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As part of our continuing goal of bringing the best speakers and ideas to you to help you develop as a salesperson, manager, and business executive, we’re excited to invite you to a dynamic, new webinar on Wednesday, June 18 at 11AM Pacific, 1PM Central, 2PM Eastern.

According to Daniel Pink, bestselling author of To Sell is Human, selling and buying has changed more in the last 5 years than it did in the last 100 years! Unfortunately, most salespeople have NOT adapted to these changes. What worked well just a few short years ago can be a liability today.

Our guest speaker is John Schumann, partner at Whetstone Group, a sales process improvement and training company. He is the co-author of several books, including Common Sense Selling, Sales Mastery, and The Monday Morning Sales Coach. He has trained 1000s of salespeople in over 17 countries.

John brings a new perspective to the old game of selling, one that will help you understand how these changes are affecting your everyday selling activities and how salespeople are now being manipulated.

You’ll walk away with some fresh ideas on how to begin making the transition to selling more effectively and selectively in 2014 and beyond…and learn a tool that you can put into practice immediately.

The webinar is complimentary. You won’t want to miss this.

Click here for more information and to reserve your spot now.

Customer Segmentation has been something of a trending topic in the recent weeks. Everybody is talking about it, but as my grandfather used to say ‘Just because you are hearing, doesn’t mean you are listening’.
So today, I would like you to listen (or read more like it) and I would break down the truth about customer segmentation, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The Good

The whole concept of segmenting and categorizing your customers is good. It is actually great if I may say so myself. We are all different, we all have different preferences, likes and dislikes.

Imagine the following situation. You decide to go shopping for shoes. The first shop you go into only has 1style of shoes, in 1 colour and they only stock 1 size. Unfortunately this is not quite the shoe that you want and it’s not your size. Would you stay in the shop and browse? Would you buy? Of course not. Because this is not what you are looking for, because this size doesn’t fit you and it wouldn’t fit everybody.

So how is your product, business and marketing technique any different? Do you target everybody with the same old message hoping that one size would fit all? Well, it doesn’t. That is where the greatness of customer segmentation comes into play.
Grouping your customers together and targeting them with relevant messages comes with an array of benefits including better ROI on your marketing efforts, business growth and more happy and returning customers!

The Bad

The bad is that not every business is segmenting their market. Some think that it is too complicated, other believe that is unnecessary…

Well, not segmenting is bad. It would be confusing for your customers if all of them receive the same message. A bit of a hit and miss type of situation. Shooting at all directions hoping to hit. Some may be happy, but the majority would be left wondering if you really know who they are, if you really care who they are.

You would waste your time and money, you would not attract new customers and you may lose a few as well.

Instead, show your clients that you care. Segmentation is not that hard at all! You can start small and work your way up. Define 2 or 3 types of customers (based on gender or purchase behaviour) and target them accordingly. You will see an improvement in your marketing efforts straight away!

The Ugly

The ugly part about segmentation is that once you start, you can never go back. Or at least you cannot imagine how you have done business before!

Customer information segmentation touches every aspect of your marketing strategy! From what channel of communication would be most appropriate for the different segments (some of our clients may prefer for you to contact them via email, others may prefer SMS), to how often you should contact the different groups, segmentation would allow you to better understand and target your clients.

Some people find it difficult to begin and have trouble incorporating Segmentation into their strategy but don’t worry. There is a free resource that can take you through the process step-by-step.

So tell me, do you segment your customers or do you have only one size of shoe and hope that it will fit everybody?

Last week, we asked the Hackerspace hive mind to share their tips on how to become better at a sales job. Here is their best advice.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. – This year’s World Cup will play out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and messaging apps like WhatsApp just as it progresses in stadiums from Sao Paulo to Rio De Janeiro.

Nearly 40 per cent of Facebook’s 1.28 billion users are fans of soccer, better known as football outside of the U.S. and Australia. On Tuesday, the world’s biggest online social network is adding new features to help fans follow the World Cup — the world’s most widely viewed sporting event — which takes place in Brazil from June 12 to July 13.

Facebook users will be able to keep track of their favourite teams and players throughout the tournament in a special World Cup section, called “Trending World Cup.” Available on the Web as well as mobile devices, the hub will include the latest scores, game highlights as well as a feed with tournament-related posts from friends, players and teams. In addition, an interactive map will show where the fans of top players are located around the world. The company is also launching a page called FacebookRef, where fans can see commentary about the matches from “The Ref,” Facebook’s official tournament commentator.

Social media activity during big sporting events such as the Olympics and the Super Bowl has soared in recent years and should continue as user numbers grow. In 2010, when the last World Cup took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, Facebook had just 500 million users. Now there are just that many soccer fans (people who have “liked” a team or a player) on the site, the company says.

Facebook has recently focused on making its mobile app usable on simple phones that use slower data speeds since many of its newest users are in developing countries. As a result, Rebecca Van Dyck, head of consumer marketing at Facebook, said the World Cup hub will also be available on so-called “feature phones.” Here the section will be “little less graphical” than what’s shown on smartphones and on the Web, she said, but will include the same information.

Users can get to the World Cup hub by clicking on the hashtag #worldcup in a Facebook post, or by clicking on “World Cup” in the list of trending topics on the site.

In a nod to Twitter, Facebook, earlier this year, began displaying trending topics to show users the most popular topics at any given moment. The feature is currently available in the U.S., U.K., India, Canada and Australia.

“This is our first foray into this, especially for a big sporting event like this,” Van Dyck said. “We’re going to see how this goes. If people enjoy the experience it’s something we’d like to push on.”

Facebook, which counts 81 per cent of its users outside the U.S. and Canada, is unveiling its World Cup features at a time when the company is working to become a place for more real-time, public conversations about big events— a la Twitter. Such events attract big advertising dollars, though the company is not saying how much money it expects to make from World Cup-related ads.

Not to be outdone, Twitter touted in a blog post last week that the “the only real-time #WorldCup global viewing party will be on Twitter, where you can track all 64 matches, experience every goal and love every second, both on and off the pitch.”

Fans can follow individual teams or players and use the hashtag #WorldCup to tweet about the matches, and follow official accounts such as @FIFAWorldCup, @ussoccer for the United States team and @CBF_Futebol for Brazil’s soccer governing body, for example.

The World Cup is the planet’s most widely viewed sporting event. According to FIFA, which organizes the tournament, an estimated 909.6 million viewers watched at least one minute of the final 2010 game when Spain beat the Netherlands. In comparison, nearly 900 million people watched at least part of the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics. On Twitter, more than 24.9 million tweets were sent out during this year’s Super Bowl, up from 13.7 million just two years earlier.

Because it takes place over several weeks, marketers are gearing up for “a marathon, not a sprint,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst for research firm eMarketer.

“Developing countries will be a key target for global brands,” she said. “They will work hard to capture the attention of soccer fans in Latin America, Asia, Africa. The challenges (include the fact) that all the games are taking place in one place and the customers and marketers are in multiple time zones. This will require around the clock marketing.”

For fans travelling to Brazil for the game and hoping to tweet and post about it on Facebook, the country’s mobile communications services might pose their own challenge. Dropped voice calls are common even without the hundreds of thousands of soccer fans descending on the country. Accessing the Internet can be incredibly slow, and there’s even some worry about network blackouts.

“World Cup visitors won’t be able to communicate the way they want to,” Christopher Gaffney, a visiting professor at Rio de Janeiro’s Federal Fluminense University whose research focuses on Brazil’s preparations for the World Cup and Olympics. “Instagram, Twitter, social media will not function at world class levels but at Brazilian levels, so people visiting Brazil will experience the frustrations we face every day.”

___

Online:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldcup and www.facebook.com/FacebookRef

Twitter: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/follow-the-worldcup-action-on-twitter

Associated Press writer Luis Andres Henao contributed to this story from Rio De Janeiro.

The post Facebook, Twitter gear up for World Cup fever with new features appeared first on Canadian Business.

Image Credit: LINE

Salesforce’s marketing cloud and the 450-million member mobile messaging platform LINE have announced a partnership at the Salesforce conference today in Tokyo, Japan.

But LINE is just the beginning. WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger could be next.

Above: Example of a marketing message on LINE

Image Credit: Salesforce

“We think it’s huge for 1-1 marketing,” Salesforce VP R.J. Talyor told me today. “We talk about customer journeys, and how they’ve replaced campaigns … they’re event driven and customer-based.”

This move, he says, is just another step in enabling Salesforce’s vision for enabling brands and consumers to have global conversations at human scale. Talyor (no, it’s not Taylor) is VP for mobile products for the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which is owned by and part of Salesforce.

“We want to be everywhere a consumer has a relationship with a brand,” he said.

The partnership marks the first time marketers can connect personally with consumers via one of the world’s premier messaging services. Brands will be able to send short multimedia messages to LINE users who have opted in and given permission.

Examples that Talyor mentioned include personalized offers, coupons, exclusive content such as might be shared by a band or recording artist, or behind-the-scenes pictures and videos. Stickers, which LINE users prize as emotional, funny, or meaningful ways to interact with others, are also part of what brands could offer consumers.

With additional permission, brands will also be able to connect what they know about users with LINE user’s personal information, enabling extremely relevant and personalized communications.

LINE currently allows companies with official paid accounts (which cost about $25,000/year) to message their followers with a single broadcast message. There are about 100 companies in Japan alone with these accounts, with an average following of 3.5 million users, according to Kantan Games. Via this new partnership, those brands could now send personalized messages to targeted groups or individuals.

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It’s not going too far to say that this is ground-breaking capability.

But if Salesforce has its way, this partnership will soon be joined by others.

“We believe these group messaging apps are part of the future of mobile messaging,” Talyor told me. “As soon as these APIs become available … we’ll extend these capabilities to any messaging apps, such as Snapchat, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger.”

Which, of course, is starting to enable the monetization of messaging beyond stickers and apps, and beyond mass-media style campaigns.

It’s also a massive step toward the realization of the 1-1 Salesforce vision, in which companies can talk to consumers on an individual level, personalized to exactly what they are interested in and looking for. That vision requires a single view of people across devices and social platforms as well as an understanding of their relationship with a brand, and content tailored to that person.

Above: Building a message in Salesforce’s ExactTarget Marketing Cloud for LINE

Image Credit: Salesforce

“When you sign up and provide permission, marketers can ask you to provide your first name and last name, or, if you allows your information to be shared, can link you to the Marketing Cloud,” Talyor said.

Once that’s done, brands will be able to segment LINE users according to profile data in the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, including location and language, engage in personal two-way communication, and “drive engagement” via rich media such as videos, images, and audio files, Salesforce said.

LINE of course is Japanese in origin, but boasts a global audience. The service recently announced hitting the 450 million member milestone, and reportedly has a goal to reach 500 million users by the of this year. There are rumors that company is planning a dual U.S. and Japan IPO. This partnership is likely a test case that Facebook and other, more North American and European-based messaging proprietors will be watching very closely in order to determine how best to implement similar features in their own services.

The partnership is currently in private beta, and although Talyor said that early results were very positive, Salesforce did not release any data about their scope or effectiveness.

“Marketing has shifted from brands managing customers through campaigns, to brands and customers engaging on a journey together. Now more than ever, that journey is taking place on a mobile device,” Scott McCorkle, CEO of ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, said in a statement. “ExactTarget Marketing Cloud empowers brands to take advantage of this shift by connecting with customers in new ways through SMS, MMS push notifications, and now mobile messaging, including LINE and its more than 400 million global users.”

With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at t... read more »

The State Of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is yet another buzzword that has been metamorphosing constantly. In other words, it continues to grow but the evolution has been very zigzag. A few decades ago, IBM used to offer its mainframes to banks, utilities and other industries on a rental basis and the billing used to be metered. Even today IBM is doing the same thing with much success thanks to the amazing performance of its mainframe servers. However there are various new forms of cloud computing that have made it a common household word.

SaaS:

Salesforce is the company that showcased to the world more than a decade ago what SaaS could do. Having said that, SaaS, with multi-tenancy and metered billing model at the heart of it, is more applicable for product and services companies that offer per use services over the net. A lot of verticals, for better or worse, are not comfortable with the fact that the data lives somewhere outside of their brick and mortar structure. These fears in the minds of the end user companies take us to the other forms of cloud computing i.e. Paas, Iaas, Hybrid. In short, very little overall IT cost incurred, good service availability and a per use model for user companies is what SaaS brought to the table.

PaaS:

PaaS provides all kinds of hardware, software stack and tools to enable an IT department to deploy apps over a cloud. However PaaS seems to be lost when compared with the other two flavors i.e. SaaS and IaaS. Developers have to deal with myriad version mismatches of Java, or PHP or Microsoft libraries and frameworks and often work around them to push something into production. Moreover to make matters worse, PaaS is expected to keep up with the dynamism of IT industry i.e. keep adding newer shining frameworks and libraries. For instance, if there is library that helps plumbing social media integration or improve mobile compatibility or provide MBaaS, then a PaaS framework has to get it sooner than later in order to stay relevant and retain customer base. Add to that the cost incurred when an end user type of customer buys  a piece of cloud infrastructure and takes some time before actually getting it to work for it. In short, PaaS has been struggling to make its mark and leaves much to be desired.

IaaS:

IaaS involves providing servers and VMs and then using them to build application architecture totally to your own likes with little or no restrictions. This is very popular amongst verticals that are jittery about their data due to regulatory and privacy concerns. However the hourly billing of server and uptick in price that you have to bear with when you buy 99.9+ availability or fail over or clustering, tends to make IaaS cost prohibitive to have a lot of servers. In short, maintaining an IT or DevOps team wherein servers are built out when an application is ready to go to production becomes a costly option but nonetheless worth the peace of mind that IaaS brings to the table.

Hybrid computing:

This incarnation of cloud computing is better for customers who run massive analytics or batch jobs on several nodes concurrently and find the hourly billing of server provisioning a bit predatory. Hybrid implies using a combination of own servers and cloud servers together to achieve high thorughput.

The Hybrid advantage:

One good way to use hybrid is to start the work on your own servers and perform all the ground work beforehand. Once the batch job or data crunching needs start to become enormous or exponential wherein a whole lot of servers are needed to process the data in a timely fashion, cloud computing kicks in. By dividing the work into a set of logically separate pieces and running them in parallel on several cloud servers, very high throughput can be achieved without spending a lot of dollars on cloud infrastructure. A business criterion for, dividing and running the job on several servers in tandem, needs to be evolved. For starters, you can apply Pareto’s principle (also known as 80-20 rule).  This rule dictates that 20% of your customers bring 80% business. These are the customers that deserve provisioning of a separate node for processing their data while rest 80% customers can be processed by a couple of in-house servers.

What is your cloud strategy? What have been your experiences in the cloud space? Share with us.

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A friend of mine recently set up a business as a sports massage therapist and asked if I could give him some tips on digital marketing.

Aside from setting up social profiles and optimising his website, I suggested that one of the most important things he could do was to setup a Google+ business page.

His is obviously a small business and one that only operates in his local area, so would benefit hugely from having a decent presence in local search results.

Having imparted these brilliant words of wisdom it then struck me that my knowledge of Google+ Local is a bit shaky.

So, in honour of my good friend this blog post explains the reasons why every business should be on Google+ Local, and gives some advice on how to setup a page...

What is Google+ Local

Formerly known as Google Places, Google+ Local enables offline businesses to gain greater prominence in local search results.

By establishing a Google+ page businesses can give the search engine relevant information such as their location, operating hours and contact details.

Google obviously looks kindly on business listings that contain useful, up-to-date information and gives them a boost in search rankings. 

So, if I search for a sports massage therapist in Bristol, businesses that have a Google+ Local page appear in the local search listings and have more prominence in the map on the right-hand side.

Local search listings are even more important on mobile as they appear directly under the paid results.

The reason for this is Google knows that 40% of mobile searches have local intent and three out of four mobile searches trigger follow-up actions, whether that be further research, a store visit, a phone call, a purchase or word-of-mouth sharing.

Furthermore, 55% of conversions from mobile search take place within the hour, while 81% of conversions occur within five hours.

So to make sure you’re capturing those valuable mobile searchers, get your business on Google+ Local.

The benefits of Google+ Local

Aside from the additional exposure of appearing in the local listings, there are other benefits from having a full and detailed Google+ business page.

If we take a closer look at the local search results, you can see that several of the businesses have star ratings taken from customer reviews.

Numerous studies have shown the positive impact of consumer reivews on conversions, with one report finding that 77% of UK shoppers consult reviews before buying online, so this is an excellent benefit of local listings.

The local listings also include the address and a contact number, which makes it easier for people to get in touch.

This is even more important on mobile as local listings have a click-to-call button and also a ‘directions’ icon that links directly to Google Maps.

Click-to-call is important as research published by Google found that 42% of smartphone owners have used click-to-call in search and a massive 94% have needed to call a business directly when searching for information, whether click-to-call is available or not.

On desktop users can also access additional information by hovering over the local listings. These cards include the opening hours, further reviews, and photos of the business. 

The type of information displayed here varies slightly for different businesses, so for example restaurants can give an indication of price and also link to a booking feature.

It’s worth populating your Google+ Local page with as much information as possible as it gives you the best chance of converting searchers into customers.

Imagery can be a particularly important and persuasive feature, especially for restaurants or hotels, so it’s a good idea to upload a selection of photos. 

Local Carousel

Google’s carousel shows listings as an image-heavy, rotating, interactive tool at the top of the screen.

I’ve seen it appear for searches related to entertainment, such as ‘Rolling Stones albums’, but as yet I haven’t seen business listings presented in this way.

This means it may only be available for US consumers at the moment, but will no doubt be rolled out in other markets in due course.

According to Mike Blumenthal, the results that appear in the carousel are determined by such factors as the number of +1s and reviews they have received, and perhaps even by the quality of the photography.

Blumenthal has also come up with a list of words that trigger the carousel, so businesses should consider optimising their listing for these keywords.

Setting up a Google+ Local listing

Now that you’re fully convinced of the benefits of Google+ Local, the time is right to set up your own page.

The first step is to create a personal Google+ account, then on your profile page select ‘Pages’ from the dropdown in the top left of the screen.

Then simply click the ‘Create a Page’ button displayed in the top right of the next screen, and you’re on your way.

When filling out your listing, be sure to pay close attention to the following:

• Be thorough. Give people as much information about your business as possible. A half-arsed listing is no good to anyone.
• Remember your keywords. Ensure that your 200-word description is relevant to your customers, but also make sure you include important keywords.
• Use imagery. I’ve already mentioned the importance of images, but it’s worth reiterating as a few high quality photos can go a long way in convincing people to visit your business.
• Create a different listing for each location. If you have a chain of sport massage clinics, or more likely a handful of restaurants or stores, set up a separate Google+ Local page for each one so people in different localities can find them.

The team behind the Department of Energy’s solar program SunShot internally calls one of its projects “the Steve Jobs solicitation.” That’s the one officially named “Plug and Play Photovoltaics,” which is using $21 million to support projects that try to turn the process of installing solar panels on rooftops into an easy, simple and ultimately one-step product — a far cry from the current lengthy and relatively complicated process it is today.

The goal is noble. The so-called soft costs of solar — everything that doesn’t include the hardware — make up over half of the total costs of solar panel systems. Making solar panels that can be bought off the shelf, installed by a handy person or even the buyer, and instantly connected to the power grid would not only reduce the cost of solar panels significantly, but could also expand the market considerably by making it more accessible.

Solar panels on a roof. Image courtesy of Elliot Brown, Flickr Creative Commons

Unfortunately, making solar panels plug-and-play will likely be complicated: Some company that is the Apple of solar won’t just be able to jump in and building new user-friendly products to disrupt the market. Startups have tried it on the hardware product side a variety of times, with little success to date, though there is still some interesting innovation happening around more niche DIY solar systems.

I don’t mean to downplay the innovations that have already made the process of buying home solar systems much more efficient. Companies like SolarCity and Sungevity have done a lot of heavy lifting in this area, creating new types of financing, marketing and ways to access installers, among other things.

The solar market is just so complicated compared to consumer electronics or even appliances, hampered with regulation and permits and filled with slow-moving utilities, that I think Steve Jobs would completely despise working in it, despite the fact that he was concerned with sustainability later in Apple’s life. I guess he had to face some of these issues when Apple launched into the phone industry.

Solar panel on rooftop, courtesy of Marufish, Flickr Creative Commons.

There are some obvious explanations for why purely plug-and-play solar panel systems will be difficult. Namely, solar panels aren’t iPhones. They are heavy, usually installed on rooftops (though they can also be set up on the ground), have to plug into home electrical systems, need permits in most locations and, for net metering programs, need to be approved by the local utility. Plug-and-play solar in reality would probably look more like buying a washing machine: a buyer could order it online or in a store, but an electrician might have to come and install it.

Solar entrepreneur Danny Kennedy, founder of solar incubator SfunCube, has been working in the solar market for years and thinks plug-and-play solar probably won’t be coming any time soon, and maybe not ever. “Technology diffusion of services requires the vendor to keep it simple, and most of the stuff I have seen so far is too DIY for normal people,” notes Kennedy. He adds, “We need to take this out of people’s hands, make it painless and seamless with other lifestyle technologies rather than make it something you have to plug in to the grid to play.”

Solar panel, Image courtesy of Alan Levine, Flickr Creative Commons

In that respect, making solar more plug-and-play will need a lot of little product innovations across all of these aspects of the solar process, instead of just one killer hardware product. Research firm the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems is working on just such a multi-faceted project with backing from the SunShot program, to make solar able to be bought, installed and connected by homeowners without outside contractors or consultants, and within a day. It says it’s using a “multidisciplinary team” that includes “manufacturers, utilities, local governments and research institutions,” to figure out how this would work.

What does this need from their perspective? Fraunhofer says some of the keys to its project are:

• lightweight solar modules
• self-sealing roof mounts
• distributed power conversion (for safe, simple wiring on the outside of the building)
• self-testing system components
• a communications protocol that allows the installed system to easily communicate with local utilities and obtain the necessary permissions to access the utility grid
• tweaking of national codes and local building requirements and regulations

So, yeah, it’s a little complicated. Fraunhofer has a $11.7 million grant and five years to try to do this. Partners on the program include Lumeta Solar; Petra Solar; Schletter; the City of Boston; the Town of Rutland, Vermont; Vermont utility Green Mountain Power; the Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing; Vermont Law School; Tufts University and Sandia National Laboratories. Phew. North Carolina State University’s FREEDM Systems Engineering Center is also working on a plug-and-play solar project supported by SunShot.

Solar panel, Image courtesy of Andreas Demmelbauer, Flickr Creative Commons

One of the key aspects that could be truly disruptive to come out of this Fraunhofer project — and which Steve Jobs would probably approve of — are solar systems that can automatically check themselves for proper installation and instantly communicate with the local utility for permission to feed power into the smart meter. The utility could then remotely use software to grant the system permission or not, and the solar project could immediately start producing power.

In an era of the internet of things and always-on connectivity, it just makes sense to do this using computing and networks. It reminds me of setting up an Apple router.

There are also some big picture infrastructure decisions, as well as next-gen technology, that could help with making solar more plug-and-play. When SunShot first launched its plug-and-play solar solicitation in 2012, I attended a brainstorming session where interested participants gave these suggestions:

• Have houses be solar-ready already: Develop a standard PV plug at the utility meter. Change the National Electrical Code. Have houses get smart solar-ready circuit breakers.
• Use polymers and new materials that don’t need roof penetrations or specialized tools. Can a solar system fit over a roof like a bed sheet?
• Panels that are very light can avoid some of these issues. Spray-on paint photovoltaics?
• Add GPS to panels to help them self-locate for best sun generation placement.

An M-KOPA retailer hands out flyers about the solar product. Courtesy of M-KOPA, Georgina Goodwin.

The main target for this discussion has been the U.S. market and other developed markets that have regular access to the power grid. Ultimately, though, emerging off-grid rural markets could play an even bigger role with plug-and-play solar (though in the U.S., connecting to the power grid is half the battle). Companies are currently selling solar systems to rural villagers in Africa and India. Local entrepreneurs or home owners can install them, maintain and monitor them via cell phone networks.

Many of these systems aren’t powerful enough to serve the electricity needs of an American home, but perhaps these technologies and entrepreneurs could provide valuable lessons for programs like the one Fraunhofer is working on. While plug-and-play solar might be a far distant dream in the U.S., it’s already happening off of the power grid.

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The Tesla Model S is famous for what’s under the hood—but what’s on the dashboard is nearly as significant. (Tesla)

The partners at Toronto-based mobile strategy and development shop BNOTIONS were so excited about the idea of the Internet-connected car that they went out and bought the latest Tesla Model S, just to get their employees thinking about it.

The legendary electric car—list price: a cool $130,000, with all the options—comes with a giant touch screen mounted on the dash, which runs a web browser hooked up to the car’s own Internet connection. To spark their creativity, employees can book this “laptop on wheels” for an afternoon, or maybe even for an evening, which doesn’t seem like a bad proposition.

There’s only one problem: you can’t make apps for it.

“We’ve got a bunch of really excited engineers here,” says Alkarim Nasser, BNOTIONS’ managing partner, “but the reality is there’s nothing you can really do with it yet.”

The Tesla’s “in-vehicle infotainment system” lacks an application programming interface—a way for programmers to tap into a computer system and write apps for it. Like most car computers today, the way it comes out of the box is the way it stays.

That’s about to change. The Internet-connected car is making its way to the mass market. That car will do all the things a computer does. It will run apps like a tablet or a laptop. It will learn from you in ways you don’t expect. It will try to sell things to you. It might even be useful.

But first, there’s going to be a fight about just how these connected cars are going to work, and whose smartphones they’re going to resemble. A crew of familiar players—Apple, Google, and BlackBerry—are jockeying for position, and an industry full of would-be app-makers is waiting to see which way the chips will fall. It’s a high-stakes battle: one British automotive consultancy estimates that the global connected car market will be worth $61 billion by 2018.

The infotainment systems that you see on high-end dashboards, like the Tesla’s, have traditionally been homegrown systems that vary from one car to the next. Carmakers tend to see those systems as product differentiators and exercises in offering a unique brand experience, says Tony Stone, a connected-device executive at IBM in Detroit. App-makers, however, see this as a hindrance: when no two car computers are the same, it’s not practical to write software for them.

With that in mind, Apple and Google are forging ahead onto the dashboard. Apple’s technology, called CarPlay, will turn a car’s systems into an extension of your iPhone as long as it’s plugged in, while Google, working with an alliance of carmakers that includes Honda, Audi and General Motors, is developing a model that could see the car’s own systems running on Android.

Either approach would open the door for a whole new class of automotive apps, which could talk to the car’s on-board systems on one hand, and the world at large on the other. Parking apps, for instance, can use the Internet to check in with parking authorities and advise drivers of available spots. More cutting-edge ideas would use real-time analytics, the kind enabled by the hundreds of sensors in today’s cars—what Nasser calls “the really exciting stuff.” If carmakers decide to allow app-makers to access data about how the car is being driven, apps could coach the driver into using less gas. Then there’s the other, inevitable, destination for any Internet connection: marketing. “People want the ability to do commerce from their car,” says Stone. “Consumers are expecting that kind of interaction.”

An app might keep an eye on the car’s fuel gauge and not only proactively suggest gas stations that are nearby, but match their driver’s loyalty-card preference. For both Apple and Google, the fight for dashboards is more than just part of their broader turf war to bring consumers into their respective ecosystems. Tim Tang, an analyst at IDC in Toronto, suggests that for Apple, this is essentially a media play, broadening the reach of its iTunes music, film and app-selling empire and ultimately encouraging people to buy more Apple hardware.

Google, on the other hand, is notoriously hungry for data. Access to information about exactly how and where millions of people are driving would further its advertising ventures. (And, lest we forget, Google is one of the pioneers of the self-driving car, which continues to lurk just offstage.)

“It’s about information, it’s about transaction, it’s about e-commerce,” says Tang, pointing to the big question hanging over all these plans. “If it’s about all that, it’s about privacy.”

The more cars know, and the more cars talk, the more that the data security and privacy will be critical. Consumers have been willing to let technology companies keep tabs on where they surf and where they take their phones, but when you’re physically inside your computer as it hurtles down the highway, the stakes are higher.

While a car’s infotainment system won’t have the power to veer the steering wheel on the highway, the fact that all these systems are connected means that malware picked up on the Internet could have unforeseen consequences. Over the years, security researchers have found ways to hack into car computers, ranging from accessing maintenance ports to hijacking signals from wireless tire-pressure gauges.

This could be a selling point for an unlikely competitor in this arena: BlackBerry. The smartphone maker owns an operating system called QNX, which has a reputation for reliability and security. (Among other things, it’s used for real-time control systems in nuclear power plants.) QNX has also become a favourite of automakers, which have built their proprietary in-car entertainment systems on top of it.

“QNX is so pervasive already,” says Tang. “Carmakers know them, respect them, trust them. There’s a history of a relationship there.” Tang says that, under the leadership of its new, enterprise-focused CEO John Chen, BlackBerry’s strategy is up in the air, and anything is possible.

Android, Apple and QNX options aren’t mutually exclusive. For instance, CarPlay can run on a system that’s based on QNX, simply handing control of the car’s screen and audio over to the iPhone when it’s connected. A QNX system could run Android apps. And some automakers, like Hyundai, are working with Apple and Google simultaneously.

Ultimately, however, before developers like Nasser can get their teeth into making apps for cars, Detroit and Silicon Valley are going to have to work through a basic culture clash. Carmakers lock down their hardware offerings years in advance, while smartphone makers pump out new devices quarterly, with software updates by the hour. Carmakers like differentiation, while technology companies like standards. Carmakers are accustomed to control, while technology companies prefer openness.

Google says it expects Android-enabled devices to hit the market within the year, and Apple’s CarPlay will appear in 2015 Hyundai models, among others. And then, for the drivable computer and those who would program it, the open road.

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Video marketing without a clear CTA is like fishing without bait. Or a hook. Or a rod…in the desert.

Don’t go fishing without bait.

If you’re lucky enough to grab peoples’ attention, it’s up to you to funnel that interest in the right direction with CTAs that capture, convince, and convert.

Here’s a simple flowchart and four steps for creating CTAs that make people bite.

1) Choose One Action

Your explainer video is short and to the point (hopefully), and your CTA should be the same. Set out to accomplish One Single Thing. Define exactly what your goal is before you optimize word choice or tweak font size, because none of that other stuff matters if you don’t know what you’re selling.

Say you’re promoting a free ebook about flipping houses and your goal is to maximize downloads. You make a marketing video all about the benefits of the book – including testimonials and projections – and it’s compelling. You’ve hooked the viewer, and now it’s time to close the deal and promote your book.

So…tell them to download your book.

Don’t mention subscribing to your email list, or watching other videos you’ve produced. Craft your CTA in the form of a simple command – ”Download My Book.” Some of the best CTAs start with simple commanding verbs. Even Facebook uses these in their app install ads:

• Click
• Buy
• Listen
• Download
• Watch
• Share

Start with the basics – the action words – then add to your CTA as you refine the target.

2) Be Specific

Now that you’ve established a single goal – book downloads – and told them how to get the book – ”click to download” – it’s time to make people click that sweet, juicy button. Your CTA should always leave the viewer with a clear idea of what to do next, and a compelling reason for why they should do it.

This is where you stress the problem facing users while emphasizing how your product is the solution. Some sample copy for our house flipping ebook could be:

• “Click to Download the Book that will Sell your Home in 30 Days”
• “Download House Flipping 101 and Turn that Money Pit into a Cash Cow!”

Don’t just ask people to “click” or “download” – tell them how that click is going to make their lives better.

3) Create a Sense of Urgency

Effective CTAs involve creating a timeframe for your product. This happens by either limiting its availability – ”3-day sale, limited time offer” – or by defining the use cycle – ”Get rid of zits this weekend,” or “Eliminate credit card debt in 60 days.”

If these tactics sound a little too “salesy” or pitchy – you’re right – they’re obnoxious and sales forward. But they work. Here’s a list of 60 classic CTAs that are still relevant to today’s marketer.

Time limits encourage action, and raise the perceived value of your product (only 10 left! – Buy NOW!”). Specific use cycles create an implicit contract or guarantee that addresses doubts about the effectiveness of a product. Establishing a set number of days to measure the success of a product is a great way to sell it.

Note: While it’s important to stress exclusivity or create immediacy for your product, don’t get carried away with these tactics. If your store is perpetually having a “Going Out of Business Sale,” you’ll lose customer credibility pretty fast (and your CTA tactic might become a self-fulfilling prophecy)!

The best way to add a timeframe to your CTA is by stressing its effectiveness – ”Sell your home in 30 days.” This bold claim is enticing enough to override doubt about the product, but only use this tactic if you can deliver on the promise. Sleazy sales copy and bald face lies aren’t sustainable CTAs.

That said, nothing says “professional” like setting an outrageous timeline and delivering on that promise.

If your product doesn’t work in a timeline, or you’re wary of sales copy, simply add words like “today” or “now” to your CTA. Mentioning time – even vaguely – is the easiest way to spur action.

4) Make it Obvious

Don’t wait until the end of your video to squeeze your CTA in. Even engaging videos – like Dollar Shave Club – can have a noticeable drop-off in viewership in the last 15 seconds. Their CTA – ”Join the Club Now” – pops up in their YouTube video 0:10 seconds in, and doesn’t go away. Say your CTA early and often – it’s the whole reason you made your marketing video!

If you get nervous, just tap your heels together and repeat this three times:

“A clear CTA improves conversion rates.”

5) Be Tactful

This bonus step (just my taste), is pretty much awesome advice so…

• Find the balance between promotion and over-promising
• Make sure that you can deliver on every claim you make, and you’ll grow your business

An outlandish claim might seem like a great way to get quick results – but just like the tortoise and the hare – steady hard work always wins the day.

Your CTA is one of the most important – and neglected – parts of your branding and video marketing strategies. Be mindful of what you ask and how you ask it, and you’ll get the conversions that drive your business forward. Just don’t end up like this guy…unless that’s what you’re going for.

After months of planning, research, writing, and design, your new B2B research report is set to launch.

Personas have been defined. Databases have been segmented. Website traffic, lead generation, and sales conversion goals are all set. And your project management system has been stacked with all the standard elements of a successful content marketing campaign, such as:

• An eBook: All of the brilliant (and statistically valid) research and insights you’ve gathered have been neatly packaged into a downloadable eBook.

• An infographic: The design team has taken the most tweet-worthy stats and created a tantalizing infographic to accompany the eBook and drive social shares.

• The landing page: Your dedicated landing page is live, complete with a contact form that’s been integrated with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. There’s even an A/B test set up to monitor conversion rates using varying headlines and images.

• A blog post: Your team has written an engaging blog post, featuring key takeaways and a call-to-action (CTA) to download your eBook.

• SlideShare: The infographic and an eBook teaser have both been uploaded to SlideShare to maximize reach and sharing potential.

• Social media: Social updates have been scheduled from your company’s accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

• Website CTAs: Banner and tile CTAs have been added to popular pages throughout your company website to convert visitors to leads.

• Lead scoring: Marketing has collaborated with sales to determine criteria that define sales qualified leads (SQLs), and lead scoring has been set up in your marketing automation system.

• Lead nurturing emails: An automated email workflow has been created and scheduled to nurture contacts that download the eBook.

• An associated webinar: A webinar featuring insights from the research has been planned for the purpose of capturing the leads that are further along in their buyer’s journeys. The CTA to register for the webinar has been featured in your series of lead nurturing emails.

• Webinar emails: Another lead nurturing email workflow has been configured to follow up with those who have already downloaded your eBook AND attended your webinar.

• Internal team alignment: An email has been sent to your sales team members detailing the content marketing campaign and offering tips on how they can integrate the new content asset into their sales activities.

• Campaign tracking: All URLs that will be shared have been tagged using Google’s URL builder tool, in order to monitor traffic and conversion sources.

Seems pretty thorough. Right? But there’s more you can do to help your content marketing plan surpass your expectations for success. Let’s explore how public relations can add fuel to this content fire.

Understanding the role of PR

PR encompasses any activity, online or offline, designed to improve communications and build relationships with audiences that matter to your business. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Analyst relations
• Blogger relations
• Community relations
• Crisis communications
• Employee relations
• Media relations
• Public speaking

Unfortunately, PR has gotten a bad rap at times because professionals have historically relied on “soft” metrics such as placements, impressions, and ad equivalency to create the perception of value. They have failed to connect actions to outcomes, and clearly demonstrate how PR activities impact key performance indicators (KPIs) that are relevant to the C-suite.

But, times are changing, and modern PR pros are becoming adept at building strategies that have an undeniable impact on expanding reach, driving website traffic, generating leads, increasing sales conversions, and enhancing customer loyalty.

Amplify the content

Here are eight ways an integrated PR strategy can accelerate your content marketing success:

1. Build a media database: Start with a media database that includes business publications, blogs, and trade publications in relevant vertical markets. At minimum, the information you track should include: outlet name, organization, phone, email, social profile links, areas of interest/beat, and notes. Ideally these contacts will be uploaded and managed in your marketing team’s CRM system.

Tip: Journalists and bloggers are in the business of telling stories that matter to their readers. If your content isn’t relevant to their audiences, don’t waste their time (or yours) blasting out pitches and press releases to them.

2. Pull editorial calendar information: Traditional print publications often publish editorial calendars that show the topics they plan to cover throughout the year. Research the calendars of your target media outlets, and look for topics that align with the content in your campaigns.

3. Pitch story ideas to relevant media contacts: Once your media database and editorial calendar list are complete, seek opportunities for customized pitches.

For example, if you know Chief Marketer Magazine plans to write about Personalization in its November issue (PDF: sample editorial calendar), you might consider pitching your eBook, 10 Ways to Personalize the Customer Journey, to its editors.

4. Identify bylined article and guest post opportunities: Publications and blogs often accept contributions from outside writers. Bylined articles and guest blog posts from your executives and marketers are a great way to expand reach, build quality inbound links, and drive referring visits to your website. 

5. Conduct influencer outreach: Does your eBook feature insight from industry influencers? Is the content highly relevant to influential bloggers? If so, take a strategic approach to get the information in front of them — and (hopefully) their audiences.

6. Consider partnerships: Evaluate the associations and organizations in your network that have expansive reach. Consider ways to collaborate and distribute your content through their events, emails, and websites. 

7. Pursue speaking engagements: Identify opportunities for your company’s leaders to speak at industry events. This will give you a platform to discuss relevant topics and concepts from your content marketing with members of your target audience, as well as a way to use your content to showcase your company’s credibility, thought leadership, and expertise.

8. Submit your content for industry awards: Look for programs, such as the Content Marketing Awards, that recognize excellence in marketing. Award programs are a great way to extend the life of a content marketing program, and extend your reach to new audiences.

Are you using PR strategies to amplify your successful content marketing campaigns? Share your stories, and tips, below.

Join Paul Roetzer as he shares more tips for successful content marketing during his presentation at Content Marketing World 2014. 

Cover image via Bigstock 

How to make sure content creators have just as good an experience building your website as the end user clicking on the buy button

Think about it. Every blockbuster movie we watch and every high-end car we drive has teams of people working behind the scenes to bring the creation to life. The movies and cars that we truly admire have a wealth of technology behind them. In reality, building an award-winning car or movie is really no different from creating a successful website. The end goal is the same: draw an audience and make money. It’s a big endeavor that doesn’t happen just by luck. The companies behind successful websites – you know who I mean – know you’ve got to have great teams with great tools that help, not hinder, the process. 

The goal: lots of customers using your website

Let’s start with the end goal – customers and how to attract them. Sure, you’ve got to have something people want, but beyond that, you’ve got to make sure they can get it wherever they are. That means whatever device they’re using – desktop, laptop, smartphone – with a display that adapts to any of them. Websites created using responsive Web design are just naturally easier and more satisfying to use.

Once they’re on your website, they’re going to respond to content that really speaks to them and their needs. So, getting personal is much more likely to make your site a visitor’s top pick over a competitor that doesn’t offer personalized content. The beauty of personalization for companies is you get a much clearer picture of your customers, so you can keep supplying them with content that keeps them coming back and clicking the buy button. 

Unsung heros – the content creators who make it personal

Creating great and personalized content for a fickle audience (too many ads or pop-ups, too hard to navigate equals clicking to another website) is a creative process often involving multiple activities: authoring; pulling in content from other sources; transformation, localization, tagging and re-using content; assembly and formatting; editing and quality assurance; and in some cases, publishing. With so much to do on the creation end, figuring out how to use complex tools shouldn’t be one of them. Because content creators aren’t usually the IT people in your company, anyway.

Putting it all together

Companies that consistently serve up websites that are the go-tos for most consumers are intimately aware of the need to use Web content management systems to enrich the user experiences of their customers and content creators. Some 93 percent of what Gleanster called Top Performer companies use WCM solutions to support responsive design for multi-channel distribution of content. Top Performers, those companies that rank highest in revenue growth, customer satisfaction and use of CMS systems, also understand the need to make the content value chain — the folks all along the line of content creation — in a word: content.

So what does it look like to have a supportive CMS running quietly and efficiently behind the scenes?

• Content creators and editors can edit directly in the browser and change text, images and formats right there too. Creators can see websites as the end user does throughout the whole process on various screen sizes.
• Text, photos and other elements can be moved with simple drag and drop.
• Design and content reuse is simplified to keep the message consistent over multiple channels (including bricks-and-mortar), marketing campaigns and even websites in multiple languages.
• Looking for something? Full-text searches with auto-complete and a myriad of filters as well as non-textual (objects, photos, graphics) are not only possible; they’re easy do to with simple drag and drop.

At the end of the day, a successful website is all about drawing visitors and turning them into regular customers. A positive end user experience begins with content creators and a CMS that supports them from day one.

We get a lot of questions about Take Control, one of the three Challenger Rep competency skills. What does Take Control actually mean? How do we help our reps navigate these waters without coming off as too aggressive? Isn’t Taking Control simply good negotiation skills? We’d like to offer some insights for you and your sales organization because there’s a lot of complexity in getting Taking Control right.

The first step is to understand what Take Control actually means.

Taking Control is about being comfortable with applying what you know about a situation to drive a desired outcome; it’s about managing conversations and proactively putting commercial insight in front of customers and prospects. It means determining what customers need to understand and finding ways to show it to them despite their focus on price. It also has a strong component in pushing back (diplomatically) on objections and identifying and coaching Mobilizers, those customer stakeholders who can mobilize their organization around a purchase. It’s about suggesting to customers ways to more effectively build consensus and buy your solutions, something we started researching with Commercial Coaching and expanding on this year with our newest study on Creating Customer Consensus.

What about negotiation? Where does that fit into the equation?

For many people, negotiating is the most obvious and tactical example of Taking Control. Negotiation is about our reps exhibiting the unflinching nerves of steel to push back on customer objections and build constructive tension. We find that during customer interactions, reps often err on the side of being too passive, avoiding tension at any cost to make situations more amicable. This, however, allows the customer to control the interaction and it often relegates the conversation to price, or delaying decision making (perhaps to a no-decision scenario).

Our job is to focus the conversation on value, not price. Since customers often have a limited set of negotiables—mostly driven by price—Challengers are charged with broadening the customer perspective. But, there’s a common fear that, when allowed, reps might take that pressure too far and risk coming off as overly aggressive.

In order to help our members better navigate these waters, we’ve profiled DuPont on how they created a negotiation roadmap to mitigate reps’ potential aggressiveness and help them maintain an assertive posture without appearing too inflexible. The roadmap guides reps on how negotiations should unfold and follows four key principles: 1) create an action plan, 2) shift discussion to value, 3) refocus and explore priorities, and 4) exchange value… don’t give it away.

To learn more about how DuPont did it, click here. We’ve also created a webinar on the topic: Harnessing Constructive Tension in Sales Negotiations: A Discussion with DuPont.

Like other Challenger skills, Taking Control can be learned and improved upon with proper training and preparation. At some level it comes back to projecting confidence (something to consider looking for in candidates during the hiring process) and it’s best developed through application and reinforcing opportunities (i.e., coaching). 

Clearly, there are many moving parts to getting Take Control right and many opportunities to steer the boat astray. If you’d like more information about any of the concepts above please contact your Account Manager and we’d be happy to set up a conversation with you.

Related Blog Posts:

• Four Ways to Say NO to a Customer
• 4 Steps to Being an All Star Negotiator
• The Way to Negotiate? ZOPA!

Related CEB Sales Resources:

• Take Control of the Buying Process
• Get Reps to Assert Control of Sales Interactions
• Controlled Negotiation Roadmap (DuPont)

Father’s Day is this coming weekend but plenty of people do more than just celebrate biological Dads on it. Some celebrate foster parents, the leadership ideals that fatherhood implies, as well as father figures.

And speaking of which, you can’t get closer to a father figure in business than in a mentor. For entrepreneurs and their start-ups, a mentor can be their best consultant and wisest advisor. Plenty of leading businessmen are mentors (e.g. Guy Kawasaki and Warren Buffett).

That however might be a good reason for why it’s difficult to find yourself one. Fortunately, B2B lead generators like telemarketing are just one among the several ways you can get in touch.

Getting a mentor requires a personal reach.

When you first begin your search, it’s commonly suggested that you start with your immediate circle of friends and family. So when it comes to that, it doesn’t make sense to send your run-of-the mill email promo. You need to show these people that it’s really you behind the message and not your blasters.

That’s why it makes sense to either give them a call or even visit them at their office. You know these people personally. (In fact, that in itself is already an advantage.) It makes sense that your means of communicating with them isn’t so automated.

These people command plenty of respect.

Being a mentor puts you in a powerful position of influence. That’s why you can’t just take up much of their time. One testament of their own B2B marketing success is the fact that many people have already heard of them. You’re not the only one who goes to them for advice.

That’s why getting in touch and staying in touch should be with a lot more effort. Mentors value the knowledge and experience they share. You can’t just expect them to hand it over (even at a good price) if they don’t see you as the type to even make use of it.

You can’t just forget about them either.

What’s the point of establishing good ties with your mentors when you have no intention of remembering them? If you’re going to give them something, give them something that already adds to their success. Help them share their influence and there’s a chance that they might even do the same for you. Give them options on what they’d like to have in return for their mentorship even if you think it wouldn’t be enough. It’s really the thought that counts, even in B2B marketing.

Last week I got an email last week from a New York VC asking for advice about building a house in the California Coastal Zone. For six and a half years I served as a public official on the California Coastal Commission.

The call reminded me that it’s been a year since I resigned, and it’s time to tell a few stories of what I learned as a Coastal Commissioner. Each and every month I learned that not everything was how it seemed.

Here’s Lesson 1: Farming for Developers.

Background
The California coast is a panorama of open farm fields and hundreds of miles of undeveloped land. Highway 1 (the Pacific Coast Highway) follows the coast for almost the entire length of the state. The kind of road you see in car ads and movies, it looks like it was built to be driven in a sports car with the top down. The almost 400 mile coast drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco is one of the road trips you need to do before you die.

With 39 million people in the state, there’s no rational reason there aren’t condos, hotels, houses, shopping centers and freeways, wall-to-wall for most of the length of our state’s coast (instead of just in Southern California).

The Coastal Act saved California from looking like the coast of New Jersey.

Almost 40 years ago the people of California passed Proposition 20 – the Coastal Initiative – and in 1976, the state legislature followed with the Coastal Act, which created the California Coastal Commission. Essentially the Coastal Commission acts as California’s planning commission of last resort for all 1,100 miles of the California coast.

Thanks to the Coastal Act and the Coastal Commission, generations of Californians and our visitors enjoy the most pristine and undeveloped coast in the country, with recreation and access for all. It’s an amazing accomplishment.

The downside is that the coastal zone has the strictest zoning and planning requirements in the country.

As a new commissioner I learned quickly what developers would do to bypass those requirements.

A Different Type of Developer
After 30 years in Silicon Valley I thought I knew what a developer was: a software programmer building a web site, app, game, firmware, etc. But as a Coastal Commissioner, I was dealing with a different type of developer – a real estate developer – someone who acquires land and builds housing and commercial buildings.

The business model for real estate developers isn’t hard to understand: buy farms and/or ranches then build commercial buildings or houses and sell them off. Real estate developers make their money off the difference between the raw land and the net profit on the houses or the commercial buildings.

But a lot must happen before they can make money. If they’re building homes, they need to get approvals to rezone and subdivide the property, bring in utilities (water, sewer, electricity, phone, internet); build infrastructure (roads, sidewalks, street lights, etc.), get approvals to build the units, etc. A lot of capital is at play. Naturally if you’re a developer you want to maximize your return on invested capital. The easiest way to do that is to ensure that you can build as many units (apartments, condos, houses, etc.) as you can on the parcel you own.

Absent any zoning or regional planning, each developer will naturally maximize the development density of a parcel while leaving the impacts on traffic, views, water, wildlife, ecosystem, community character for others to worry about. The result is what’s called the tragedy of the commons (individuals acting independently end up depleting shared resources.) An example of this are the wall-to-wall housing developments on the Southern California coast and resulting gridlock on the freeways.

The Coastal Act has tried to protect the remaining parts of the California Coast. The opening section of the Act starts by stating, “…the permanent protection of the state’s natural and scenic resources is a paramount concern to present and future residents of the state and nation.”  It follows with, “…it is necessary to protect the ecological balance of the coastal zone and prevent its deterioration and destruction.” One of the ways it protects the coast is that you can’t build on land that has been designated an Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area (ESHA) or on lands that are Wetlands.

Part of my education as a commissioner was seeing how housing developers attempted to avoid these rules.

Farming for Developers
My first lesson was learning that developers love farmers.

In fact, developers think farms and farmers are the best thing to ever happen to the coast of California. Developers love buying farms. They buy-out family farms for prices that far exceed what the farmers could ever get from selling their crops. And often developers let the farmer stay on the farm, leasing them back the land so they can continue to farm it. Developers even help farmers optimize their output by making sure that they plant multiple crops each year and insisting that each time they plant they till each and every inch of their fields. And the farmers are told to make sure the fields are perfectly level so no water can collect or pond on the fields, regardless of how small.

When I first ran into this I thought, “Wow what a great deal. The developers are helping farmers maximize their yields by making all these improvements to California farming. “

Boy was I dumb.

The developers knew that if the farm fields were to remain fallow, many of them would return to the native wetlands or sensitive habitats that are protected by the Coastal Act and when that happened, developers couldn’t build on them. If enough of the farm would be found to have ESHA or Wetland, it would limit the number of houses that could be built (reducing the value of the project) or might even make the entire project economically unfeasible.

The reality was that the real estate developers could care less about farming or the crops. Tilling every inch of the farm and pouring pesticides on it meant nothing but a single crop could grow. Making it perfectly level meant that no water could pool and start a wetland. Developers were using the farmers to ensure the continued eradication of any Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Area (ESHA) or Wetland.

So the developers keep the farmers plowing the fields as the developers work on changing the zoning and getting approvals, and when they do, the bulldozers show up to start building the condos or houses that have buried Southern California. And the farmers retire.

That’s why developers on the California coast love farming.

Lessons Learned

• The Coastal Act prohibits development in Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas (ESHA) or Wetlands
• Existing farms have previously eradicated ESHA or Wetland
• Keeping the farming going while developers get approvals minimizes environmental objections

Listen to the podcast here

Download the podcast here

Every small business is constantly marketing itself – whether that means reaching out to new customers, asking existing customers for repeat business, or attracting new customers via word of mouth and online marketing. Unfortunately, some small business owners fall into a trap of relying too heavily on only one type of marketing and ignoring the rest.

If you are spending too much time on outbound marketing (such as sending direct mail postcards, making cold calls, or sending e-mails), you might be missing big opportunities from online marketing and other “inbound marketing” tactics like SEO and social media. If you’re spending all of your time with Facebook marketing, you’re missing lots of customers who might prefer to hear from you via phone and other “old fashioned” techniques.

Here are a few reasons why your small business needs a diversified portfolio of inbound and outbound marketing tactics:

• Different customers respond to different methods. Even with as much hype as social media marketing has gotten in the past few years, the majority of Americans still do not use Twitter. Depending on your business, social media might not be right for you. If you are a product brand, Facebook certainly is where you can reach your decision makers, but if you are targeting CFO’s in large institutions, chances are, you aren’t going to reach them on social media. According to CMO, LinkedIn is the only platform the majority (62 percent) of B2B marketers consider to be effective. Depending on the demographics of your customer base, you might be better off exhibiting at a trade show or buying a mailing list or calling customers directly on the phone. Social media marketing is amazing if your customers are on social media – but if not, don’t be afraid to keep using “old-fashioned” marketing methods for as long as they still work for your business.

• Inbound and outbound marketing can support each other. It is not a zero-sum game of deciding to “only” invest in inbound marketing (SEO, social media marketing, etc.) or outbound marketing (direct mail, phone calls, etc.) You can do both. And your various marketing campaigns can feed into each other. For example, you could make an offer via a direct mailing that can be redeemed on Facebook – “Like us on Facebook and get a 10% discount on your next purchase.”

• Different marketing methods can fit better into your budget. With traditional “outbound marketing” like direct mail or advertising, there is usually a fixed upfront cost to placing an ad or buying a mailing list or printing a mailing. With inbound marketing, the cost can often vary depending on the amount of time that the business owner spends implementing the marketing tactic and doing the work. There is a value to your time, so if you’re spending time on Facebook marketing you’ll want to know that you’re getting some return on the investment. The advantage of inbound marketing, ideally, is that once you invest some upfront time and money to set up a website, create a social media presence, and establish an online audience, you will have a long-term foundation of “owned media” that will keep bringing customers to you.

Finding the right balance of inbound and outbound marketing is a constant challenge, but there are more exciting, innovative and measurable ways to reach your customers than ever before. Just remember that just like with your investments, you should take a “diversified” approach to your marketing methods. That’s the best strategy for long-term success.

To create marketing messages to connect with your customers, you have to take the time to understand what they need and give it to them when they need it. The Online Marketing Institute class, Four Way Customers Can Be Consumer Centric, will teach you how to create consistent marketing messages across a variety of channel that connect with your audience.

By now, you’ve likely heard of Uber’s staggering US$1.2 billion funding round that values the business at US$ 18.2 billion. One can debate the merits of the valuation, but whatever your opinion, the folks at Uber will have a ton of resources to fund their next strategic move. So to us the interesting question is what Uber should do with the money and, perhaps more importantly, what it shouldn’t.

Let’s look at some of the options. Ones that Uber should probably look at include:

Value proposition: Uber’s 20-25% commission is high by most standards. The fact that incumbent taxi medallion owners and black car booking agents had even more usurious rates helped Uber get away with this pricing model. This is not going to last. Uber’s next competitors will be other apps (perhaps one that might be baked into a mobile operating system or a mapping product) and these will be far more serious competitors than the old ones. Further, Uber’s product by its very nature has limited sticking power; it will need to continually upgrade its experience and charge lower commissions if it wants to retain its dominant position in the US and elsewhere.

International markets: Uber is the big daddy of ride-hailing platforms in the US, but its dominance is far from global. In many international markets it faces strong competitors. Rocket Internet-funded EasyTaxi is prominent in many markets in Asia and South America; GrabTaxi is building market share far faster in Singapore; China has its own homegrown players.  Intermediation platforms like Uber are natural monopolies, which means getting to scale early on is critical. Given that Uber already lags behind in many international markets, it will take substantial resources to get up to speed in these markets.

Culturally sensitive local teams: Uber must acknowledge that it is not just a technology company, it is a real-world intermediary in a decades-old industry. As with previous disruptions of existing industries there will be winners and losers. This has important political consequences and handling these requires a culturally sensitive, country-specific strategy. For instance, the arguments around market efficiency that Uber makes work far better in Germany and the US than in France, where customers value equality and fairness over efficiency. Uber must use some of its resources to build culturally sensitive and locally empowered teams that can effectively create country-specific strategies, rather than simply bringing its aggressive playbook to new markets.

There are also some talked-about options that Uber should probably not explore:

An on-demand courier service: One of the most talked-about avenues for Uber is to use its instant on-demand platform to match supply and demand for transporting products as well as people. Our research into the economics of such peer-to-peer transport systems indicates that while the model is great for achieving very quick delivery times, it is also a poor use of transport infrastructure and makes little sense for all but the most time-sensitive deliveries.

Self-driving cars: The technology is definitely impressive, and some have called for Uber to invest in this trendy new area. While the experience of a self-driving car feels futuristic and magical, they don’t make business sense in an era of decreasing real wages for semi-skilled labor (like drivers). Further, Uber has the DNA of a business model innovator, not that of a technology company, which means this move is unlikely to work.

We have been Uber users and fans from the very early days. We see it as a game-changing transportation innovator in the tradition of Henry Ford, whose business model (standardization, mass production, welfare capitalism) made the automobile accessible to ordinary people.   The next few years will reveal whether Uber will realize this potential.

A successful journalist understands how to tell a story and engage his or her audience. A good social media marketer does the same. Here are six things social media marketers can learn from journalists to strengthen their content marketing and social media strategies…

1. Get the Facts

According to the Pew Research Journalism Project, “‘journalistic truth’ begins with the professional discipline of assembling and verifying facts.”

Journalists know that the foundation of a captivating story is doing the proper research. They check their facts and then they check them again.

a) Journalists use only top-level, credible resources and then sprinkle compelling statistics and newsworthy facts into their stories.

b) Journalists understand the importance of accuracy because their reputations are squandered without it. The value of a fact from reader-generated entries on Wikipedia vs. noteworthy news sites such as The New York Times is incomparable.

The weight and importance of where you get your facts and figures are undeniable. Before making a claim and deeming it factual, do your research first!

Check out Quicksprout’s infographic – “How to Increase Your LinkedIn Engagement by 386%”.Without sources to back up this hefty statistic, how do readers know that the statements are valid? Just as Quicksprout has done below, always provide proof that backs up your claims.

2. Credit Your Source

In addition to researching and fact-checking, journalists understand the importance of giving credit where it is due. If there’s one thing that is drilled into a journalist’s head, it’s to attribute, attribute and oh yeah… attribute. Whether paraphrasing or using a direct quote, always state from whom, what or where from this information is coming. Beware of the naked quote!

Also beware of plagiarizing. For journalists, plagiarism is one of the most heinous crimes. They understand the severe legal implications associated with it and the failure to cite sources accurately. If a journalist is ever caught plagiarizing, his or her reputation may be tarnished beyond repair.

The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication defines plagiarism as:

The same rules apply to social media marketers. Whether you link to a blog post or share a tweet, give credit to the original source like the Huffington Post does below:

Also avoid copying and pasting web content and claiming it as your own without permission.

“Finding your content somewhere else on the web with no credit given is a harsh experience,” writes Explore B2B writer, Jonathan Gebauer.

Claiming another’s material as your own is simply unacceptable. It can destroy your brand’s credibility.

3. Adhere to a Style

Is it 3 or three? Colorado or CO? Feet or ft?

Most journalists conscientiously follow the AP (Associated Press) Stylebook when writing. Adhering to a clear standard format helps journalists maintain consistency and clarity throughout their writings.

The same applies to social media marketers. If you fail to standardize your writing style — be it in blog posts or social media posts — you end up confusing your readers. So be sure to choose a styleguide to standardize your content marketing and social media posts. Doing so strengthens your branding.

4. Use Language Artfully

Journalists understand the art of language and how to craft words into an impactful, engaging and easy-to-understand story without overusing flowery language. Their words simultaneously create an image and interest.

What sets professional journalists apart is their understanding of showing not telling. For example, instead of saying, “It is cold outside,” they use descriptors and action verbs to reveal the weather.

Which sounds better – a) or b)?

a) It‘s cold outside.

b) I could see my breath as I stepped outside.

Check out Mark Guarino’s article from the Chicago Sun-Times and notice his fantastic descriptions in the opening paragraph.

The same approach applies to your social media posts. Aaron Lee from Post Planner advises to “personalize every description” in Facebook updates, to build interest and intrigue. While social media marketers generally prefer a conversational and approachable tone, find a balance between informing your readers and writing in an engaging manner. Establish your company’s voice and let your creativity flow.

5. Embrace Multimedia

Long gone are the days of print-only journalism. Today, journalists are technologically savvy. Not only do they know how to write a great story, they also know how to show a great story through visuals. From video interviews to beautiful photos, journalists understand the importance of incorporating quality multimedia into their articles.

Social media marketers also benefit from multimedia enhancements to their content. Posts that use photos and/or videos go a long way to boosting conversion rates immensely. Note the strength of this Facebook post that links to two videos that compare a wintry day in Chicago, Illinois to one in Charlotte, North Carolina.

6. Stay Ahead of the Curve

From world news to business volatility to sport upsets, journalists are constantly in-the-know; in fact, they’re hungry for the most up-to-date info.

Think about your social media strategy. Are you staying ahead of the curve? Do you know the top industry sources in your niche? Do you understand the value of the latest technology? Can you write intelligently about the pros and cons of the top companies’ workplace styles? Stay informed by following the social media pages of leaders in your industry. If the content is something your readers may find valuable, share it!

Your Thoughts:

Have these lessons from journalism inspired you to adapt them into your social media marketing strategy? What can you add to the list? Share your thoughts below.

The conventional wisdom about IBM is that Louis V. Gerstner, the RJR Nabisco executive who became IBM’s CEO and chairman in 1993, righted the ship, taught the elephant to dance, and insert-whatever-turnaround-metaphor-you-want here.

There’s no doubt he did turn around a struggling company founded nearly a century before by Thomas J. Watson. But he also helped sow the seeds for IBM’s current distressed situation, according to a new ebook, The Decline and Fall of IBM by Robert X. Cringely.

One of the negatives Gerstner brought to IBM was the notion of superstar CEO with pay package to match. According to synopsis of Cringely’s book on Amazon.com:

Only the Watson family had become rich running IBM with later CEOs like John Opel and John Akers living comfortable lives with lots of perks, but they never got BIG RICH. That changed with Gerstner. Sam Palmisano an IBM lifer followed Gerstner as CEO and followed, too, the Gerstner playbook. Palmisano retired three years ago with a retirement package worth $241 million, replaced by IBM’s first woman CEO, Ginni Rometty, who certainly expects a comparable golden parachute.

When top executives don’t have skin in the game, things get out of whack. If IBM does well, its CEO does well. If IBM tanks, its CEO still does well. Top execs are insulated from the fate of the company.

Current and former IBM insiders noted that IBM’s emphasis on innovation and invention has been on the decline for years, Watson being the exception to that rule. The past few decades at the company have seen a transformation from an R&D-driven company where engineers and developers were valued to one where marketers and lawyers are valued more.

IBM makes much of the fact that it spends about $6 billion on R&D annually, but that figure has been pretty much unchanged for years. In its rankings of the top 20 R&D spenders worldwide, Strategy & (formerly Booz & Company) ranked IBM 16th last year.

Strategy&

When you look for transformative technology now — things like augmented reality glasses, self-driving cars, electric cars, etc. — they’re more likely to come from Google, than IBM despite the polished PR IBM pours into projects like its annual 5 in 5 technologies extravaganza.

In a book excerpt posted on Re/code, Cringely writes:

Lou Gerstner saved IBM from a previous crisis in the 1990s, and then went on to set the company up for the crisis of today. Gerstner was a great leader who made important changes in IBM, but didn’t go far enough. Worse still, he made a few strategic errors that helped the company into its current predicament. Sam Palmisano reversed some of the good that Gerstner had done, and compounded what Gerstner did wrong. The current crisis was made inevitable on Palmisano’s watch. New CEO Ginni Rometty will probably take the fall for the mistakes of her predecessors. She simply hasn’t been on the job long enough to have been responsible for such a mess. But she’s at least partly to blame, because she also hasn’t done anything — anything — to fix it.

Cringely probably doesn’t look kindly on Palmisano’s edict that IBM hit $20 earnings per share by the end of 2015, a move made to assuage shareholders but that has damaged morale and IBM’s ability to build great products, so I’ll have to read the book to find out.

Part of IBM’s problem is now that terrible morale, exacerbated by a continuing wave of layoffs driven by the $20 EPS mandate. It appears the only people not on the the chopping block at IBM are those in the C-level suite — the very executives who engineered its decline, or at least watched it happen.

Related research and analysis from Gigaom Research:
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Education is on the brink of rapid change that will create a lot of value for innovators. But still sitting on the sidelines? Those who make the decisions and control the purse strings at legacy higher education institutions.

One representative example: April’s Education Innovation Summit, where more than 2,000 people energetically discussed how technology and markets are charting the future of education globally. The summit’s organizers claimed that 80 universities were in attendance, but a closer look at the attendee list revealed only a handful of high-level decision makers — and exactly one university endowment. Most of the attendees from post-secondary institutions were professors or deans of schools of education. Meanwhile, the halls were filled with hundreds of investors and hundreds more entrepreneurs.

I’ll admit that I’m not an entirely disinterested observer when I look upon the $450 billion currently sitting in university endowments in the U.S. I’m a partner at a venture capital firm, and venture capital has long been a key way for the top-performing endowments to deploy capital. But when I talk to general partners at venture capital funds that focus on education — Learn Capital, where I work, Rethink Education, and University Ventures — they report that university endowments have not been nearly as interested as other institutions in the work we’re doing.  One outside manager of many endowments I spoke to confirmed to me that there has been “no mandate” from clients to be investing in the future of higher education.  “I haven’t heard that at all,” was the quote. At the Education Innovation Summit the only university endowment in attendance was the University of Texas‘s UTIMCO.

The business models of universities are being challenged, and it looks like the universities are out to lunch. The transformation in education technology and markets is happening with the business leaders and money-men of higher education barely present. Not only will the spoils of this sea change largely go to private markets, with those spoils will go the prestige and legacy of those who invented the future. This is a tragic waste, given that universities are not only our greatest repositories of educational talent, but among our greatest repositories of investable capital as well.  Those who manage money for higher education, I propose, need to get much more interested in the market they are in.

The challenges to the traditional higher education model are well known.  This summer, a well-produced documentary, Ivory Tower, will likely sharpen the public discussion.  In a nutshell, the credit hour, the seat in the lecture hall, the tenured professor with a two or three course load, the four-year tuition, and the two-year professional degree will all be up for grabs in the next 20 years.  The more astute higher education administrators tell me they can see this happening now: Tuition discount rates are at record highs, and the summer scramble is on to hit admission targets as enrollments drop. Debt levels are unsustainable, for both students and many universities.   Meanwhile, every post-secondary institution in America is scrambling to bring more full-pay foreign students to their degree programs just to make the numbers work.

Many universities will figure out how to thrive under a new world order, but there are not-so-quiet alarm bells that suggest many will not. (See comments by Clayton Christensen and Mark Cuban). There are examples of universities forging ahead. Arizona State University, Southern New Hampshire University, and Abilene Christian University are names that sit alongside the usual MIT and Stanford.  Still, most colleges are lucky if they can afford even a small team charged with developing new lines of business and new business models. One senior administrator with bold ideas lamented to me that the intention and impetus exists at his well-known college, but there’s just no capital to try to experiment, and thus no room for failure. As a result, his university’s business model is in a holding pattern, and so is nearly everyone else’s.

Many universities manage billions in research funding, but there is usually no R&D budget for their own product, namely delivering education to willing buyers. Those administrators in the position to understand the imperative to innovate don’t actually have control over purse strings. Presidents and provosts will tell you: operating budgets are tight.  Institutions have been raising tuition just to keep the lights on.

Meanwhile, trustees control universities’ sometimes-giant endowments, and most often delegate this control to asset managers who treat the endowments as pools of money with the sole purpose of creating more money.  They’re quite good at it, on the whole.  The National Association of College and University Business Officers Study on Endowments reveals that endowments are performing enviably — with returns of near 12% in 2013. Their top-performing alternative strategy for the year was distressed debt (quite the irony, given all the distressed student and university debt out there).

There’s a systemic Catch 22, one outsourced endowment manager told me.  The trustee committees and endowment managers are fine with  making investment decisions about any old asset.  But when it comes to education, they feel like that’s too close to home, so they pass the buck or avoid the decision entirely.  But if you go to the operational side of the institution, they feel investing capital is the business of their money managers, so they in turn pass the buck or avoid the decision entirely.  It’s a game of responsibility hot potato.

Thus, the asset managers are more comfortable with hedge funds, real estate holdings, and trading strategies than in market opportunities in education. This is a mistake from a purely fiduciary perspective — the new market actors in education are making money in droves. More importantly, if the endowment is there to support the future of an institution that will need to reinvent itself, it should be investing in that reinvention.

There is a precedent for endowment managers to see capital as a tool to help the university thrive — investing in local real estate.  Universities have a vested interest in seeing their surrounding communities flourish as a way to attract students and faculty.  Harvard notoriously owns (and manages) much of Cambridge, Mass., but even my alma mater, Clark University, which has a small endowment by comparison, has actively bought up much of the real estate around it in order to make downtown Worcester, Mass., a better place to be.  This has generally been a successful strategy for universities in both financial and strategic terms. But these days the mantra is “more clicks, less bricks,”  and universities should be using their capital to manage their digital surroundings as well.

Instead, innovation in education is mostly happening outside of the university, with entrepreneurs leading the way.  Coursera and General Assembly (both in Learn Capital’s portfolio) have rapidly scaling businesses.  When the Minerva Project can get Larry Summers to chair its advisory board, when Coursera can recruit the former president of Yale as its CEO, and General Assembly can endow a scholarship fund with money from Microsoft and Google, you know that there’s been a real shift in the center of power.

As one university trustee said to me, “We need to get in the game. Right now, we’re road kill.”  It doesn’t need to be this way. There’s a scenario where everyone emerges a winner.  But it requires that we all have a seat at the table, and right now, we’re not even in the same rooms. For universities, joining the league of innovation may require casting aside the firewall between endowment money and innovation in education.

Digital has changed our world. The web has transformed the way we gather information, make purchases and carry out daily tasks.

Social media is altering the way we interact with friends and even the nature of society as a whole. And mobile has nurtured the 24/7, always on culture.

Organisations are scrambling to adapt to this new reality. Some businesses have been too slow and digital has forced them to close their doors. HMV, Tower records, Kodak and Blockbusters are all high-profile victims of the digital revolution.

But some organisations are making the transition, even in sectors harmed by the arrival of digital. One such organisation is the Guardian newspaper.

Newspapers have faced competition from online advertising. They have also faced the challenge of new forms of journalism made possible by the web.

In an interview for Design Week, the Guardian gave some interesting insights into the digital processes behind the recent launch of its new range of mobile apps. These approaches are worth highlighting as they represent best practice that are relevant for a range of organisations.

We start with the publisher's attitude towards digital design.

Digital demands new thinking

We know digital journalism will have to change form; there might be stories that are just based on a piece of interactive graphic, or some might be gallery-based or live-blogged.

Whenever we encounter something new we endeavour to fit it into our existing mental model. For example many newspapers have treated digital like print.

They’ve taken their old processes and tried to apply them to this new medium. Unfortunately this will fail because digital is unlike anything we have encountered before.

It does share some common characteristics. But, trying to force it into our traditional processes and structures will limit its potential.

The Guardian has realised that digital isn’t just an extension of its print offering. It understands that digital journalism is different from its print counterpart. The publisher realises that old processes will need to adapt for the digital age.

Focus on users, not internal structures

This always feels quite inward-looking – users don’t consume content based on departments in newspaper buildings.

The Guardian has also realised that digital is forcing a new focus on user needs.

Often organisations structure digital content around the departments that manage it. Each business silo has its own area to manage. This ends up reflected in the information architecture and unfortunately traditional organisational structures rarely reflect the way users think.

A new generation of post digital companies have realised this and have set a new standard in user centric design. This is forcing older businesses like the Guardian to adapt as user expectations increase.

It is no longer enough to expect the user to adapt to your structure - your organisation has to adapt to the user.

Good content is about copy and design working together

We have a system that gives editors control over presentation – and now we’re going to have designers on the desk helping them to create these pages.

Websites driven by content management systems use templates into which content creators pour copy. As a result one page looks much like another. The design is no more than a wrapper for the text that appears on a page. It in no way supports the content.

Good design should help communicate the message through layout, photography, colour, illustrations and infographics (to name just a few design elements). Text cannot tell the full story alone and that means designers and copywriters need to work hand in hand.

At the Guardian editors have control over presentation. This has fallen out of fashion in recent years because content creators had too much freedom in the past and this resulted in design disasters.

But, things have moved on. Pattern libraries, grid systems and style guides allow content creators a degree of control without compromising the design.

Many disciplines must work collaboratively

 We have tight composite teams of programme managers, designers, UX people, developers and editors, who all sit and work together.

For me this is the heart of modern digital working. Digital requires a huge range of skills and that requires close collaboration. The old waterfall process of handing off work from one person to another doesn’t work in a digital world.

It is crucial that all team members sit and work together, and that decisions are not made without the whole team's agreement. If this does not happen it is all too easy for a designer to create an impractical design. Or a developer might build a content management system that content creators don’t understand.

This is where agile is so useful as a project management approach. It forces teams to work in a close collaborative fashion. Even if you do not adopt all the principles of agile, ensure your team are working together.

For more information on this topic, download the Econsultancy Digital Marketing Organizational Structures and Resourcing Best Practice Guide.

Ditch hierarchical structures and adopted a culture of experimentation

While we have overarching timelines it’s important to allow that team to build hypotheses and work without needing to go up and down a complex management chain.

In the industrial era the cost of failure was high. This meant organisations had complex operating procedures and sign off processes to prevent mistakes. Nothing could happen without checking and double checking.

The digital era is different. Mistakes are quick and easy to correct, and they also provide a unique opportunity to gather valuable data. This means a culture of forming and testing hypotheses works much better than careful planning.

But for this to work organisations need to adapt their previous ways of working and must recognise that those doing the implementing are just as skilled (if not more so) than their superiors.

Design with data

After that initial wireframing we went very quickly to rough prototypes and when we had a Beta version we opened up access to our most engaged users to let them play with it.

Digital provides unprecedented opportunities to collect data on your successes and failures. Imagine a TV ad where you could track viewer reactions in real time and adjust the ad before it was next broadcast.

Or a billboard ad that allowed you to use eye tracking. It would be insanity to put out a TV or billboard ad without making use of these features.

Yet that is what we do all the time in digital. We build digital products based on personal opinion or managements whims, all without ever testing what we are producing.

Some worry that this ‘designing with data’ stifles the creativity of designers. That shouldn’t be the case. Designing with data only works when you have something to measure.

The designer must still create a design. Also knowing that something is not working is not the same as creating an elegant solution for making things better. Designing with data is not about picking the right shade of blue - use it to confirm the design decisions that your designers are making.

Continually evolve

One of fundamental ways in which this project is different is that previously there’s been a tendency to build something and let it sit there for a while. With this process we’re already planning future releases.

I end this post with one of the most important observations made in the Guardian article. The team evolves its digital tools.

Digital is not like a building. We plan and construct buildings, then we might do some minor upkeep, but that is it. Digital is like a garden. It needs constant tending, and it grows and changes overtime adapting to conditions.

If you build a mobile app or website and then leave it, it will become less useful overtime. Technology will move on, user expectations will change and what you need it to do will shift. Only with constant evolution can you expect your digital assets to provide business benefit.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sure that like any organisation The Guardian makes mistakes. But, like organisations such as Gov.uk, Mailchimp, Valve and others, they hint at a better way to run a business in the digital age.

2 young lads meet at the center of the pitch, “Winner Stays On” says one to the other and suddenly one by one, the young men on the pitch transform into soccer giants.

First Cristiano Ronaldo, the Real Madrid star, then Brazil’s Neymar. Suddenly, what started as a pick up game turns into a bout of legends on a global stage; I found myself fixated on the video. Completely lost by the action, the excitement and the drama. I couldn’t wait to see what happens next.

A Commercial? No way, this was the best 5 minutes of television I had watched in months. Sorry House of Cards, Game of Thrones and any soccer match ever played on television; this was better.

But it was a commercial. With the World Cup just around the corner Nike has further evolved following the lead of companies like Red Bull and Coca-Cola who have turned their business storytelling into content marketing so native that you don’t realize you are consuming ads. It is the perfect blend of product placement, provocative storytelling and real-time marketing.

While opinions about Nike may vary, I must say that this Nike World Cup ad campaign warranted a big kudos for the team at Nike. After seeing the one-minute short for the commercial I found myself on YouTube searching for the full-length version and other commercials in the series. I ended up spending 25 minutes riding an elliptical while watching commercials, on purpose. Who does that?

Español: Cristiano Ronaldo y Forlán, enfrentados en un derby. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Campaign

At the end of the commercial one of the “Lads” that first took the pitch walks up to Ronaldo who is about to take the game winning penalty shot and pushes him aside. Without a word spoken he takes the ball off of the current worlds’ best player. The music stops, the fans in utter silence, and then he approaches the ball and buries it in the top corner.

Celebration ensues. The world has been put on notice. Here comes the World Cup and more importantly here is one more example of how brands in the future will connect with their consumer.

Gone are the days of ordinary advertisements. One by one the world’s best brands are risking everything as they commit to building stronger brand affinity through entertaining consumers with shortening attention spans and greater access to more content. Welcome to the future of marketing where brands, media and content meet seamlessly to create the ultimate level of customer engagement.

This post first appeared on Forbes and can be found here

Content marketing is at the heart of what we do as marketers these days.  Cool infographics, eBooks, podcasts and everything else under the sun. It’s the best way to connect with your buyer. It’s really the only way to start the conversation, Engage your buyers and gain permission to continue that conversation. But, how do you know what to create, when to deliver it and with whom to communicate? It’s the strategy behind content marketing that makes the difference. And most marketers forget that.

According to the 2014 B2B Content Marketing Benchmark Study by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs, only 44% of B2B marketers have a document content marketing strategy.  In addition, only 73% have someone who oversees content marketing strategy. The reality is that these statistics show us that although we are making great strides in content marketing…we are still in the early days of this “content marketing revolution” per the report.  Otherwise, stay with me now…why would 29% of the 73% who oversee content marketing strategy, not have a documented content marketing strategy? Something is missing here. Especially since the report states that those with a documented content marketing strategy are more effective and are less challenged in aspects of content marketing.

A true strategy: Maybe it’s the lack of understanding of why the strategy so important? A documented content marketing strategy is essential for many reasons including mapping the right message, to the right buyer at the right time.  As much as you think you can simply document your plan (topics, format and dates) and even when you execute flawlessly, that is not a strategy. That is an editorial calendar.

What should a strategy look like? See the ANNUITAS example of the buying process with various content offers throughout the buyer’s journey.

Know your buyer: It starts with understanding your buyer and their unique buyer’s journey or purchase path because all content is not created equal.  A white paper is not going to be effective to generate interest for an early stage (Engage level) buyer. They are just not ready for that kind of content yet. That needs to come later when they are already bought into the idea of needing A SOLUTION to solve their problem.  White papers are great for later stage Nurture content or even Convert stages – when your buyer is discovering how YOUR SOLUTION could solve their problem. There’s a big difference.

A documented content marketing strategy makes you think about all the ways you can connect with your buyer, when and how to best do that and that drives results. An editorial calendar provides structure and even a cadence for your marketing- which is great-but it’s not a strategy. Do the essential research to understand your buyer and then build out a content marketing strategy to deliver the relevant information to your buyer in the format they want to consume it in. Don’t forget that aspect of the strategy- not everyone wants an eBook or video– people consume content in different formats, so address that in your strategy as well.

It’s a lot to think about and a lot to do. That is why an editorial calendar just won’t suffice to drive real revenue. Strive to become next year’s statistic – one of the elite 44% that have a documented content marketing strategy. It makes a difference.

Author: Erika Goldwater, CIPP/ US @erikawg Director, Marketing for ANNUITAS

It’s a (sometimes forgotten) truism of business that no company can cut its way to growth. As the economy continues to slowly recover from the great recession, smart leaders, having pared back spending during the lean times, are looking at how to invest for growth. Entrepreneurs are forming new businesses at an increasing pace, hoping to take advantage of new opportunities in the recovering economy. Workers across the spectrum are a bit less fearful and a bit more optimistic.

But the business environment has changed significantly in just the past six years since the start of the downturn. For example, no one was talking about the social employee as recently as late 2006, but according to Google Trends, search interest in the term has quadrupled in the past five years.

So investment in growth will return, but it will be different. How can companies tap the social exposure potential of their workforces? What beliefs do managers, leaders, and entrepreneurs need to discard–and what new beliefs do they need to embrace? How has the purchase cycle changed, and what are the expectations of today’s buyers? How can small companies use new ideas to compete more effectively against larger competitors?

Find the answers to these questions and many others here in 19 of the most noteworthy guides to leadership, motivation, business strategy, and branding of the past year.

Leadership Guides

7 Ways Management Can Boost Employee Productivity by westXdesign

Renee Gaylor explains seven steps leaders can take to increase employee engagement and productivity, such as ensuring “senior leadership models behavior that makes the rank-and-file proud to be part of the team. Nothing demoralizes employees more quickly than seeing senior leaders act in a way they don’t respect, and few things energize employees more than a senior team they admire. Leaders are always being watched and judged; employees have keen eyes.”

Paid to Post? What the Social Workforce Means for All of Us by iMedia Connection

Writing that “Savvy brands like Dell, Oracle, Intel and Accenture think the future of marketing is on social media and their best advocates are their own employees,” Greg Shove demonstrates why this strategy can be incredibly powerful, but also discusses the challenges involved. In the end, he concludes that to be successful in developing social employees, companies will need to “focus on producing cultures that employees want to advocate for. In terms of long-term sales growth, marketing success and talent retention, that will matter far more than the fine details of each advocacy program.”

What Does it Take to Lead a Social Business? by NewRayCom

Ray Hiltz identifies five characteristics required of R.A.R.E. (responsible, accountable, relevant, ethical) leadership, and notes “these are also the traits of a successful social business.” Leadership and social business are both grounded in developing relationships, and doing so effectively requires a long-term vision at odds with ever-shortening attention spans.

Motivation and Inspiration Guides

9 Mind Myths to Ditch for 2014 Success by Rebel Brown

The wise and delightful Rebel Brown steps “into the truth and beyond our limiting beliefs” here, debunking nine myths about our minds which she says limit our potential. Among the myths skewered are “we’re all limited by this crazy economy,” “failure is to be avoided at all costs,” and “change is hard” (“Humans are instinctively wired to avoid anything that is new and different. Our unconscious mind views it as a threat…[however] We can act to consciously remove that threat of change [by focusing] on the opportunity in the change, not the problem that caused it”).

How to Give Remarkable Presentations: Lessons from the World Domination Summit by Dr. Michelle Mazur

Michelle Mazur shares lessons learned from speakers at the World Domination Summit (yes, apparently, that is a thing), including “Train to speak like an athlete trains to win the race” from Danielle LaPorte, on the importance of speaking frequently, and contrasting the gap between what is and what could be, from Nancy Duarte: “The best speakers – Martin Luther King, Jr., Steve Jobs and Eva Peron – construct a gap between what is currently and what could be in the future. Think of Steve Jobs comparing the world without an iPhone versus a world with the iPhone (can you remember the world before Smart Phones?).”

9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People by Inc.

Jeff Haden reveals nine characteristics that help define and create success, from approaches to time management and hiring to how to deal with failure and “go the extra mile.” A great reminder for consultants: “Only do what you want to do and you might build an okay business. Be willing to do what customers want you to do and you can build a successful business. Be willing to do even more and you can build a remarkable business.”

8 Things Remarkably Successful People Do by Inc.

Following up on the post above, Jeff Haden here turns the topic from the beliefs of successful people to their actions; things that most if not all successful people do, such as setting audacious goals, selling, and avoiding the crowds: “Remarkably successful people habitually do what other people won’t do. They go where others won’t go because there’s a lot less competition and a much greater chance for success.”

Business Strategy Guides

Small Talk, Big Results by strategy+business

Keith Ferrazzi introduces ideas from The Necessity of Strangers by Alan Gregerman, demonstrating how vital “small talk” is: “anthropologically, we are hardwired to be ready to fight or flee from someone not of our tribe—a state of mind that obviously has a very negative effect on our ability to innovate together. Small talk quiets that reptilian response of our brain.” The book excerpt details a simple exercise that can be used within organizations to increase success by creating a “culture of conversation.”

How Women Decide by Harvard Business Review

Pointing out that “Today women occupy about half of all managerial and professional positions in the United States, including 37% of management jobs and 60% of accounting and auditing roles…They also make up 41% of employees with authority to make purchasing decisions,” Cathy Benko and Bill Pelster present research on how the differing physical structures of the male and female brains lead to different decision-making styles, and how these distinctions need to be accounted for when selling or presenting ideas.

5 reasons I hate big data by iMedia Connection

Chris Marriott brilliantly skewers the hype behind big data (and advises executives what to focus on instead), writing that it’s an old idea with a new name; that it makes something easy sound complex; and that it’s “like teenagers and sex:

a. Everybody’s talking about it.
b. Everybody thinks everyone else is doing it.
c. Most of those who claim to be doing it aren’t doing it.
d. Those who are doing it aren’t doing it very well.”

8 Real-World Stories Of Why Startups Fail by ReadWrite

Scott Gerber shares the stories of eight “(now) successful founders from the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to share why a prior start-up didn’t make it – and what they’re doing differently knowing what they know now.” Among the lessons: manage cash flow (“Numbers are not only the oxygen of a business, they are the vital signs as well”), match your timing to the state of the market, and be careful about choosing employees (“hire people who are sincere and trustworthy”).

Marketing and Brand Strategy Guides

Fire the funnel — 5 stages of the real buyer’s journey by Chief Marketing Technologist Blog

Contending that “The funnel model of marketing and sales doesn’t reflect reality very well” (and we know this), Scott Brinker suggests an alternative five-stage model that is less exclusionary and more positive, recognizes that today’s “lost” prospects may become tomorrow’s new opportunities, and acknowledges the importance of continuing to market and sell to existing customers and convert them into brand advocates.

Thought Leadership Requires A Little Thought by CMO

Jeff Pundyk rants (intelligently) about how, far too often, “thought leadership” is anything but; rather, it’s ego-building, internally focused, disorganized, and doesn’t address reader or market needs. Instead, he advises marketers to “find creative ways to tap into publishers’ audiences…venture beyond the walls of your own Web site. It will force you to up your content game: to think hard about your audience…(and) to start listening and collaborating.”

Integrated marketing: optimizing the connected customer experience by i-SCOOP

J-P DeClerck makes the case that marketers should shift their focus from channels, tactics, and campaigns, to addressing what customers really want: “we shouldn’t optimize for media, channels or tactics in the first place. We optimize for the customer experience.” Customers don’t care how a company organizes its campaigns or silos; they care about consistency and the company meeting its brand promise.

How Underdogs Can Market Effectively by MarketingProfs (free registration required)

Abhay Padgaonkar outlines three strategies small companies can use to win against larger competitors, starting with aiming “for your competitor’s Achille’s heel.” That can come in the form of scope (starting out by serving a neglected segment, which is how Southwest Airlines got its initial foothold in the market); service; or scale (targeting segments that don’t fit with investments larger competitors have made).

Big marketing opportunities for under $10K by iMedia Connection

Greg Kihlström details four “ways to connect your audience with your brand” that won’t break the bank, such as creating new content, experimenting with new channels, or giving something back: “Help an organization in need. There’s no downside to this one…(for example) let your customers choose which organization they’d like you to donate the money to by allowing them to vote for their favorite nonprofit every time they submit a photo that includes your product.”

6 Expert-Endorsed Ways to Improve Your Marketing TODAY by HubSpot

Katie Burke outlines half-a-dozen expert “tactics and strategies you can employ within a workday to help attract, convert, engage, and delight more prospects, leads, and customers.” For example, on video marketing, from Kevin Daum: ““You don’t need cats and babies to make business videos that work…By aligning on a goal, a target audience, and a core story, your business can benefit significantly from using video to foster growth.”

The end of digital and social media by iMedia Connection

Terms like “digital media” and “social media” will soon be redundant, according to the brilliant Rebecca Lieb, as all media are increasingly both digital and social. So, Rebecca asks, “How do you cut through the clutter of media, messaging, and a ridiculously busy social life spanning all channels, digital and otherwise? There are six traits that matter. Employing as many as possible — in concert — will greatly enhance a brand’s ability to be noticed in a relevant and meaningful way.”

The Seven Pitfalls of a Modern-Day Brand by MarketingProfs

Despite the unprecedented reach that social media provides, “Brand Awareness is hard to come by,” writes Matthew Turner. He identifies seven pitfalls of brand-building (such as lack of voice, too much “sell,” and being easy to forget) and how to avoid them: build a “brand story that delves deep into your brand and discovers what it’s all about…A brand story allows you to create something of worth, and most important, something that matters to you: It’s built on your terms.”

The business world of today is obsessed with data. In the 2014 IDG Enterprise Big Data report, research found that close to half (49%) of enterprise respondents have already implemented big data initiatives or have concrete plans to in the future, and organizations overall expect the amount of data they manage to increase by 76% over the next year. The data they’re talking about is what we mine at every step of the sales process from our customer’s search and buying patterns before they even discover our products, to their behavior on our websites with our content, to the sales calls and emails we send, or even the time they spend on social media and the support they ask for and we provide. 

The amount of pure, raw data that businesses can put to use is easier than ever to obtain and, undeniably, is one of the biggest competitive edges differentiating successful industry leaders today. So it’s no surprise that the big data market is growing six times faster than the overall IT market, or that business spending on big data is expected to reach $16.1 billion by the end of 2014. That spending doesn’t just include the infrastructure required to harvest the data, after all raw data is useless without the personnel and services, like data analysts and mobile analytics, that can extract the most important parts and refine them in actionable business insights.

All of this sounds great:  we collect more information by volume than ever before, and we have analytics and mobile services that put those numbers directly at our fingertips. But despite this unlimited quantity of information, many organizations are still stumped on the same businesses problems 

Why are so many companies still struggling to realize the benefits that big data and mobile analytics promise, even after implementing these strategies?    

Here are a few reasons I can think of: 

Businesses are Prioritizing Data Before People

Here’s the thing about the data you collect and analyze: no matter how big it is, it means absolutely nothing until one of your employees uses it to make a decision. It’s easy to forget that data is a tool that doesn’t think for itself. We use cars as a means of transportation, we use knives to cut food into manageable amounts, we use mobile phones to enable long-distance communication and computers to process complex tasks. These tools are inert, they don’t have value until a person with human brain decides to put them to action, and most of the time, a person doesn’t inherently know how to use a tool until they’re properly trained to do so. 

It’s like if I ride my bike to get where I need to go everyday, and then one day someone gives me a car with no training and no instructions. I know that the car will move me faster and with far less exertion but I don’t know how to make it do that. And if I get in and start driving with no instructions I’m either going to stay put in my driveway and go nowhere, or I’m going to get started and immediately crash it into the side of my house, or I’m going to gradually teach myself how to break and steer after I’ve already hit several mail boxes and maybe a few pedestrians along the way. 

Data and analytics are the same way – unless your employees understand, both in theory and in practice, how to put these toosl to use, they won’t be able to use them. When companies invest in these initiatives, they often fail to prepare their employees who will be the primary users of this information, which leads to several other problems along the way.

1. Analysts Aren’t Sure Which Metrics to Provide

Analysts are very good at taking raw data and picking out trends or just generally making sense of it. But businesses will often task them with creating and designing dashboards for other business teams, like sales and marketing, with out giving any input as to what metrics are really the most important for those teams to track. A marketer, for example, could wind up with a dashboard that tracks website visitors and email click through rates, but doesn’t cover how many of those visitors or clickers are actually turning into leads for sales. 

2. Metrics Aren’t Being Segregated Based Off Job Roles

A Sales VP, a sales operations manager, and a field sales rep shouldn’t be looking at the same mobile dashboard (read these post to find out what Sales VPs, Sales Ops, and Sales Reps should each be tracking). Each of these individuals needs a dashboard with metrics that are specific to the kinds of business decisions their job requires them to make. Your dashboards cannot be one size fits all across entire departments or organizations, but it takes training to be able to see this or to figure out the right way to provide different employees with different metrics. 

3. End-users Can’t Transform Information into Knowledge

Businesses, and by proxy, their employees have unlimited amounts of information in the form of raw data and analytics solutions. Like I described earlier, the problem occurs when these employees need to transform this inert information into actionable knowledge but don’t have the skills to do so. 

These skills aren’t based solely off intelligence either. After all, intelligent people still need to be trained to assemble furniture, make meals, and do their taxes every single day. It’s up to the business to invest in training end-users how to think about and use data and analytics as much as they invest in the actual infrastructure and product.  

4. Businesses Are Collecting Data Without Changing Behaviors

Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT, recently summed it up best when he said, “The real challenge is recognizing that using big data and analytics to better solve problems and/or make decisions obscures the organizational reality that new analytics often requires new behaviors.” If you’re wondering why, after implementing these solutions, you’re still having the same businesses problems and discussions that you did five years ago, maybe it’s because your behavior as an organization hasn’t shifted. Data should be used to improve behavior, and if you’re doing it right, as you change your behavior, your data will change too to show better results. 

Takeaway

As your numbers get smarter, your people have to too. Data means nothing and does nothing until humans use their judgement to react based off of it. This means your employees and mobile data-workers need to be better trained to understand, analyze, and make decisions based off of the analytics they receive. As you invest in big data and analytics solutions, make sure you invest just as much into the people who will use them.

Post originally published at the Roambi Blog

Many brands have recently fallen victim to Google tightening its backlinking policy, resulting in their websites losing rank in search results. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines is an invaluable tool in ensuring that your content can not only be found, but leveraged to its full potential.

With the rules of the search game constantly changing, it seems that quality content will always count.

Some of the key points to consider when creating content for your brand include:

• Writing for humans first and search engines second.
• Ensuring content is fresh, relevant and engaging.
• Using keywords organically rather than stuffing your content with irrelevant keywords

Without readers for your content, what’s the point? Distributing your content into amplification channels can boost your search ranking and get your content seen by the right people. This is the type of content that Google favours: popular content that is distributed through what Google considers to be legitimate channels. Here are three amplification channels you may not have considered.

LinkedIn is fast becoming a content hub for brands. With the launch of Showcase Pages, businesses are better able to leverage and deliver their content to targeted audiences. Showcase Pages allow your business content to be discovered by new readers (and potential leads) on LinkedIn and are also searchable within the LinkedIn platform.

Lenovo’s Think Hub is an excellent example of a Showcase Page at work.

Native advertising is when paid content sits alongside editorial on publishing sites. Quite often they are constructed in a style that is similar to editorial, which can make them somewhat harder to differentiate. Native advertising is in place in publications such as BuzzFeed, Mashable and The New York Times. To make this form of content work, it’s integral that it is well constructed and editorially led in style.

It’s highly likely that multiple staff members across your organisation contribute to your brand’s content creation. Whether it’s the CEO writing a thought-leadership piece or a “day in the life” of a sales representative blog, your team is a great asset for your amplification strategy. By sharing your brand content across their personal networks like LinkedIn and Google+ your company’s credibility grows, as does their own.

What are your tips for content distribution?
By Lisa Cugnetto and Louisa McSpedden

By John Sanchez

With Sysomos hosting an upcoming event in San Francisco about the link between social media and customer intimacy, I’ve been thinking even more lately about what “customer intimacy” really means. And it occurred to me that the term is really just the latest incarnation of a time-honored approach to delivering great products and service: Get close to your customers.

During a recent leadership meeting, I asked a group of our executives to stand up, put a hand in the air and repeat the phrase “we’re getting closer to our customers” five times while turning in circles. I’m proud to report that some members of the team took to the exercise with great enthusiasm—predictably, they were the Sales folks. Finance was a bit less enthusiastic. HR played along, but they were keeping an eye on me.

When we completed the exercise, I asked everyone to put down their hands and look to their left and right. Then I asked: “So are we any closer to our customers?” I’m pretty sure it had the desired effect.

The concept of customer intimacy is not new. In fact, you’ll find a virtually endless array of research, books, case studies and testimonials on the topic. While I find it curious that there’s still an endless appetite for even more “new” and “original” thought on the topic when so much excellent work always exists, the main takeaway for me is this: customer intimacy remains incredibly relevant today because it’s an objective companies truly want and need to attain.

I’m familiar with enough of the research to frame up a discussion about customer intimacy using all the usual jargon. But I think it would be far more helpful to share a few practical lessons about what it really takes to pursue customer intimacy—based on what I’ve learned over the years simply by rubbing elbows with the people we in business call “customers.”

1. A fish rots from the head. Leadership is a privilege, and leaders set the tone for the organization in a million different ways. In the end, every resource a company has stems from the good will—and patronage—of customers. Customers can take their business elsewhere for any reason at any time. A company’s most senior leaders must sincerely understand and humbly demonstrate their appreciation of customers if there is to be any hope of influencing front-line staff to walk their talk.

2. Common sense is not common. We all intuitively seem to understand what if means to receive exceptional service and how it looks when we deliver it. Yet consistent execution against this standard is the exception, rather than the rule. The path to “that very hot place” in the world of customer experience is paved with the best intentions. It’s true that the best and most memorable service experiences feel spontaneous. But the accompanying reality is that extraordinary, branded customer experiences—the consistent, intentional, differentiated and valued experiences that delight customers so much they’re willing to pay a premium for them—are the product of meticulous planning and hard work.  Companies that enjoy intimacy with their customers and provide exceptional service understand that it doesn’t just “happen.” They’ve worked tirelessly to plan, build processes, track and measure in order to ensure that their product or service meets or exceeds expectations.

3. Service starts at home. We can’t expect that an organization’s ability to deliver service to customers would exceed the degree to which it regards its own team members and supplier-partners. A leader who walks by a team member she sees every day and fails to acknowledge that person’s humanity probably expects that team member to answer every call professionally and cheerfully. If internal systems for reward and recognition, coaching and feedback, payroll, or benefits are lacking, it’s a good bet that many of the steps along the customer journey—such as new customer onboarding, product sales and service, invoicing, and all the background processes that support them—are flawed as well.

4. All the lessons learned before kindergarten from people like Dr. Seuss still count. Laugh if you like, but “please” and “thank you” are still the magic words. And if you keep frowning like that, there actually is a chance that your face may stay that way forever. We can find a great deal of wisdom on how we should listen to and try to understand customers in the digital age by reading, re-reading and applying lessons from Horton Hears a Who. Moreover, Yertel the Turtle nicely lays out the consequences for leaders who don’t listen to their team members—and for companies who don’t listen to their customers.

5. Customers’ needs are simple. Soon after I first started working at Harrah’s Casino, I was assigned the task of observing service levels at our famous seafood buffet—under the watchful eye of a mentor of mine named Paul. We were running a special promotion that night, so the place was packed, and there was a long line of customers waiting to be seated that was getting even longer. Paul, an experienced pit boss who had cut his teeth at the Flamingo back in the early 1960s, had a sharp eye and an even sharper tongue. He immediately saw the problem and motioned for me to help as he quickly stepped in to seat customers and get the line moving. Later on when the line cleared, he set me straight: “Kid, customers only want three things: perfect, now and free. We mostly ain’t going to give it to ‘em free, so we’d better do the other parts great.” There’s really nothing I can add to that.

6. “Try, try again.” I intentionally left off the first part of this proverb (“if at first you don’t succeed”) because even if you do succeed, it will be fleeting. Just as perfection should never get in the way of better, good is the enemy of great. Customers, competitors, the environment and technology are in constant flux, so solutions must be agile enough to anticipate and quickly change.

7. Technology evolves to serve people, so it should be used only if it helps your customers. This week, I interviewed a candidate for a role at Sysomos. He mentioned that before his day had even started, he found that he’d been invited to a pub event, noticed that someone had a poor experience on an airline, and discovered that many people were exchanging views about the abdication of the King of Spain. Our candidate received all of this information, and contributed his own perspectives, over social networks. For him, social media is second nature—it’s simply how he communicates. So user, beware: trying to leverage social networks to become intimate with customers before you’ve attended to the basics is like trying to e-mail before you’ve achieved a basic level of literacy. Even worse, it will reveal what you don’t know and increase the chances of poor communication.  What’s clear is the fact that social media makes it much more difficult to “fake it” if you are not committed to customer intimacy and service.

If you’ve read this far, you may be scratching your head, wondering: “How can it be this simple, especially given all of the continuing discussion on this topic?” You may even be tempted to discount these seven principles as obvious platitudes with no underlying value. But as Ockham’s razor tells us, in the absence of certainty, the simplest explanation is often the most apt.

Talking about getting closer to customers while you turn around in circles won’t get you any closer to achieving it. But taking action to bring these seven principles to life in your company is guaranteed to take you a long way toward realizing the goal of customer intimacy.

John Sanchez is EVP of Global Operations at Marketwired—the parent company of Sysomos—where he leads the organization’s customer engagement and lean process redesign initiatives, and also oversees the client support teams that service Sysomos-powered products across the enterprise. A decorated combat veteran and graduate of both the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Wharton School of Business, he has over 26 years of experience in engineering, operational and financial roles in diverse industries.

The post Getting Close to Customers is Easier Said Than Done appeared first on Sysomos Blog.