David Shepherd is the Content and Platform Director at XpertHR, an online legal compliance toolkit and data service for HR professionals. He helped launch and grow XpertHR rapidly into a leading subscription service in its market. Previously he worked at IRS and Incomes Data Services. XpertHR provides concise summaries and compliance information to help HR professionals. It has expanded its offerings over the years to include additional data services, applications, and international versions.
Good Web Design can be quite a hazy concept to understand.
If you're a business owner and have lost sleep over deciding whether a professionally-designed website is truly what you need, this should clear things up for you once-and-for-all!
Read this document if you have asked yourself the following:
Why do I need web design?
Can I afford web design?
Should I just build it on my own with a site-builder?
Will my new website actually bring me leads?
How do I determine what kind of website I need?
QUICK START GUIDE TO EASY ONLINE PROFITS !!SahilSingh470
It's hard isn't it? Knowing just where to begin when you're new to the whole online selling game. With so many others already earning money and touting the praises of their methods, where exactly do you begin?
3 Ways to Keep Your Business from Dying | Affinity Agency LennyRichardson1
When it comes to Digital Marketing, there are 3 specific techniques that all businesses should be using to stay alive. Read this free eBook to find out the 3 techniques.
Good Web Design can be quite a hazy concept to understand.
If you're a business owner and have lost sleep over deciding whether a professionally-designed website is truly what you need, this should clear things up for you once-and-for-all!
Read this document if you have asked yourself the following:
Why do I need web design?
Can I afford web design?
Should I just build it on my own with a site-builder?
Will my new website actually bring me leads?
How do I determine what kind of website I need?
QUICK START GUIDE TO EASY ONLINE PROFITS !!SahilSingh470
It's hard isn't it? Knowing just where to begin when you're new to the whole online selling game. With so many others already earning money and touting the praises of their methods, where exactly do you begin?
3 Ways to Keep Your Business from Dying | Affinity Agency LennyRichardson1
When it comes to Digital Marketing, there are 3 specific techniques that all businesses should be using to stay alive. Read this free eBook to find out the 3 techniques.
How to broker daily deals by daily deal builderChris Powell
The Fool-Proof Guide to Being a Deal Broker and Cutting Yourself in
High Dollar Deals Between Merchants and Daily Deal Sites to Generate
Massive Commissions and Deliver a High Quality Service.
If you’re looking for budgeting vehicle insurance then it might be assembled as the high risk. On the other hand, the insurance company desires to think that you’ll surely pay off the bills on exact time so that if the credit history displays that you basically pay out the bills later on as the matter of habit then you might have some issues in getting the budget insurance. In fact, most of the insurance companies will also judge you without human intervention through the credit history, including the budget vehicle insurance companies.
Visit us for more information http://www.mybudgetingworksheet.com/
Learn the basics of internet business.
Definitions: Affiliate Marketing: An Internet based marketing practice where a business pays an individual for each customer or visitor brought about through the individuals marketing efforts. Click and Mortar: A business model where a company has both offline and online presences. Also known as Bricks and Clicks. Content Advertising: Content based advertising placement such as that pioneered by Google, also classified ads and ‘pay for performance’ models.
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What the heck is content marketing and why you should give a damn | Tips from...Craig Martin
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It's a way to increase sales and improve your business!
Is that a good enough reason?
Enjoy this short guide with several tips from Craig Martin, an experienced journalist & freelance copywriter
Decision, Decisions - Tom Petty, GoCardless - Byte Breakfast383
Tom Petty, Head of UX at GoCardless at 383's Byte Breakfast talking about employing the right design principles and how they influence everyday decisions.
How To Build A Business Online: Start With WhyVito La Fata
It's time to take your fitness business online. Here are the reasons why:
1 - The number 1 reason to be online is to build a list.
Your list is your collection of emails and addresses for your current and potential clients.
Think of your list like an ATM machine, an insurance policy. If your business burned down but you still have your list, you can rebuild that business within a certain amount of time. You want to grow that list so you can make money on the backend of that list.
2 - Going online is about spreading your message.
You have a message that you want to communicate to clients, to prospects, and to the world about the differences you can make in their lives. And if no one knows your message, you're not as successful as you could be.
3 - Going online is about Making Money
To start making big dollars and start making a big impact you have to stop the one to one selling, marketing, and communication. In the online world, you can stop the one to one selling and go to the one to many.
Going online takes your voice and amplifies it so you can go out and make a bigger difference.
how to increase website traffic for free in 2021shehananthony1
#1. Optimize your website for search.
#2. Experiment with content freshness.
#3. Submit your site to search engines.
#4. Build out your backlinks.
#5. Spy on your competitors.
#6. Optimize for long-tail keywords.
How to broker daily deals by daily deal builderChris Powell
The Fool-Proof Guide to Being a Deal Broker and Cutting Yourself in
High Dollar Deals Between Merchants and Daily Deal Sites to Generate
Massive Commissions and Deliver a High Quality Service.
If you’re looking for budgeting vehicle insurance then it might be assembled as the high risk. On the other hand, the insurance company desires to think that you’ll surely pay off the bills on exact time so that if the credit history displays that you basically pay out the bills later on as the matter of habit then you might have some issues in getting the budget insurance. In fact, most of the insurance companies will also judge you without human intervention through the credit history, including the budget vehicle insurance companies.
Visit us for more information http://www.mybudgetingworksheet.com/
Learn the basics of internet business.
Definitions: Affiliate Marketing: An Internet based marketing practice where a business pays an individual for each customer or visitor brought about through the individuals marketing efforts. Click and Mortar: A business model where a company has both offline and online presences. Also known as Bricks and Clicks. Content Advertising: Content based advertising placement such as that pioneered by Google, also classified ads and ‘pay for performance’ models.
A Recap of 2013 for the Daily Deal, Coupon, and Ecommerce Industries.Marc Horne
A recap of 2013 for the daily deal, coupon, and ecommerce industries presented by http://dailydealbuilder.com. Questions? email us at support@hcdesk.com.
What the heck is content marketing and why you should give a damn | Tips from...Craig Martin
"What the heck is content marketing and why should I give a damn" is a short, 10-minute guide for business owners and salespeople who may not know what it is.
It's a way to increase sales and improve your business!
Is that a good enough reason?
Enjoy this short guide with several tips from Craig Martin, an experienced journalist & freelance copywriter
Decision, Decisions - Tom Petty, GoCardless - Byte Breakfast383
Tom Petty, Head of UX at GoCardless at 383's Byte Breakfast talking about employing the right design principles and how they influence everyday decisions.
How To Build A Business Online: Start With WhyVito La Fata
It's time to take your fitness business online. Here are the reasons why:
1 - The number 1 reason to be online is to build a list.
Your list is your collection of emails and addresses for your current and potential clients.
Think of your list like an ATM machine, an insurance policy. If your business burned down but you still have your list, you can rebuild that business within a certain amount of time. You want to grow that list so you can make money on the backend of that list.
2 - Going online is about spreading your message.
You have a message that you want to communicate to clients, to prospects, and to the world about the differences you can make in their lives. And if no one knows your message, you're not as successful as you could be.
3 - Going online is about Making Money
To start making big dollars and start making a big impact you have to stop the one to one selling, marketing, and communication. In the online world, you can stop the one to one selling and go to the one to many.
Going online takes your voice and amplifies it so you can go out and make a bigger difference.
how to increase website traffic for free in 2021shehananthony1
#1. Optimize your website for search.
#2. Experiment with content freshness.
#3. Submit your site to search engines.
#4. Build out your backlinks.
#5. Spy on your competitors.
#6. Optimize for long-tail keywords.
A 12 slide practical guide on how to tap the value of what you know to attract, nurture and close your prospects.
How to give away some of your most valuable information to connect you with your most valuable prospects: customers who need what you sell.
A quick guide on improving your sales and marketing pipeline.
Designing Strategy: Realign Your Mission and Values With Your Digital PresenceBryan Merica
The idea behind “Designing Strategy” isn’t simply about building a slick-looking website with all the latest bells, whistles, and social media plug-ins. Instead, it’s about asking oneself all of the questions that need to be answered when building an online presence, and using those answers to form an outreach, engagement, or marketing game plan.
There have been series of new opportunities made available by internet. The internet has made it possible for everyone to make money, and over time, more and more ways are rising from the online world; Ways that have previously been impossible or very difficult to monetize. By reading this book as one of the books in the series of "Smart Business" " you will learn four main methods of online money-making that allow you to grow as a small or medium-sized business and maintain and develop your market.
How Consumers Buy Today - Harnessing the Buying Journey to Get More CustomersTodd Ebert
It’s not debatable that the Internet and social media have changed the way we communicate, learn, work, play, and buy. So, have you taken the time to really think about the process your customers take to find you, research you, compare you to competitors, and ultimately choose you? We call that process the consumer buying journey, and this ebook explains how to apply it to your marketing strategy in order to get more customers.
Top tips for affiliate success
If you have decided to become an affiliate marketer, there are many things you can do to improve your chances for success. Keep in mind that with an affiliate...
"How to Get The MOST out Of Internet Marketing!"Eric Newman
This is a clear and concise narrative of internet marketing and how it can truly be leveraged with the right resources in their online business to provide for all of its participants the life of their dreams.
In this short and concise directive narrative, Internet marketing is described with the right perspective in mind. It is usually never the tasks at hand but rather how we must continue to create the desired environment consistently with the right strategies and clear and transparent goal in mind.
Would you like to comprehend how to take your site a notch higher? It’s a no-brainer. You have to have buyers who are interested in what you'll be offering to make sure consistent profits.
Constructing a big customer base starts with driving traffic to your site or blog. We will look at the best ways.
Are You Already Marketing On The Internet?
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In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
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Topics covered:
CI/CD with in UiPath
End-to-end overview of CI/CD pipeline with Azure devops
Speaker:
Lyndsey Byblow, Test Suite Sales Engineer @ UiPath, Inc.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
In his public lecture, Christian Timmerer provides insights into the fascinating history of video streaming, starting from its humble beginnings before YouTube to the groundbreaking technologies that now dominate platforms like Netflix and ORF ON. Timmerer also presents provocative contributions of his own that have significantly influenced the industry. He concludes by looking at future challenges and invites the audience to join in a discussion.
Threats to mobile devices are more prevalent and increasing in scope and complexity. Users of mobile devices desire to take full advantage of the features
available on those devices, but many of the features provide convenience and capability but sacrifice security. This best practices guide outlines steps the users can take to better protect personal devices and information.
Sudheer Mechineni, Head of Application Frameworks, Standard Chartered Bank
Discover how Standard Chartered Bank harnessed the power of Neo4j to transform complex data access challenges into a dynamic, scalable graph database solution. This keynote will cover their journey from initial adoption to deploying a fully automated, enterprise-grade causal cluster, highlighting key strategies for modelling organisational changes and ensuring robust disaster recovery. Learn how these innovations have not only enhanced Standard Chartered Bank’s data infrastructure but also positioned them as pioneers in the banking sector’s adoption of graph technology.
Dr. Sean Tan, Head of Data Science, Changi Airport Group
Discover how Changi Airport Group (CAG) leverages graph technologies and generative AI to revolutionize their search capabilities. This session delves into the unique search needs of CAG’s diverse passengers and customers, showcasing how graph data structures enhance the accuracy and relevance of AI-generated search results, mitigating the risk of “hallucinations” and improving the overall customer journey.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Climate Impact of Software Testing at Nordic Testing DaysKari Kakkonen
My slides at Nordic Testing Days 6.6.2024
Climate impact / sustainability of software testing discussed on the talk. ICT and testing must carry their part of global responsibility to help with the climat warming. We can minimize the carbon footprint but we can also have a carbon handprint, a positive impact on the climate. Quality characteristics can be added with sustainability, and then measured continuously. Test environments can be used less, and in smaller scale and on demand. Test techniques can be used in optimizing or minimizing number of tests. Test automation can be used to speed up testing.
Pushing the limits of ePRTC: 100ns holdover for 100 daysAdtran
At WSTS 2024, Alon Stern explored the topic of parametric holdover and explained how recent research findings can be implemented in real-world PNT networks to achieve 100 nanoseconds of accuracy for up to 100 days.
Goodbye Windows 11: Make Way for Nitrux Linux 3.5.0!SOFTTECHHUB
As the digital landscape continually evolves, operating systems play a critical role in shaping user experiences and productivity. The launch of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0 marks a significant milestone, offering a robust alternative to traditional systems such as Windows 11. This article delves into the essence of Nitrux Linux 3.5.0, exploring its unique features, advantages, and how it stands as a compelling choice for both casual users and tech enthusiasts.
Alt. GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using ...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and SalesLaura Byrne
Clients don’t know what they don’t know. What web solutions are right for them? How does WordPress come into the picture? How do you make sure you understand scope and timeline? What do you do if sometime changes?
All these questions and more will be explored as we talk about matching clients’ needs with what your agency offers without pulling teeth or pulling your hair out. Practical tips, and strategies for successful relationship building that leads to closing the deal.
The Art of the Pitch: WordPress Relationships and Sales
David Shepherd notes
1. David Shepherd
Content and Platform Director, XpertHR
Reed Business Information
David Shepherd is Content and Platform Director at XpertHR, the online legal
compliance toolkit and data service for human resources professionals and small
businesses published by Reed Business Information. David was launch editor of
XpertHR in 2002 and has helped it grow rapidly into the leading online
subscription service in its market. His previous career included stints at IRS, now
part of the XpertHR Group, and Incomes Data Services, now part of Thomson
Reuters.
david.shepherd@rbi.co.uk
www.xperthr.co.uk
www.xperthr.com
www.xperthr.nl
www.personneltoday.com
www.twitter.com/xperthr
Images in this presentation are from iStockphoto.com unless otherwise specified.
1
2. Follow me @oldshep, my most prolific tweeting colleague @mjcarty and the main
XpertHR Group profiles @xperthr, @tribunalwatch, @payintelligence and
@personneltoday.
2
3. Many publishers in both consumer and b2b are looking to charge for online services that
were previously free, typically websites that were seen as a “value add” or brand
extension of a print product but are now in search of a more sustainable “user pays”
business model.
By contrast, my product, XpertHR, was an exclusively paid service when it was launched
10 years ago in 2002, and has spent the past five or six years moving in the opposite
direction, opening up to search engines and visitors and finding new ways to engage
with non-paying users – without dropping the paid subscription model.
I’m assuming that most people here today fall in to the former group, so why should you
be interested in our experience? After all, we are travelling in opposite directions.
The answer is that the most effective “user pays” online business models are not based
on charging for everything of value but on achieving the best balance between free and
paid.
3
4. Introducing XpertHR...
• Launched 2002
• A subscription service for HR professionals
• Regulatory compliance, best practices and benchmarking
• Rapid growth in market share at expense of competitors
• Double digit growth and very high renewal rates
• Benchmarking data service and salary surveys added 2009/10
• Liveflo workflow application launched November 2010
• XpertHR International launched December 2010
• XpertHR NL launched January 2011
• XpertHR US launching 2012
4
5. When we launched XpertHR it was a paid subscription service, with all content available
to paying subscribers only.
The implicit message to visitors who somehow found their way to the website was
“keep out, this is for subscribers only”. The only options offered to non-subscribers were
“buy now” or “book a demo”.
This didn’t stop us from selling subscriptions and building the business very rapidly at
the expense of our competitors, because the product itself was demonstrably superior.
But it did mean that the marketing and sales methods we used were of necessity old-
school and offline, albeit executed highly effectively.
To sum it up, we had a digital product delivered by an analogue business. Or, to put it
another way, we were “on the web but not of the web”. We were not taking advantage
of the marketing and sales opportunities that come from being a web-based product.
Taking advantage of those opportunities requires one thing above all: opening up the
service to allow – indeed encourage – engagement with non-paying users, aka
prospective customers.
5
6. So we embarked on a major programme of opening up and, in effect, joining the web on
its own terms. This is work in progress for us, but so far has involved:
• A complete site redesign in 2006 (and there’s another one on the way).
• Opening up categories of content for free access.
• Search engine optimisation, including deep structural changes to retrofit SEO to our
system.
• Ensuring a free segment of all content items is in front of the subscription barrier and
hence available for indexing by search engines.
• Launch of a blog, Employment Intelligence, followed two years later with the launch
of two breakaway niche blogs, Tribunal Watch and Pay Intelligence.
• Use of the blogs to engage with HR and employment law blogging communities on
both sides of the Atlantic.
• Building a social media presence via the content team (not the marketing team),
especially through Twitter and the HR blogosphere.
• Working with our free-to-air community site www.personneltoday.com to drive
traffic .
This transformation has had many benefits, but for the purpose of today’s presentation,
the key one is that is has helped us, as an online subscription service, to match our
selling process more closely to our customers’ buying process.
6
7. To make the web a place where you can do business as well as a medium through which
you deliver your product, you need to match your selling process to your customers’
buying process.
It is hard to achieve this by putting everything of value behind a paid subscription
barrier, or by expecting the first point of contact to be a completed “subscribe now”
form or a request for a salesperson-led product demonstration.
That just isn’t how most of us make buying decisions. It is asking too much, too soon,
before the prospective customer has had a chance to take the steps that feel natural
before making a decision.
If you want to use your website as a selling medium, why not think of it as a shop? I’m
not thinking here so much about retailers’ websites, which are in a different category
from information and data services, but more about the ways retailers match their
offline selling process to their customers’ buying process.
We can learn much about buying and selling from the world of retail.
7
8. They invite you inside and make you feel welcome.
They display their wares attractively and encourage you to pick them up and inspect
them or try them on.
They make you feel that you’re in charge and everything is laid out for your convenience.
They give you the sense that, as a customer, you have the power and you make all the
decisions.
8
9. The best shops go even further.
This is Whole Foods Market, Stoke Newington Church Street, London on Saturday 11
February 2012 (my photo).
On that day they had two tables of produce that customers could try for themselves. As
well as the cheeses, pictured, there was a table with oatcakes near the biscuit shelves.
Personally, I would have liked the cheese and biscuits tables closer together, and
perhaps another table nearby with small shots of an appropriate wine, but you can’t
have everything.
At this store they always have tables of produce that shoppers can try for free. It looks
friendly, inviting, confident.
People love to try before they buy.
It’s a great example of matching selling process to buying process.
(I go to that shop most Saturdays. The only downside is how crowded it gets – but I
don’t suppose the owners see that as a problem.)
9
10. If the retail analogy hasn’t convinced you about the importance of matching buying and
selling processes, I’d like to offer another one.
I find the dating analogy is also a useful way of looking at these issues.
Jim Morrison could get away with a declaration of love to a stranger – but he was the
original dionysian rock god. He could also get away with shoulder length hair, a bare
chest and tight leather trousers, but I don’t recommend this as a fashion look for most
men.
For us mere mortals, telling a stranger you love them before you know their name feels
wrong, not in tune with the way lasting relationships evolve.
But isn’t this the same as asking a first-time visitor to a website to fill in a form to
subscribe now or request a salesperson-led demonstration? That’s the equivalent of
popping the question on five minutes’ acquaintance: rather inappropriate.
Whatever happened to getting to know each other?
10
11. How about a coffee? Let’s take this a step at a time. Get to know each other. No
commitments beyond an hour or two in a cafe. If we want to meet again, we will. If not,
we won’t. Who knows what may happen, or may not happen?
What’s the online publishing equivalent of this kind of first date? It could be:
• consuming some free content on the website,
• downloading a white paper, video or podcast,
• following the brand or one of its representatives on Twitter,
• subscribing to an email newsletter, or
• registering for free credits to view subscription content.
But whatever else it is, it will typically be free, without any major commitments, and
very, very easy to do.
Where there is a transaction, it is typically not financial but involves the user providing
some personal data (name, email etc) and a willingness to receive marketing
communications in exchange for access to content or parts of the service.
Thus as publishers we provide a more human and natural way for users to get to know
us better. But importantly, we also gain the ability to get to know them better – allowing
the relationship to develop in a more natural way.
11
12. So far we have looked at one half of the equation: providing opportunities for
prospective customers to get to know us better. The other half is just as important: how
we get know our prospective customers better. Of course, as we might expect from the
dating analogy, these two sides of the equation are very closely connected.
We can find out much directly and indirectly from social media conversations and
debates. But we have also put in place tools, such as Eloqua, to enable what in the
jargon is sometimes called “closed loop marketing” but which at RBI we tend to refer to
as lead nurturing.
By offering a range of free options for visitors to sign up to and use, we can:
• discover user interests and preferences,
• refine messages and content based on this knowledge,
• generate deeper user engagement,
• gain even more knowledge of the user,
• refine again, and ...
• … and so on, in a virtuous circle (or “closed loop”).
This approach is enormously powerful and we are getting great results.
12
13. A “closed loop” process could being with a campaign, such as this one, to get users to
sign up and download a single piece of content, in this real-life example a model policy
on personal relationships at work.
We have had much success with these. But there is an inherent weakness. Such
campaigns are based on offering users a single piece of content to download. What if
the user is not interested in this topic at this time?
It is much more powerful to offer people a choice – just like Whole Foods Market offers
a choice.
13
14. If someone were to offer you a strawberry cream or nothing, it may be the perfect
choice or a useless one. Personally I can’t stand them. So much better to be offered the
box and allowed to choose.
The same applies to sample resources offered by subscription websites. Why not let the
user choose for themselves?
Better to offer a choice of several white papers or other resources on a variety of topics
than to offer just one white paper.
But even better than that to offer metered access to the entire service, or large parts of
it, so people can really make an informed judgment on whether or not what you offer
suits their needs, by viewing X items of their choice, out of thousands, for free.
Does this latter approach open up the prospect of “freeloaders”, coming back for the
good free stuff but never subscribing? I don’t that’s a helpful way of looking at it,
especially in a b2b context – and I dislike the word freeloaders almost as much as I
dislike the paywall metaphor to describe paid online services.
14
15. By providing valuable resources for free, it is entirely possible that you will attract many
users who consume the free stuff but do not go on to subscribe to the full paid service.
They keep going round the free loop.
This is not a problem. These are people who like you, they like what you do and they
keep coming back and consuming what you make available for free. In dating terms,
they want to be friends but they may not be ready for a relationship.
Is it good to have friends? Better than not having friends. So best not call them nasty
names like “freeloader”.
This is especially the case in a b2b context when the decision to buy may not rest with
the individual user. The user may want to be more than just friends but, to take things
further, they need their boss to sign the cheque.
Far from being a “freeloader” such a person may be your brand ambassador, lobbying on
your behalf with the powers that be in their organisation, going round the free loop
while waiting for the day they can branch off towards your paid services.
15
16. This example illustrates the point.
I have doctored this tweet to alter the details. There is no Twitter user called HR_Person,
or at least there wasn’t at the time I made this illustration.
But there was a real XpertHR user last year who tweeted her distress at her company
not renewing its subscription. She later tweeted that she had a cunning plan to get the
sub reinstated. And a little while later she tweeted that she had been successful.
Fantastic.
Of course we absolutely love this kind of commitment from our users. And while we
would soon go out of business if we gave our product away, we have every interest in
providing as many touch points and means of engagement as possible for users who, for
whatever reason, do not currently enjoy the benefits of a paid subscription.
So how does this picture of the reality of growing an online subscription service fit with
the metaphor of a product behind a “paywall”? Not very well, in my opinion.
Can I ask you to visualise what the image of a wall means to you?
16
18. All in all, walls are bad.
(Especially metaphorical ones.)
18
19. Smashing down walls with a sledgehammer is good.
So can we come up with a better metaphor than “paywall” for the business model
behind our paid online services?
I’m going to have a go. But before that I’d like to take a step back and think about exactly
what it is that we are asking customers to pay for.
19
20. Are we simply asking customers to “pay for content”?
There is some truth in this, but it is no longer the whole story – and never has been for
XpertHR. Increasingly we are selling functionality too. The medium through which the
content is delivered is a key part of the value.
What’s interesting is that, as you step up the value chain, the functionality becomes an
ever more important part of the proposition.
At the top of the value chain, at least for our kind of b2b information and data product,
is integration into the end user’s workflow. And this is an area where content is not king,
or at least, if it is still king, enjoys a kind of joint and equal reign with Queen
Functionality.
Thinking about different value delivered by different kinds of information, data services
and functionality leads to a more nuanced view beyond a simple binary distinction
between free and paid.
20
21. Here I have defined five value steps for an online information and data service.
Broadly speaking, the higher the step the more value is being delivered to the customer.
The next view translates the descriptions to content types.
21
22. This particular schema works for the HR market and for other regulatory markets, but it
is not universally applicable.
News is relatively low value in our market and tends to be free. But in other markets,
actionable news has great value, especially when delivered very quickly and used to
inform pricing and trading decisions.
But the principle is the same everywhere: different elements of our online products
deliver different amounts of value to our customers and entail different costs, and hence
should be priced accordingly.
The hill-walking image is a little abstract, so I have also created a more literal illustration
of how the schema could translate into payment options online.
22
23. I created this imaginary matrix as it might appear on a website. It shows the five content
types corresponding to the five value steps illustrated in the previous slide.
The “free” column denotes open access but registration may also be free or available at
a lower price point involving free or paid credits, for example.
Whatever the details, the key point is that options are presented to the user with pricing
corresponding to value – from free to fee. There’s something there for everyone and the
choice is theirs to make.
I do not think it appropriate to describe this as a paywall. On the other hand I accept
that “pay matrix” isn’t going to catch on, so how about ...
23
24. Emphasising the wall focuses attention on what keeps people out.
Emphasising the gateway focuses attention on what lets people in.
24