up OEM deals with strategic partners to leverage their customer base and distribution power. What generally works best here is allowing the OEM to sell only a base layer of your product with co-branding. Then you can go back into their customers and upsell them. Owning the customer base is an important way to control your own destiny, and will also earn your company a higher valuation. In addition to distribution power, these kinds of relationships solve the “safe choice” concern of many buyers, and can transform your business.

Consider converting to a channel sales model at some stage in the lifecycle of the business. Many times this requires that you “prime-the-pump”, as most resellers won’t sell a product until they see clear customer demand. Channel sales models usually only work when the company commits to them fully, and passes all orders through the channel, so be prepared for the loss of margin this will represent to your current order flow.

Another option is to evaluate whether you can move from field sales to inside sales people. Insides sales people are not only less expensive in direct salary costs, but also in travel costs. Other advantages of inside sales people is that they are far more efficient due to remaining in one location, and can contact more people in a typical workday. At a minimum, look at combining inside sales with field sales to improve the efficiency of field sales people.

Conclusions

If you are entrepreneur planning your next business, you can’t afford to ignore the cost of customer acquisition. The earlier you work on this the better, as many of the best techniques require you to build your product differently.

It is also important to ask yourself the question: can my business realistically expect to acquire customers for considerably less than the amount that I can monetize them?

Once you have completed the product, you will want to familiarize yourself with all the latest techniques involved in the low cost sales model, or Sales 2.0.

From a funding standpoint, it is useful to know that your ability to raise capital will dramatically improve as soon as you have proven that you have a viable business model. Think of that as two equations:

CAC < LTV (3x appears to be a rough minimum for SaaS businesses)

CAC should be recovered in < 12 months (for subscription businesses)

Once you have proven out the business model, hit the accelerator pedal, and invest as much as you can afford. You’ll want to grow the business as fast as possible before a competitor realizes what you have done, and tries to steal your market!

Follow on Blog Post

If you found this blog post useful, I highly recommend reading the following post which adds a lot of additional thinking around this topic: How Sales Complexity impacts your Startup’s Viability.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the management teams at JBoss and HubSpot, Gail Goodman of Constant Contact, Sheila Marcelo of Care.com, for contributing greatly to the ideas in this post.

– David Skok

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The post Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition appeared first on Ecompanies Canada.

from Ecompanies Canada http://bit.ly/2IMrQfC via ECOMPANIES CANADA

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ecompaniesusa · 5 years

Text

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition

In case you are not familiar with the importance of Product/Market fit, Marc Andreessen has a great blog post on this topic: The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters.

Business Model

Cost to Acquire Customers (CAC)

The ability to monetize those customers, or LTV (which stands for Lifetime Value of a Customer)

Successful web businesses have long understood these metrics as they have such an easy way to measure them. However there is a lot of value in looking at these same metrics for all other businesses.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that business model failure comes when CAC (the cost to acquire customers) exceeds LTV (the ability to monetize those customers.

A well balanced business model requires that CAC is significantly less than LTV:

The Entrepreneur’s Achilles Heel: Optimism

Some examples of CAC calculations

Another shocking computation is to look at the cost of a direct field sales force:

Lessons Learned – Business Planning Stage

Cost per lead

Conversion rates at each stage of your sales process

Level of touch required

Then compare this to your expected monetization. As a very rough rule of thumb here are two guidelines that you might find helpful:

Aim to recover your CAC in < 12 months, otherwise your business will require too much capital to grow. (Banks and wireless phone companies ignore this rule, but they have access to tons of capital.)

The good news is that if you can monetize your customers at a higher rate than the cost to acquire them, you probably have a great business on your hands.

Next Generation Business Models

Use of a free trial, where the customer can easily download, or use a SaaS version of the full product to see if it works for them.

Leveraging the power of your customers’social networks to get viral growth where possible.

Use of the touchless conversion to convert trials to paying customers.

Using low cost inside sales when the touchless conversion is not possible.

Extensive use of software to automate all processes such as SEO, SEM, social networking, lead scoring, lead nurturing, CRM, etc.

Metrics on all aspects of the customer acquisition process to find out what can be improved.

These techniques are frequently referred to as the Low Cost Sales model, or as Sales 2.0.

Balancing Monetization with CAC

The way in which these techniques can work together with other techniques to drive up monetization (e.g. recurring revenue) are illustrated in the diagram below:

Lessons Learned – Ways to reduce customer acquisition costs

Create demo videos that answer every likely sales question.

List the common sales objections that come up in the sales cycle, and provide answers to these on the web site.

Try using customer references to avoid the need for a trial

Options for products requiring high touch

Conclusions

It is also important to ask yourself the question: can my business realistically expect to acquire customers for considerably less than the amount that I can monetize them?

Once you have completed the product, you will want to familiarize yourself with all the latest techniques involved in the low cost sales model, or Sales 2.0.

CAC < LTV (3x appears to be a rough minimum for SaaS businesses)

CAC should be recovered in < 12 months (for subscription businesses)

Follow on Blog Post

If you found this blog post useful, I highly recommend reading the following post which adds a lot of additional thinking around this topic: How Sales Complexity impacts your Startup’s Viability.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the management teams at JBoss and HubSpot, Gail Goodman of Constant Contact, Sheila Marcelo of Care.com, for contributing greatly to the ideas in this post.

– David Skok

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To incorporate a new company in the USA., one or more persons(called “the incorporators”) may form a company by filing articles of incorporation, notice of address and notice of directors with the Corporations Division Office of the desired jurisdiction of registration.

Ecompanies USA offers fast & easy US online incorporation and business registration services to foreign companies interested in doing business in Canada. At Ecompanies Canada we help you step-by-step and take care of the entire business registration process from start to finish. Incorporating a business with us is fast, easy and takes just minutes.

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This Article first appeared in entrepreneur

The post Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition appeared first on Ecompanies USA.

from Ecompanies USA http://bit.ly/2WVXYHK

#Ecompanies USA

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middletuna7-blog · 5 years

Text

I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

The subject of today’s post might seem a little strange at first, but I hope you’ll bear with me. :-) My goal with each blog post is to share at least one thing with you that helps make your life easier. Sometimes that thing takes the form of a useful tip or trick, instructions on how to make something, or a piece of advice. But every once in a while, I come across a product that is so useful, I feel compelled to share it with you.

And that’s exactly why today I’ll be telling you about my very favorite trash can! I didn’t know it was possible to love a trash can as much as I love this one, but here we are! I find myself appreciating it’s helpful features multiple times per day, so I wanted to tell you about it in case any of you could benefit from upgrading your trash can too. :-)

Meet my fancy new kitchen helper, the simplehuman 58L Stainless Steel Trash Can. This is definitely a splurge item, but I haven’t regretted it once! In fact, I find new things to appreciate about it every day. I’ll walk you through some of the things I love most about it!

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1. Motion Sensor

Lifting the lid on your trash can gets tricky when your hands are either full or covered in food. That’s why I love the motion sensor on this trash can! All I have to do is move my hands over the sensor and the lid will pop up on its own. It’s highly convenient, and more hygienic too!

2. Voice Activation

Not only does this garbage can have a motion sensor, but it has a voice sensor too. Just say “Open can!” and the lid pops right open! I don’t use this feature all that often, but my boys love it. They love telling the can to open so they can practice their across-the-kitchen garbage basketball skills. (I let this slide because they are well aware that it’s their own responsibility to clean up any messes if they miss!) ;-)

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It’s so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

The one minor drawback of this and other simplehuman brand trash cans is that they are designed to be used with their special fitted trash bags. (This can takes “Code Q” liner bags.) However, for me this isn’t much of an issue. Not only do their bags fit perfectly and never slip, they’re also much more durable and leak-proof than other bags I’ve used!

4. Easy Bag Changing

I had another motion-activated trash can before I got this one, but there were a few things I didn’t like about it. One of the issues I had with it was how I had to pull out the unwieldy liner bucket to change the trash bag. With my new trash can, the process of switching bags is much easier!

All I have to do is lift the lid section up, pull out the full bag, and put in a new one. Then I just drop the lid back down, and it’s ready to go! The lid both secures the bag in place and hides the edges of the bag, so the outside of the trash can stays looking sleek and clean.

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

Not only does the finish on this trash can look sleek, it stays that way too! I’m not sure how it works, but the finish seems to repel fingerprints and smudges. And when it does get spilled on or splattered, all I have to do is wipe it clean with a wet microfiber cloth. I love having a garbage can that never looks “dirty.”

6. Five-Year Warranty

Looking For Something Similar?

If you like the idea of this trash can, but not the price tag, I totally get it! I wanted to offer an alternative option, so I did some digging on Amazon and found a trash can with similar features. It’s the iTouchless 13-Gallon Touchless Trash Can, and it’s listed for just $69.99! Here are some of the features it has:

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

Source: https://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/the-best-kitchen-trash-can

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justinjslone · 5 years

Text

SaaS Growth Strategies: How to Build Strategic SaaS Partnerships for Business Growth

While inbound and content marketing may be key to generating leads and pumping up your pipeline, the successful growth of a SaaS business depends on so much more than those techniques.

One proven way to accelerate SaaS growth is building a powerful partner program.

Don’t believe me? Take HubSpot, for example. With one of the most successful SaaS partner programs in existence, HubSpot has demonstrated the power of partnerships for rapid business growth. Soon after the partner program launched, it began generating a substantial amount of monthly recurring revenue with limited effort needed by HubSpot’s partner team. In fact, the first quarter of the program produced approximately 42 percent of the company’s customers and 33 percent of its revenue.

In today's post, we're going to take a deep dive into the key mechanisms, goals, structures and business questions that you need to consider when developing a SaaS partner program.

Why Are SaaS Partner Programs So Successful?

The B2B SaaS industry comes with a number of unique challenges that set the stage for partner programs to flourish:

SaaS products are a significant investment.

Because B2B SaaS investments typically affect multiple stakeholders, the buying process is notoriously cumbersome.

Almost every software on the market has a bit of a learning curve and requires dedicated upkeep to avoid it becoming shelfware.

Partner programs can soothe some of these challenges by enabling other companies to sell your product on your behalf. For example, as a Diamond-Tier HubSpot partner, New Breed can sell, upsell, renew and service the HubSpot platform without ever needing to consult a HubSpot representative.

This kind of touchless sales cycle that occurs outside of your internal resources can reduce the cost of acquiring new customers and free up your internal team to pursue higher-value, more complex opportunities.

Plus, because we can onboard and service HubSpot customers on our own, we can help ensure that customers are using the platform to its fullest potential and getting the most return on their investment. In that way, a partner program can act not only as another sales channel but also as a client success channel.

Partner programs serve as a brand-building channel as well. Often, your partners will also be your customers and evangelists, so building a robust partnership network can create an engaged and dedicated community around your brand.

An important note: a partnership should be mutually beneficial

Yes, building a partner program can reap incredible rewards for your SaaS company — but it’s important to remember that the program should benefit your partners as well.

By offering attractive incentives like recurring revenue sharing, insider information such as product updates and discounted event tickets, you’ll help your program grow. Ultimately, the more successfully your partners can use, sell and extract value from your product, the more your partner program will contribute to your overall business growth.

Is a Channel Sales Partner Program Right For My Company?

Before diving in any further, you need to determine whether or not a channel sales program is a good fit for your company in the first place.

When making this decision, consider:

1. How much training and support does your product require?

The easier your product is to use, the easier it will be for your partners to sell. However, that doesn’t mean that products with a complex onboarding process can’t be sold successfully via a channel partner.

Ultimately, the success of your partner program comes down to whether or not you’re providing the right training, resources and support to your channel partners to sell the product on your behalf.

2. Will you be able to effectively train your partners to sell your solution?

You need to have the infrastructure in place to train and support your channel partners.

Typically, companies will assign a partner program manager or a channel account manager to act as the liaison between your company and your partner companies. Similar to a customer success manager, this person is tasked with ensuring the success and satisfaction of each partner, and they’re probably the one who’ll conduct training sessions if needed.

3. Is your product ready or are you still ironing out the kinks and building out important features?

Partner programs are a great strategy for scaling your business, not for gaining initial traction in the market.

Before you can implement a successful partner program, you need to have a well-developed minimum viable product that meets the needs of your target market. You should be familiar with your ideal customer base and have an in-depth understanding of the sales cycle. If you can’t convey these important sales elements to your partners, then a partner program probably isn’t right for you.

4. Do you have a scalable and repeatable sales model internally?

If you’re struggling to develop a streamlined sales model for your internal sales team, then it’s unlikely you’ll be able to train your channel partners to sell your product successfully. Before you even think about developing a channel sales partner program, make sure you have your own internal ducks in a row.

The bottom line is: Companies that are still in the startup phase should not be investing in a channel sales program. Instead, startups should dip their toes into lower-stakes, more easily controlled partnerships like co-marketing or affiliate programs.

How Do I Get Started With A Successful SaaS Partner Program?

Once you've decided that a channel sales program is right for your business, here are a couple challenges you should keep in mind as you work to get it off the ground:

Building partnerships with established resellers will take considerable time and effort up front. The pitch to your potential partners must illustrate that you clearly understand their business.

You will need to enable your partner's sales team to resell your product. Therefore, sales enablement content will be critical to success.

It will take time for your channel to start to generate revenue. In fact, it's not uncommon for it to take 12–18 months before you start achieving your channel goals.

The product-development feedback cycle from your partners will be slower than from your direct customers, which means you should make sure you've reached product-market fit before you commit to a partner network.

Don’t worry, though. These challenges are certainly not insurmountable. However, this will take time. Start experimenting with a small number of partners and reasonable customer goals, and then increase your partner personnel and marketing budget as your program proves successful.

As a SaaS company, you might want to offer your product for free or at a significant discount to partners to gain traction for the program. After all, giving value before you ask for value is a key component of any kind of inbound endeavor.

How Do I Establish Goals and Mechanisms For My Partner Program?

At a high level, the goal of your partner program should be to generate customers through this new channel (at least) as effectively as your internal sales efforts. To achieve this, you'll also need to be ready to track the same key metrics in your partner program as you do in your direct efforts (CLV, CAC, payback period, etc.).

Depending on the size and complexity of your partner program, you might want to hire a partner manager, invest in a tiered partner relationship platform like PartnerStack or both. For smaller, co-marketing or affiliate partner programs, you might not need something so robust.

The primary mechanism used to create a partner program must be a model that can be easily communicated to your channel partners and empower them to be working advocates for your product and brand, and rewarded as your company grows (while helping them grow their own).

This way, you can reach their networks as a trusted source and lower your cost of acquisition. If your resellers offer services that complement your platform, your partnership will also act as an outsourced customer success engine.

However, you need to determine internal figures before setting goals for the partner program. Assess your current business performance. Look at past data to understand your growth patterns and forecast based on those goals.

When you’re just starting out, don’t count on the success of your partner program. The infancy of your partner program is not a time to set goals that could make or break your business, but rather a time to start collecting data and creating benchmarks for your program in the future. As it becomes more robust and begins contributing more predictable revenue, then you can start forecasting partner goals for the future.

What Are the Different SaaS Partnership Models?

A great way to structure your partner program is using tier levels to acknowledge how successful a given partner has been in reselling your product. Tiered structures can also help create a competitive ecosystem that provides achievement levels and rewards, such as additional support from your channel team.

If you’re new to partnerships, you may want to experiment with different levels of involvement and start building relationships without high risk. Co-hosting webinars, guest blogging and exchanging backlinks or social mentions in exchange for lead shares are great ways to get started, even well before your business is ready to scale.

How Do I Compensate My Partners For Their Involvement?

For the program to be successful, you'll need to have a clear financial model built out to compensate your agency partners. This model should be built based on your business's growth goals and align with your direct marketing and sales teams. This way, the partner program is being compared against the same metrics used across the organization.

It’s important to dabble in low-barrier monetary incentives before you implement a full-blown reseller program. For example, if a partner drives a lead to your website and that deal later closes, you could reward them with a flat rate of $200 or a revenue share percentage.

The best part is, these kinds of incentives don’t need to be restricted to your partner network. You could offer gift cards for customer referrals or affiliate companies to generate demand and interest in your partner program as it grows.

What Kind of Assets Do I Need to Create for My Partner Program to Be Successful?

Once you have the model and framework in place and have experimented and proven that the channel is viable for your business, it's time to take it to market.

Here are a few key assets you should create:

A public partner overview site page: This page should discuss the structure, goals, financial models and mechanisms of your partner program. It should talk about what you expect from your partners and what they can expect from you.

Partner sign-up landing page: This is where interested partner prospects can go to request to join your partner program, ask for more information or discuss different partnership models they might be interested in.

Brand asset/sales enablement library: This asset should be the go-to resource for your partners to find important information like brand guidelines, product messaging and updates. It could take many forms, such as an e-book, a partner forum, a Facebook group, etc.

Partner contact channel: Give your partners a simple way of contacting you in the case of discount questions, product troubleshooting or else. This could take the form of a chatbot, a form, or an account executive.

Marketing content: Depending on how robust and complex you hope your partner program to be, you’ll need to create content to market the partner program and generate interest.

Partner-tier site page: This shows each of your partners’ statuses by tier. It doesn't show exactly how many customers or revenue each partner has generated, but provides high-level insight into everyone's standing. Here's an example from HubSpot. This provides great visibility for your partners, and also incentivizes them to reach the next tier level:

With this business framework and your marketing assets ready, your business is now ready to launch its own partner program.

Remember, partner programs aren't right for every SaaS business and require a clear strategy and time to develop. Start small and set clear goals and performance indicators up front. When executed correctly, a successful partner program can be a huge driver of your business growth and the success of your customers.

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lauriecgarcia · 6 years

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I Splurged On This Surprising Kitchen Item And Have No Regrets

The subject of today��s post might seem a little strange at first, but I hope you’ll bear with me. :-) My goal with each blog post is to share at least one thing with you that helps make your life easier. Sometimes that thing takes the form of a useful tip or trick, instructions on how to make something, or a piece of advice. But every once in a while, I come across a product that is so useful, I feel compelled to share it with you.

6 Reasons Why I Love My Trash Can

1. Motion Sensor

2. Voice Activation

3. Trash Bag Storage

Perhaps my favorite feature is the integrated storage pocket for extra bags in the back. It’s so nice to have a new trash bag at the ready when I take the full bag out!

The one minor drawback of this and other simplehuman brand trash cans is that they are designed to be used with their special fitted trash bags. (This can takes “Code Q” liner bags.) However, for me this isn’t much of an issue. Not only do their bags fit perfectly and never slip, they’re also much more durable and leak-proof than other bags I’ve used!

4. Easy Bag Changing

5. Smudge-Proof Finish

6. Five-Year Warranty

Looking For Something Similar?

If you like the idea of this trash can, but not the price tag, I totally get it! I wanted to offer an alternative option, so I did some digging on Amazon and found a trash can with similar features. It’s the iTouchless 13-Gallon Touchless Trash Can, and it’s listed for just $69.99! Here are some of the features it has:

Motion sensor lid

Carbon filter for odor control

Works with any 13-gallon garbage bag

One-year full service warranty

Do you have a product at home that makes you happy every time you use it?

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8302119 https://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/the-best-kitchen-trash-can/ from The Top Cleaner https://thetopcleaner.tumblr.com/post/182130470552

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rachelmorris305 · 7 years

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A White Kitchen Goes for a Touch of Shine

How to up the ante with a neutral like white? Go high-gloss!

White, high-gloss cabinets are a popular feature in many Sweeten renovations (the photos above are from the following projects: Ursula, Jill and Aaron, and an Upper West Side kitchen).

Editor’s Note: This feature, originally published summer 2015, is one of our favorite dramatic makeovers. An overpowering closet flanking the existing galley kitchen seemed to squeeze the entry even tighter. Then the walls came down, and the white cabinets got glossy with a finish that amplifies when natural light hits it. The affordability of this full kitchen from IKEA is an extra bonus. The takeaway: a bit of shiny goes a long way.

“Sweeten made the process super easy to get bids and ultimately find a great contractor. I’m really glad I found you guys.”

– Lee Hoffman, Manhattan homeowner

Here’s one of those before and afters that’s hard to believe at first glance. Lee Hoffman, the CEO and founder of the photo-sharing app Memoir, bought a 1+ bedroom, 1 bathroom co-op in Midtown East. The original kitchen and bathroom were beyond forlorn; the kitchen was hidden behind a walled entryway – more of a hallway than a room. This might have been initially helpful given its 1978 vintage, but not ideal in an apartment that depended on the kitchen window for extra light in the living room. And we can only assume that this bathroom had seen better days, right? Lee did months and months of research on ways to update the space and came to Sweeten to find a contractor who could give some serious attention to this unloved little kitchen and bath pair. We sent this Sweeten general contractor to handle things, envisioning some nice new cabinets and tile—the usual works. We definitely did not see this whole new look coming!

While there is more than enough to see in these “before” photos, Lee found himself up against one major, invisible force: the co-op’s previous tenant had been a smoker and the original stock finishes were covered in smoky residue. The kitchen was virtually sealed off from the living room, and its big window was partially blocked by cabinetry and a fridge that had been wedged into the galley. Lee knew he could swap in new cabinets and appliances, but when he learned that the dividing wall was non-load-bearing, he began to picture taking down the wall to let light into the living room from two directions. He put together a lengthy list of big and small updates (wall demolition all the way down to soft-close cabinets) and took the same approach to bring light and modern appeal to the crumbling bathroom.

Lee took on the kitchen with all of the resolve of a tech entrepreneur. He spent a month talking to every cabinet maker in NYC before accepting that even the lowest price for a high-end, custom-built set was way beyond what he was willing to put in for the entire project. Even the next tier down felt costly, and the slightly more budget-friendly options at big box retailers didn’t seem like an obvious slam dunk. After reading positive reviews about IKEA cabinets, and realizing that a whole new IKEA line was about to hit the market, he found himself psyched by the look of the white, high-gloss lacquer Sektion option. The cost-benefit of going with IKEA was immediately evident: for well under $10k, Lee got a full set of kitchen cabinets and was really happy with the quality. The downside? Getting delivery right took weeks of follow-up and re-shipments to get all of the pieces on site. A great deal overall, but most definitely not without headaches and hand-holding. But details, details…take a look at what happened when the wall came down and the cabinets went in!

Lee’s research paid off in other parts of the kitchen. He loved the look of white marble and spent six months on the hunt for a quartz countertop with a similar feel, ultimately landing on a porcelain slab by Euro West with an almost-identical yet indestructible effect. Lee compared the slab side by side with marble at Mark and Benneton in Brooklyn and never looked back. To keep his budget focused, Lee decided to skip a typical tiled backsplash. With the newly opened room, and with an upper row of cabinets only on one side, it ended up being a smart choice. Lee thought carefully about cabinet placement—drawers only along the left (16″ depth to maximize open space) and a slim row of upper cabinets centered on the right. The team installed the counter-depth Liebherr fridge against the back wall and lined up all other appliances: a Samsung stove, a stainless steel Blomberg dishwasher, and a Blanco Quatrus sink on the opposite side, leaving plenty of room in all directions for food prep and hosting.

Lee was entirely unsentimental about the bathroom. Everything had to go and in its place, lots of clean, bright whites and crisp glass. He found happiness in a touchless San Souci Kohler toilet, “designed for OCD people,” in his words, and also went with a Kohler recessed medicine cabinet above the Fresca sink vanity. The bathroom hardware is all Hansgrohe – we love that full shower suite with all of its bells and whistles. Lee’s heavy research brought in one more big catch: he found a specialty frameless shower glass from Mirage Shower Doors that eliminates the slight green aura that lots of shower doors end up with and lets the Glassos white wall tiles do their thing.

Big thanks to Lee and the Sweeten team for a stunning redo, and for all of this insider research!

KITCHEN RESOURCES: Porcelain slab countertop: Euro West. Sink: Blanco Quatrus. Stove: Samsung. Dishwasher: Blomberg. Fridge: Leibherr. White, high-gloss cabinets: IKEA Sektion.

BATHROOM RESOURCES: Toilet: Kohler. Sink vanity: Fresca. Shower panel: Mirage Shower Doors. Hardware: Hansgrohe.

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If you’re thinking about getting IKEA cabinets for your kitchen, check out our comparison guide that weighs the pros and cons of IKEA vs. custom cabinets.

Sweeten handpicks the best general contractors to match each project’s location, budget, and scope, helping until project completion. Follow the blog for renovation ideas and inspiration and when you’re ready to renovate, start your renovation on Sweeten.

A post from originally from Sweeten

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