Rnordman

Improving the business environment has always been a challenging task for organizations. Right from SMBs to large corporates, business organizations always aim at ensuring a substantial business environment for employees so that they can maintain the best possible productivity. Over the past few years, the proportion of knowledge workers has increased to a great extent, across business enterprises. With this change in trend, the necessity of improving the office environment has increased more than ever. With better communication facilities and improved secretarial help, the productivity of employees can be improved to a great extent and this is where office automation software helps organizations in an efficient manner.

Office automation platforms are new age solutions which help integrate different office functions so that information can be managed properly. These state of the art solutions help automate different business processes, within a short period of time. This software are usually designed following smart technologies so that these can be used for creating, storing, collecting and manipulating a different kind of office information.

From the perspective of business organizations, an office automation software helps perform multiple tasks. For instance, this software helps produce outgoing documents with the help of text processor. These also help transmit messages using message communication systems. Document management systems is one of the integral aspects of any office automation platform. This helps in storage and retrieval of documents while video conferencing systems help schedule and manage meetings.

Let’s take a look at the different aspects of how office automation helps business organizations –

• Document Management system – Document management system is probably one of the most useful and integral components of an office automation platform. Usually, these software capture information that is contained in a document, store the same for future reference and then, communicate the significant information to the users, based on requirement. Document management systems are usually connected to other components of office automation platforms like electronic message communications and text processors. One of the best possible uses of DMS is that it ensures remote access of documents which is not quite possible with manual document management processes. Document management systems prove to be of great help for internal communication. For instance, a particular form filled up by a group of employees can be scrutinized and sanctioned by the senior authority without taking print out of the forms. More importantly, the process can be completed within a very short period of time. Apart from reducing the time, needed to access documents, a DMS also helps minimize the use of paper work. This is possible since the requirement for multiple copies is not there as different users can access the different versions simultaneously. Employees, who are working remotely, can also access the documents without any difficulty.

• Video conferencing or teleconferencing system – In the present era of cut throat competition, faster communication is of acute importance and that is where video conferencing or teleconferencing seems to be the best possible solution. The process helps conduct a business meeting between two or more people who are physically located at two or more different places. Probably, the best possible benefit of a video conference is that it helps reduce the cost and time of meeting since the professionals don’t need to physically travel from one place to another in order to attend the meeting. This is, undoubtedly, one of the most fundamental parts of an office automation platform. The effectiveness of video conferencing can be enhanced by ensuring proper training for the users. Right from conducting budget meetings and technical consultations to arranging contract negotiations and project reviews, teleconferencing, indeed, plays a very significant role.
• Message Communication System – Finally, this is one of the most popular and basic aspects of an office automation platform. Sending and receiving messages and other modes of communication is an absolute necessity for business organizations and that is why, office automation platforms are equipped with advance message communications systems. Electronic mail, fax and voice mail are the three major components of a message communication system. Electronic mail is undoubtedly one of the most conventional mode of communication which has been extensively in use since a long period of time. This is one of the most economical method of communication. With the increasing speed of transmission, the time cost is reducing even further, and as a result, the popularity of email has increased to a great extent. One of the best features of email is that it also gets easily integrated with other information systems.

These are three of the most crucial aspects of an office automation platform and these help business organizations to a great extent when it comes to run the business operations with ease. Looking at the trend of past few years, it seems that office automation is going to play a very crucial role in shaping up the future of business organizations.

If you owned or managed a retail store and someone walked into the store, what would you do? Obviously, you'd say, How can I help you? and engage in a conversation because the person may be interested in what you have to sell.

LinkedIn has something similar to your very own retail store—your profile. People are viewing your profile (stopping into your store) each and every day. So why not take these visits seriously and engage in a conversation with at least some of your visitors.

LinkedIn's Who's Viewed Your Profile feature can help you with this. However, in spite of this feature's tremendous potential, it's a bit confusing to navigate, so most users fail to capitalize on it.
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How to access Who's Viewed Your Profile and how it works

To access this feature, click the words Who's viewed your profile on the left side of your home page.

If you're on the free account (like 79% of the users I've surveyed), you'll see some of the details on the last five people ("stalkers") who looked at your profile. Premium members see the same amount of details but have access to a list of all their stalkers for the last 90 days. The details you see for each stalker are based on a setting chosen by the stalker and not by you. Thus, even with a paid account, you'll see no more than the person has chosen to reveal to you.
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How to adjust your settings when you're viewing people's profiles

Go to your Settings & Privacy page by clicking the down arrow under your photo on the top toolbar and selecting Privacy & Settings>Privacy>Profile viewing options from the drop-down menu. There are three options to choose from.

Personally, I want my name and headline to show up in every possible place. Hey, it's free advertising. But you may have a different strategy.

If you choose full disclosure but want to be anonymous for a short time while you stalk, say, a competitor, change your setting to Anonymous LinkedIn Member while you gather your competitive intelligence. But don't forget to change it back when you're done, because on the free account LinkedIn penalizes you for choosing anonymous. While in anonymous mode, you cannot see who looked at your profile. They also remove the five people who looked at your profile immediately prior to your choice to remain anonymous. So you'll want to check out the list before changing your setting.
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Why should you care who's looking at your profile?

People typically don't look at LinkedIn profiles to pass the time when they're bored. Trust me—if someone is on your list, one of two things has probably happened:

1.  Someone has referred you. In other words, someone you know has passed along your name and maybe some information about you with a statement like, "Check out Wayne Breitbarth's profile; this guy really knows his LinkedIn stuff."

or

2.  You stood out in a LinkedIn search, a discussion, a comment you posted, or LinkedIn selected you to be listed in one of these features—People Similar To, People Also Viewed or People You May Know—and the person was interested in seeing more, so (s)he clicked through to your profile.

But no matter how the person found your profile, it's a good thing they're there!
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What should you do with this list of stalkers?

There's nothing you can do if they've chosen to be totally anonymous or mostly anonymous. If any of the others look interesting to you, click through and review their profile to see if there's any reason to message them (if they're already a first-degree connection) or connect with them. They obviously have an interest in you, so you should probably contact them if they look interesting to you.

Remember, with a free account, you only see the last five people who've viewed your profile. So check your list frequently. You wouldn't want to miss someone who's dying to be your next customer or future employer.
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Final thoughts

The more time I spend using this feature and discussing it with LinkedIn power users, the more I understand why Who's Viewed Your Profile is the top-ranked feature on LinkedIn.

And the more popular this feature becomes, the more important it is that you have a great profile, don't you think?

For help with sprucing up your profile and formulating your personal LinkedIn strategy, sign up for a one-hour, one-on-one phone consultation with me for the significantly reduced rate of $175. (This is a limited-time offer.)

Book your personal session today by clicking here: https://calendly.com/waynebreitbarth/special1on1linkedinconsult

Here's what one client said about his session:

"Wayne provided excellent advice and recommendations during our recent LinkedIn consulting session. He is an expert in this area and was able to provide insights into my profile that will help me advance my brand and positioning. Wayne is an excellent listener and took a great deal of time during our session to understand my background, experience, and interests. I strongly recommend his services."

The post Why Is it Important to Know Who’s Viewing Your LinkedIn Profile? appeared first on Wayne Breitbarth.

Structured data is about telling the search engines exactly what the data in your website is. Bots can read the information when they crawl your site, but adding the schema helps the bots understand the kind of data they’re reading, so they can improve their rankings, and thus the searcher experience.

Google has introduced the Structured Data Testing Tool and the Structured Data Markup Report in the Google Search Console so you can make sure your schema is correct before publishing it on your website, and keep track of any errors that may arise.

If you want to know what kind of schema markup you should be using, take a look at this basic guide.

What Schema Markup Should Be on All Websites?

These schema markups can be used on any website, and aren’t specific to any niche or vertical.

Organization Markup

The organization schema markup improves brand signals that can enhance Knowledge Graph entries and your snippet presence in the search results. When you use this schema, take the time to time to specify your social profile links, contact information, and logo.

WebSite Schema

The WebSite markup helps you generate the sitelinks search box feature for your brand search engine results page and helps your name appear in the results. For this to work, you must have a site search on your website.

Breadcrumbs Markup

If you want to include your site’s breadcrumbs in the search results snippet for your page, you’d use the BreadcrumbList schema.

Site Navigation Schema

If you want to make it easier for the search engines to understand your site navigation and structure, use the SiteNavigationElement markup. This can also be used to influence organic sitelinks.

Make Your Own Videos? Use Video Schema Markup

If you use hosted or embedded video on your site, you should use the VideoObject schema. This way you’ll be able to display rich snippets when your website appears in Google video search.

You’ll need to fill in the following properties:

• Name
• Description
• ThumbnailUrl
• UploadDate

Have an App? Use Software Application Markup

If your site has an accompanying app, or features app listings, use the SoftwareApplication markup to get rich snippets. The only required property is Name, but it’s suggested you fill in as much as possible for the following properties:

• AggregateRating (including ratingValue and either ratingCount or reviewCount)
• Offers
• OperatingSystem
• ApplicationCategory

What Schema Markup Should Be on eCommerce Sites?

Product and Offer Markup

When you use Product and Offer markup, you increase the chances of product information appearing in the search results, including the price and stock status information. Offer markup is required if you want pricing information to appear.

For Product, the only required property is “Name.” For the Offer schema, you’ll need to include Price and priceCurrency properties.

Rating Markup

The Rating schema is typically used on ecommerce websites but can also be used on local business sites like restaurants. If an item has multiple rates, they can be averaged to produce an AggregrateRating.

Google will assume you’re using a five-point scale where one is the worst and five is the best. If you’re using anything other than this scale, you’ll want to use the bestRating property to indicate the highest possible rating. These markups are what show the star ratings in the rich snippets in the search results.

What Schema Markup Should Be on Publisher Websites?

Article Markup

If you’re a publisher site, you’ll want to use either the NewsArticle or BlogPosting schema depending on the type of content or site. Using these markups allows your content to appear in the in-depth articles search suggestions as well as Google News.

You’ll need to include the following required properties:

• Headline
• Image
• DatePublished

What Schema Markup Should Be on Local Business Sites?

Local Business Markup

If you have a local business with at least one brick-and-mortar location, you can use the LocalBusiness and PostalAddress schema markup to improve your local listing. You can use it to indicate your physical address, the types of payments you accept, your operating hours, and more. You’ll also have a choice of several industry specific schemas, such as:

• AnimalShelter
• AutomotiveBusiness
• ChildCare
• Dentist
• DryCleaningOrLaundry
• EmergencyService
• EmploymentAgency
• EntertainmentBusiness
• FinancialService
• FoodEstablishment (restaurant is here.)
• GovernmentOffice
• HealthAndBeautyBusiness
• HomeAndConstructionBusiness
• InternetCafe
• LegalService
• Library
• LodgingBusiness
• ProfessionalService
• RadioStation
• RealEstateAgent
• RecyclingCenter
• SelfStorage
• ShoppingCenter
• SportsActivityLocation
• Store
• TelevisionStation
• TouristInformationCenter
• TravelAgency

What Schema Should Be on Event Sites?

Event

The Event markup can be used on sites that organize events, including anything from festivals to concerts and conferences. This will generate a rich snippet that includes tour dates and locations for concerts, and other details for other types of events.

What Schema Should Be on Recipe Sites or Food Blogs?

Recipe

If you’re a food blog or recipe website, you’ll want to use the Recipe schema to show rich snippets and appear in Recipe searches. The only required property is Name, but Google will only show snippets for recipes that include at least two of the following:

• At least one of prepTime, cookTime, totalTime or ingredients.
• Image.
• NutritionInformation.
• Review.

What Markup Should Be on Personal Websites?

Person

If you want to influence Knowledge Graph results about an individual, you can use the Person markup.

What’s the Risk of Not Using Schema/Structured Data on My Site?

If you don’t use structured data markup on your website, you will not have rich snippets displayed anywhere in Google when your site appears in the results. This isn’t that big of a deal, but it can affect your rankings – especially if your competition is using it. Taking the time to implement schema anywhere you can on your website provides a better user experience and helps to improve your rankings.

The team here at SEO Inc. will ensure the proper schema markup is used on your site when we build or rebuild it for you, and when we work to improve your rankings.

Twice in two days, I have been approached about the automation and disintermediation of salespeople.

First, an email exchange with Dave Brock, who expressed his concern about quantification without any reference to qualitative measurements. Because we can count, we believe that what we can count is the only thing that counts. There are dozens of tech companies that have solved the problem of counting but have not solved the problem of making the subjective into something objective. Somethings require value decisions. The context is missing.

Dave and I have agreed to do a webinar to make a case about how things are getting worse in sales, why they are getting worse, and what sales leaders and salespeople should be doing about it.

Today is my birthday and the 4th year of the last five where I have been booked to speak. I followed a speaker who has strong opinions about sales. When I arrived, I found my handler to let her know I made it to the venue. I was greeted by three people who were attending the conference who wanted to know if I was going to tell them that field sales is dead, that they only need inside reps, and that everything will soon be automated.

I explained to them that I was not going to speak on anything that even remotely sounds like what they just suggested, and that I vehemently disagreed with their premise. The speaker that spoke the day before I was scheduled had made this case, and they hoped they weren’t going to be hearing more of that message. They believed, rightly I would argue, that commercial relationships are still critical, and more still, selling is about creating a preference (if you want to win, anyway).

At the end of the first segment of my speech, I told them that “When sexting replaces sex, I will believe that human relationships no longer matter. But I am long on human relationships, and I would not bet against something so persistent over hundreds of thousands of years.”

We live in a world where the present state is not constant; instead, we have accelerating, disruptive change. This means cultural changes, economic changes, changes to business models, economies, and strategies, technological changes, scientific changes, and political changes. Much of what we know is changing and will continue to change.

It is a mistake to look only at what is changing without also looking at what persists over time. What are the deep structures that are timeless and don’t change much, if they change at all? Things like trust, caring, civility, relationships. Things like networks, and the need for advice navigating tough decisions.

Evolution transcends and includes what comes before it as it produces novelty and growth. It negates what is no longer useful, and the deep structures survive for a reason. You would do well to pay as much or more attention to what persists as you look at what is changing.

The post The Evolution of Sales Is Not What You Think appeared first on The Sales Blog.

Alright, alright, alright. It’s 2017 and the dating scene is now digital. With Tinder making more than 26 million matches a day, it is time for marketing and sales departments to take a play from the online dating handbook.

Think about how your marketing and sales teams are engaging digitally with prospects. Would you “swipe right” for those messages? Chances are your organization’s messages might be raising “creeper” flags for prospects. In this blog, I’ll cover tips for lead management to make sure your “first date” with a prospect isn’t your last.

Awareness & Attraction

The first stage in both the dating and marketing/sales process is making sure the prospect knows who you are (awareness) and is interested in learning more about the value you could provide (attraction). Just like with dating, attraction is critical for moving beyond simply being an acquaintance.

When working to create awareness and interest with potential customers, it is important to think of these interactions as you would on a blind date (or in the case of online dating, your first message).

Imagine if you received a message like this from an online dating app, you would probably be creeped out and wondering if there are any normal people out there. This person doesn’t even know anything about you but already wants to enter a life-long commitment with you. Too much, too soon? Heck yes! [Delete Message]

The same thing applies to cold marketing/sales emails. I am sure you all have received an email from a person/company that you have never heard of that talks about how they can solve all of your problems before they have ever taken the time to hear what your interests and concerns are, to begin with. Unsubscribe.

This is why it is so important in business (as well as online dating) that these first interactions are treated as first dates. Don’t make assumptions and don’t come off too strong.  Spend time learning about the other person’s’ areas of interest, then determine if he or she is a mutual attraction (yes, mutual attraction is critical, since they’re vetting you as much as you’re vetting them) and plan out next steps.

This top-of-funnel engagement should really be focused on educating the prospect on why you are “Mr./Mrs. Right” and building credibility and trust for them to want to learn more. Advertising, digital content (blogs, infographics, cheat sheets), social media, and webinars are great mediums for creating awareness and attraction with prospects.

Qualification

Okay, you have now gone on a couple of dates and things are going well. This becomes the pivotal point in the relationship when both parties have to decide if they want to get more serious and potentially become exclusive. This decision requires both parties to determine if the other party meets all of their ideal criteria for a potential suitor.

For businesses, this is typically done when a prospect meets their qualification criteria, generally through lead scoring. It is important when creating this criterion that you factor in both the prospect’s fit and interest level.

Fit generally refers to demographic/firmographic characteristics. These are key attributes of the prospect such as company size, location, job title, etc. Your fit criteria generally aligns with the details of your ideal customer profile.

Interest refers to the actions or behaviors a prospect has taken that demonstrates consideration of your solution. This could be activities such as clicking an email link, requesting a demo, attending a webinar, etc. Your interest criteria generally reflects a level of engagement a prospect has taken to learn more about your solution.

A business or personal relationship will not work if there is not both fit and interest. Even though Brad Pitt meets all of my firmographic requirements for a husband, being that he has no interest in me (let alone has no idea who I am), my fairytale wedding is probably never going to happen. The same goes for that prospect you keep emailing and never responds.

During the qualification stage of the relationship, it is important for both marketing and sales to work together to provide the prospect with content that positions you as the right solution to solve the prospect’s challenges. Stronger content such as case studies, ebooks, testimonials, and videos can provide more real-world and relatable examples on how your customers are using your solution. 

Commitment & Acquisition

In the words of my mother, “Are you two ever going to get married? I am ready to be a grandmother!”

I am sure many of you can relate to the constant nagging of, “Are these two ever going to make it official?” In relationships, either professional or personal, eventually the time comes when it’s time to “fish or cut bait.”

For both relationships, it is all about mutually agreeing on the next step, whether that’s an engagement or a signed order form.

It is important as you work toward this acquisition that you have a strong understanding of your prospects’ pain points and requirements (including budget, authority, need, timeline, aka BANT) and have mutual confidence that your solution is the right one to overcome their challenges.

No one wants to or intends to breakup, whether it’s a personal relationship or in business. We all know it is cheaper to retain a customer than acquire a new one, which is why it is critical to start the relationship with confidence that everything is going to work out.

During these opportunity stages, it is important that marketing and sales are nurturing the prospect through the decision-making process, providing tailored resources ensuring that your solution is the best choice, as well as using tactics to create urgency (such as a discount or additional functionality) to help move the deal across the goal line sooner.

Tinder Wisdom

As you work to engage prospects and move them through your buyer’s journey, think about how you would respond to the messages you are planning on sending. That is generally a good indicator if it is going to create the right experience and generate a positive response. Because let’s face it, no one wants to be like Tom.

Image credit: BuzzFeed

What has your brand done in the past that may have come off too strong? What marketing messages have smelled like a bad date to you as a customer? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

The post When Lead Management and Dating Align: Get Your Prospects to Swipe Right appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

I hope your Fall 2017 Selling Season is off to powerful start. Like you, I am running hard to maximize impact during this critical time of year and I’m sure that many of you fellow road warriors can relate. I’ve been on so many planes and in so many hotels recently that it’s been difficult remembering where I parked at the airport or which hotel room I’m in. Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve posted anything.

In the past two weeks I’ve led meetings for three very different companies in three very different locations with three very different businesses: in Munich for an executive team meeting of a high-tech global company; on the west coast of the U.S. with a large business development team for a company that I’m prohibited from sharing anything more about; and in heart of the industrial midwest for an old-economy manufacturing company. The three meeting locations, the three company cultures, the three company histories, the backgrounds of the sales teams, the style of executives, and the nature of what they sold Could. Not. Have. Been. More. Different. Said differently, there was nothing similar and nothing in common about any of these organizations. Except…

Except that each of these companies was experiencing almost identical sales issues, caused (in my opinion), by the same challenges.

1.  The sales team was not focused on a finite strategic list of target accounts (including both growable existing customers and ideal profile prospects) that they were absolutely committed to proactively pursuing.

 

2.  Their messaging (“sales story”) was focused much more on their products and services rather than the issues they addressed for customers (problems solved, pains removed, opportunities captured, improved results)…the outcomes they achieved.

 

3.  The salespeople spent a pathetically low percentage of their time actually selling compared to the amount of time they were either babysitting/over-servicing accounts, putting out fires, or doing administrative and internal corporate work.

 

The bad news? These are VERY common sales challenges that have VERY BAD consequences. When individual sellers or sales teams aren’t proactively working strategic target customers, they either miss opportunities, or end up arriving late to the party to encounter prospects who are already shopping and often having their buying criteria shaped by the competitor’s more proactive salesperson who wasn’t waiting around for a warm lead. This is one of the most deadly and most common sales issues today. Worst case is that we completely miss out on an opportunity. Not too far behind is the second-worst case where we end up coming across as nothing more than a vendor quoting a price (column fodder) who gets commoditized because it’s really really really hard to be perceived as the expert/consultant/value-creator when you’re last to the table.

Compound that first challenge with issue #2 above where the salesperson is not only late to the opportunity, but when they get there, instead of their messaging/story being focused on the customer’s issues/needs/desires, they make their product/service the focus of their lame, self-focused pitch which further relegates them to nothing more than vendor/product-pitcher status.

And do I even need to expound upon issue #3 above? I didn’t think so. I’m continually amused that I get brought into companies to help identify sales issues and train the sales team to be more effective at developing new business only to find that very often The. Single. Biggest. Issue. preventing salespeople from acquiring more new business is that they spend a shockingly low percentage of their time working to develop new business. Yes, I just wrote that. And, yes, I actually get paid to point that very deep and complex observation out to sales managers and senior executives.

The good news? The fixes for these sales challenges don’t require a new corporate strategy or a massive reorganization, or someone with a PhD. To fill the pipeline with fresh sales opportunities  and begin to execute a successful new business development-focused sales attack, you (or your salespeople) need:

• A strategic, workable, finite list of growable accounts and/or ideal profile prospects that you/they are 100% committed to proactively working – Chapters 4 & 5 in New Sales. Simplified.
• A higher percentage of the calendar dedicated to actually selling. (In case that came across as so simplistic that it didn’t sink in, please re-read it. To sell more it really helps to spend more time selling. Feel free to quote me on that one!) – Chapter 14 in New Sales. Simplified.
• A compelling, succinct, customer-issue (outcome)-focused, differentiating “sales story” (message) – Chapters 7 & 8 in New Sales. Simplified.

Please stop believing that your sales challenges are so unique. I promise you with 95% certainty that they are not. I have the most eclectic group of clients that range from a just a few million dollars in sales to many, many billions. These companies are in completely unrelated industries with very different offerings, sales cycles, pricing schemes and salespeople. Some sell to governments, some sell to printers, some sell to CIOs of Fortune 100 companies. Some call on shop floor maintenance managers, some on procurement, other on engineers and others on CFOs. Let’s stop looking for magic bullets or highly complex solutions to what are typically relatively simple challenges. Sales is simple and people who tell us how complicated it is are either confused themselves or using that complexity as a smokescreen to hide their lame effort or excuse their poor results.

Around this time last year, marketers across industries were coming off a summer of watching their kids catch virtual pocket monsters and scrambling nervously back to the office to build an “AR strategy.” To this point, augmented reality has joined beacons and several other technologies in retail as a purple squirrel eCommerce marketers chase to no avail.

While many trends come and go, personalization continues to be a core strategic priority for retailers of all sizes. Gartner has cited personalization as the #1 strategic investment are for brands in 2017. McKinsey and the Wall Street Journal have referred to personalization as the “holy grail of marketing.”

According to Boston Consulting Group, personalization will push a revenue shift of $800 billion to the 15% of companies that get it right in the next five years. In a nutshell, “personalization leaders stand to capture a disproportionate share of category profits in the new age of individualized brands while slow movers will lose customers, share, and profits.”

With the seismic tides behind personalization, why aren’t all eCommerce companies serving individualized experiences? From our experience talking to hundreds of customers, the main barriers to implementing personalization can be summarized in three basic objections.

1. We’re unaware of revenue impact so we can’t make the case to senior leadership that personalization is a high priority.
2. We’re not sure of what is possible so we never defined what an ideal personalized user journey would look like.
3. We don’t know who in our company should manage personalization or how it would fit into our workflow.

To help you make the case for personalization in your organization, let’s break down each hesitation in more detail.

We’re unaware of revenue impact

Marketing practitioners at eCommerce brands are constantly searching for methods to help them achieve greater ROI on their marketing investments. And in light of its promise to increase top-line revenue and provide high marketing ROI, personalization is still thought of as a mere tactic in assisting the delivery of superior customer experiences.

Because eCommerce ROI is a balancing act influenced by acquisition costs, conversion rates, average order values, and a litany of secondary metrics such as margin, customer lifetime value, and return rate, it can be hard to understand where personalization fits in.

And proving the ROI of personalization is never about increasing a single metric. Since personalization impacts several KPIs that contribute to revenue, small increases in each piece of the revenue puzzle can lead to big outcomes.

But things really get exciting when applying gains from personalization back into the top of the purchase funnel. For example, with additional revenue from personalization, you can invest more money back into your traffic acquisition campaigns with greatly extrapolated returns. Uplifts of 10-15% across different stages of the funnel can add up to almost 40% revenue growth.

By investing in personalization, eCommerce brands stand to make the most of their existing website traffic and have more money to invest in acquisition, improving results at all stages of the purchase funnel.

We never defined an ideal personalized user journey

Modern consumers share many interactions with a brand on their path to conversion. Often on several devices and across touchpoints, marketers are now tasked with having to pick up the conversation right where it left off. These days, channels are irrelevant — there is only one single customer journey.

While this may be true, each user journey differs per person and encompasses a variety of experiences unique to the customer and brand. The real trick to creating a personalized, omnichannel retailing experience is by 1) creating a complete 360 degree/single view of the customer and 2) mapping experiences based on the real-time signals a customer makes in the decision-making process.

Here’s just one example of what a user journey could look like for an anonymous user visiting your eCommerce site:

And without a cohesive dataset based on all available customer information, an “ideal” personalized journey for Carmen is simply a shot in the dark. Powerful, contextual experiences are built off the back of insights gleaned from across your web, mobile apps, email, CRM, 3rd party data sources, beacons, and customer support touch-points.

Carmen visits your site as a new, unknown user. You already know that Carmen clicked on a search ad for a sale on blue jeans. And once she lands, using third-party data, you can infer Carmen is female, 25-34, lives in New York, and makes 60K. She browses the site a bit and then leaves.

So, even on this first visit, she is not truly unknown.

Though this level of orchestration between channels can only be achieved by employing the right technology, often leaving those without it at risk of producing inconsistent, irrelevant, and less impactful experiences along the customer journey.

We don’t know who should manage personalization

Delivering personalized experiences is a huge challenge for brands who don’t know where to start or who in the organization should own it. With struggles around choosing suitable champions to take ownership as well as coordinating responsibilities associated, the synchronization necessary between various stakeholders to drive efforts towards success quickly diminishes.

The truth is, great customer experiences and sustainable growth from personalization is the result of a coordinated team effort and involves many stakeholders for different departments, including product managers, performance marketers, eCommerce managers, and web analysts.

And, as personalization and optimization become increasingly crucial to the functions of the digital marketing and customer experience roles, organizations must focus on transforming traditional, rigid working silos into structured teams that promote effective facilitation between the different stakeholders and marketing departments.

Ideally, a world-class personalization team will have someone on the team who is able to work with internal teams, translate their goals and customer profiles, and create and implement an integrated personalization program.

Successful personalization should be baked into the DNA of all key departments and stakeholders.

For more on the roles and structure of an agile personalization team, read this article.

So, while 100% of user experiences may not be personalized today, those who get it right will receive the lion’s share of the market as these customized experiences become table stakes for consumers with increasingly high demands.

This post originally appeared on the Dynamic Yield blog. It was co-written by Shana Pilewski and Mike Mallazzo.

What is a Chatbot?

You've likely talked to a robot already without even knowing it. And you might have even heard the term "chatbot" in the news. But what is a chatbot? How do chatbots work?

Essentially, a chatbot is just a robot chat that imitates human conversations through voice commands, text chats, or both. It's a virtual conversation in which one party is an online talking robot.

The artificial intelligence feature within talking robots has been used in various industries to deliver information or perform tasks, such as telling the weather, making flight reservations, or purchasing products.

Chatbot Technology

Inside the artificial intelligence of a chatbot is machine learning and what's known as natural-language processing (NLP). Machine learning can be applied in different fields to create various chatbot algorithms, while NLP has the ability to pick up conversational cadences and mimic human conversation.

The chatbot is trained to translate the input data into a desired output value. When given this data, it analyzes and forms context to point to the relevant data to react to spoken or written prompts. Looking into deep learning within AI, the machine discovers new patterns in the data without any prior information or training, then extracts and stores the pattern.

This machine learning algorithm, known as neural networks, consists of different layers for analyzing and learning data. Inspired by the human brain, each layer is consists of its own artificial neurons that are interconnected and responsive to one another. Each connection is weighted by previous learning patterns or events and with each input of data, more “learning” takes place.

How Chatbots Got Smarter

With the advancements in artificial intelligence and the rapid growth of messaging apps, chatbots are becoming increasingly necessary in many industries. Although bot technology has been around for decades, machine-learning has been improving dramatically due to the heightened interest from key Silicon Valley powers.

Natural language processing mimics human speech patterns to simulate a human tone in computer-human interaction, which creates more intimate interactions. The predictive analytics within bots uses statistics, modeling, data mining and more to generate information proactively, rather than in response to a prompt.

The sentiment analysis in machine learning uses language analytics to determine the attitude or emotional state of whom they are speaking to in any given situation. This has proven to be difficult for even the most advanced chatbot due to an inability to detect certain questions and comments from context. Developers are creating these bots to automate a wider range of processes in an increasingly human-like way and to continue to develop and learn over time.

An indicator of just how human-like these machines can be was actually developed in the 1950s by British scientist Alan Turing. His Turing Test checks the presence of mind, thought, or intelligence in a machine and if it can fool a human to believe that it is a human as well, then it passes the test.

There was a time when even some of the most prominent minds believed that a machine could not be as intelligent as humans but in 1991, the start of the Loebner Prize competitions began to prove otherwise. The competition awards the best performing chatbot that convinces the judges that it is some form of intelligence. But despite the tremendous development of chatbots and their ability to execute intelligent behavior not displayed by humans, chatbots still do not have the accuracy to understand the context of questions in every situation each time.

Chatbots Uses of Today and Tomorrow

Chatbots currently operate through a number of channels, including web, within apps, and on messaging platforms. They also work across the spectrum from digital commerce to banking using bots for research, lead generation, and brand awareness. An increasing amount of businesses are experimenting with chatbots for e-commerce, customer service, and content delivery.

Furthermore, major banks today are facing increasing pressure to remain competitive as challenger banks and fintech startups crowd the industry. As a result, these banks should consider implementing chatbots wherever human employees are performing basic and time-consuming tasks. This would cut down on salary and benefit costs, improve back-office efficiency, and deliver better customer care.

More to Learn

Chatbot technology will continue to improve in the coming years. Chatbot architecture and design will evolve to the point that interactive AI will become standard for customer service. But there are numerous applications for chatbots across a variety of sectors.

That's why BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a bundle of detailed reports on chatbots:

• The Chatbots Explainer
• Chatbots in Banking
• Chatbot Monetization
• Conversational Commerce

To get all four reports, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full reports using the links above.

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The “cheap and cheerful” cost-cutting train has left the station and it is not coming back anytime soon. I firmly believe that companies and organizations that think an outsource provider can provide easy cost-cutting measures are standing at the wrong train platform. Unfortunately, there are too many people standing at this platform speaking at conferences touting inexpensive and simple fixes. I don’t believe them.

There are absolutely ways to cut costs. There are absolutely service providers who can and will deliver on those measures. Today, cutting costs is so much more than shaving a little off of the price the customer pays for something though. It is no longer easy (maybe it never was easy) and it is not a one-way street. It takes some ingenuity and effort from the buyer and the provider to deliver savings.

Highly collaborative relationships cut costs but use a very different approach than most.

Buyers can unlock value for their organization by decreasing both their companies’ and vendors’ exposure to risk. For example, a food manufacturer unlocked value by partnering with their trucking vendor to mitigate the risk of fluctuating fuel costs. The companies agreed that the cost of fuel would be passed through to the company. At first, that seems like a risky decision, but the vendor had a contractual incentive to be more fuel efficient, which they did by operating their trucks at lower speeds, idling less frequently for shorter periods of time, and using routing software. In the end, the risk of fluctuating fuel costs was mitigated, decreasing risk to both companies and lowering costs to the food manufacturer.

Costs were cut–just not in the traditional way. I believe that to truly cut costs, you’ll have to get creative, work with your partner and look through a different lens. But, it can be done. It has been done.

According to Wikipedia, the Prevent Defense is a defensive alignment in American football that seeks to prevent the offense from completing a long pass or scoring a touchdown in a single play and seeks to run out the clock.

Super Bowl winning coach John Madden doesn’t quite agree with this definition. He has this to say about the prevent defense: "All a prevent defense does is prevent you from winning."

As we all know, disagreement is a fact of life. I can’t mediate those in the world of football, but I can weigh in on three areas of argument in our industry that are dramatically impacting sales and marketing spending and results that I feel are important to understand:

1. There are some who say that Inbound/Content marketing is king and Outbound is dead. I don’t agree with those folks, but I do agree with contrarian Marketo’s response:

“Inbound, Outbound? They both sound pretty good, right? So, which is the ultimate approach? You’ve got it—it’s a healthy combination of both.

“Why? Inbound drives organic engagement and attracts leads, while outbound helps you target specific prospects more accurately. These approaches work well in both B2B and consumer marketing, covering the entire length of the lead funnel and the customer journey, respectively.”

2. Others in our industry content that 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before sales needs to get involved. I concur with Julie Schwartz’s (ITSMA) opinion on that:

“It’s widely believed that 60% to 70% of the buying process is over before prospects want to engage with a salesperson. The premise is there’s so much information available online that salespeople are unnecessary in early stages.

“ITSMA’s data says that for high consideration technology solutions, this is a myth. We believe the opposite: 70% of B2B technology solution buyers want to engage with sales reps before they identify their short list.

“In fact, buyers perceive value in interacting with sales at every stage of the buying process.”

3. A lot of people will tell you that sales and marketing are aligned. Ardath Albee (Marketing Interactions) disagrees (and I do too):

“A form completion is a lead. Hogwash! A form completion is an expression of potential interest in what your copy describes that the person will get in exchange for their information. Period.

“The only intent a person has when completing the form is to gain access to what you’ve promised. It’s time marketers acknowledge that this is a reason salespeople continue to ignore leads sent to them by marketing.”

When one of the most aggressive inbound marketers (Marketo) states that “inbound drives organic engagement and attracts leads, while outbound helps you target specific prospects more accurately,” if I were a leading a sales or marketing organization for a company, I would listen. Are you listening?

When the ITSMA states unequivocally that you should not wait for the buyer’s journey to advance so far into the process that you are going to be column fodder in an evaluation already won by a more agile competitor because THEY GOT IN EARLY, I would think that would ring true to those charged with sales lead generation, sales lead qualification and sales lead nurturing, I’d pay attention.

Sending sales leads that suck is a lose-lose plan. Read “How Much Do Your Leads Cost” to understand why.

In 30 minutes or less I can help you estimate what your lead cost should be. Just ask.

The article I read on LinkedIn stated that salespeople who relied on rapport, said another way, “being liked” do not fare as well as salespeople who have a greater level of expertise. One example that they cited was familiar to me. The author suggested that you would choose a neurosurgeon that was highly skilled over a likable one with lesser skills and knowledge. Having once been forced to choose a neurosurgeon for a brain surgery, I can’t argue with that math.

That said, there are two problems here. First, the problem of generalizing. Second, the problem of mutual exclusivity.

Large, complex, expensive, and riskier deals require greater insights, greater business acumen, and situational knowledge. Smaller, simple, relatively inexpensive and relatively low-risk deals don’t necessarily require greater skills or greater knowledge.

All generalization, as useful as they are, are lies (even this generalizing sentence). Selling is a complex, dynamic, human interaction, and succeeding in sales is about choices. In some cases, your smarts will serve you well. In others, your fast rapport skills will produce the same or better results.

Mutual exclusivity is a terrible trap. When you are offered a choice of “being smart” or “being liked,” you are presented with the idea that you can only have one, and that selecting one means giving up the other. This is a false choice. You can actually be smart and be liked. You can have insights and also have rapport skills at the same time.

• High Insights and Low Rapport: You can be smart, have poor rapport skills, and still win business. You will likely win business from people who are more concerned about the outcomes they need and who want to eliminate risk.
• Low Insights and High Rapport: You can know little and be so amiable that some people buy from you, usually people who don’t want to be challenged or forced to deal with conflict. Some people will work with you because you have a smart team behind you.
• Low Insights and Low Rapport: You are going to have a very tough selling anything that isn’t a straight transaction, eliminating any need to deal with you over the longer term.

Now you have seen three of four possible combinations of smart and likable. But there is another choice available to you.

• High Insight and High Rapport: You can be both smart and likable. It is possible to be known, liked, and trusted while also possessing the business acumen and situational knowledge you need to serve your clients, helping them to make substantial changes. In fact, the very best salespeople look more like this than they do High Insight and Low Rapport. Why? Because for most complex sales, the relationship comes with the purchase.

Let’s look at the scenario from the first paragraph again. You are choosing a brain surgeon. One has world-class skills, little empathy, and poor bedside manner. The second has world-class skills, is highly empathetic, and a bedside manner that helps put you and your family at ease, giving you a far better experience as you make a difficult decision under immense pressure. Which surgeon do you choose and why?

A large part of selling, the part that is not transactional, is creating a preference to buy from you personally. There is no reason to believe that you are not part of the value proposition, and in some sales, the largest part. The more advantages you stack on your side of the scale, the better. These advantages accrue to you when you are smart and also someone your client wants to work with long term.

The post Be Smart and Be Likable appeared first on The Sales Blog.

One of the biggest challenges faced by marketers today is the struggle to produce engaging content.

This has led to some wide variation in content strategies, partially influenced by the ever-changing search algorithms and their attempt to filter out low-quality content.

Some brands have gone the long-form content route:

(Source)

Or the type of content Brian Dean promotes with his Skyscraper technique.

The result has been an explosion of content flooding the web. Today, over 2 million blog posts alone are published every day.

This level of content saturation has caused many companies to pivot.

In recent years, many have worked to diversify their content by adding other formats like infographics. In fact, Infographics saw a huge spike in adoption during 2016, with 58% of marketers counting it among the top tactics they use to engage their audiences.

It’s no surprise when data shared by HubSpot shows that infographics are liked and shared on social media 3X more than any other type of content.

But then come the other challenges brought up in CMI’s research – marketers are also struggling with producing a variety of content as well as understanding and choosing technology to help with content marketing.

For example, some marketers think infographic creation requires a professional skillset, or a costly graphic designer. But that’s just not the case.

You don’t need a dedicated design team when you have platforms that offer a range of tools to simplify and speed up the interactive creation process.

In this post, you’ll see that not only are interactive infographics easy to create, they’re more effective than static infographics at engaging your audience, and turning readers into qualified leads.

Why Interactive Infographics Beat Their Static Counterparts

The concept behind infographics is simple: pack as much value as you can for the reader into a piece of content while providing a visual medium to better engage them.

And that approach flat out works.

Research from Nielsen Norman shows readers pay more attention to images that carry information. In fact, viewers spend more time looking at images than reading the text on the page.

Truth is: I could drop a million and one statistics about why it is important to leverage visual media in your content marketing strategy. But, I’d be stating the obvious. In fact, almost every content marketer on the planet already knows this.

There are now millions of infographics floating around the web.

Once we find something that works, we do it over and over and over again until it stops being as effective.

So:

It makes sense to level things up. And, the easiest way to break through all the noise and engage your audience is to tailor static content to each indivdiual by making the infographics interactive.

Don’t believe me? 88% of marketers say interactive content differentiates them from their competitors.

91% of buyers are looking for more visual and interactive content.

The interactive infographic does just that.

More than half of buyers are strongly influenced by custom content. An interactive infographic can reduce otherwise heavy data sets into formats that present the information most relevant to the interests of your audience based on how they click or interact.

It’s a means to provide a ton of value, answers, solutions, and information without making readers wade through a ridiculous amount of text.

After all, which would you prefer:

A) An interactive asset that delivers a valuable, personalized content experience in seconds
B) Searching through a 30+ page static whitepaper
C) Scrolling through a 20’, multi-screen “infomural” crammed with statistics.

Option A for the win!

Here’s how to do it…

How to Make an Interactive Infographic: A Simple 6-point Checklist

There are countless ways to make an interactive infographic.

No matter how the final design comes out there are elements and steps you should take to make sure the infographic attracts your audience and inspires the right type of engagement.

Start With Ideation and Data Gathering

Creating infographics isn’t difficult. The real challenge comes in making them engaging.

That’s why you start by storyboarding and identifying the data you want to include.

There are several different types of data sources you can leverage to quickly build your infographic:

1. Proprietary data from internal surveys, customer profiles, buyer data, polls and other internal data sets.
2. Third party reports, research and industry studies.
3. Public data sets and industry research.

Important: All data should be accurately cited and the proper permissions obtained before sharing.

Now:

If all you include is data and graphics, you’re creating a snooze-worthy piece of content.

Tie it to a story and you’ve got yourself something far more engaging.

A story has segments with elements that intentionally move the reader from point to point through a logical progression toward the end. This is a great way to ensure your audience not only is interested, but continues to engage with the infographic.

This infographic from MahiFX is a great example of building a story around data:

As the user enters their salary and interacts with the infographic, it leads them through a story about:

• how quickly John Paulson earns their annual salary
• how much he earns from trading
• what you could buy if you made that much trading
• how his spending compares to yours

It doesn’t just tie into John’s story, it becomes personal – so the infographic also becomes the user’s story.

Note: If it takes John Paulson more than five seconds to make your annual salary, you’re ahead of the curve :)

Select a Visual Theme That Fits the Story

You’re not just sharing data with an interactive infographic. You’re creating a visual asset designed specifically to capture and retain the audience’s attention. But you don’t just want them to remember the data, you also want them to remember the experience around your brand.

Like this infographic shared by CEWE Photoworld:

(Source)

The visual design of the graphic aligns perfectly with both the story and data set. The theme has you travelling at 3000km/hr as you pass the international space stations on their way to the height of the 21.9 billion Instagram photos uploaded every year.

Keep these things in mind when you choose a visual theme for your interactive infographic:

• Do the images and interactive elements help bring the data to life?
• Do the images, animations, and design elements reflect your brand as well as any other brands that may have partnered with you to create the content?
• Where will the interactive graphic live? If it will be housed on your website you may want to focus on design elements that match your site theme/templates
• Make sure the visual theme matches the audience and their interests, the industry, and the overall story. An infographic built around vacation resorts would have a very different visual style than one being designed for C-Suite trade show promotion.

Another great example is this infographic from Joho Bean:

It takes the user on an extraordinary multimedia adventure using very colorful imagery highlighting the process and journey the coffee bean takes from the field to the consumer.

User Action Should Create a Reaction

An interactive infographic should be well, interactive, but that doesn’t mean it needs to be limited to individual clickable elements.

Every action the user takes should create some kind of action within the content so everything feels like personalized engagement – right down to scrolling.

Population Healthier does a great job of this kind of interaction.

As the user scrolls through the content, headings fade in and bullet points slowly appear as the content rises.

The background also shifts to match the content as the user scrolls, including flipping a state map to a 3D facility map. This is a great way to pull the reader further into the story. The visual stimulation engages, and retains attention.

Hide Content to Inspire Action and Engagement

You can also inspire engagement from the audience by creating an infographic with hidden elements that require clicking. This can force the user to take action in order to get the information they’re looking for.

Like this example from the Future of Car Sharing.

(Source)

Not only does the hidden content force the reader to actively participate in the content experience, it encourages the user’s sense of curiousity, and even allows the reader to skip sections of little interest to them.

Personalize the Content by Requiring User Input

You can guarantee a lot more engagement when you serve data to the user based on the information they input. This appeals both to the desire for more interactive content and the desire for personalization.

A terrific example of this is a personalized infographic that provides insight on whether or not your job is at risk of being automated by robots:

(Source)

Users have to make a selection personal to them (or whatever field they wish) in order to get back relevant data.

Include In-graphic Forms to Capture Information

About 80% of B2B marketers list lead generation as the top organization goal for content creation in 2017:

With an infographic that offers personalized results, or any kind of data tailored to the input of the user, you have an opportunity to capture attention and create a much more compelling user experience.

Not only can you capture relevant information about your audience, you can also collect contact information by offering a personalized version of the infographic based on their input.

Either that, or offer them the option to download the full infographic by filling out the lead form.

Interactive content has been found to generate 2x more conversions than passive content.

BBC does this with their infographic Your Life on Earth.

Another example of capturing leads within the infographic is Content Land, which won the Best Use of Interactive Infographic award at Content Marketing World 2017.

As the user goes through the game board layout encountering bite-sized research, they are asked a series of qualifying questions about their content marketing strategy:

At the end of the infographic the user is asked to enter their contact information in order to get access to the final destination, which uses the answer data to personalize the page and recommend further content or a demo sign up:

In this case, much more information is both shared with prospects but also gathered from them, so marketing teams can know more about who is actually engaging with them.

Get a Fast Start: Turn a Static Infographic Into an Interactive One in Minutes

You don’t necessarily have to build an interactive infographic from scratch. One of the smartest tactics to save resources in content marketing is to repurpose content you already have.

If you have an infographic already, look at how you can turn it into an interactive experience.

Consider these possible elements:

• Where can you add animations to place emphasis on certain data points?
• What kind of story can you add to the data to make it more engaging?
• Can certain information be hidden until called on with data entry?
• Which data can be hidden until an interaction like a click or hover place?
• Can some visual clutter be reduced by transforming callouts or tooltips into animations that appear while scrolling or taking action?
• Can you add more depth to the infographic by including audio callouts and voice snippets?
• How can an ultra-long infographic be sliced or segmented to reduce scrolling?
• How can you make the data dynamic so it stays current in real time?
• What kind of information can you collect from the audience to generate a more personalized experience?
• How can you gate content within the graphic to capture leads?

Summing It Up

While it may seem daunting, it’s just the “moving parts” of an interactive infographic that make it appear difficult. Truthfully, developing an interactive infographic is very similar to the creation of any static visual assets you’ve already created many times before.

The most complex part of the creation process is building a story around the data and understanding how you want to present it.

Any piece of static visual content can be brought to life by incorporating animation, video, illustration, animated and layered text.

Follow the 6-point checklist above to get the creative juices flowing.

Your prospects don’t want to speak to sales people who are only interested in their own pockets. They want to speak to consultants who will provide them industry insight and create opportunities for them to streamline and grow their business. That’s why the top performing sales leaders in every field have a personal brand instead of relying on the “corporate brand” like the VP of Sales and Operations below:

LinkedIn is the one platform where we can establish our personal brand by providing insight that differentiates us from the competition to establish credibility and trust long before we make the first dial or email draft. But, we can only do this if we think differently about our profile and turn it from a basic resume into an instrument of sales and marketing success. Unfortunately, out of the hundreds of profiles I view each week, 9 out of 10 sales professional profiles are worthless as sales tools.

Recent studies show that Trust is paramount to ROI but Sales Leaders fail to use their profiles to build trust.

Instead of expanding on the complex needs of his prospects and how he’s offering solutions that improve his clients’ businesses, this VP discusses his sales, marketing and management abilities as if he’s looking for a job rather than a closed deal:

As you can see by the picture below, trust in a relationship is the most important factor for buyers who are looking to invest in a particular solution. Trust is paramount to ROI, price and strategic counsel. Trust building needs to be part of each touch point and every interaction a prospect has with sales, starting from the initial awareness. How we communicate our ‘personal business story’ and ‘unique value to prospects’ determines whether a prospect will trust us enough to connect and advance a relationship.

But how can you begin to build trust with prospects when your profile speaks to sales achievements and sales responsibilities instead of your value to prospects? That sends a message to the client that they are only a commodity and not important to us personally. Conversely, our clients are quickly building trust with their prospects as they are using their profile to:

• Demonstrate understanding of the buyers’ specific business issues
• Help the buyer to think differently about what causes the issues or who is impacted
• Clearly articulate relevant information on how to resolve the pain

These are the top 3 items that buyers look for in a sales meeting. Don’t you think that if we communicate the value buyers are looking for in your LinkedIn profile, then you’ll attract more key decision makers who want you to engage?

LinkedIn profiles do not communicate a strong competitive advantage.

For those LinkedIn profiles that are not a cover letter and resume, I find very little competitive advantage. They rely on their years of experience like this management consultant:

Years of experience is a basic qualification but not a unique differentiator: everyone discusses breakthrough results and the ROI they’ve delivered. But the profiles lack commercial insights that would explain why they are the only solution for the specific challenges their prospects are facing. This means we need to go beyond mentioning extremely-tired “generic benefits” that 90% of sales people and sales leaders seem to repeat ad nauseam.

Instead of talking about generic concepts like people, process and technology, the Schneider sales team showed how there were gaps in the technology offered to mid-market manufacturers and what those gaps meant to the business. Because of the profiles and the content provided, Schneider received inquiries like the one below:

Because the prospect saw the Schneider sales team as Experts, this prospect became a $400k annual revenue opportunity.

LinkedIn profiles do not support Account Based Sales and Marketing, although studies show that ABM brings the highest returns.

• 97% of marketers report that ABM approaches had the highest ROI (Alterra Group)
• 85% of marketers who measure ROI describe ABM as delivering the highest returns than any other marketing approach. (ITSMA)
• 45% more opportunities are gained through taking an ABM-based sales and marketing approach (LinkedIn)
• 60% of firms using ABM for at least 1 year experienced 10%+ growth (Forrester)
• ABM strategies lead to a higher contract and customer lifetime value (Forrester)

Yet, sales and marketing leaders are going for volume by throwing out content and messaging in attempt to ‘speak to everyone’ with their profiles instead of focusing on the accounts they really want and the specific issues those accounts are facing.

For a supply chain technology company, sales leadership wanted a focus on those companies of the Inc 5000 fastest growth list. On the sales executives profile, we spoke about scaling a supply chain and the issues that many high-growth companies experience while expanding their global footprint. The companies he targeted wanted fast growth, they wanted their supply chain to be able to keep up with the growth, and they wanted their margins to remain profitable while doing so.

What to expect when you have a profile that is a Sales & Marketing tool…

By changing the profile from a resume to a complete sales and marketing tool:

• Schneider’s Director of New Business Development took his social selling index from 30 to 85, increased connection conversions by 400% and his response rate from 30% to 60%.
• The VP of Business Development for Single Point of Contact (a San Francisco Bay MSP) moved sales conversations forward with a local real estate management firm that ignored all previous communications because the firm didn’t see specific, relevant value before.
• Lawson Abinanti, President of Messages That Matter in Seattle gained a $15,000 immediate project plus ongoing consulting after getting a profile makeover.

How you communicate your value on LinkedIn can determine if prospects will respond to messages, joining your LinkedIn community and request sales conversations. The conversations you receive will not be ‘networking calls’ to determine if a value can be provided but ‘sales calls’ to discuss how that value would be implemented and who needs to be engaged in the conversation to move it forward.

A great resource to help you create a LinkedIn profile that builds trust and supports the sales cycle is Kristina Jaramillo’s profile makeover webinar.

Sales has a ton of tools at their disposal to measure the effectiveness of their efforts and the ROI of different activities. CRMs allow sellers to record every single interaction they have with a buyer and track the entire lifecycle of a deal. Using these analytics gives Sales plenty of insights that can be pored over and used to improve processes. Sales leaders then have a clear understanding of their team’s performance in many different areas.

Marketing on the other hand, has long been in the dark on exactly how effective their efforts are and the ROI of their activities. It’s been difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain how a piece of content affects the buying cycle, or whether Sales is even using the content in the first place. This lack of insight makes it hard to ascertain the success of certain efforts and difficult to plan future endeavors without knowing how previous ones fared. Unlocking these insights – content engagement analytics, content usage statistics – quite literally changes the game for Marketing.

It’s clear that these types of insights are incredibly important and can take marketing activities and planning to the next level. However, a report from The CMO Survey has found that many high-level Marketing executives are not yet taking full advantage of marketing analytics. On a 1-7 scale, the average response to the question “To what degree does the use of marketing analytics contribute to your company’s performance?” was 3.7.

The survey further delved into the reasons behind why organizations are not leveraging marketing analytics as much as might be expected. Respondents were asked, “What factors prevent your company from using more marketing analytics?” and given a list of answers to choose from. 32% of the respondents choose “Lack of process/tools to measure success through analytics” as their answer. Furthermore, 29% choose “Lack of people who can link to marketing practice.”

These answers reveal that high-level marketing executives may not even be aware of the types of analytics that they could have available to them to improve their processes and help their team succeed. For a long time the type of analytics that could transform a marketing team simply weren’t available. But now, those type of analytics are able to be tracked and can make a huge difference for any organization.

Content engagement analytics are key for any marketing team. Is the content Marketing creates actually resonating with buyers? Which part of the content are they most attracted to? How long do they spend engaging with the content? These types of questions unlock basic truths about a buyer and give Sales crucial information about them when engaging in conversations. For Marketing, content engagement analytics provide a critical feedback loop that leads to the creation of smarter and more effective content.

Content usage statistics give Marketing key insights into how Sales interacts with the content they create. What content does Sales use? Are they using it in the right stage of the buyer’s journey? Are they using new content that is created or defaulting to old stalwarts? When marketing has access to usage statistics they can better understand Sales’ needs and then create content that gives them exactly what they want.

Marketing analytics are crucially important for any organization. The insights provided by marketing analytics shine a light on an area that has long been in the dark – and gives your organization a leg up on the competition.

Whether you’re married, dating or simply just friends, trust is the main ingredient for any successful relationship. And relationships between salespeople and prospects are no different. When someone chooses to go with your product or solution, they are putting their budget, time, success and, more often than not, reputation on the line. There must be an element of trust to feel comfortable making this sort of decision.

In a recent interview, founder of sales training firm The Hoffeld Group and author of The Science of Selling David Hoffeld said, “What we’ve found is that there is a direct correlation between the way prospects judge the salesperson and the way they judge the company. If they trust the salesperson, they trust the company, and vise versa.”

But trust is fragile, and once it’s broken, it’s nearly impossible to repair. Here are three reasons why your prospects may be losing faith in your business, and what your team can do to avoid these trust issues in future relationships.

Premature Process Steps

As ex-sales ops professional and current product marketer at Base Lindsey Bly explains in the Science of Sales Bootcamp, companies tend to create sales processes that lay things out the way that they wish they would happen. In reality, a sales process should be reflective of your customers’ needs and realistic buying processes – not your needs.

She then shares an example of a time at a previous company when she noticed prospects frequently dropping out of a particular pipeline stage. After some digging and analysis, she and her team discovered that the culprit was a request for credit card information that was being sent far too early in the sales process.

Because prospects felt that their “relationship” with the company had not yet progressed to a point where credit information was necessary, they got spooked, lost trust in the process and went dark. Lindsey concludes, “If we had waited a stage to do this or added an extra little step to verify our customer’s requirements, the overall process would have run a lot smoother.”

Take a step back and examine your sales process – could premature requirements like this be hurting your prospect relationships? Be sure that early stage process steps are focused on understanding needs and defining outcomes, and any major asks are saved for further in the funnel.

Impersonal Communication

You trust your best friend – you share great memories, she knows all about you and you have all sorts of inside jokes. She made an effort to get to know you, and you’ve grown increasingly close ever since.

Now, imagine if she had never bothered to learn your name or where you work, or constantly forgot what you shared with her each time you spoke. No doubt she wouldn’t be your best friend, and you definitely wouldn’t trust her.

So how do you think prospects feel when they receive a generic outreach email starting with “Hi there”? Or when reps ask them to repeat their goals? Why should they trust your company when your reps haven’t made an effort to get to know them or their business?

Many times this is a product of competing priorities – reps feel pressured to work fast and be productive, which leaves little time for personalization. However, research shows that personalized emails result in 6x higher transaction rates than those that are not, which means reps must find a way to achieve these two competing goals. One way to make this happen is by using a sales platform that enables reps to use pre-written email templates and customize them at scale using merge tags.

Another culprit of impersonal communication is poor organization. Without an easy way to record important prospect information and an even faster way to access it, reps may find it more efficient to simply ask again rather than dig through the recesses of their inbox or CRM looking for the answer. To avoid this misstep, be sure to choose a sales platform that facilitates seamless data entry and access.

Failure to Respond at Key Moments

The instantaneous nature of social networks and Google search has accustomed consumers to receiving real-time answers and attention. As such, it can be extremely frustrating and cause major anxiety for prospects when sales reps fail to respond to their questions or concerns in a timely fashion.

In all fairness, with hundreds of leads in a rep’s funnel at any given time, expecting your team to react to prospects’ needs in real-time just isn’t realistic. However, thanks to developments in natural language processing and artificial intelligence, your sales platform has the power to be your eyes and ears and alert you of any red flags.

Sales platforms with real-time, custom notifications enable reps to go about their daily business and receive alerts notifying them of activities or occurrences that they have defined as important and warranting immediate action. Examples of these include when a prospect views a sent document or replies to an email with negative sentiment. Reps can then reach out to address any concerns and answer any questions, effectively fostering trust by being aware and proactive.

Losing Trust Means Losing Dollars

As the saying goes, “Trust takes years to build, seconds to lose and forever to repair.” Not to mention, news travels fast – giving prospects the chance to lose faith in your business can not only harm your financials, but it can also damage your reputation. To make sure that your team has the right tools and tactics in place to build strong customer relationships, download The 2017 Guide for Next-Generation Sales Leaders.

Since the term “inbound” was created and pioneered by the folks over at HubSpot, ideal client profiles (ICPs) have been a subject dominated by those who are into using inbound marketing. But this is slowly beginning to change (for the better). In this post, we’re talking heavily about setting up ICPs with the right firmographics — specifically for B2Bs.

There are giants in the outbound sales industry who are (and have been) using ideal profiles to generate quality leads without having to bring them in with SEO, organic traffic, or even paid ads.

Most inbound methods put the emphasis on the individual getting content, not the brand.

While the person you’re talking to is very important, outbound B2Bs need to first concentrate on the markets and companies within those markets.

So, in order for you to fully benefit from ICPs, we have to look at the attributes of the organizations that are most likely to buy.

This involves firmographics.

Firmographics: Firmographics are descriptive attributes of firms that can be used to aggregate individual firms into meaningful market segments. They describe businesses, non-profits, and governmental entities. Essentially, firmographics are to businesses and organizations what demographics are to people. (Source)

Why an Outbound Sales Ideal Customer Profile?

B2B inbound and outbound ICPs are very similar, but there is one main difference between the two.

From an inbound perspective, you are looking at leads flowing into your funnel and seeing who meets your criteria. Those that do may be contacted, but may not depending on how your sales process is set up.

This makes content written for individuals within those brands vital for qualifying leads.

From the outbound sales side, you are looking proactively at brands that may not have any idea who you are. These contacts simply meet the criteria in your profiles and are contacted.

The funnel is much shorter in outbound sales. Here’s an image of a typical inbound funnel, followed by an example of an outbound funnel.

Inbound Funnel Example

Outbound Funnel Example

See the difference?

Information you acquire that will make up your outbound profiles may also be utilized differently for sales purposes. And even the data itself may be different. This post is to help you niche down and find the attributes of those businesses and decision makers that buy your products.

Creating this profile correctly will help you throughout the other modules of the course. Understanding who your buyers are makes it much easier to:

• Discover Your Unique Value
• Position Your Company and Products Properly
• Find Lead Sources
• Identify Prospects and Weed Out Suspects
• Develop Your Copy (Email, Web Copy, and More)

Developing Your Ideal Client Profiles (Step by Step)

Step One: Find Your Target Market(s)

You do this by looking at your current clients (Good and Bad). There’s a reason they’re called ideal profiles.

One of the best places to look are the accounts you’re currently servicing. It’s likely there are many customers on your books that have similar attributes — both positive and negative.

As you look into these things and call your clients, it will get clearer over time who your best customers are, and why you feel this way. Too many B2B companies try to be “all things to all people” and it ends up leaving them with a frustrated sales team and lackluster growth.

There are two basic things to look at when eyeing your current clientele. The industry/company data and the people-level (e.g. decision makers) data.

Let’s take a look at exactly how to find your ideal buyers.

Find Common Denominators Until You See a Market

Start with the companies who are currently using your product(s). Separate them by industry first — it’s often the most telling.

Example:

You have 70 current clients for your software product that tracks resources for manufacturers. Upon research, you find 20 of them are all plastic injection molders. There’s something to look at there. It’s kind of like those little green leaves Ancestry.com provides.

It’s a hint as to whom you may be able to target. You then have to dig deeper and figure out why those businesses like your stuff better.

Let’s run with our injection molders example for a bit.

Finding out that you have an abundance of one industry as opposed to others is not a clear indication in and of itself. If you have targeted molders in your advertising, that could explain the disproportionate number — but that doesn’t mean this is your “ideal” buyer.

That said, if you discover they have come through word of mouth or specific features of your product, you can safely assume that a target market is close.

What Happens if Nothing is Clear?

If you can’t find a clear industry that stands out from the crowd, you may have to test the industries of a few of your clients. To use the example above, you could have a mix of fabricators and manufacturers who love to track their resources with your product.

Here’s what to do:

1. Pick one or two industries (based on the factors in our next section).
2. Test a batch of leads.
3. Keep detailed track of the results.

Once you have some data from a few hundred leads ran through your funnel, you have enough data to move on in the process of developing your ICP.

What If We Are Pre-Startup?

If you have zero clients (or very few), you’ll have to do some educated guessing.

Chances are, you’ve already done some digging on your competition. The quickest way to choose a test market is to find the product that is closest to resembling yours and take a look at the keywords and target markets they’re trying to reach.

Use a tool like Spyfu to see where your competitors are spending money and who is seeing the ads. Even if you have a clear target market — this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Bonus Resource: Here’s a fantastic list of 25 ways to help you “spy” better.

Once you have a few potential markets on the list, it’s time to niche even further (until it hurts) to find the most profitable space for your company.

Step Two: Niche Until It Hurts (Using the Firmographics)

It’s best to have a few potential target markets from your current client data (or the other procedures outlined in step one). Starting with a list of 3-5 should do it. Keeping with the example, our software company could have:

• Plastic Injection Molders
• Metal Fabricators (like equipment and tool manufacturers)
• Farmers (tracking resources like water and nutrients)

All three of these could be ideal markets. But figuring out your ideal buyers helps you focus and get the most out of your lead generation.

Finding the best one (possibly two) to move forward will help fill your pipeline with leads that will convert at a much higher position — due to how well you know their industry.

Before we begin this process, we need to address what we’re assuming. At this point you should have:

• Customer Data (from your own clients or from competitors).
• Potential Markets (that you have at least ran enough leads through to have some data).

Without these, you’ll be flying blind trying to niche down.

Start Sorting the Firmographics

Firmographics: Descriptive attributes of firms that can be used to aggregate individual firms into meaningful market segments. They describe businesses, non-profits, and governmental entities. Essentially, firmographics are to businesses and organizations what demographics are to people. (source)

These data points are the things your ideal brands have in common. Let’s go over several of them briefly.

• Industry: Finding the industries that are buying from you is really the first step into this process and, often times, the easiest.
• Location: Depending on your product, this may not be a determining factor. That said, it could help you know the best times to push your products. Elements such as weather, tourist traffic, and many other factors can make this useful in the sales and marketing process.
• Size: Regardless of who your products can serve, there will be businesses of certain sizes that are more geared toward using them — and others that are less likely to buy. If you find that most of your business comes from businesses with less than 25 employees or more than 200, that’s your sweet spot.
• Company Structure: Depending on the buying cycle, you could avoid certain organizations and choose to target a specific layout. For instance, small operations may not have enough money and larger corporations may have a complicated buying process that is too lengthy.
• Revenue/Performance: There will be a level of income that can indicate the readiness of certain brands to buy your product. Finding the right dollar range can help you tremendously when trying to understand the budgeting and objections you’ll encounter before you ever reach out.

How to Make It Hurt

Some of these firmographic points may have seemed redundant — because they are.

You’re not trying to fill your pipeline with large numbers of decent leads. You’re trying to send personalized emails, voicemails, and social prompts to highly targeted contacts in brands that are likely to pull the trigger.

Instead of shoveling in dirt, hoping to pull out a diamond, you’re more like a fighter pilot trying to hone in on your opponent. You’re not firing wildly, you’re waiting until you hear the lock.

Take a look at your current clients, look at who your competition is targeting, call your clients (and theirs) to find out as much as you can.

Then, analyse the data and find a lock on your ideal target.

Step Three: Find the Buyer Within the Buyer

Once you have the niche down, you still have to talk with a person. Gary Vaynerchuck said it best when describing B2B sales;

“If you are in the B2B space I am stunned by how many forget a human still makes the buying decision … B2b = business to business and B2C is business to consumer … Very different .. Yet basically the same #HumansMakeTheCalls” — Gary Vee.

Even if you’ve got the target market, industry, company size, etc., you’re not quite done. Now, you have to find out who you (or your reps) are going to be interacting with in the sales process.

The company may need what you provide, but there is a flesh and blood human being (or maybe a few of them) that make decisions.

While there is usually only one decision maker, there are, on average, 5 to 6 personas that make up the average company’s buying team. Things like different roles and titles are one of the issues, but the most prominent reason for multiple personas are influencers.

Influencers are individuals who have direct or indirect access to decision makers and often times influence the decision process. A few examples include:

• Direct Reports
• Supervisors
• Colleagues

Pro Tip: To have the best odds of reaching the decision maker in a particular brand, find three likely contacts in each company.

How about a practical example?

We are selling a product that helps track labor stats and compliance to metal fabricators who do $10-20 million in annual sales and have 50-100 employees. They love our software, but who’s most likely to buy it?

The head of human resources would be my guess. Let’s say that after a quick look at who made the decision to buy and who our competitors target — it is indeed the human resources director that usually says the final “yes”.

Other influencers and decision makers could include safety supervisors, the founder/CEO, or the Head of Operations — depending on the size and structure of the business.

So, after a bit of digging, we need a short persona for human resource heads, COOs, CEOs and maybe someone in charge of safety. Find the most common three and go deeper to find out what makes them tick, in regards to your labor software.

Adding a Persona to Your Profile

Essentially, you’re adding these buyer personas (like the human resources example above) into your client profile. The people will buy your product for the brand.

Instead of firmographic data, you’re going to be looking for the demographics and other variables that will affect how you pitch and move buyers down the funnel.

While it may not be hard to figure out the one or two common people who make decisions, it will take some thought to find out what’s important to them.

Continued Example: If you’re dealing with founders, it’s pretty easy to figure out what they want. More business and more free time. If your product can provide one of those at a decent ROI, it’s not a hard sale.

But once you get to a level selling to people on the payroll, needs are more complex.

A human resources director will like the idea of a product that saves time. But if it doesn’t help them perform better overall, they may pass. But what if you could convince the contact that your product will help them look like they’re doing the job better this year than last year?

You’ll have anyone’s attention. And it’s details like this that you have to find by asking questions and looking for insights.

Choosing an industry and company size is fairly pragmatic. The numbers are usually clear and reliable.

Things to Consider

• Demographic Information: Common age, gender, location, titles (may vary).
• Job Details and Responsibilities: The metrics to which they’re held accountable and how busy they are at which times of day/month/year.
• Day in the Life: Figuring out where they spend the most time, why, and how your products/services can help.
• Pains and Frustrations: Finding out which parts of the job prospects would change if they could.
• Career Goals/Personal Goals: The aspirations your prospect has in this company or for their career in general.
• Prominent Resources for Their Role: The blogs they read, industry reports they order/download and the people they follow on their work social profiles.
• Buying Cycle/Process: Finding the average process and timeline for buying and implementing a new solution (like yours).
• Most Common Objections: Figuring out the things this persona always brings up to help reps overcome these objections quickly.
• Key Identifiers: If you hear or see these traits, you are likely dealing with the decision maker of this brand.

Where to Find the Data?

• Most commonly, this information can be found by calling both your current clients that fit into your new profile and calling those leads that didn’t end up buying from you.
• Competitor marketing is also a prime place to look at copy written specifically for similar industries.
• Social profiles, company websites, and lead generation tools can also be valuable resources.
• Cold outreach is also very effective. Sending an email to the top 3 potential decision makers on the same day could be a great way to find the person in charge. It also works to introduce yourself to potential influencers.

Start Creating Your Profile

Are firmographics a part of your customer personas?

Ideal Buyer Profiles are the initial step in finding your unique value. This also allows you to better position your brand to be seen by your target industries.

If you follow the steps in this module, you’ll have a list of two to three niche markets.

Next, you have to discover what it is about your brand that these markets love about your products. But that’s another post.

When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started the journey to the Apple we know today, they had a garage, a Volkswagen van, and an HP scientific calculator. Not a lot of assets, for sure, but just enough to push an idea over the edge and, with time, turn Apple into one the most, if not the most, successful brand and product of all time. Interestingly, like most of us, Wozniak wasn’t confident that the development skills of his time would make a staple in mankind’s history. It was actually Jobs who convinced Wozniak to go all in. At the time, Wozniak had little faith in his abilities, but Jobs encouraged to push further. Fast forward to today—you and I both know how this story ends: Apple becomes synonymous with bread and water, and your iPhone or whatever smartphone you use is within one foot of you right now.

When you stop telling yourself lies, you get somewhere. In Wozniak’s world, a lie was telling himself that “I was shy and felt that I knew little about the newest developments in computers.” On a personal level, it might be a feeling that you are too shy, clumsy, or messy to achieve success. For companies, the lies go much deeper, involve multiple people, and tend to have a huge negative impact on the success of marketing.

Throughout my experience and the experience of my colleagues, we hear lies—lies that cripple the potential to make marketing a success and lead to company growth. Here are some of the most common lies we’ve heard at SmartBug and in previous roles that, when corrected, can lead to a huge amount marketing success:

‘We Are the Best at What We Do, Period’

When I think of this lie, I can’t help but think of the song lyric, “My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.” And the title is followed by, “Damn right, it’s better than yours.” I have seen companies toot their horn as loudly as Kelis does in that song. Being proud of what you do is important, but you must be completely aware of your company’s shortcomings, because being too comfortable and confident in what you do can limit growth.

This lie is especially dangerous when you consider a concept known as confirmation bias or myside bias. Confirmation bias is the psychological tendency to seek out information that confirms or reinforces pre-existing beliefs. When it comes to companies that think they are the best, confirmation bias often comes into play when they hear positive reviews from prospects or customers. Naturally, a company gets overly excited about these kinds of reviews, but may overlook comments from prospects who don’t totally get what they do, or from customers who complained and then jumped ship for a competitor.

If you really do want your milkshake to bring all the boys to the yard (or buy your product or services), you must completely understand what makes you great and what makes you fall short. By understanding your company’s position on both, you can stay ahead of the curve and focus on fixing gaps, not touting what’s already working.

‘MQLs Don’t Matter’

The definition of a marketing qualified lead varies by company, but for most, an MQL is anyone who you want to engage with via marketing. Typically, savvy marketers will classify MQLs as people who are engaged already, meet a certain amount of ideal prospect criteria, and are likely to buy from you or spread the word about you in the future. Because MQLs aren’t a direct measure of ROI, a common lie companies tell themselves is that such leads do not matter. In reality, MQLs are like the tiny plants in a garden a month after you’ve planted the seeds: You don’t have vegetables to eat yet, but if you ignore these seedlings and fail to nurture them, you won’t have a harvest in a few months. When you measure MQLs and their overall growth, you ensure that you have enough leads and engaged contacts in your database to fuel future sales qualified leads and customers.

‘6 Months or It Will Never Happen’

We all want quick results. That’s exactly what I wanted when I started a 30-day health challenge and hoped to have abs of steel in less than a month. The truth is, however, results that last and achieve optimal success will take time. Inbound, SEO, and organic digital results are more like a marathon than a 100-meter sprint. When I hear companies say “It’s been six months and we don’t see results; it won’t work, and we are throwing in the towel,” I cry a little. To put in perspective, imagine you hike three-fourths of the way up a mountain but you can’t see the majestic view of the valley yet. Do you turn around or keep going? Of course you keep going! But in business and for companies that have just ventured into marketing in general or are trying inbound for the first time, you have stakeholders, budgets, and much more on the line. This is why it is extremely important to understand that when investing in certain marketing channels, the strategy is long-term but well worth the wait. In the meantime, plenty of digital avenues are available that can supplement your efforts.

‘We’re Acquiring Customers; Therefore, We Win’

Gaining customers is great, especially if you are gaining enough to meet goals. Whether you are a tech company or pro services firm, getting a new customer is something to celebrate. However, acquiring a customer can be less celebratory if you are also losing customers at the same time. In today’s world, where the customer has all the power in the buying decision, you cannot fail to focus on customer retention. If you’re willing to invest in acquiring a customer, you must also invest in keeping them. Otherwise, your initial investment will never truly see ROI.

‘We’ve Had a Blog and It Was a Flop’

Having a blog and having a successful blog are two completely different things. Both LeBron James and I play basketball, but I am not making $30 million this year on my basketball skills. There is a significant difference between doing something and doing something well, even when it comes to marketing.

Successful blogging takes strategy, planning, consistency, and persistence. If you missed one of those keys, I wouldn’t be surprised that your blog flopped. In terms of strategy, you must understand your buyer personas (an often overlooked element for blogging) to know not only the right content to produce, but also the channels you should utilize to bring people to your blog. In addition, strategy is only as good as its execution, which is why planning, consistency, and persistence are equally as important. More often than not, poor execution causes a blog to flop. For example, I’ve seen companies blog daily but not figure out why they aren’t seeing any leads or customers come from their blog. The missing element? Not a single one of their blogs was utilizing CTAs or a way to to capture leads. When they add these strategies, good prospects rain down like cats and dogs.

‘People Know Who We Are and What We Do’

It’s amazing how companies will seek out the help of an agency or ramp up their marketing efforts, but as the story unfolds, they insist that people know who they are and what they do and don’t need to further educate prospects via their website, content, email nurturing, and so on. These organizations are living in a bubble and need to test awareness outside of their inner circle and current client base. Often, we find out that not many people really know what the company does when its product or service is difficult to understand to someone outside of the company, especially when reading materials versus listening to the 20-minute pitch. Companies tell themselves this lie because they have a certain amount of business from those who know them, but they are missing out on the growth potential they could have through better marketing and product education.

‘What We Do Is Complicated’

This lie is quite contrary to the previous lie but is still as prohibitive to success. We often see this lie when working with companies on writing website copy. We distill what they do into short paragraphs that will pass the short attention span of web users, but the client comes back to say that what it does is complicated and we need to add more explanation. People don’t buy complicated, though—they buy things they understand, and usually buy based on the perceived outcomes they will get from whatever they are purchasing. When it comes to businesses that are “complicated,” marketing is only successful if you can make what you do simple and understandable to the outside world. You do not need to give lengthy explanations for people to get what you do and want to buy it.

‘Our SMEs Are Too Busy to Contribute to Content’

In companies where leveraging the expertise of subject matter experts or thought leaders is critical, nothing is more limiting to marketing than those people being “too busy” to contribute. First of all, we live in a world where saying you know something isn’t enough—people expect you to actually show them that you know it. You can do this through content.

In a post on Medium, American author Jeff Rivera emphasizes that there’s no such thing as “busy,” only other priorities. Thus, when your SMEs say they are too busy, they really just have other priorities, which is completely understandable if you haven’t done a great job at convincing them that their expertise in content should be a priority. Marketers must create excitement around the idea of these experts contributing to content, but they also must emphasize that content is a critical component to remaining “experts” today and in future customers’ eyes.

Another lie that companies often tell themselves is that their SMEs aren’t great writers and, therefore, can’t help contribute content. The truth is, however, that SMEs don’t have to be great writers. They just need to give up an hour or so a few times a month to be interviewed by someone who can write.

‘We Don’t Want to Open the Kimono’

This lie, which is often also presented as, “We don’t want to open a can of worms,” or “We don’t want to ruffle any feathers,” often comes up when ideas are presented that are out of the box or push the envelope. In baseball, there’s a reason that players steal bases; sure, it can be a bit risky and may lead to an out, but playing it safe doesn’t win the game. There will inevitably be ideas, strategies, or tactics that not everyone in the company agrees with. They may even be completely new to everyone in the company, which means they may “open the kimono,” but you must be willing to do things that others won’t because these are the actions that will leave a lasting, positive imprint on your marketing success.

‘We Want to Focus Only on Our Core Business or Expertise’

This lie is far too common among companies just venturing into content marketing for the first time. They want to keep content closely aligned to their bread and butter or where they have the most subject matter expertise. This lie can be extremely limiting, however, for a couple reasons. If you only stick to your core business or expertise, you will eventually run out of things to say. You will also quickly bore your audience with the same repeat topics. Variety is the spice of life, and just because you focus content on areas outside of your core business or expertise does not mean you won’t acquire customers from that content. You may be wondering how you can be seen as an expert in content, even if you don’t know a topic end-to-end. First, research gives any writer the ability to be an expert in what they write. Second, interviews can fill the void where research falls short.

‘Our Audience Isn’t on Social Media’

Fun fact: Roughly 79 percent of online users use Facebook, according to 2016 Pew research. This means that if your audience is online, there’s a good chance they are also on Facebook, not to mention other social channels such as LinkedIn and Twitter. Compared with five years ago, I hear this lie much less often, but I do still hear it, especially in regards to Facebook. With Facebook’s ad targeting demographics, however, this lie could seriously be the unicorn of all channels for your company, even if you’re B2B. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for your company to invest in regular social media management, but it is worth exploring further by researching similar brands on social and, at least, testing paid ads to get you started.

‘Nobody Searches This Online; No Need to Do Digital’

It is true that there are some businesses whose audience won’t follow the typical Buyer’s Journey; however, the idea that nobody searches the subject online is farfetched. Even if your buyers aren’t researching at the top of the funnel, they or someone they delegate the work to likely will do online research at some point of their buying decision. It’s almost second nature for people to do a Google search on someone or something when they first hear about it, especially when your prospects have internal conversations about your company. Thus, I don’t know anything else to say except that it is 2017 and you must have a digital presence!

Stop Telling Lies!

Next time your company makes an excuse like these, stop yourself and ask, “Am I telling myself a lie?” Think about how bad the consequences really could be if you stop telling the lie. Likely, they aren’t as horrific as they might seem at first.

Now, it’s your turn! What lies have you heard that you believe are prohibiting marketing success?

Generating leads is a crucial marketing activity. More leads in the pipeline, more chances to make a sale.

But lead generation isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Proof that’s the case are the 63% of marketers who tag lead and traffic generation as their top challenge, according to HubSpot’s 2017 State of Inbound report. The good news, however, is the same study found that 61% of marketers believe their marketing strategy is sound and effective.

This means there are lead generation strategies that work, practices B2B marketers can learn from.

B2B lead generation is a combination of different strategies

Lead generation entails a diverse pool of tactics for it to become effective. And based on research by top marketing organizations (here, here, and here), the following are some of the best lead generation strategies for B2B organizations.

Email marketing

You’d think that spam, bought email lists, and other nefarious tactics such as phishing would somehow make email marketing go extinct. But email marketing, to this day, remains effective because the benefits far outweigh the risks.

Below are compelling email marketing statistics compiled by Campaign Monitor:

• There are 3x more email accounts than Twitter and Facebook accounts combined
• 90% of emails get delivered to the recipient’s inbox, while only 2% of Facebook posts are seen by page fans in their news feed
• An email campaign has an average CTR of 3% compared to tweets with just around 0.5%
• The ROI for email marketing is 3,800% or $38 for every dollar spent
• 72% of people prefer receiving promos via email, whereas only 17% favor social media

Getting started

Lead generation through email marketing generally starts with three things:

• Email marketing goals: Obviously, our goal is lead generation. But email is a preferred customer interaction channel (68% of customers want to be emailed, says a study by consumer experience platform Bluecore), and therefore any marketing goal can be accomplished with it: branding and awareness, sales generation, and even customer retention.
• Automation software: There are many to choose from. Some examples are AWeber, Constant Contact, MailChimp, and GetResponse.
• The email list: This is where you’ll need some work done. Building a list requires time and a good dose of creativity.

For inspiration, let’s look at what Help Scout shares to grow your email subscriber list. Some of these tactics they’ve implemented themselves to grow their own list:

• Identify the best location for your opt-in form: top of the sidebar, bottom of the article, below the footer, feature box, or popup box,
• Create a dedicated resource page
• Create hub pages that address important industry topics and link to several of your best content on the subject + an opt-in box for updates
• Create gated content
• Offer free downloads
• Guest post on related blogs and funnel visitors to a custom landing page

Social media marketing

According to research by IDC, 75% of B2B buyers and C-level executives use social media to make purchasing decisions.

Other statistics pointing to the usefulness of social media for lead generation include:

• 80% of B2B leads generated from social media come from LinkedIn. [Source]
• 52% of companies with a Facebook page saw an increase in the number of customers, while those with a Twitter account saw a 44% increase. [Source]
• Facebook is arguably one of the fastest-growing ad networks, with the number of advertisers more than doubling since 2015. [Source]
• 74% of consumers rely on social media for help with their buying decisions. [Source]

Getting started

Hootsuite presents several ways to use social media for lead generation:

• Share links to gated content
• Run contests
• Use social media advertising
• Use Facebook’s custom tabs
• Host a webinar, Hangout, or live video
• Engage in social selling, which, according to HubSpot, “is when salespeople use social media to interact directly with their prospects”

GetResponse offers some more tips:

• Choose the right social media platform
• Build a strong network (i.e., connect with industry leaders, follow new connections and prospects on Twitter or Facebook)
• Include CTAs in your profiles
• Bring lead magnets (or “ethical bribes”) into your social media posts
• Share your content
• Use paid ads
• Monitor and measure your social media performance

Search engine optimization (SEO)

According to search engine stats compiled by Smart Insights, over 6 billion searches are made each day around the world, with Google taking the lion’s share at 77%. That’s a lot of searches, which means the search engines continue to play a huge role in customers’ search for information online.

In fact, a whopping 93% of B2B buying decisions start with an internet search.

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But that’s not all the SEO statistics we have for lead generation. Here are some more compiled by IMPACT:

• 57% of B2B marketers believe SEO has the greatest impact on lead generation
• Organic search leads have an average 14.6% close rate, whereas outbound marketing leads only close at an average 1.7%
• The first listing on Google’s organic search results generate 33% of clicks
• High spenders are likely to use organic search for more information on a product or service

Getting started

Search marketing is not a standalone marketing tactic. To generate B2B leads via SEO, employ a strategy that combines good content, an active social media presence, good website design, and conversion rate optimization.

Content marketing

Content is the reason the internet came to be, and today, B2B marketers use content to engage customers and prospects at all stages of the buying cycle.

Some statistics about content marketing for lead generation:

• 80% of B2B marketers plan to use content marketing for lead generation and 66% for lead nurturing. [Source]
• Content marketing’s top three goals are lead generation (59%), market education (43%), and brand awareness (40%). [Source]
• Long-form posts generate 9x more leads than short forms. [Source]
• Yearly site traffic growth is 7.8x higher for marketers with a defined content marketing strategy than their counterparts who don’t have one. [Source]

Getting started

Neil Patel shares five ideas on how to generate leads via content marketing:

• Ebooks. Write an ebook to educate potential leads, show what you know, and collect your readers’ email addresses
• Webinars. A webinar’s success hinges on whether you’re offering anything of real value. As such, ask questions on the signup page so you have a better understanding of what participants expect from the activity
• Real-life events. Actual face-to-face events bridge the gap between online and offline, and lets you interact with potential leads in a way that’s not possible via email or on social media
• Guides and white papers. Create guides and white papers that address the issues and pain points potential customers experience at various stages of the buying journey
• Case studies. Write customer case studies to showcase how your product/service solves customer problems

B2B credit platform Apruve adds several more:

• Expert blogging. Well-researched content that offers a deep dive into the industry’s most pressing questions solidifies your role as an expert
• Email courses. Offer free but valuable email courses to site visitors who opt into your email list
• Templates or spreadsheets. Save businesses time and energy by providing templates, spreadsheets, illustrated guides and other tools that help simplify their processes
• Help or explainer videos. Create entertaining videos to answer consumer questions, or guide users on how your product/service works

Start generating leads today

A lead generation strategy that works for one company may not work in exactly the same way for another, and therefore may require a good deal of testing, experimenting, and tweaking. If you’re still strategizing for lead generation, remember that a combination of the strategies that work for other B2B marketing organizations should be a good place to start.

Which B2B lead generation strategies have so far brought you the most success?

Let’s face it. Planning and budgeting are not marketing’s favorite activity. The process is like trying to herd cats. There’s no defined process, so you attend mind-numbing meetings and review endless and meaningless spreadsheets and PowerPoints. Through it all, you have no idea what this has to do with your job and once the process is done and the plan disappears never to be seen again, you don’t care. Welcome to planning season.

Fortunately, there is a better way – Have marketing operations (MO) lead the process. When this happens, the benefits to the CMO, marketing and sales are impressive.

A new strategic planning, budgeting, and management model (SPB&M)

It’s fascinating to see the marketing operations organization assume more and more responsibility. In today’s more sophisticated marketing departments, one of those areas is strategic planning and budgeting, but with a significant twist. The twist is rather than treating planning and budgeting as a singular annual event, it’s treated as an ongoing process throughout the year. The SPB&M model provides an overview of this new process.

The SPB&M model includes two main phases: planning and managing. This is an important distinction of the SPB&M process. It represents strategic planning, budgeting, and management as a continuous process of improvement, not a one and done effort. Planning includes three steps:

1. Facilitate alignment
2. Mediate pro forma consensus
3. Broker shared KPIs and publish plan.

The use of facilitate, mediate, and broker as verbs is both intentional and descriptive of the role of the MO executive in this process. It also implies a strong process orientation. The managing aspect encompasses two further steps:

4. Track and measure
5. Responsive adjustment and optimization.

This is where the MO leader shines. After all, the MO team owns all the performance data! While not a linear step in the model, a key element is Lead and Manage Change. This is such a critical driver of success, we have chosen to call it out separately and have it appear in every step of the model. It’s represented by the horizontal bar across the bottom of the model.

Benefits to the CMO, the marketing organization, and the sales organization

Benefits for the CMO

“For me, having my MO executive lead a formal SPB&M process, I now enjoy increased credibility as a business executive, not just as a marketing leader. Because of the increased visibility, alignment and transparency the process drives, I have more confidence in working with the executive team. It’s clear how I am accountable and how I am doing with that accountability.”

The words most used by CMOs in describing how they benefit from a MO-led planning and budgeting process include credibility, confidence, visibility, and alignment. The SPB&M process contributes to securing the CMO as an important member of the strategic conversation around annual planning. It helps the CMO to build a ‘win together, lose together’ culture because it aligns marketing goals to company and sales goals. The process also drives visibility, transparency, and accountability to complementary KPIs.

Benefits for the marketing team

“Since we’ve adopted a more formal SPB&M process, I finally understand the role we (the marketing team) play in the annual planning and budgeting process. More importantly, I now understand how what we do directly affects sales and company performance. I totally get what accountability means for me and my team.”

For the marketing team as a whole, the SPB&M process drives line of sight to accountability and confidence. By defining the role of marketing in the planning process, marketing becomes a collaborator with sales and finance to meet organizational goals. Alignment between marketing, sales, and finance is greatly improved and as a result, marketing feels more integrated into the company. This builds confidence and a sense of working as a team.

Benefits for the sales team

“We see a difference in how marketing is working with us. Since they were a part of the annual planning process, they understand what we need to achieve and are coming to the table as a partner. Never thought I would see that!”

When marketing operations leads the SPB&M process, benefits to sales include gaining an unexpected partner in revenue and quicker course corrections during the year. As marketing operations drives the SPB&M process, they track and measure all marketing-related KPIs that affect sales performance. They hold marketing accountable for those KPIs and are able to help facilitate quick course corrections. This proactive responsiveness and ability to make data-based decisions ensures marketing is tightly aligned with sales around goal achievement.

Career opportunity for the marketing operations leader

Successfully running a SPB&M practice enhances the career opportunities of the MO leader. As more companies realize marketing can and should be a growth driver in the organization, executives are looking for those marketing operations executives who have a proven track record for operationalizing a growth engine.

Taking more of an investment portfolio perspective to the operations of marketing, the marketing ops leader who can demonstrate a growth agenda including broad expertise in planning, budgeting and optimizing operations, will have a long and full career.

Sales is a tough nut to crack. But, when you are on the line, you need to be aware of the tips and tricks that will help you close a deal. While there are certain traits that a salesperson needs to be born with, there are many more skills that he or she can learn, in order to be better at selling. Here are a few tips which budding sales professionals can use:

Sell until you are convinced the customer doesn’t need the product

They say that the best salespeople can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. While you may not need to tackle this particular challenge, you are sure to face multiple problems of your own. Prospective customers always make excuses to not buy the product. The most successful salespeople are always the ones who are the most perseverant.

Understand why the prospect is saying “No”. Unless you are yourself convinced with the prospect’s reasoning, there will always be room to turn these opinions around.

Give prospective customers time to take a decision

Many salespeople are often extremely hasty and they end up giving customers an ultimatum. From “The sale is about to end” to “Discounts are only applicable on these products”, salespeople use various tactics to push their prospects to make a purchase.

While these techniques may work sometimes, most times they don’t. Many customers feel cornered in such situations and they respond by completely shutting the company and the salesperson out.

Instead, tell the prospect that you will reach out to them in a few days time. Follow through with this. Giving prospective customers some breathing space might be the one thing that tilts the game in your direction.

Ask questions

Most salespeople fail to understand the true purpose of making a sale – providing a solution to the prospect’s problem. But, when you are unaware of the problem your prospect has, you will hardly be qualified or equipped to provide a solution to it.

Talk to your prospect before launching into your sales pitch. Understand their queries and concerns. Be accepting of their wants and expectations. Finally, address all these issues in your sales pitch. Customers tend to respond more favorably to salespeople who genuinely care about their needs.

Request references

The prospective customer you pitch to may not always make a purchase. But this isn’t the end of the line. One of the best ways for salespeople to get leads is through their existing customers and their prospects.

Request your prospects to suggest customers. You might be surprised to see that many will oblige. Once you get these leads, waste no time in contacting them. Inform your leads where you got their contact details from. This will help you establish trust and an open line of communication.

Following these few tips can definitely help salespeople hone their skills. It will also make them more approachable and trustworthy in the eyes of their prospective customers.

The modern internet is viewed in some circles as a corporate corruption of the principles that the platform was founded on. Openness and freedom have given way to censorship and restriction. The ongoing debate about Net Neutrality is just one example of this existential crisis. To some, Bitcoin, the blockchain based cryptocurrency, was a return to those early principles. As the transactions are stored on the blockchain — a peer to peer register of historical transactions — in theory it is incorruptible and secure, and free from the interference (and fees) of middlemen. Bitcoin’s phenomenal success has been a surprise...

Read the full article: What Is a Bitcoin Fork and What Happens Afterwards?

• Zunum Aero's will build a 12-seat hybrid-to-electric jet.
• It will hit the market in 2022.
• Zunum's jet will have a range of 700 miles.
• Zunum is backed by JetBlue Technology Ventures and Boeing HorizonX.

On Thursday, electric aircraft start-up Zunum Aero announced its plans to introduce a 12-seat hybrid-to-electric jet by 2022.

"With this announcement, we are coming out and saying our initial product will be a nine to 12 seat airplane," Zunum CTO, Matt Knapp told Business Insider in an interview. "It flies at about 300 mph and is really optimized for regional flights."

That means everything from short "puddle jumper" flights to longer routes of as much as 700 miles between cities such Boston and Washington D.C, Knapp said.

In April, the three-year-old company made news by earning financial backing from Boeing HorizonX fund and JetBlue Technology Ventures.

"We believe that the regional transportation industry is ripe for disruption and we're excited to support Zunum and its efforts to help introduce a new era of aviation," JetBlue Technology Ventures president Bonny Simi said in a statement.

Zunum believes its aircraft will be able to cut door-to-door travels on trips of less than 1,000 miles by more than half. For instance, the company claims a trip from San Jose, California to Los Angeles could be completed in just 2 hours and 15 minutes door-to-door instead of the four hours and 40 minutes it takes now.

According to Knapp, Zunum will be able to do this by taking advantage of a network of more than 5,000 secondary and general aviation airports around the country. Many of these airports have strict noise and pollution requirements that keep larger conventional aircraft out. However, Zunum's hybrid-electric propulsion system runs virtually silents and with very low emissions. As a result, passengers avoid the long drive to major hubs as well as the long wait times associated with a trip to those airports.

Later on, the company will release a larger 30 to 50 seat jet that will be able to serve larger markets and make longer flights.

Hybrid-to-electric flying

Zunum's upcoming jet won't be a pure electric aircraft when it arrives in 2022, but one day it could transform into one, Knapp told us.

That's because Zunum's jet will arrive initially as a hybrid-electric aircraft. The plane's serial hybrid system will feature both an internal combustion generator as well as multiple lithium-ion battery packs.

Knapp believes this setup will not only help allay the range anxiety that has plagued road-going electric vehicles but also provide operational flexibility for owners. Operators will be able to adjust the size and number of the plane's onboard battery packs to optimize performance. In some instances, less battery and more generator will be called upon, while ultra-short range flights could be made without a generator at all.

Zunum's customizable propulsion system takes into account the ever-changing tech landscape. Since the aircraft are designed to have a service life of as much as three decades, the company incorporated the possibility that major advancements in technology may be around the corner. As a result, the plane's battery packs can be easily swapped out for more advanced units and its generator can be removed when advanced battery tech no longer requires its services.

Even though the Kirkland, Washington-based company has a plan in place to go at it on its own if necessary, it is currently in talks with partners to help build and assemble the aircraft.

In addition, Knapp believes Zunum also has a future as a technology exporter with the possibility that its propulsion system could be licensed to other domestic and international airplane makers looking to enter the space.

SEE ALSO: Here's a first look at the New England Patriots' Boeing 767 private jet

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NOW WATCH: Why you can't fly a plane to space

This week’s guest post was authored by Ed Horne (white cap in the video) who completed a Gibraltar Strait swim with swim partner Michael Fabray in June 2017.

Well, the goal was simple . . . I wanted to join the list of swimmers who have swum from Europe to Africa across the Gibraltar Straits, joining the ranks of such renowned swimmers as Colin Hill (founder of Chillswim), Simon Murie (founder of Swimtrek) and, of course, Total Immersion founder, Terry Laughlin, who completed the swim with two TI compadres—Lennart Larsson of Sweden and Tommi Patilla of Finland—in October 2013.

But, as I lay there in my hospital bed on 26 September 2015 only 24 hours after receiving a ceramic replacement left hip (the original had atrophied following a skiing accident in March 2012), the plan was going to be a little more complicated!

By the end of March 2016, I had confirmed my slot for the swim for late June 2017 and had worked with a personal trainer to generally improve my physical well-being including walking without a limp and strengthening my core. I had got back into the pool and could reasonably swim for 60-90 minutes. With 15 months to go, all I had to do now was:

• Jettison the wetsuit in open water;
• Improve my base swim speed and stroke efficiency; and
• Get plenty of sea swimming experience.

During this time, I was also guided by a great piece of advice from Professor Greg White, an elite performance coach, who amongst his many ‘claims to fame’ coached the English comedian, David Walliams, to swim both the English Channel and the length of the River Thames for charity. Greg’s advice was simple: ‘Make sure you enjoy the process, because you cannot predict what will happen on the day’!

Jettisoning the wetsuit was relatively easy; I put two river swim events on the calendar, a 6K/3.7mi swim in late July 2016 and a 10K/6.2mi swim in September. As practice, I swam without a wetsuit both in a local lake and, a couple of times, in Dover Harbour with the (soon to be) Channel swimmers.

Improving my base swim speed and stroke efficiency was the key to completing the swim. This brought me into contact with Tracey Baumann, a very experienced Total Immersion teacher and Master Coach. Tracey has a cadre of excellent open water swimmers who this year alone have done a 20-hour English Channel swim, a 2-person English Channel relay and a Jersey to France solo swim. I found myself in exalted company.

Over a series of one to one lessons, Tracey managed to (i) adjust my head position, (ii) commence my breathing rotation earlier, (iii) shorten and soften my hand entry position, (iv) steepen my arm entry ahead of the catch, (v) correct my over-rotation and (vi) introduce me to the 2-Beat kick! In just four months, she remodelled my stroke, improved my stroke efficiency (as measured by stroke count in a 25m pool) by 15%, and my base swim speed had improved by 10%. This ‘old dog’ had clearly learned new tricks.

During this period, my personal trainer continued to work principally on shoulder strength, flexibility, and core development.

The final piece of the jigsaw was to increase my sea swimming experience. With my window booked for the end of June 2017, I would only have six possible opportunities to get into the sea, knowing that, in early May, the temperature would be no more than 53 degrees. So, during the winter, I joined the cold-water enthusiasts/lunatics at Tooting Bec Lido in South London and swam outdoors unheated throughout the winter. The temperature in January dropped as low as 35F. The endorphin buzz and general health benefits from this were enormous and I will continue this practice in future years. Anyway, after sea swims of 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours and 5 hours on successive weekends all in sub-60 degree water, I tapered back down to 2 hours for the weekend before we flew out to Spain.

On the morning of the swim, I could confidently look at myself in the mirror and happily confirm two things:

• I was as well prepared as I could possibly be; and
• Whatever happened, I had enjoyed the process.

I hope that you enjoy the youTube video beautifully compiled by my wife and daughter for me. It was a truly memorable and in many ways life-changing event for me. I had proved to myself that I could make my own wishes come true both by planning properly and, as importantly, executing on that plan.

I cannot thank Jerome Sawyers (personal trainer), Tracey Baumann (Total Immersion teacher) and Emma France (Channel Training co-ordinator) enough for their help in allowing me to realise my goal.

Last but not least, I must mention my good friend and swimming partner, Michael Fabray. We intuitively worked as a team throughout the swim whilst spurring each other on. A little testosterone in the water on the day clearly increased the intensity and enabled us to swim out through the incoming tide for the first hour. Indeed, I am convinced that it was this close partnership that enabled us to complete the swim in a very respectable time. I think for both of us it was a shared experience that neither of us will ever forget.

I am genuinely not sure what is next but . . . I know that there will be a next!

 

 

The post Guest Post: A goal without a plan is just a wish! appeared first on Total Immersion.

A new method for capturing radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is cheaper and more effective than current methods, a potential boon for the energy industry, according to new research published in the journal Nature Communications.

What Is a Distributed Ledger?

Blockchain has gotten a lot of attention recently thanks largely to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but distributed ledgers have not received the same level of focus.

In fact, there appears to be a great deal of confusion on the differences between the two. And then we add Bitcoin to the mix, and the situation gets even more muddled. But as we'll explain below, distributed ledger technology is actually relatively easy to understand.

A distributed ledger is simply a database that exists across several locations or among multiple participants. Most companies use a centralized database that exists in a fixed location. But a distributed ledger removes third parties from the process, which makes them quite attractive.

Blockchain vs. Distributed Ledger

Think of blockchain and distributed ledger in the same way you might think of Kleenex and facial tissues. The former is a type of the latter, but it has become so popular that it becomes engrained in people's minds as what the product actually is.

Blockchain tech is essentially a shared database filled with entries that must be confirmed and encrypted. An easy way to understand it is as a type of highly secure and verified shared Google Document, in which each entry in the sheet depends on a logical relationship to all its predecessors.

The name blockchain refers to the "blocks" that get added to the chain of transaction records. To facilitate this, the blockchain uses a cryptographic signatures called a hash.

Advantages of Using a Distributed Ledger Like Blockchain

Blockchain tech offers a way to securely and efficiently create a tamper-proof log of sensitive activity (anything from international money transfers to shareholder records). The conceptual framework and underlying code of blockchain is useful for a several financial processes because of the potential it has to give companies a secure, digital alternative to banking processes that are often bureaucratic, time-consuming, paper-heavy, and expensive.

Distributed ledgers such as blockchain are exceedingly useful for financial transactions because they cut down on operational inefficiencies (which ultimately saves money). They also provide greater security due to their decentralized nature, as well as the fact that the ledgers are immutable.

We've laid out dozens of use cases for blockchain here.

Distributed Ledger Technology Beyond Blockchain

Blockchain may be the most widely-known distributed ledger technology (DLT), but the future of DLTs will depend on collaborative efforts. James Wallis, Vice President of Blockchain Markets and Engagements for IBM, told the Association for Financial Professionals that "you'll see uses for DLT that you can’t even think of today" but that this will involve "a level of sharing that hasn’t really existed before."

Should DLTs become standard, they could revolutionize "Know Your Customer (KYC)," the process through which a business identifies and verifies the identity of its clients. Broader identity management would also become much simpler.

More to Learn

The technological potential of distributed ledgers, specifically blockchain, is immense, and those uses will only grow with time. That's why BI Intelligence has put together two detailed reports on the blockchain: The Blockchain in the IoT Report and The Blockchain in Banking Report.

To get the full reports, subscribe to an All-Access pass to BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports. As an added bonus, you'll also gain access to all future reports and daily newsletters to ensure you stay ahead of the curve and benefit personally and professionally. >> Learn More Now

You can also purchase and download the full reports from our research store: 

                            >> Blockchain in the IoT

                            >> Blockchain in Banking

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Canada’s trade picture continued to deteriorate in August as exports dropped for a third straight month and the deficit unexpectedly widened.

The trade deficit hit $3.4 billion, the fifth-highest on record, from $3 billion a month earlier (estimates were for a $2.6 billion trade gap). Exports fell 1 per cent and are down 11 per cent since hitting a record in May. Imports were little changed, but are down 6.1 per cent in two months.

Key takeaways

Exports are suffering one of their biggest tumbles ever over the past three months after touching records. That may fuel concern the nation’s currency has been accelerating too quickly. Canada’s dollar has advanced about 7 per cent over the past six months.

The slumping trade performance also means Canada’s expansion is losing a major engine in the second half of the year, reinforcing expectations its growth rate is poised to slow from levels over the past year rarely seen in the past couple of decades. Economists had been anticipating annualized growth of about 2.5 per cent in the third quarter, from 4.5 per cent in the second quarter.

Market reaction

The report reinforces expectations the Bank of Canada — which has been signaling it’s concern about the stronger Canadian dollar — won’t move ahead with another interest rate increase at a rate decision later this month.

The Canadian dollar dropped 0.5 per cent to $1.2539 per U.S. dollar at 9:54 a.m. in Toronto, and is down 3.4 per cent since touching a two-year high on Sept. 11. Swaps trading suggests investors are pricing in less than a 20 per cent chance of a rate increase at the Bank of Canada’s Oct. 25 decision.

What economists say

Nick Exarhos, CIBC Economics: “After a rough two months, it got uglier for Canadian exports in August…. That supports our call for a 2 per cent or so growth pace for the third quarter, and for the Bank of Canada’s ‘monitoring’ of the economy to translate into a pause in interest rate hikes.”

Robert Kavcic, BMO Capital Markets: “In case there was any doubt that peak Canadian growth is behind us, this report all but cements the case.”

Other details

In volume terms, exports declined 1.9 per cent and have fallen for three consecutive months for the first time since 2011. Real imports fell 0.2 per cent.

Non-energy exports are down for the third month in a row, dropping 2.8 per cent from a year earlier. Auto plant shutdowns that have been longer than usual continue to play a role, with shipments of motor vehicles down 0.5 per cent.

It’s only the second time in the last three decades that exports have declined by more than 10 per cent in three months outside of a recession.

Energy products, precious metals, and motor vehicle exports — in that order — are the three biggest drivers of the three-month slump. Electronic and electrical equipment exports (2.5 per cent) and energy production (1.5 per cent) led gainers in August.

Bloomberg

Many digital publishers are struggling to scrape by in an era when banner ads trade for pennies and social networks control distribution.

Maybe it's time for magazines to make a comeback? 

That's been the bet at Issuu, a company that has been helping entreprenuers publish digital magazines for over a decade. Now Issuu is rolling out a new product via which these publishers can charge readers for digital subscriptions.

According to Issuu CEO Joe Hyrkin, there are now 35 million indy publications using Issuu's free tools, which let creators put togther slick magazines on niche topics ranging from craft brewing to knitting to cycling. 

In aggregate, these 'digi-zines' reach 100 million unique readers each a month globally who consume close to a billion pages of content, Hyrkin said. Issuu pulls in revenue from selling some publishers premium tools and services.

To date, Issuu publications could make money from selling ads or weaving e-commerce into their magazines. But now, they can sell individual issues or monthly subscriptions at the price of their chosing. 

You might ask, why the magazine format? Wasn't the rise of the blogosphere supposed to enable these kind of narrow publishers?

"I think its an indictment of that system, meaning digital ads, programmatic," said Hyrkin. "Blogs are often one page, and are random in terms of cadence. Consumers don’t know when or where content is coming from."

Meanwhile, he argues that in a news feed, sea-of-headlines digital media era, magazine-style packaging still has an appeal.

"A collection, a curated body of work is much more interesting," said Hyrkin. "And five years ago, if you wanted to do a publication like this, you had to get get blessed by [legendary Vogue editor] Anna Wintour. Now, if you are a fashion publisher today, you have access to a set of digital tools to put together a world class digital publication."

For example, one breakout Issuu publication is Sweet Paul, a Brooklyn-based food and crafting magazine that was born out of a blog founded in 2007 by Paul Lowe, a traditional publishing veteran, and his partner Paul Vitale.

Started as a side project, it evolved into a full time job for both Pauls , and eventually led to a deal to print and distribute copies of the digital magazine with the retailer Anthropologie.

"We've been building an audience that is young and tech savvy," said Vitale. And the Issuu platform provides "the ability to have so much control."

"We’ve lost a lot of big magazines over the past couple of years," he added. "I think there’s a lot of room for magazines like ours. You can have a really small team. And you don’t have to lay people off because we lost an ad."

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NOW WATCH: The 5 best hidden features from the latest iPhone update

What is a “smart” society? While flights of imagination from science-fiction writers, filmmakers, and techno-futurists involve things like flying cars and teleportation, in practice smart technology is making inroads in a piecemeal fashion, often in rather banal circumstances. In Chicago, for example, predictive analytics is improving health inspections schedules in restaurants, while in Boston city officials are collaborating with Waze, the traffic navigation app company, combining its data with inputs from street cameras and sensors to improve road conditions across the city. A city-state such as Singapore has a more holistic idea of a “smart nation,” where the vision includes initiatives from self-driving vehicles to cashless and contactless payments, robotics and assistive technologies, data-empowered urban environments, and technology-enabled homes.

More broadly, we might define a smart society as one where digital technology, thoughtfully deployed by governments, can improve on three broad outcomes: the well-being of citizens, the strength of the economy, and the effectiveness of institutions.

The potential for technologies to enable smart societies is rising. For example, internet-of-things sensor applications are envisioned to deliver a wide range of services, from smart water to industrial controls to e-health. The market for smart technologies is predicted to be worth up to $1.6 trillion by 2020, and $3.5 trillion by 2026. Surely, given the size of the opportunity, increasing interest among governments and policy makers, and the explosion of relevant technologies, we can start to understand what smart societies are  and establish standards and ideals to aim for.

The Fletcher School at Tufts University and Microsoft Digital have launched an initiative to explore this issue, with several questions as the guiding framework:

1. What are smart societies, and what are their core components?
2. Are there countries that might offer realistic models for such societies?
3. Are there patterns of different approaches to smartness reflecting different contexts, histories and societal priorities?
4. What are the implications for policy makers, particularly as they consider digital technology — whose applications are growing at an accelerated pace — as a lever for getting to smartness?

To answer these questions, we began with a simple premise: Neither “smartness” nor the technology to be deployed is the end goal. A smart society ought to be defined by a framework that is based on outcomes. Its building blocks are what governments and policy makers aim to provide for their citizens. The technology is just a way to get there.

The next step was to identify potential models for smart societies.  A natural group of countries to use as role models was the Digital 5, or D5, nations, representing the most digitally advanced governments in the world.  The group comprises Estonia, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and the UK.  Their objective, as set out by the D5 charter, is to provide the best digital public services and to share practices across these high-performing digital governments. There is a plan to admit more countries to this group as it establishes practices that can benefit countries from across the world.

To set an aspirational but realistic target, we created a benchmark that combines the best attributes of these advanced digital nations. Our hope is that it serves several purposes. First, it sets a standard for policy makers based on what has been demonstrated to be feasible by at least one of the D5 nations. Second, with the benchmark as a composite, no single nation achieves it and yet each of the five countries’ progress toward the ideal can be assessed in terms of performance against the benchmark. If any country intends to close a gap, it can turn to the others to learn about best practices and import knowledge that could help it get to the benchmark. The benchmark, therefore, is a tool for policy makers, technology innovators, and others to evaluate progress and prioritize the gaps, thus enabling a dialogue among the key actors and a plan for action.

Methodology

We collected data on the D5 countries on over 240 different indicators, covering three major areas: citizens and their well-being, the economy, and the state of institutions. Over 40 data sources were used, including public and proprietary databases. Each country was given a score for its performance on each indicator; we used the best score for each indicator to create the Smart Societies Benchmark. Given the large number of indicators analyzed, we organized them so that each indicator could be classified under one of 12 broad benchmark components. These broad components were:

• Citizens/People Components: the four components in this category are:
  • inclusivity,
  • environment and quality of life,
  • state of talent and the human condition,
  • talent development.
• Economy Components: the four components in this category are:
  • global connectedness,
  • economic robustness,
  • entrepreneurial ecosystem,
  • innovation capacity.
• Institutions Components: the four components in this category are:
  • freedoms offline and online,
  • trust,
  • safety and security,
  • public services.

Each component is made up of different clusters of indicators. As an example, consider the first component listed above: inclusivity. The score assigned to this component is an aggregate of scores earned by different clusters of inclusion-related indicators; the clusters that make up inclusivity are labor market inclusion, economic mobility, diversity and acceptance, and policies that promote inclusion. In turn, the “policies that promote inclusion” cluster includes indicators such as data on policies, laws, and regulations that promote access for marginalized or disadvantaged groups. As observed above, each D5 country gets a score along each indicator. Thus, the benchmark score for the Inclusivity component is the aggregate of the top scores for each  indicator within this broad benchmark component. The scores for each component were normalized.

Finally, each of the D5 countries was scored along these indicators, and the resulting country score was compared with the benchmark to evaluate each country’s progress and to derive patterns and differences in priorities. Collectively, the D5 nations serve two important purposes for our project: They give us a way to construct a global benchmark that can be used to assess D5 nations and other countries, and they each offer a case study and model for what smart can look like.

The outcomes of this exercise are shown in the exhibits below. Higher scores along each of the 12 components are represented by the distance from the center. The line connecting each country’s component scores across all 12 components is its “Smart Society Footprint.”

 

There are several implications that flow from this analysis.

• The D5 nations constitute an extraordinary group, with the world’s most digitally advanced governments, and collectively they help us define a global benchmark for a smart society. The benchmark is aspirational and yet feasible.
• The D5 nations share several characteristics, even as they offer role models for different types of smart societies. Each has a democratically elected government that plays an active role in offering services to its citizenry. Each is a highly evolved digital player. As reported in our recent HBR article “60 Countries’ Digital Competitiveness, Indexed,” each scored highly on our Digital Evolution Index; with the exception of South Korea, each is also in a state of high digital momentum. Yet each also has a unique context.

Consider some of the key differences:

• Estonia is an outlier. It is a small country, formed out of the breakup of the Soviet Union. It used technology to build out its government services and embrace a market economy.
• Despite their historical associations, the UK and New Zealand are at extreme ends of the connectivity spectrum. The UK is often identified as a global hub (a position that is going to be tested during the Brexit process), with strong global economic and political connections; New Zealand is geographically distant from much of the economic and political centers of the world, and is used to operating at the periphery of the global economy.
• Both Israel and South Korea have escaped the “middle-income trap”, successfully transitioning from middle-income to high-income status – a relatively rare feat. They both are key players in the global economy today, have great geopolitical significance, and are strong U.S. allies. Israel is mostly surrounded by hostile neighbors in a politically tense region. South Korea resides in a different politically tense region, in North Asia, with an active threat of conflict with its nuclear-armed neighbor, North Korea, and the added tensions created by China’s growing dominance.

We asked Colin MacDonald, Chair of the D5 and the New Zealand’s Government Chief Digital Officer, about the differences between the D5 countries. He said: “Although we all bring a diverse range of perspectives, the D5 allows us to leverage the knowledge and experience of our smartest people, creating faster and more efficient digital governments for our citizens. We do this through collaboration and sharing. We all learn from one another, and adopt the solutions that will work in our own countries. Ultimately, this makes us all stronger as digital nations.”

The Smart Societies Footprint analysis reveals that each D5 nation is an archetype of a distinct model of “smartness,” which reflects a combination of the country’s context and priorities. In a world with limited resources, the ability to prioritize and identify areas of focus and particular form of smartness that fits with each country’s circumstances can prove to be essential. Here are some of the distinct patterns, which offer models for other countries to use.

Strong Institutions Footprint: Estonia’s footprint reveals its initial priorities on establishing strong institutions, particularly in its commitment to assuring post-Soviet era freedoms to its citizens. Its e-solutions have resulted in high levels of government transparency and easy access to data and public services. Its priorities on creating an open and decentralized system that links multiple digital applications and services are core to how it accomplished these outcomes. Its key gap areas as revealed by its distance from the benchmark are in establishing greater connectedness and robustness of its economy. Given its heavy investment in digital infrastructure, the government can leverage this foundation to narrow the gaps.

Strong Innovation Footprint: Israel demonstrates strength in the area of innovation, while its greatest opportunities for closing gaps are in the area of strengthening institutions. In addition to the technology-related innovations that are a product of Israel’s investment in its national security infrastructure, a major government plan, the Digital Israel initiative, with its emphasis on high-speed internet connectivity, has been a boon for businesses looking to operate online.  The country can utilize the same technological platforms for improving public services and improving the state of interaction between the government and its people – which our analysis has identified as being among the gaps that need to be narrowed.

Strong Well-Being Footprint: New Zealand offers a case study in strengths in the components that ensure well-being of a country’s people, including the environment and quality of life, inclusivity, and the state of its talent base. Here, policy makers view digital government as one where digital technology is a tool for  governments to interact with its “customers” — citizens and businesses — so that they can experience public services in a seamless, integrated, and trusted manner. Given its physical distance from much of the world, New Zealand has some inherent challenges in narrowing the gap in its global connectedness; its investment in a seamless digital ecosystem to enhance the well-being of its people and the quality of its institutions indicates a focus on areas where it can compensate for its physical distance, and also attract and retain talent to narrow the gaps in the areas of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Strong Public Services Footprint: South Korea has utilized a digital initiative, Government 3.0, to provide personalized public services. One of the key areas where the government needs to narrow the gap is in the robustness of the economy and the quality of its institutions. The Government 3.0 initiative is potentially a powerful lever in advancing such an objective through several means: ensuring greater transparency and providing more data on the workings of public agencies, encouraging more cross-agency collaborations, and helping people find jobs and economic opportunities more readily.

Strong Economy Footprint: Historically, the UK has been one of the world’s most significant economies. It is the fifth largest in terms of GDP, and is one of the most globally connected of all major economies. It has historically been the preeminent hub for global finance because of a combination of history, geography, and its strengths in digital technologies. As one of the authors of this article (Chakravorti) has observed earlier in HBR, “Would a Hard Brexit Cripple the EU’s Digital Economy?” the UK is a star performer among EU digital economies. These strengths show in the benchmarking analyses above. The conundrum for the UK is that, with Brexit, it runs the risk of diminishing its economic strengths. Already, since the Brexit referendum, it has been the worst-performing advanced economy in terms of growth; its currency has lost more than 13% of its value against the dollar because of the uncertainties caused by Brexit. In order to compensate for the turbulence ahead for the economy, it is essential for the government to use tools at its disposal to shore up the other aspects of society. Here the UK’s Government Transformation Strategy 2017-2020 and “Government as a Platform” approaches help provide first-rate digital services to grow talent, improve workplace conditions, and help transformations through shared platforms and data.

These case studies suggest that before we can take advantage of the ways in which smart technology can strengthen economies, make institutions more effective, and improve citizens’ well-being, we need to bring the idea of a “smart society” down to earth, defining it in ways that are practical, actionable, and focused on outcomes. Benchmarking can help governments better understand their current capabilities.

Of course, it’s quite possible that one day all smart societies will be traversed by flying cars and lighted by streetlights that communicate with each other. In the meantime, we can get societies to be a whole lot smarter by making better use of the technology we have at hand. As the footprints of the world’s most digitally advanced governments indicate, even the best-positioned nations have some gaps to close. And those gaps, and the technologies to close them, vary according to every country’s unique context and priorities.

The authors are grateful to James Bolitho, Jessica Sashihara, Caroline Troein and Bradley Waddell from The Fletcher School, Russell Craig, Bruce Johnson, Rimes Mortimer, Brigitte Reuland, Ramesh Siva and Tyson Storch from Microsoft Digital, Emma MacDonald, Tim Occleshaw and Graeme Osborne from the NZ Government, and Colin MacDonald, Chair of the D5, for their valuable inputs, advice and contributions to the analyses.

Knowing how to create an emotionally compelling site that draws in users by understanding their personalities and psychology can increase your revenue drastically.

Understanding Emotional Design

In order to understand the customer journey to your website, you have to learn a bit of biology.

The biology

Neurotransmitters can help us understand how design triggers emotion in the human brain. There are two hormones released when we experience emotions:

• Dopamine: this is released when experiencing positive emotions. It’s frequently triggered on anticipation of reward. It gives people energy, gets people feeling curious, and inspires movement toward a goal. Overall, it’s an energizer.
• Cortisol: this is released when experiencing negative emotions. Controlled by your sympathetic nervous systems, it’s produced when you experience stress. Mostly, it inspires threat avoidance.

(Note: A third hormone, serotonin, has a role in learned associations, but that topic is for another day.)

Key concepts

The first step to understanding emotional website design is best expressed by Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi: “Reason leads to conclusions, emotion leads to action.”

The trick is to assume that everyone acts in their best interests. People do things that make them feel proud and that help them avoid embarrassment. Reason is not a guidepost.

This suggests people are much more likely to make a purchase based off of emotion rather than cost-benefit analysis. In behavior science, though, the motivation is much less of the focus.

Most of the time, you don’t need to know a customer’s motivation; you just need to know what works from real-world examples.

What are core motivators?

In 1943, Abraham Maslow’s released a Psychological Review paper that introduced a pyramid-shaped model for the hierarchical nature of human motivation.

What is now known as Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs (a.k.a. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs) is a tool you can use to rank the motivations of your audience, though many argue it needs some updating.

What each level means

The Lower Levels

• Physiological: when a person feels the need to survive; the most basic instinct.
• Self-protection: when a person desires safety and security. Threat avoidance is dominant here, but no more.
• Social affiliation: when a person has the urge to connect with people. It’s very easy to motivate people to do this. Trigger emotions like abandonment and rejection occur when there’s a threat, and can be spur people to immediate action.

The Higher Levels

• Status and self-esteem: when a person craves respect and usefulness. People can feel degraded, unimportant, and depressive if they aren’t fulfilled at this juncture. (Self-actualization has been absorbed into this category.)
• Sex: when a person desires mating/reproduction.
• Love/Pair Bonding: when a person needs love and/or commitment.
• Parenting: when a person feels the urge to bear (and hopefully rear) children.

You need to appeal to at least one of these needs, and often a combination, in order to convince a person to buy from you.

The motivation to buy

What are common motivations for customers purchasing a product? Loss aversion, group rejection, and social norms and pressure.

It’s important to know that most tactics don’t only use one emotion. One tactic is to offer an incentive (they’ll get a reward, or one of their core needs is going to be met) and present a loss (they’re going rejected from a group or lose status) if they don’t buy your product

So, how can you apply this knowledge to get people to buy your product?

#1 Emotional Triggers

Emotion is what happens when the mind prepares the body for action, and express the changes through our facial expressions, body language, voice, and more. It can help us deal with a threat or an opportunity.

An emotional trigger is an idea or image that evokes that emotion based on our past associations. Tactics appealing to these emotions typically work best.

#2 Schema

Schemas are the network structures the brain uses to remember and encode information. They classify events, which trigger the appropriate emotional response.

These are formed from prior experiences and shape interpretations of UI elements and UX. Concepts learned in one part of a consumer’s life aid their comprehension in another. Neural schemas correlate to hierarchies, and the way the brain encodes memories is the same way it encodes those hierarchies.

Certain symbols and words will trigger emotional reactions habitual behaviors based on past experiences.

Schema are very hard to control, and act independently of your willed, conscious awarenesses. However, using cognitive appraisal, we can learn to better manipulate this reaction.

Example: Compliments

Let’s take a compliment, like “You’re amazing!” How does this make you feel?

Most people react positively to this (though some people might have more distrustful personalities and react suspiciously). A compliment like the above has been positively reinforced our whole life, and theoretically makes most of us feel good.

What does this mean for website design?

The challenge is to build website on categories people already understand. When consumers have a pre-existing schema for the topic, people learn faster.

So in order to attract and retain traffic, your website needs to anticipate their schema.

The buyer’s emotional journey

The buyer’s emotional journey starts at the trigger event, as shown above, and goes through sense perception and schemas before the user even reacts.

Based on this response, the reader may have an impulsive behavior, which they then appraise. Once they evaluate their emotion and reaction, a deliberate action will be taken. (For our purposes, the deliberate action would be purchasing your product or service.)

Emotional states before purchasing

If we have to appeal to these needs and feelings, how do we know what someone is feeling when they’re looking at website or product? We don’t.

However, there are some emotional map guidelines in the graph below that cover most of the emotional states of potential buyers.

Here’s a walk-through

• High energy emotional states are above the horizontal line, or x-axis. Customers above this line are excited, and feel anticipation of a reward.
• Low energy emotional states are below the x-axis. Customers tend to feel unempowered, degraded, and in a depressive state.
• To the right of the vertical line, or y-axis, are positive emotions.
• To the left of the y-axis are negative emotions.

Each quadrant needs to be marketed to differently.

Now that we understand the graph, where do we want to be?

• Marketers generally want to target those customers whose emotions are mostly in the upper right-hand quadrant; they’re motivated to take action.
• Customers in the upper left quadrant can be motivated too, however; the trick is to promise to remove or solve something negative in their life.

Where don’t we want our marketing efforts to be?

• Marketers try to avoid customer who fall in the bottom left quadrant, mostly because in order to get your low motivation, highly content customer to take action, you have to promise to give them something bad. This can be alienating.
• To motivate customers in the bottom right, your marketing should promise to take away something good.

Why does personality matter?

Personality is a person’s emotional and cognitive disposition. It’s about 50% based on genetics. Emotions can hijack our minds, and it’s important to understand a user’s personality so as not to trigger the wrong one when attempting to sell your product or services.

Personality-targeted design

Historically, a lot of personality-based audience research throughout the 20th century was based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Assessment (MBTI), which released in 1944 by mother-daughter team Katherine Cook Briggs and Isabel Myer.

Much of the test is based on a Jungian theory that people see the world through 4 lenses: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. (Carl Jung based many of his ideas off of Freud’s research as well.) The test also has similarities to the concept of the Big Five personality traits.

What’s wrong with the MBTI?

The MBTI has been used frequently in the business world. Forbes estimated that about 80% of Fortune 500 companies have used the test at one point or another However, researchers are finding it to be increasingly unreliable.

Adam Grant, Ph.D., Psychology Today

“[…] I am an INTJ. That’s what I learned from a wildly popular personality test. […] When I took the test a few months later, I was an ESFP. Suddenly, I had become the life of the party, the guy who follows his heart and throws caution to the wind. Had my personality changed, or is this test not all it’s cracked up to be?

I began to read through the evidence, and I found that the MBTI is about as useful as a polygraph for detecting lies. One researcher even called it an ‘act of irresponsible armchair philosophy.’

When it comes to accuracy, if you put a horoscope on one end and a heart monitor on the other, the MBTI falls about halfway in between.”

So, if not MBTI, what’s more accurate?

The above image captures a more complete way to look at personality than MBTI. There are three categories with two choices:

• Anchor (A) and Seeker (S)
• Feeler (F) and Thinker (T)
• Lower reactive (-) and higher reactive (+)

From each category, the user can pick which end of the spectrum they are closer to and get a letter combination.

Let’s say my result was Seeker, Feeler, Higher Reactive, or “SF+.”

On this graph below, my letter combination would be in the upper right-hand quadrant, telling me that my personality is “non-traditional, risk-taking, routine-avoiding, and energetic.”

Why is it important to know your own personality type?

In short: knowing your blind spots. So here’s the question: if you fit firmly into one niche, how can you market to someone who is in another, potentially complete opposite, one?

The easiest thing to do is seek out people who’ll write better for your target audience because their personality is more similar to their audience’s.

But ultimately, you’ll have to market to many varying personalities.

Marketing to many personalities

The trick is to use both negative and positive emotions. The only tactic we really want to avoid here is entirely negative messaging.

There are various combinations of how to do this

• Loss aversion: combine a negative message (something is wrong) with an optimistic or advocacy message (what the user can do about it).
• Create mystery to arouse curiosity and trigger dopamine.
• Use gratitude and compliments, followed by a request or call to action.

Caution

Avoid overly negative messaging. Insulting or degrading messages when someone isn’t interested in your product or service can alienate customers and cut off your chance at reclaiming them in the future. It’s crucial that your efforts don’t backfire.

Negative emotions should occur before someone leaves; it’s better to leave with respectful outro rather than a guilt trip.

The future of emotional design

Our digital footprint will provide a signal tied to the user’s neurological predisposition, telling you what drives each user and/or audience. However, the art and science of conversion will remain the same, as everyone will be using the same tools.

Conclusion

Emotional design is the use of psychology and emotional triggers to influence the design and copy of your site.

• People are motivated by one of the levels of Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs.
• They are driven to purchase by specific emotional triggers and neural schema.
• Knowing the personality, needs, and emotional triggers of your customer before they buy from you will help inform your persuasion tactics.
• The personality-targeted design is one of the best ways to market to your target audience.