Marketing’s VR Problem

There’s virtually no reason for most marketers to care about VR.

If it quacks like a bubble…Full disclosure—historically, Magnani has been as guilty as any about touting the potential of VR. We have VR officially listed in our capabilities and we have trained our creators and developers to produce amazing experiences, deliverable on a number of platforms. But, as of today, VR is not delivering on that potential in any way that is compelling from a marketing or advertising perspective. So what’s happening?A close inspection of the market over the past year shows an industry where investment curves dwarf actual consumer adoption curves.

In most industries, that would portend the imminent bursting of a (virtual) bubble. In their 2017 Hype Cycle, Gartner Research places VR as emerging out of the “trough of disillusionment” and into the “slope of enlightenment.” That scale assumes the tech will plateau in adoption in 2 to 5 years. If we believe that, and we follow the adoption rates, then VR will never really scale to be important. It will be the next LaserDisc. 

Lack of a killer app

VR has the ability to take the user to any place, time, or alternate universe content creators can imagine. The problem appears to be that the creators are not imaging very much yet. When consumers purchase the hardware and make their first excited trip to the Oculus store, they are met with a limited hodgepodge of content. Some interesting ideas. An occasional compelling technology demo. Collections of poorly implemented low-resolution 360-degree video. But no real reason to invest much time with the technology.

Our experience demonstrating the technology for clients and employees alike has been fairly consistent in both the initial surprise and delight that the technology works as well as it does followed by questioning for what purpose one would actually use it for any extended period of time. Compound that feeling with the fact that a computer-based VR system with an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive costs upwards of $1,200 US and it’s clear why the dearth of compelling content is hobbling VR out of the gate.

VR supporters will cry, “What about the Playstation VR?” While it’s true, more than a million units have sold as add-ons to the game console, it still represents less than a 2% attach rate to its overall console sales. Hardly a compelling business case for game developers.

The same goes for marketers. Creating a compelling VR experience is costly. While there are obviously a few specific use cases where that investment make sense, there is no general audience of any scale to think of the technology as a universal marketing medium.

Blame evolutionary biology

They say that the reason most of us are restless the first night in a strange place is that we’ve been programmed by evolutionary biology to not enter a deep sleep. We need to keep our wits about us until the environment has been proven to be safe. Similarly, for every visual delight VR technology can deliver, there is, at least for me, always a nagging feeling that I am blindfolded, vulnerable. It begs a question in my mind whether we are also biologically programmed to be somewhat uncomfortable by cutting off our senses to the surrounding environment.

RIP VR. Long live AR.

The good news is that all of the technology and content development investments made in the VR space need not be relegated to sunk costs. As slow as the uptake in VR has been over the past few years, the adoption of high quality augmented reality (AR) capable devices eclipsed the totality of VR units in a single day when Apple released iOS 11. Every mobile handset from the iPhone 6s up can run software based on Apple’s ARKit. That is already billions of active, waiting users, worldwide. Even prior to the official iOS 11 release, developers started to make compelling demos. And just days after the official rollout, Swedish furniture giant, Ikea delivered on the promise of ARKit.

AR, unlike VR, relies on a tangible connection to the users’ physical space. AR removes the barrier most customers have in trying to visualize how a product would actually fit into their environment or their lives in general. AR on a mobile handset finally gives consumers a low-cost, low-risk way to try out virtual technology and marketers a way to let a large group of consumers instantly try out, try on, and imagine owning their products. In other words, AR gives marketers an augmented (pun intended) version of what they have already been doing in every other medium for decades. Seems like the smarter way forward, for now.

Marketing’s VR Problem

There’s virtually no reason for most marketers to care about VR.

If it quacks like a bubble…Full disclosure—historically, Magnani has been as guilty as any about touting the potential of VR. We have VR officially listed in our capabilities and we have trained our creators and developers to produce amazing experiences, deliverable on a number of platforms. But, as of today, VR is not delivering on that potential in any way that is compelling from a marketing or advertising perspective. So what’s happening?A close inspection of the market over the past year shows an industry where investment curves dwarf actual consumer adoption curves. In most industries, that would portend the imminent bursting of a (virtual) bubble. In their 2017 Hype Cycle, Gartner Research places VR as emerging out of the “trough of disillusionment” and into the “slope of enlightenment.” That scale assumes the tech will plateau in adoption in 2 to 5 years. If we believe that, and we follow the adoption rates, then VR will never really scale to be important. It will be the next LaserDisc. 

Lack of a killer app

VR has the ability to take the user to any place, time, or alternate universe content creators can imagine. The problem appears to be that the creators are not imaging very much yet. When consumers purchase the hardware and make their first excited trip to the Oculus store, they are met with a limited hodge-podge of content. Some interesting ideas. An occasional compelling technology demo. Collections of poorly implemented low-resolution 360-degree video. But no real reason to invest much time with the technology.

Our experience demonstrating the technology for clients and employees alike has been fairly consistent in both the initial surprise and delight that the technology works as well as it does followed by questioning for what purpose one would actually use it for any extended period of time. Compound that feeling with the fact that a computer-based VR system with an Oculus Rift or an HTC Vive costs upwards of $1,200 US and it’s clear why the dearth of compelling content is hobbling VR out of the gate.

VR supporters will cry, “What about the Playstation VR?” While it’s true, more than a million units have sold as add-ons to the game console, it still represents less than a 2% attach rate to its overall console sales. Hardly a compelling business case for game developers.

The same goes for marketers. Creating a compelling VR experience is costly. While there are obviously a few specific use cases where that investment make sense, there is no general audience of any scale to think of the technology as a universal marketing medium.

Blame evolutionary biology

They say that the reason most of us are restless the first night in a strange place is that we’ve been programmed by evolutionary biology to not enter a deep sleep. We need to keep our wits about us until the environment has been proven to be safe. Similarly, for every visual delight VR technology can deliver, there is, at least for me, always a nagging feeling that I am blindfolded, vulnerable. It begs a question in my mind whether we are also biologically programmed to be somewhat uncomfortable by cutting off our senses to the surrounding environment.

RIP VR. Long live AR.

The good news is that all of the technology and content development investments made in the VR space need not be relegated to sunk costs. As slow as the uptake in VR has been over the past few years, the adoption of high quality augmented reality (AR) capable devices eclipsed the totality of VR units in a single day when Apple released iOS 11. Every mobile handset from the iPhone 6s up can run software based on Apple’s ARKit. That is already billions of active, waiting users, worldwide. Even prior to the official iOS 11 release, developers started to make compelling demos. And just days after the official rollout, Swedish furniture giant, Ikea delivered on the promise of ARKit.

AR, unlike VR, relies on a tangible connection to the users’ physical space. AR removes the barrier most customers have in trying to visualize how a product would actually fit into their environment or their lives in general. AR on a mobile handset finally gives consumers a low-cost, low-risk way to try out virtual technology and marketers a way to let a large group of consumers instantly try out, try on, and imagine owning their products. In other words, AR gives marketers an augmented (pun intended) version of what they have already been doing in every other medium for decades. Seems like the smarter way forward, for now.

Apple vs. The Mad Men: Can marketing and privacy co-exist?

Apple is drawing a line in the sand around privacy.

Digital media networks are claiming that the release of iOS 11 will introduce the greatest threat to the Web as we know it. That’s because Apple is introducing strict new privacy protection in its mobile Safari browser on the iPhone. The update to Apple’s Safari browser prevents ad networks from effectively tracking your browsing history through the use of cross site tracking. According to this blog post by John Wilander on the WebKit.org (author’s note: WebKit is the open source code foundation for Apple’s Safari browser), the new intelligent tracking prevention features stops third-party sources (e.g.: major ad networks) from effectively creating a copy of your browsing history via tracking cookies stored on your device.Here’s how John describes the process in his post: “Imagine a user who first browses example-products.com for a new gadget and later browses example-recipies.com for dinner ideas. If both these sites load resources from example-tracker.com and example-tracker.com has a cookie stored in the user’s browser, the owner of example-tracker.com has the ability to know that the user visited both the product website and the recipe website, what they did on those sites, what kind of web browser was used, et cetera. This is what’s called cross-site tracking and the cookie used by example-tracker.com is called a third-party cookie. In our testing we found popular websites with over 70 such trackers, all silently collecting data on users.”While advertisers claim the process is benign, Apple deems the process overly intrusive, offering a data cache rich enough for any interested party to effectively reconstruct your complete browsing history. In the hands of a malicious entity, that information could surely be used to nefarious ends.

And the ad industry is living up to the term, “Mad Men.”

According to a sternly worded press release, penned jointly by a coalition of industry associations which includes the 4A's—American Advertising Federation, Association of National Advertisers, Data & Marketing Association, Interactive Advertising Bureau, and Network Advertising Alliance (hereafter referred to as the Industry)—the Apple update will effectively break the commercial Web. Or, at least, make it prohibitively difficult to monetize. In the joint press release, these industry groups assert they are “deeply concerned about the Safari 11 browser update that Apple plans to release, as it overrides and replaces existing user-controlled cookie preferences with Apple's own set of opaque and arbitrary standards for cookie handling.” Ultimately, they claim “Put simply, machine-driven cookie choices do not represent user choice; they represent browser-manufacturer choice.”

Did consumers ever really choose?

Running a company that makes its bread and butter crafting digital experiences, I can wholeheartedly and unquestionably agree there that browser cookie technology is fundamental to ensuring users have a seamless and personalized experience on the Web. But it is tough to agree with the industry’s position that the highly aggressive tracking and consumption of users’ effectively unfiltered browsing history was in any way a user choice that Apple is now violating.I guarantee that if I was ever presented with any detailed terms of service outlining how, and what detail, my browsing history would be collected and reported back to third-party ad networks, I cannot remember the moment I accepted them. I would assume most users’ experience around that issue is similarly clouded by the fog of our myriad collective browsing experiences.

Is Apple overstepping their authority?

Put simply, I don’t think so. The company is, at its core, a purveyor of hardware and user experiences. If they deem the best user experience on their platform to be founded in a more conscientious protection of their users’ privacy, it’s difficult to see how their approach isn’t the smartest means to that end.So, what is apple proposing? Again, the WebKit.org post describes it thus: “If the user has not interacted with example.com in the last 30 days, example.com website data and cookies are immediately purged and continue to be purged if new data is added.”And, further, they simplified it into this easy-to-follow chart:

Ad-infinitum?

It seems the Industry would prefer that in the long run, with enough data-sharing and partnership agreements, everyone would be, by virtue of any number of unread terms of service, opted into everything, in perpetuity. It’s a convenient position in the short term, but one that ultimately, I believe, will lead to consumer backlash far less manageable in the long run than their current Apple problem.

Can’t we all just get along?

It may be tough to remember at this point, but we used to have a political system in the US where two conflicting parties would discuss an issue over which they differed and come to a compromise that was workable, even if both parties were slightly unsatisfied with the outcome. Ultimately this is where I think this issue should and will end up, in a compromise.A day may be too short a time to allow tracking cookies to work their personalization magic in a way that satisfies the commerce needs of content providers and the ad networks that drive their revenue streams, but it’s hard to imagine a world where unlimited access to browsing histories doesn’t constitute a massive violation of privacy. In the end, it’s a question that needs to be resolved. Publicly. With open debate and full transparency for consumers. And when no interested party is fully satisfied with the outcome—Apple, the industry or consumers—we’ve probably derived the right solution.

7 Ways To Improve Your Customer Experience

Eventually, every product or service category becomes a commodity

The result of the inevitable maturing of markets is that today’s innovation becomes tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, so to speak. And as the hyper-connected environment of the internet empowers your customers to price compare among a virtually infinite set of your competitors, this process will only continue to accelerate. But just because the category itself is commoditized, there is still competitive advantage to be found in the customer experience you build around the transaction. So, let’s look at some of the quickest ways you can diagnose any issues, avoid common pitfalls and improve your customer experience.

1.    Survey your customers

Assuming you have an established mailing list for your customers, set aside part of your outreach schedule to survey them about their experiences. If you have the budget, conduct focus groups or one-on-one user testing sessions. The most useful topics of inquiry are generally surrounding points of friction in the user journey. Ask them about what’s working, what could work better, and what’s not working at all. Observe their navigation patterns and choices.Watch for the big issues, sure, but more importantly, watch for the micro-moments, the hesitations that interrupt the journey ever so slightly. It’s not always the big hiccups that depress your conversions, but the aggregation of a number of small pain points spread across the total population of your customers’ base can add up. In the end, it always pays to actively listen to your customers. It’s rare that customers can tell you the best ways to fix their pain points, but they are great at telling you what those pain points are and why they are annoyed by them.

2.    Survey non-customers

If you don’t already have access to a mailing list of non-customers, this group may be a bit harder to engage. But any business seeking to increase market penetration would be well served by knowing what about the experience of engaging with your business is ultimately undesirable, or at least not desirable enough to overcome the switching costs.

3.    Make sure contact information is up-to-date and easily accessible

If anyone asks how to get ahold of your customer support, you’ve already failed. It’s frustrating to search a site, fruitlessly, for contact information. Worse yet is finding contact information and attempting to use it, only to find a disconnected line or an unmonitored “catch-all” email account. Place contact information on every page, and the more avenues of communication available (e.g.: email, phone, twitter, et al), the better.

4.    Prioritize and minimize available actions

When considering any information architecture or user experience design challenge, there is always a fine line between simplicity and obfuscation. Knowing where that line actually lies needn’t rely on guesswork, however. This is a perfect use case for a systematic A/B testing or conversion rate optimization (CRO). Create iterations of the page or screen in question and test the variants for effectiveness. You should be able to uncover what level of information delivers the most positive impact on KPI levels.

5.    Focus on load times

While it seems like a performance issue, optimizing load times is really about keeping the user happy. Google has an interesting framework for evaluating the experience surrounding load times called RAIL. The idea is that the longer the load time, the greater the frustration and decrease in focus on the task at hand.

Delay & User Reaction

Source: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/performance/rail

6.    Mobile first. Seriously.

The rationales for not replacing or updating non-responsive legacy web properties usually sound reasonable: “We’re a B2B company. Our customers don’t need mobile.” Or, “Who would make a major industrial purchase from their phone?” But dive into the analytics of any site and the volume of traffic originating from mobile devices is likely to be well over 50%. Regardless of how we imagine any customer’s work day, their browsing habits are created and reinforced by their habits in and out of work. And, for most people, that means using their mobile device to fill any idle moment—whether that’s work, pleasure or some jumbled mashup of the two. They don’t distinguish between dayparts or environments when seeking information, and if your experience doesn’t address their needs, whenever, wherever, they choose to enter it, they will move on.

7.    Improve on your competitors’ best UX ideas

Legendary Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is oft quoted as saying, “A good artist borrows. A great artist steals.” Amusingly, he seems to have stolen the phrase from Picasso, who likely lifted it from the annals of history. The point here is that you should be looking at your competitors’ customer experiences at least as frequently as your customers and potential customers are. Create an incognito browser window and take the user journey yourself—yours and your competitors—from search up to the moment of conversion. Take time to formally document and compare your user journey to that of your most successful and least successful competitors. Make a list of the most useful features and designs and look for ways to optimize your own experience based on those models. Imagine the perfect user journey and compare it to the journey you’re offering. If there’s a gap, choose the best ideas, from anywhere you can, to fix it.

Ultimately, experience is brand and brand is experience.

In marketing journals and blogs across the internet, you’ll see stories about the death of brands. Or, that brands don’t matter. But it is probably more fair to say that what defines a brand today is less the logo, typeface, slogan or ad campaign than it is the experience the user associates with it. And that is where you’ll create your next market advantage.

Can you answer these 5 influencer marketing questions?

Influencer marketing is not new. In the mid 1960s, when Lee Iacocca was General Manager of Ford, he was preparing to launch the new Mustang onto the American public. Legend has it that as part of the marketing program, Iacocca placed Mustangs in the hands of “big men on campus” types at colleges and universities across the country to jumpstart the new model’s cool factor. Today, influencer marketing is common practice for a growing portion of marketing budgets, with brands expected to spend as much as $5-10 billion with influencers by 2020. You could say that with social media, influencer marketing has been taken to scale. For marketers who haven’t yet taken the influencer marketing plunge, it’s time to ask some basic questions:

1. What are the FTC regulations governing influencer marketing?

   Why is this the first question? If you have never done influencer marketing campaigns, this is an easy (and potentially costly) point to overlook. The FTC requires all influencers to disclose any sponsorships near the top of any post. The FTC has an online endorsement guide in an easy-to-follow Q&A format. Protecting yourself and your influencers is easy, but you need to understand the constraints.

2. How do you find influencers in the first place?

   According to the Linqia State of Influencer Marketing Report 2017, 64% of respondents engage dedicated management companies (Linqia being one example) to provide turnkey influencer programs.

3. How do you distinguish between reach and influence?

   In its simplest form, reach is equal to the number of followers or subscribers that are exposed to an influencer’s content. Some may add secondary reach numbers, e.g.: populations exposed to reshares. But anyone can buy followers, or the appearance of reach. So, neither of those numbers really quantifies influence. To quantify influence, you need to do a little homework beyond the raw numbers:

   1. What percentage of the influencer's audience meets your target customer profile?

   2. What percentage of the content they produce is relevant to your industry and target customers?

   3. Does the influencer achieve more or less engagement when they are delivering content relevant to your industry or business?

   4. Do they command a similar presence across platforms?

4. How do influencers get paid?

   There are a number of methods, each with its pros and cons. Some favor success on the influencer end of the funnel, other favor success on the marketer’s end of the funnel.

   1. Free products or services—you want the influencer to talk about something, you give them that something for free. This is generally better suited to one-off campaigns, product launches etc.

   2. Pay per post (PPP)—a set fee paid to the influencer for each blog article or social post linking to your site. Easy to verify, but it assumes all posts have equal value, regardless of their effectiveness.

   3. Cost per engagement (CPE)—a set fee for every click, share, forward, et al. This model begins to distinguish between the relative values of various posts, but is more cumbersome to track and doesn’t tie back well to downstream business metrics.

   4. Cost per click (CPC)—a set fee is paid to the influencer for every click through to your site. It addresses the issue of relative value based on effectiveness of the posts to generate clicks, but stops short of rewarding for the quality of the customer delivered.

   5. Cost per acquisition (CPA)—a fee is paid only when someone an influencer has directed toward the site converts to a customer, e.g. subscriptions or sales. This definitely favors the marketer as it limits the ultimate cost per acquisition.

5. How do you measure ROI (Return on Influence)?

   So, after you choose a cost model, how do you tie it back to success measures? The short answer: the closer your metrics get to an actual monetary transaction the greater your ability to calculate true ROI. Now, for the longer answer. If your goal is increased awareness, you can run pre and post campaign awareness surveys. But it’s probably impossible to tease out the incremental effect of an individual influencer outside of the broader marketing you’re performing. If you’re looking for something more concrete, like page views, supplying influencer-specific tracking URLs tied into your analytics package, or creating influencer-specific landing pages will do the trick. That will at least get you to understand what those specific clicks and views are costing you.

   Delving even more deeply into the analytics, you can track specific events to see how deeply the users the influencer is delivering are engaged. Ultimately, if you assign a specific dollar value to specific engagement points, confirmed active leads, or final transactions, and you can review your analytics to track those leads back to specific influencers, you can quickly come very close to quantifying exact percentage returns on dollars spent.

Bonus question: should you trust your brand to a third party?

The simple answer is that your brand is already being talked about online. So, assuming you’re transparent about the sponsored nature of your influencer relationships, proactively guiding the conversation into positive territory can only be beneficial. Just take the time to understand who those influencers are and what the depth of their influence is. Also make sure your compensation method aligns with your business goals and analytics capabilities. The rest should feel like a great conversation.

“What’s the deal with #hashtags?”

You can almost hear Jerry Seinfeld’s nasally voice in your head. All joking aside though, their usage seems to be extremely arbitrary, especially when it comes to individual social media platforms and the users themselves. Recent studies have shown that topics without a hashtag trend higher than their hashtag equivalent. All of that begs the question, do we need hashtags at all? Before we can answer that we need to understand from where the hashtag originated.

#BackToTheFuture

The history of hashtag use in social media goes back 10 years to 2007, where it was used on Twitter for the first time as a way to organize during a time where social media search left a lot to be desired. In addition to the searchability and categorizing qualities, it also could be used to add further context to Twitter’s restrictive 140 character limit.The hashtag caught on rapidly on Twitter, and soon it started to make its way to rival platforms. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn all wanted a piece of the hash-action and hashtags became even more plentiful. Eventually, marketers wanted to get in on the action too and the hashtag began to take on a life of its own.

#StateOfTheHashtag

Now, after nearly 10 years in use, let’s take a look at the State of the Hashtag across the five major social media platforms. Do they work at all, and if so – which platforms embrace them best?

Snapchat

You can load up your posts and comments with as many hashtags as you like on Snapchat. The problem is Snapchat doesn’t offer a search option, and there is no way to track hashtags or to categorize them, rendering hashtags mostly useless on Snapchat. Bash the hash!

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has had a love/hate relationship with hashtags in the past, but right now, it’s in love. With its makeover in early 2017 came a new emphasis on categorizing hashtags and utilizing them through the search option. A recent study by B2C shows that posts with a hashtag saw a 11% jump in reach and a 17% increase in interactions. Both are modest gains but gains nonetheless. The verdict? Utilize hashtags on LinkedIn.

Facebook

Hashtags never really caught on for Facebook users. Hashtags don’t offer your content much value, and they may actually hurt your organic reach. A recent BuzzSumo study found that Facebook posts featuring a hashtag attracted only 70% of the organic reach of posts that did not feature a hashtag. According to a recent report from Your Story, posts with hashtags received only 0.8 percent viral reach, while posts without hashtags had 1.30 percent viral reach. Steer clear of hashtags on Facebook; they’re not only useless — they can be harmful.

Instagram

Instagram is a hashtag lover’s utopia. Not only does the platform boast a 2200-character limit, allowing you to flood your posts with hashtags, but on Instagram, they actually work. A 2016 TrackMaven study revealed that the optimal hashtag count for engagement on Instagram was nine. That’s right. Nine hashtags are recommended for every Instagram post in order to build your audience and keep engagement elevated. It’s the visual nature of the platform that so readily empowers its users to search using hashtags and to categorize their content.

Twitter

The original home for hashtags. Hashtags have been instrumental for users to find, search and comment on communities and topics of interest. As a news-breaking platform, the hashtag allows Twitter users to quickly search for a topic and users who are engaged in the conversation around it. The 144 character limit doesn’t allow for a lot of hashtags, but a recent BuzzSumo study suggests that using one or two hashtags per tweet can increase your engagement by 21%. But stop at two, because that same study showed that using three hashtags or more lowered your engagement by nearly 17%.

#BestPractices

Hashtags are great for building engagement on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. When writing your social content, remember to use hashtags more strategically. Here are five ways to make hashtags work for you:

1. Keep it short – If your hashtag is too long or contains multiple words it’ll be to be difficult to read, much less type. Keep your hashtags to a limit of 10 characters—including the hashtag itself.

2. Use abbreviations – Scroll through Twitter or Instagram during any live event and you’ll see the hashtags with the most traffic are abbreviations or contain abbreviations. #Lolla is going to be easier to type and search than #Lollapalooza. For sporting events, #CLEvGSW is easier to type and search for than #ClevelandVersusGoldenState.

3. Test your hashtag – Utilize Hashtagify and the advanced search within Twitter to see if your hashtag is already in use, and by whom. A rival brand may have already used your hashtag. Or, worse yet, your hashtag may have a connected meaning that is completely unrelated and inappropriate to the message you’re trying to deliver. Do some basic research to protect your brand. Utilize platforms like ‘Hashtagify.me’ to search the web for hashtags, related hashtags and their usage rate.

4. Use them when context is needed – If your post is in reference to a specific event or topic then use a hashtag to give context to your post. “I can’t take it anymore!” reads a lot differently with a hashtag: “I can’t take it anymore! #Cubs”

Resources

http://buzzsumo.com/blog/how-to-improve-facebook-engagement-insights-from-1bn-posts/

https://coschedule.com/blog/how-to-use-hashtags/

https://yourstory.com/2017/04/using-hashtags-right/

https://blog.markgrowth.com/what-is-the-current-state-of-the-hashtag-bef93c9736ad

Is your smartphone making you stupid?

Maybe outsourcing to a second brain wasn’t such a good idea.

In the past few years, a number of long-term, peer-reviewed studies have come out that have begun to suggest that the piece of technology we once called the “Jesus phone” is really no savior at all. In fact, it may be, for our productivity and general mental acuity, just the opposite. Even if we ignore the socially inept habit of dodgily flicking about your smartphone screen while in the presence of other humans, there appear to be some very real changes that occur in the chemistry of the human brain that may suggest we rethink our attachments to these devices.

We’re not Pavlov. We’re the dogs.

I have no doubt that there was nothing other than benign intent in the original design and implementation of the iPhone™ and Android™ notifications systems. You get a message—a text, an email, an incoming chat—you get a notification. Seems fair enough. But it turns out that when presented with these notifications, visual or audible, our brains release a tiny bit of dopamine. Historically, we associated dopamine with pleasure. But more recent studies are linking the neurotransmitter to something more akin to “seeking.” Pleasurable or otherwise.

It seems dopamine is connected to general curiosity. And that, it seems, is where we get into trouble. Notifications, Twitter responses, Facebook newsfeeds, all provide a virtually endless cycle of instant gratification. Worse still, is that the dopamine system in our brains is heightened by unpredictability.

And finally, when we realize that the dopamine system is also especially sensitive to reward cues (the sound of an incoming text, that buzz of an incoming Snapchat story), it’s clear that, intentionally or otherwise, we have imposed on ourselves the mother of all dopamine loop generators. We all end up, in some sense, Pavlov’s dog, waiting for the bell to ring.

We’re constantly distracted.

Another study just published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research presents the case that even the presence of our smartphones within arm’s reach causes a measurable hit to cognitive ability—”brain drain” as the authors put it. And, as you might have guessed, the more addicted you are to using your device, the worse this specific malady seems to be.

“Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence.“

-Adrian F. Ward, Kristen Duke, Ayelet Gneezy, and Maarten W. BosBrain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity

The authors of the study conclude their report by saying that the increased cognitive load accompanying the presence of the smartphone might actually hinder consumers’ ability to evaluate marketing offers rationally, defaulting to more emotionally driven heuristics. The good news? That effect is less of an issue with advertising presented on the mobile device itself, since it is no longer a distraction, but the point of focus itself.

You’ll probably forget you read this anyway.

The final report I came across is by Russian security experts at Kaspersky Labs. They assert we’ve all become so accustomed to offloading to our smartphones that we are, in effect, losing our ability to actively transfer information into long-term memory. Here are some of the highlights:

• Up to 60% of adult consumers could phone the house they lived in aged 10; but not their children or the office or their partners without first looking up the number.

• One third of consumers polled were happy to forget, or risk forgetting, information they can easily find – or find again – online.

• When faced with a question, a third (36%) of consumers would turn to the internet before trying to remember and a quarter (24%) would forget an online fact as soon as they had used it.

• “Digital Amnesia” was equally and sometimes more prevalent in older age groups.

• And none of us is actively doing much to protect the collection of data we’re storing on our computers and devices. (This point is not surprising. After all, this is Kaspersky talking, they make data protection software.)

So, how do we get our cognitive mojo back?

Simply put, we have all adopted behaviors with regard to our smartphones that, by nature of our evolutionary biology, are self-amplifying. Disrupting those stimulus and reward cycles will not be easily accomplished by casual means. You’ll probably need to create new, deliberate counteracting behaviors or strategies that are equal in measure to your level of dependency.

Moderate dependency: Schedule some alone time every night.

When you come home at night, put the phone on silent mode and into a closed cabinet. Never set it on your nightstand “just in case.” In other words, develop your ability to ignore the phone at times when being disconnected poses the lowest social or professional risk. Eventually, you should become more comfortable managing your daytime relationship.

Substantial dependency: Turn off notifications. Ditch social media.

The best way to break the dopamine reward cycle is to remove the reward triggers, e.g.: all of the dings, rumbles and text bubbles that tell our brains to prepare for seeking. Also, get rid of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat or any other streaming-feed-based reward generators. Then feel your anxiety subside, your relationships deepen, the clouds depart and rainbows appear deep in your amygdala.

Severe dependency: Go “dumb phone” cold turkey.

If your smartphone has taken control of your life, your happiness and your freedom, it may be time for the nuclear option. For something more in the tactical nuke range, try the new Nokia 3310 reissue. You can still text and get email, but it’s certainly a barrier to getting lost in your phone for hours at a time. Or, if you require the full-on ICBM, get something like the LG Wine 4. Imagine the reduction of anxiety in your life with 6 hours of talk time and 15 days of standby battery life in your pocket.

Ultimately, no technology is good or bad.

You may think I’m some smartphone hating Luddite. Nothing could be further from the truth. The smartphone revolution has been very good to me. But, I understand I fall into the “Moderate Dependency” category. So, the phone goes into a cabinet, on a charging cable, around 7:30 every evening. Sure, I have FOMO. But less and less so for what’s happening on my phone.

How to Compete Against "Good Enough"

Consumers increasingly expect good, fast and cheap. As new technologies lower barriers to entry to many industries, the price/value equation skews dramatically toward the lowest margin position, and often consumers feel like they can find a satisfactory mix of good, fast and cheap. Or, at least, “good enough”. And, when this happens, all too often the incumbent players in the market either don't see the threat looming or they dismiss it as inadequate, until it’s too late. Let’s see what lessons we can learn when examining the rise of YouTube over the past decade and a few competitive responses from within the television industry.

“Good enough” never looks threatening, at first

Imagine you were a television producer in 2006 and someone showed you this:You couldn’t be blamed for dismissing this new user-generated video phenomenon as no threat to your business model. But as the technology quickly and continually improved, and high-definition cameras were built into nearly every mobile computing device, production quality formerly reserved for local broadcast television stations was suddenly dropped firmly the hands of virtually anyone who had the desire and time to create video content. Game on.

“Good enough” emerges at unappealing scale

When this field of new creators was unleashed on us all, they didn’t even come close to commanding the kind of viewing audiences of even the worst performing show on the worst performing cable TV channel. But most of them, fueled by creative passion, would have posted videos for no audience at all. And, as passion is at times contagious, some of those audiences became large enough to generate ad views and commensurate real life-enhancing, if not sustaining, income. The opportunity attracted more and more creators who were serving more and more niche markets with more and more content. This eventually resulted in a critical mass of tagged, related and suggested content that was capable of keeping a viewer discovering and engaged for hours at a time. And more critically for our aforementioned television executive, these creators began to influence the default viewing behaviors of the new generation who were growing up online.

“Good enough” chips away at traditional markets

As Gen Z grew up watching online video—most of it firmly entrenched in the “good enough” level of production—the connection to traditional television waned. In fact, more than 50% of GenZ can’t live without YouTube. And, according to a poll published in 2016, 30% plan on cutting out cable television services altogether.

Three smart responses to “good enough”

The democratization of technology obviously isn’t limited to video creation or consumption. This type of threat can affect any industry. But the following three strategic responses by incumbents within the video industry can serve well as templates for just about any industry.

1. “Mind the gap”

   Facing the flood of ubiquitous, shareable, “good enough” video content, industry behemoths HBO and Netflix have doubled down on quality and exclusivity. Further, HBO broadened its distribution, first, via the HBO GO app tied to its traditional cable subscriptions and eventually to HBO NOW, an app-based subscription that requires no accompanying cable TV subscription.Netflix, followed a parallel path to HBO, pivoting from a content distributor to a content creator with exclusive series like the Emmy Award winning House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, anda number of Marvel-Universe-based superhero shows, just to name a few.

   The main takeaway here is that when barriers to entry become low enough, any market will inevitably become flooded with competitors at the low end. A clever tagline or ad campaign in most cases won’t help you protect your margins. A more viable position is to, in effect, re-raise the barrier to entry. In the case of HBO and Netflix, that was the level of production value/expense, but the idea applies to any business.There is no shortage of online retailers competing on price and selection.

   So, Amazon raised the barrier by investing in logistics and distribution. There is no shortage of providers of homeowners insurance, so Lemonade invested in machine learning and AI to deliver an unprecedentedly easy purchasing experience. When the market gets “cheap”, invest in creating a differentiating, difficult-to-copy advantage.

2. “Do as the Romans do”

   When early YouTube users started uploading snippets of their favorite TV shows, movies and music, the initial (predictable) response from copyright holders was to try and shut it down through DCMA notices, etc. Over time, some of the more progressive copyright holders realized may of these posts could be used to promote more traditional outlets of their intellectual property, as well as working with YouTube to help monetize those uploads through advertising revenue.

   In this strategy, the smart move was to look for ways to use the momentum of a seemingly overwhelming force to profitable advantage. If the threat looks like an infinite game of whack-a-mole, you’re better off dropping the sledgehammer and putting some corporate swag on the mole and using it to hawk your wares.

3. “Keep your enemies closer”

   In the end, numbers are numbers, and large audiences command real advertiser dollars, which in turn attracts the most deep-pocketed of incumbents. In 2013, DreamWorks Animation paid $33 million for YouTube channel AwesomenessTV. Warner Bros. placed an $18 million bet on YouTube video game channel Machinima. Even Disney eventually placed $950 million down on Maker Studios, best known at the time as the company behind "Epic Rap Battles of History" and (the now highly controversial) PewDiePie.

   While this strategy can be, and has been, successful, waiting for an emerging market to mature and then purchasing an emerging competitor, already standing at the end of well-worn path to success, can reduce market uncertainty, but you should be aware that confidence inevitably comes at a premium price.

Incumbent, disrupt thyself

Ultimately, the smartest strategy in the face of emerging technologies is to always ask one question, “How could a new market entrant use this to disrupt my business?” Then, do that. If you don’t, eventually someone else will.

Apple just killed the Macintosh.

It’s day one of the future… again.

As I write this, Apple just finished day one of their 2017 Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). And day one always means the Keynote. In its simplest interpretation, the Keynote is is a vehicle for showing the latest, greatest and soon-to-come hardware and software from Apple. But as most tech industry pundits will tell you, it’s also where Apple telegraphs its opinions on the direction of personal technology markets. While this most recent Keynote seemed unremarkable on the surface, it signaled some massive shifts in opinion as to where Apple sees markets heading. Here’s my interpretation of what I think they were saying.

Apple is ready to kill the MacOS

iPad-multi-tasking

This won’t happen this year, or the next. But it is happening. Watch the demonstration of iOS 11 on the iPad Pro. Despite Apple’s claims for the past two years that the iPad pro was a laptop replacement, yesterday’s demonstration was the first hint that their vision may actually be viable. To that end, two major hurdles were overcome. The first was drastically improved windowing/multitasking. The second was a user-manageable file system.Previously, if you wanted to add a photo stored on your device to the body of an email, you would need to traverse a complicated export and transfer data function that took no less than four or five taps and a number of screen transitions and modal dialogue boxes. With iOS 11, you should be able to drag between visible windows just as you can currently on any desktop OS.

Multitasking on the iPad finally looks useful.

The Files app, basically an “appified” version of the Finder from MacOS, lets users see, move, duplicate and delete their files manually. Previously, this required connection to a desktop or laptop computer running iTunes. Further, files were generally sandboxed within each application. If you created a sound file with one application, you couldn’t easily open that data within a complementary application on the device without, again, performing a convoluted export-and-open maneuver that would result in duplicated data.

Theoretically, as apps are updated, users would be able to open files created with any app directly from Files and start working. The larger question is what happens then to the Save behaviors in iOS? The lack of direct file management enabled the “no-menu-bar-never-hit-save” UX design inherent in the iPad now. We will have to see if this paradigm is still viable. I am guessing not.

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File management no longer requires a computer.

Combine those two important additions with the less important but highly visual addition of a MacOS style application dock and it clearly highlights a trend of slowly introducing desktop OS functionality into the iOS line. There were a number of other “killer” features added to iOS, but those two updates mark a significant shift in how Apple is positioning the future of the platform.

The new Macintosh updates

The truth is, the Macintosh line represents about 10% of Apple’s annual revenues...and that share is shrinking. To say that, strategically speaking, Apple has paid less and less attention to the Mac lineup is being kind. And yesterday’s updates, despite giving Tim Cook a bit of cover for his next analyst call, did little to dramatically improve that perception.The MacBook Pro updates are nice, however they displayed nothing truly innovative or revolutionary. The new machines introduced last year’s processors, with the same 16GB RAM limit, no significant improvement in battery life, and slightly bumped under-spec’d graphics processors.

Despite Apple’s claims of massive speed increases, the truth is those percentages really only applied to the lower models in the tier. The laptops still cannot be used for VR consumption, let alone development, and will remain brutally slow to render any complicated video compositing. The external graphics card breakout box is a nice albeit kludgy solution to that issue, but that means it’s only fully useful when tethered. Hardly a true portable workstation.

The new iMacs were also nicely bumped in terms of power, but still lack any real compelling innovation story. As for the new iMac Pro, it seems built to placate Wall Street analysts who have been questioning Apple’s lack of vision at the high end. There’s no question the power is impressive. But the issues with the current Mac Pro (which has not been updated since 2013) centered around its lack of incremental upgradability, i.e. lack of removable graphics card, remain. It’s hard to blame Apple though for lack of focus on this segment.

The $5,000 starting price means that the machine represents a sliver of the user base. It’s yet to be seen how the ‘real’ Mac Pro update expected for 2018 will improve this issue. Personally, I’d rather pay $4,000 for a RAM and GPU loaded screen-less desktop and attach it to an 8k monitor. That, to me, would qualify as a professional setup. But even if Apple creates the most powerful professional desktop workstation possible, the Macintosh will still be on death watch.

The trigger has been pulled

The only real question is, how long will the market outrun the bullet? Steve Jobs once said that general purpose computers would become the pickup trucks of the industry. They’re specialized tools for doing proverbial heavy lifting—not the inevitable and necessary center of every home as we were sold in the 90’s era vision of computing. And that’s true. In the long run, in a world increasingly made up of cloud services, real-time streaming content and AR-fueled world-as-interface, the entire category of desktop and laptop computers is an anachronism.

There is little question that, for now, the more locked-down, service fueled iOS is better suited as a platform to drive revenue in an always-connected, real time fee-for-services environment.What should be even more interesting is whether Apple can maintain their current level of dominance as we enter the next wave of our connected future—where hardware and devices as we know them becomes superfluous. But further speculation on that topic will have to wait for another day.

If you’re looking for intelligent ways to enhance your marketing strategy, integrate new technologies, or improve your customer experience,

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The Marketer’s Unorthodox Summer Reading List

As summer rolls around and we collectively look longingly at our patios, replete with the chaise nestled perfectly beneath the umbrella, it becomes quickly evident that the only things missing from this backyard paradise are a refreshing cocktail and a good page-turner. Frequently, for marketers, that means a book about marketing, advertising or branding. It has been my experience, however, that the books most influential to the way I view marketing weren’t written by, or for, marketers, nor were they written about marketing, per se. They do, however, offer critical universal insights into the human condition from which every marketer can benefit. More importantly, they don’t simply teach us new skills or facts, they affect the way we think. 

1. Zero to One (Notes on startups and how to build the future), Peter Thiel

   Few characters out of Silicon Valley are as reviled and revered as Peter Thiel. One of the founders and former CEO of PayPal, and currently founder of Mithril Capital and CEO of data analytics firm, Palantir, Thiel is best known for spouting radical notions of the coming technology “singularity” and suggesting to collegiate entrepreneurs that they would be best served by quitting school and using their tuition funds as seed capital. He’s also, of late, been advising President Trump on technology issues.

   In Zero to One, however, we find Thiel at the top of his game, creating a blueprint for how any startup should approach building a business that enjoys a relative monopoly in the marketplace. The funny thing, is that if you imagine the word “company” replaced with the word “brand” in most of Thiel’s arguments, what you’ll discover is one of the greatest expositions of how to construct a truly differentiated and highly competitive brand.

2. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy - What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny, William Strauss and Neil Howe

   We have blogged a number of times about how to approach marketing to Millennials. Foundational to that advice is an understanding of the social and cultural factors that shaped the thinking and behaviors of that generation. And as we watch the first members of Generation Z coming of age, we will surely require new marketing approaches and strategies once again.

   What Strauss and Howe offer in The Fourth Turning is not simply a history of how generations developed differing attitudes and associations with the culture surrounding them, but a fascinating framework for predicting what may be coming next. Based on the idea that history can be viewed in terms of repeating saeculum, 80-year cycles of four generations each, and a theory of how generational psychographic archetypes can shape our culture and history.Will it provide a clear roadmap for marketing to Millennials and Gen Z? Not really. But it can give marketers valuable perspective to draw from when trying to divine how impending generational shifts might require commensurate shifts in brand positioning, product mix and general operations.

3. Daemon and Freedom (two books), Daniel Suarez

   Good news! These are novels. Really entertaining novels at that. And really only one novel that was split into two volumes by the publisher for reasons unbeknownst to me. Without divulging even the smallest of spoilers, what Suarez can offer marketers is not a typical science fiction fantasy, but a prediction of where technology might lead in the next five to ten years, wrapped in a compelling narrative.Artificial intelligence, automation, genetic engineering, commercial agriculture, 3D printing/additive manufacturing, augmented reality and maker culture all make an appearance and get mashed into a singular vision for what’s next in the cultural and media landscape of the not-too-distant future.

4. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, Ed Catmull

   Few authors in any field have the creative credentials of Ed Catmull. A pioneer of computer animation, to be sure, but also one of the great storytellers, or at least leader of great storytellers, of our time. It’s really a book about how to build and nurture a creative culture and, more importantly, how to evaluate and promote great ideas while systematically evaluating and discarding mediocre ideas. A few examples of Catmull’s rules of engagement include:

   • Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.

   • If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead

   • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.

   • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.

   • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.

   It’s a great reference for any marketer charged with elevating their team’s level of creative output. And, in the end, aren’t we all?

One of the mantras written in 12-inch tall letters on the walls of the Magnani office reads, “A great idea can come from anywhere.” And as these books prove, that applies even more so to ideas about improving the connections we make with customers.

Replace Your Sales Funnel with a Sponge

There are no funnels anymore.

I think it’s time to put the traditional sales funnel paradigm into the same category as pagers, fax machines, and videotape—tools that have traveled from inspirational to indispensable to mostly irrelevant. I say “mostly” because, like anything, there are still some businesses with extremely long sales cycles for which the funnel paradigm makes sense. Some hospitals still use pagers. Some insurance agents still submit applications for coverage via fax. And—well, sorry, I can’t think of any industry that needs videotape. So why lump the venerable sales funnel into that family? Simply put, it implies a certain linearity of decision-making and extended consideration behaviors that are no longer consistent with the instant gratification environment in which most customer relationships are created.

Customers have a need—they aren’t looking to build a relationship.

A funny thing happens when consumers have what effectively amounts to an infinite number of suppliers to choose from. Competition becomes infinite. Information arrives instantaneously. Pricing becomes transparent. And every “thing” becomes a commodity. For most sellers, the idea of nurturing a prospect through an imposed knowledge or awareness funnel of any kind is laughable. The idea of a sales funnel implies connections created and strengthened over time, but today, there are often only seconds between search and purchase, not days or weeks.

If their needs aren’t easily fulfilled, consumers adopt a new need.

I mentioned in an earlier blog post about a lead response study by sales training firm LeadSimple that showed a 40% close rate for leads contacted within an hour. Returns diminished over time, falling to a 10% close rate for leads contacted within 24 hours. That rate dropped even lower as time progressed. A fourfold decrease in results in less than a day! I would argue that this is less an indicator of the value of speedy customer service than it’s an indicator that consumers are more often buying purely on impulse. Increasingly, it seems, transactions are instantiated more on a desire for consumption than a need for a specific end. And if our first impulses go unsatisfied, we bounce to the next whim and satisfy that until our capacity for (or interest in) consumption is exhausted.

Here comes the sponge.

In this environment, the paths to conversion are infinitely varied and nonlinear. But, ironically, so are the exit points. The trick is to view every entry point as the optimal completion point, not permission to force a potential customer to adhere to your internal processes. Don’t require registrations to get information or downloads. Don’t force account reps onto customers who merely wish to transact and disappear. A perfect example of this thinking is Amazon’s “Buy now with 1-Click” functionality. Ultimately, clicking “Buy now” is redundant with clicking the “Add to Cart” button followed by the “Choose Your Shipping” page, followed yet again by the “Review Your Order” page—either way, the box arrives in your preferred location at your chosen period of time. But it represents parallel paths to filling the desire, neither imposed on the customer by the company. You’ll see a lot of pundits talking about optimizing micro-moments. This is nothing more than the realization that every seemingly inconsequential point of friction in your web or mobile user experience that delays gratification of the purchasing impulse is a missed opportunity. Every extra step added to a process can devastate conversion rates. And I agree with that. But that thinking is potentially still too linear, too funnel-centric. The sponge perspective says you not only remove friction but also increase entry points and allow for more self-service. Put a “Buy Now” button in a banner ad. Create an e-commerce-enabled Facebook Messenger bot that customers can hail with a word and make purchases through without ever touching your site.

The only conversion that matters is a sale.

At the risk of sounding like Blake in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, while your marketing is focusing on filling the funnel, a closer may already be drinking your coffee.

Metrics That Move Your Understanding From “What” To “Why”

Are your dashboards revealing the whole story?

As marketers, we’re prone to collecting all the data we can about our customers and how well our programs are performing. We pour over our Google analytics, CRM conversions, and social likes every time we open our marketing dashboards. And as a whole, we look most often at those numbers that indicate reach or scale–those that tell us if we are connecting enough. But there are a few underutilized metrics most dashboards ignore or omit, metrics that go beyond reach and frequency and provide true indications of how well we are connecting (and whether we are connecting) with our most valuable targets. Let’s look at a few metrics and see how they might provide a deeper level of insight. Content warning for marketing folks: there will be some math involved.

Calculate your social growth quality index.

This index is a directional indicator of the quality of the new followers you’re adding to your rolls. It indicates whether you’re simply growing your base community numbers or, more preferably, are providing content or building a community that is increasingly creating more powerful connections with your brand. The data you need is your followers and average engagement numbers for periodic intervals over time. Your data could be as granular as measurements at the individual post level or as broad as aggregated monthly data. So, what’s the math?

Let’s say “X” is your reach—we’ll use the total number of Facebook page likes (you can also use Twitter followers) recorded monthly—and “Y” is your average engagement per post (total shares, likes, etc.) for a month. Chart them in a spreadsheet and use the “slope” function to calculate the acceleration of your return on each post. In this example, it takes close to seven new page likes to increase the number of engaged users by one. To get the growth quality index, you simply divide 1 by the slope. Theoretically (though quite improbably), the best result you could realize would be an index of one—meaning every new additional added follower is a fully and actively engaged follower. But long term, you should probably be extremely happy to see an index of around .20.

Example:Acceleration (Slope) | 6.92 Growth Quality Index | 0.14

What’s the value of a social mention?

Now that we’ve talked about determining the quality of your social growth, how can you put a dollar value on their engagement? The value of a social mention is a tangible way to determine the relative ROI on your social engagements versus traditional display advertising. The value of a social mention may often simply be calculated by dividing the number of impressions by 1,000 and then multiplying the result by your average cost per thousand (CPM) impressions.

(social impressions/1000) x average CPM for display advertising = VSM

But this formula, with no factor for the inherent costs of creating the social post, tends to overvalue the return on social. A more accurate measure may be derived by dividing the number of impressions by 1,000, then multiplying the result by your average cost per thousand (CPM) impressions, and then subtracting the average cost per post creation. Figuring the average creation cost for content can be somewhat complicated, depending on how granular your cost measures and inputs are, but at the very least, you should understand your cost per labor hour and the time spent creating all of your posts (writing, design, trafficking, et al) within a time period (weeks, months, etc.) divided by the number of posts created.

(social impressions/1000) x avg CPM for display advertising – avg creation cost per post = VSM

Including this metric on your dashboard provides you with a good indication of how much you’re actually spending to generate and promote your message on what’s long been perceived as a “free” media channel and, more important, ensures your resources are dedicated and managed appropriately, given the actual value.

Know your average conversion cost by lead channel.

This metric is all about budget prioritization based on the relative quality of engagement by channel—for example, organic or paid social versus email marketing, display advertising, pre-roll, SEO or SEM, etc. It’s a relatively simple calculation; the dollars spent by channel divided by the conversions attributable to each channel. Again, theoretically, you should be putting your budget dollars into whatever delivers the lowest cost per conversion, be they registrations, subscriptions, downloads, or actual sales. The trick, of course, is to know at what level of spending you have exhausted opportunities within that medium to the point that additional dollars become less and less effective. You then move a higher percentage of your budget to the next most-effective medium.

Figure out your average lead quality with… more math.

Using some of the same data as in the measure above, the theory behind the average lead quality measure is that all leads are not of the same value to your business. The dollars you’re spending should be applied toward those tactics/media that deliver the highest-quality leads. Whereas the average conversion cost by lead channel assesses the effect of your media mix on filling the funnel, average lead quality measures what percentage of those leads ultimately converts to a sale. Again, the math is fairly simple.

(incoming leads) divided by (executed contracts/# of sales) = average lead quality (%)

As a sole measure, average lead quality at any point in time is of limited value. But measured over time and analyzed in conjunction with other input variables or tracked KPIs, it can indicate your media strategy, target segmentation, or campaign messaging is no longer hitting or attracting the right customers. Of course, an increasing average lead quality percentage means you are doing a better job of attracting the customers who are most likely to buy to the conversion funnel—a good sign. If the percentages decline over time, you have to begin to question your targeting approach.

No more math! Find your top five drop-off locations.

Finally, we get to a spot where there’s no math involved! Most marketing dashboards stick strictly to the positive metrics. But understanding where and maybe why users drop off the path to conversion demonstrates where you may have weakness in your sales messaging and/or relevancy. Turning to your Google analytics account, look for the URLs associated with the highest drop-off rates. If they remain the same week after week, there is an opportunity to optimize the UX or UI to increase stickiness—or at least reduce drop-offs.

Your mileage may vary.

There is no single set of metrics that is best for every business. It all depends on what behaviors drive your most important KPIs. But there should always be room on your dashboard for metrics like these to expand your understanding beyond what is happening and point you toward an understanding of why you are achieving the results you see and how you can improve.

5 ways smart marketing can go too far.

Too much of a good thing?

There is a phrase in medicine: “the poison is in the dose,” meaning, that no substance is inherently beneficial or dangerous, you just need watch the amount. Humans need vitamin A and water, but ingest too much and they can make you ill or worse yet, dead. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the same can be said of today’s technology-driven marketing practices. Here are five things really smart marketers do to remain successful, that if overdone, can actually impede the success of your plans.

1. Increasing the level of detail in your analytics.

As marketers, we have an unprecedented level of analytics available to us. So, when given the option, why not increase your effectiveness by enhancing the level of analytical detail you collect, right? Before you answer, “yes,” first ask yourself the following questions:Are you really only substituting increased volume for insight?

Most marketers are not taking full advantage of the data they already have.

Have you fully detailed and examined the story your current data and analytics are telling you? Collecting data is one thing; but the actual implications of the data are where many marketers fall short. What insights does your current metrics provide?

What will you do with additional measurement and how will it impact or change your current marketing strategies and behaviors? Is the cost of the additional analytics offset by the potential gains it will provide in sales or other KPIs?So, what should you do? The truth, for most resource-constrained marketers, is that it’s better to narrow the data points you review to only those that are most important to driving business KPIs. Then prioritize your time and resources optimizing your user experience around those conversion behaviors that drive KPIs.

2. Focusing on your best customers

There has never been a marketer with unlimited time and unlimited money. Resources are always constrained (Geico’s seemingly unlimited television commercial budget notwithstanding). That’s why, as preached in every marketing or business school, the sound strategy is to focus your efforts on maintaining and maximizing relationships with your best customers. It’s the lowest risk way to see a positive return on your investment. That is still true. But often focus turns into exclusivity. What many marketers forget is that when they manage risk down to zero, they will also be managing potential opportunities to zero.What should you do? The best way to catalyze new opportunities may be allocating a percentage of your marketing budget for experimentation. Test your hunches. Take creative risks. Look for untapped new audiences. But only if you’re committed to systematically measuring and analyzing the results!

3. Going all-in on a mobile first strategy.

While more than 50% of B2B and B2C transactions begin or involve mobile experiences, despite what most marketing publications may be preaching, for most B2B (and some B2C) marketers, it is too soon to abandon or give short shrift to the desktop.What should you do? Well, the simple answer is support both platforms. Ensure your web experience is fully responsive and offers equal ability to facilitate any and all conversions. The more complex approach is to scour your analytics to fully understand the differences in user behavior across and between platforms.

Break down your user flows on each device type into micro-transactions (making sure you implement corresponding hooks in your analytics) to better understand what UX/UI features/moments in the mobile or desktop experiences are enhancing or depressing your overall conversion rates.

Then continue to optimize those micro-transactions by platform against your conversion goals. And, of course, continue to monitor ongoing changes in share of user sessions by platform and allocate future development budgets and resources based on your users’ rate of mobile adoption.

4. Maximizing engagement with customers on social media

Where once most marketers used the number of followers as the preeminent measure of a successful social strategy, lately there has been more emphasis on engagement numbers. While both are decent enough measures of activity, they are not proven, in and of themselves, to be drivers of ROI. Further, raw engagement numbers don’t necessarily convey sentiment. And finally, focusing on quantity of engagements versus quality can impart noise into your channels as well as muddy the intended message within each channel.

What should you do? Like most points made here, we suggest thinking first about optimizing or maximizing conversions or behaviors that drive business KPIs. Spend most of your time engaging in conversations that support those goals and metrics. Make all posts and conversations actionable—always try to provide links to conversion points, etc. Perhaps base success not on how many people saw or “liked” your posts, but rather on how many became actively engaged in a behavior you want to drive.

5. Expanding your content library

It seems the majority of B2B marketers have all jumped onto the content train. The idea was that white papers, blog posts and articles are more trusted mediums (versus banner ads or direct marketing) so they would more easily capture attention and pull in more interested customers while they are at their most engaged—researching a given topic. While there is certainly an SEO benefit to adding a greater volume of relevant content to your site, most B2B content is never experienced by the intended audience. Creating good, useful content is time and resource intensive to create. And unless that content is actively engaged with by users, it will not provide the desired lift in online engagement or conversions. In other words, generating content for content’s sake is time and resources wasted.

What should you do? First, understand that more is not better. Better is better. What does that mean? Well, when creating your next piece of content, evaluate if what you are saying is uniquely valuable to your audience. Ask yourself:

• Are you providing insights, ideas or factual information that aren’t available already in multiple places?

• Is there an audience waiting for content on the topic? Is it really thought leadership, or simply “me too” SEO fodder?

• Does the new content present a previously unknown opportunity for action?

• Will the content you are creating actively support your strategic business goals?

• And, most importantly, what target segments, specifically, will benefit from engaging with the content?

If you can answer all of those questions and still think that producing the content is worth your limited time and resources (as well as the time and resources your customers will expend consuming it), then create it, push it out and promote it like mad.

The short version: do everything, in the right amount, for the right reason!

Riding the Wave of AI

The wave of automation and AI disruption is coming. Is your business ready to ride?

We see new advances in digital automation and artificial intelligence (AI) nearly every day. Much like industrial robot technology reduced the number of available manufacturing jobs in the U.S. in the 1980s, the combination digital automation and AI is poised to disrupt virtually every industry at some point in the coming decade. The question is how can you position your company to be the disruptor, not the disrupted? 

Ask how a competitor using advanced AI could beat you at your own game.

Diagram your complete path to purchase on a white board. Evaluate every part of your business for any moment along that path where automation or AI facilitated decision-making could reduce process time, costs and user frustrations. Also look for any part of your path to purchase where customers drop off or fail to convert, and try to re-imagine those points with AI or automation assist. Take time to explore emerging technologies that could directly or indirectly affect your market, long term.Now, look at your market and ask, regardless of organizational, technical or monetary constraints. What would the ideal experience for the majority of your customer look like? What do your customers value/like/dislike about everyone’s current offerings?Finally, get your smartest people—from operations, sales, marketing, admin et al—and design your worst competitive nightmare. What special expertise would they offer? What advantages would they have over your business? How would they price? What capital expenditures would they need to build their infrastructure, I.T. or facilities? 

Figure out what it would take for them to get off the ground.

Once you decide how your new competitor would operate differently to steal your business, try to document what it might take to get a company like this going. What resources would be needed? What infrastructure would be required? What would the employee mix look like? How quickly would they be able to steal your business? How could they offer a parity or better product or service than you do now, cheaper than you can? 

Create a script outlining what they would say to sell against you.

Be brutally honest. Talk about where your business is vulnerable. Ask what potential benefits of this new competitive offering that your customers would respond to that you aren’t able to match. 

Surprise, you just outlined a business plan.

In those three (obviously multifaceted) steps, you’ve outlined the product/service design. You’ve begun to outline a viable financial model. And you’ve laid the foundation for marketing and sales messaging. 

Remember: if you can imagine this, so too can a real competitor.

With every new technology, it’s only disruption when you’re the incumbent. For everyone else, it’s simply opportunity.