,

Contacting Employees After Hours May Come at a Price (Literally)

The way we work today has evolved well beyond the scope of many of the laws we are currently operating within. It is important to recognize that the current laws on the books are ripe for change, or at the very least are likely to be interpreted differently in the future.

When you launch your own company, chances are you’re thinking about it every waking hour including nights, weekends and even while on vacation. It’s hard not to, as much is riding on your business success. With so much on your mind all the time, many entrepreneurs have turned to sending emails, text messages and even calling their team when a sudden burst of inspiration hits, ideas surface or forgotten tasks are suddenly remembered-often late in the evening and over the weekends.

The expectation of what happens next is currently being evaluated by our legal system and may lead to some sizeable class action lawsuits. “The lawsuits are starting to catch up to technology” says Nader Anise, Esq. “The crux of the issue that’s being decided right now in the courts is about overtime pay as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Are employees expected to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? What is the fair compensation model for employees when the line between work and personal time has been blurred?”

In a recent Wall Street Journal Article it was estimated that as much as 44% of employees use their phones to check work email and work-related text after hours. For many, having a smartphone by your side means you can instantly see who’s emailed, texted or called you about work-related issues and as part of a desire to deal with urgent issues in the moment, many employees get sucked into responding and dealing with requests long after the workday is done (assuming traditional office hours).

Work-Life Out of Balance
This all started innocently enough. As part of a desire for startups and “lean” companies to attract workers, many entrepreneurs began thinking differently about the traditional office setting. Traditional office hours at a physical office morphed into a productivity focused, “I don’t care where or when you work as long as you get your work done on time and within budget” attitude. This allowed for more employees to work from home, work non-traditional hours and leverage screen-sharing, video and other technology for impromptu collaboration.

Smartphones further blurred the lines between work and personal time. But what happens when the work keeps piling on and employees feel the pressure to work increasingly long hours just to keep up with the increasingly unrealistic expectations of individual productivity? If the traditional boundaries of “work” vs. “home” have been at least blurred and arguably eliminated, how does the employee ensure reasonable downtime to stop working and recharge his or her batteries?

The Legal Implications of After Hours Contact
As part of the Fair Labor Standards Act, Nader Anise explains, “Exempt workers are not eligible for overtime pay. The general definition of an exempt worker is someone who is a white-collar worker who earns more than $455 per week or $23,600 per year on a salary basis. If you make less than that, there’s a good chance you’re entitled to overtime pay. Of course, like all laws, there are exceptions to the rule and other factors that come into play.” And while this may not be an issue for you right now, there have been efforts by the Obama administration to increase these figures, raising this floor from $455 per week to potentially as much as $900 or $950 per week, or around $50,000 per year. If this regulation gets the green light, then there will be much broader implications and potential individual and class action lawsuits among unsuspecting entrepreneurs.

One Possible Solution: Setting Guidelines and Clear Expectations
In order to protect yourself and avoid potential class action lawsuits in the future, entrepreneurs must set clear guidelines, expectations and boundaries for their workers. For example, telling your employees that “Just because I sent you an email at 9:30pm doesn’t mean I expect you to answer it before tomorrow morning.” Better yet, develop policies and guidelines around after hour correspondence to get ahead of these issues.

“Ultimately, the new legislation being discussed and interpretation of the current laws could potentially be a big problem for entrepreneurs,” says Nader Anise. “The whole point of being small and nimble is to move quickly and get things done faster than the larger, more established businesses you are competing against. The purpose of the Fair Labor Standards Act was to prevent unfair working conditions; not to harm entrepreneurs.”

Regardless of final outcome in our legal system, it’s clear that the way we work today has evolved well beyond the scope of many of the laws we are currently operating within. It is important to recognize that the current laws on the books are ripe for change, or at the very least are likely to be interpreted differently in the future. If you haven’t spoken to your labor attorney in quite some time, it might be a good idea to spend some quality time reviewing your current business operations to identify potential exposure to problems before they become big problems and distract you from your core business. As Benjamin Franklin would say, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Avoid Prematurely Pulling the Fire Alarm
Please understand that I am by no means an alarmist. The Wall Street Journal articlegot my attention and I wanted to make sure you were aware of the potential legal implications of a highly common practice in small and growing companies. This may not be a big issue today, but there are all the signs that class action suits are being formed right now and, if successful, would have significant impact on the way we work-now and in the future.

Ultimately, this is about being aware of what’s happening now and taking the precautionary steps to be fair to your employees and respect their downtime-even if you yourself are obsessed about building the next great company in your industry and changing the world in an incredibly powerful way.

When you’re in that zone, time ceases to exist and your drive compels you to do whatever it takes. I get it. I’m living that passion and I have worked hard to pull in likeminded teammates who share my passion and vision. We just need to ensure we’re being emotionally intelligent around the needs of the people who have joined us on our quest to change the world.

/by
,

Customer Experience is Your ONLY Differentiator. You’re About To Be Rewarded or Punished.

Forget about your company’s historical point of differentiation. Customer Experience reigns supreme today and you will either be rewarded or punished for how you are treating your customers.

Lately I have been digging deep into what sets companies apart these days. In an age where you can launch any product or service you can dream up with surprisingly little cash, you can rule out historical concepts around “speed to market”, “cost efficiency” and “uniqueness”. When it comes right down to it, the only point of differentiation left today is the customer experience itself.

I recently had an incredible interview with Kevin Cochrane, who is the CMO of Jahia, a digital experience management provider. He is also a member of the board at Digital Clarity Group and, previously, he was CMO at OpenText and former VP of Enterprise Marketing at Adobe. I encourage you to watch the entire interview on YouTube.

In this interview, Mr. Cochrane discusses all three waves of digital marketing and, as someone who has been in the digital marketing industry since its inception, I can attest to his accuracy of how we got from 1994 to today. The focus of this article, however, is the current wave of digital marketing because we have reached the defining moment for companies and how they are leveraging all of their tools to deliver on an incredible customer experience (or not).

Your future depends on how you deliver on your customer experience. This is a deep dive as to why and what you must do in order to succeed the third wave of digital marketing. Here are the profound insights from Mr. Cochrane:

Delivering on the Next Generation of Customer Experience
To deliver on the next generation of customer experience, it’s not about targeting, personalization and acquisition; it’s about what happens when you already are a customer and login. I expect you to know me by name, my preferences and everything I want to buy from you or have bought from you. It’s all 100% personally identifiable information. Every single employee needs to know exactly who I am. And this is scary for people because your digital life IS your life.

Brands need to protect this personally identifiable information and this is a shift. It’s no longer just about your credit card information. It’s about protecting all of your personally identifiable information and not selling it to 3rd parties.

Now layer in the data coming out of the Internet of Things and it’s super scary as someone knows where you are at every second of the day.

With Deeply Personal Data Comes Great Responsibility
To win, you need to know the intimate details about your customers. From when they wake up to when they go to sleep and what dreams and aspirations they have. But, at the same time, that’s the very same data that makes it so valuable to steal from you.

What do you do about that? You not only need the infrastructure to empower your employees to analyze customer data in real-time, but you also have to put the governance in place to empower the consumer to know what data you’re collecting, why you’re collecting it, how long you’re keeping it and how they can delete it.

That’s what we do here at Jahia. I thought it wouldn’t happen until 2020, but we’re here now because of targeted breaches that have sped up the rapid adoption.

Breaking the Customer Experience Bottleneck
How do you break the customer experience bottleneck? Specifically, the personalization and context bottleneck? Today, in order to deliver the right content in context, you typically have a small team of people who test and optimize using all the data analytics and insights. In order to deliver true 1:1 personalized customer experiences, you need to break this bottleneck. This is about empowering your team to connect (1:1) with their audiences.

Aggregate context across all the silos, then give it to subject matter experts so that they can make an informed decision about writing content. Who am I writing this content for? You have 10,000 people writing content, but they don’t have access to the right data for personalization and context. Empower people to do their jobs well. All content must have the proper context.

This is the democratization of big data (vs. “power mongers”).

Companies must be comfortable with losing control of their content marketing, empowering the entire organization with the data insights they need to create the content that your customers are hungry for.

Balance Access with Governance
Give responsibility and authority to subject matter experts. You also need a governance framework – the bumper rails – so that your team doesn’t (unintentionally) do harm. So it’s about locking down the data. Who gets access to what data? How long do they have access to it (making sure they don’t have access to the data for a longer period of time than they should)? And we’re going to need to be transparent to the consumer about the data we’re collecting, why we’re collecting it, how long we’re holding it and we’re going to allow the consumer to make the choice about what should be anonymized, what should be deleted and we will NEVER sell that data to a 3rd party.

Every marketer will have access to every customer they are touching and targeting and every consumer will have trust because they will be able to click a Jahia-powered website privacy link to see what everyone in the company knows about you, and you can say what data you want anonymized, deleted and even where the data should be stored. The consumer will have control of their own data.

What Drove the 3 Waves of Digital Marketing: A Historical Context
Of the three waves of digital marketing, the first wave was a CIO-led wave. The first part of that first wave was infrastructure to power a brand experience online; CIOs ran the implementation of websites for their CMOs. But then continuing beyond that initial phase was web infrastructure to power things like extranets, web server portals, as well as to empower the entire employee experience with the roll-out of various portals such as intranets.

The second wave was purely a CMO-led wave around demand generation online tied to customer acquisition experiences that were both mobile and social.

What started to change in the early 2013 timeframe was the role of the CIO. This is because the technology in the marketing tech stack had relevance beyond the marketing acquisition. Employee engagement, for example, is critically important to drive the customer experience. Additionally, all of the targeting and personalization that you do for acquiring customers has relevance for your business partners. The CIO’s role, which before was much more focused on managing operational infrastructure, was now thinking much more strategically about leveraging the backbone of the digital business and taking the technologies that marketers were using to acquire customers and use them through the rest of the enterprise.

Beyond customer acquisition experiences, digital infrastructure was needed to empower the CIO to enable them to power the digital enterprise.

The third wave of digital marketing came faster than I ever expected. I thought it would be another 10 year cycle (like waves 1 & 2), but a couple of things accelerated it, like the union of CMOs and CIOs together to power next-generation business and customer analytics to drive targeted, personalized 1:1 experiences to build trusted, long-lasting brand relationships. The three things that occurred in rapid-fire succession were: (1) popularization of Apache Hadoop, (2) Big Data became a reality enabling the processing of real-time data sets and (3) in 2014 the Internet of Things took off. You suddenly had more sensors in more places in the home and work and that provided more data that you could process in real-time than you ever could before.

The Great Consumer (& CEO) Awakening of 2015
In 2015, consumers woke up and realized they were targets; that enterprises were collecting more data in more silos and yet they had no idea what data was being collected, why it was being collected, how long it was being maintained nor how it was being used for their benefit. The only people who really did know were the cyber criminals who were breaching enterprise security, primarily through smart phones, and causing catastrophic damage to people’s lives.

This was the dawn of the third wave. CEO’s woke up in 2016 and said to themselves that customer experiences are the only way we are going to be able to distinguish ourselves in the marketplace long-term. There is no other sustainable advantage. Product cycles are too short. Any person can start a company in a garage and have immediate access to global markets; switching costs are entirely low. There is no sustainable differentiation other than your customer experience. Your customer experience IS your brand.

But, there’s a challenge there. You spend a lot of money acquiring those customers. You spend a lot of money making them loyal brand advocates. But in one second, you can lose trust from that consumer and they will never go back to your brand again.

So the CEOs have two major goals: (1) drive a differentiated customer experience and (2) mitigate risk and damage to the brand by making sure they establish trust in the online and offline experiences by protecting consumer data and privacy. And those that don’t have this as a mission better wake up because it’s the law in Europe and, if you’re doing business in any European country, you do not want to get a fine as a percentage of your revenue. And you will because chances are you’re getting breached every single day – you just don’t know it.

Forrester says you will either be rewarded or you will be punished. You’re not going to spend money with someone you don’t trust or who is harming you.

Warren Buffett has said that “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” This is just as true for the individual as the corporation these days. If you’re not managing the customer experience and the associated data you’re collecting properly, then you’re essentially dead.

On the flip side, if you’re giving the power back to your customers to control their own data (with respect to their engagements with you), then you are being given permission to provide incredible customer experiences for your best customers; this is the very thing that will allow you to not only survive but also thrive in this next wave of digital marketing. For more on this topic, I encourage you to watch the entire interview on YouTube.

/by

How to Growth Hack Your Business

Growth hacking is about practical action steps you can take to immediately grow your business. For any startup, this is the secret sauce that allows you to grow quickly, cheaply, and effectively.

In case you missed it, Vincent Dignan‘s discussion of “growth hacking” was voted the best talk on the subject at this year’s South by Southwest V2V conference in Las Vegas. Now, on September 23, he’s raising the bar at the Secret Sauce Conference in London, alongside some top entrepreneurs, for a no BS approach to hacking your business to success.

I had the opportunity to interview Mr. Dignan and asked him about what insights he could share with you, his fellow entrepreneurs, to growth hack your businesses to the level of success we’re all looking to achieve. Here’s what he had to say:

  1. Ignore the Successful Millionaire Cliché Club. How many times have we heard successful millionaires pontificate about clichés that, while accurate, give you very little specific action to take? Growth hacking is about specific, actionable steps any entrepreneur can (and should) take to immediately drive your business forward.
  2. Find Any Email Address Online for Free. How? There are actually several ways that most people don’t know about. A popular site Vincent Dignan referenced was Email Hunter. Just enter the company domain you’re interested in connecting with and immediately see all the email addresses that have been scraped from the Web. Does it work? You bet. I typed in my own company’s name and found my email address along with others. Or, if you don’t find what you’re looking for, click over to SalesForce.com’s own Data.com. For the simple price of your own data, you can have access to just about any company you’re looking to reach.
  3. Automate Your Email Reminders. If you’re not hip to Rebump, this is a simple add-on feature to Google’s own Gmail that will allow you to automate your friendly email reminders to clients and prospects who tend not to respond to your first email inquiry. Rebump customers report an average 30 percent response rate! This not only saves you time, but ensures you follow up along a timeline you set (e.g., every four days).
  4. Get a One-Pager on Everyone You’re Going to Meet Before You See Them.Check out Charlie App for an incredible tool that combs through hundreds of sources and automatically sends you a one-pager on everyone you’re going to meet with, before you see them. This includes blog posts, breaking news on their company, common connections, competitive insights, common passion points, and whatever else is available. How’s that for having an effective meeting with someone you’ve never met?
  5. Establish a “Trending” Topic on Twitter. What if you could pay someone to push out a tweet that would be read by so many followers that you actually trend on Twitter? Yeah, there are people who do that, and they are hyper local, so that your trend occurs precisely in the city you are targeting. Who, exactly? Start withSteven Bartlett, who is the CEO of Social Chain, the U.K.’s largest influencer marketing agency and one of the most talked about marketing agencies of 2015. At just 22 years old, Steve Bartlett heads up a team of young creatives growing huge social trends, recognized as one of the most powerful influences on social media.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone who has attended a session with Vincent Dignan knows that it’s a lean-in experience. This is about practical action steps that you (and any highly motivated entrepreneur) can take to growth hack your business. If you aren’t in a position to attend the Secret Sauce Conference in London, I recommend you follow the Twitter feeds of the keynote speakers. I have a feeling that some incredible growth hacks will be shared next week.

And if I’m able to speak to any more of the keynote speakers, I’ll certainly share what I learn. (And yes, I acknowledge that this is in direct opposition to the growth hacker’s code: You do not talk about growth hacking. “It’s like fight club,” says Vincent Dignan). Thankfully, he was willing to make an exception today.

/by
, ,

What Is a Chief Marketing Technologist?

We can no longer afford separate silos between marketing and IT. The rapid collapse of these silos means that one person must be able to converse seamlessly between both groups.

Haven’t met anyone with the title of “chief marketing technologist” yet? You will. It’s the ultimate culmination between the chief marketing officer (CMO) role and the chief information officer (CIO) role, and it’s growing in popularity.

The line between the CMO and the CIO has been blurring for years. The first time I came across this was at a 2013 Ad Age conference featuring Bob Lord (Global CEO) and Ray Velez (Global CTO), of Razorfish, who had just published their book,Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology. It’s a great book and I highly recommend it if you are interested in this topic. Their point is that at this time in our digital marketing history, marketing and technology musttranscend the very silos they have been neatly shoved into.

Naturally, the person best suited to collapse the marketing and technology functions within your company is someone who has been trained to handle both. Today, this is somewhat of a rare skill set, but it won’t be for long.

Gartner predicted this three years ago!

In February 2012, Forbes ran an article that read, “Five Years From Now, CMOs Will Spend More on IT Than CIOs Do.” Their main points to support this prediction were as follows:

  1. As we all know, marketing is becoming increasingly technology-based;
  2. Harnessing and mastering Big Data is now key to achieving competitive advantage; 
  3. Many marketing budgets already are larger and faster growing than IT budgets.

More recently, CIO published this article: “CIO-to-CMO Transition of Power Is Becoming a Reality”. CIO pointed out that the transition has happened faster than the five-year time horizon Gartner had predicted in 2012. The article argued that since most of today’s marketing is driven by data, CIOs are a natural fit to become the next generation of CMOs.

Who is playing the role of Chief Marketing Technologist today?

For this article, I interviewed Gary Shatswell at Sizzling Platter, LLC. His LinkedIn profile pegs his role as, chief information officer and VP of marketing. As the acting head of both marketing and IT, Gary Shatswell is a bonafide chief marketing technologist in role, even if he hasn’t officially received this exact title.

When learning more about Gary’s background, I discovered that, like many chief marketing technologists, Gary started in IT and worked his way up to the CIO role. As it became clear that today’s head of marketing is analyzing big data, building complex technology systems and architecture to manage customers and their loyalty, as well as marketing automation systems, all of this felt very familiar to Gary.

“I believe any CIO will initially feel a bit anxious about owning the marketing function in addition to their more traditional CIO role,” said Gary Shatswell, “but as CIOs discover that all of the most important information assets are currently being managed by the marketing department, migration from the role of CIO to chief marketing technologist feels like a natural evolution of the CIO’s role.”

What is so unique about the role of the chief marketing technologist?

The role itself is an acknowledgement of just how important the marketing group is to driving revenue within the organization and, when properly resourced, how today’s marketing information systems are driving the current and future growth of the business. If CIOs are not actively collaborating with their marketing counterparts, then there is a growing disconnect between the role of the CIO and the traditional role of the CMO. Only by bringing these two roles together can the CEO have a complete picture of what insights must be acted upon quickly in order to establish or maintain the top position.

In short, the power comes from the intersection between marketing and IT. Marketing without technology is quickly being left behind by more sophisticated approaches based on real-time big data, which, when properly analyzed, leads to insights, actions, and a sizable impact on the company’s bottom line. Conversely, an IT organization that is not connected to the marketing function is essentially blind to a large majority of the information assets being cultivated and managed by marketing information systems.

A hybrid approach is needed to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing and technology.

Today, we can no longer afford separate silos between marketing and IT. The rapid collapse of these silos means that one person must be able to converse seamlessly between both groups. While many CMOs are getting their arms around the technology side of their business, the natural evolution of this role is for the CIO to improve its marketing skills in order to grow into the chief marketing technologist role. The faster we embrace these trends, the bigger the impact we will have on our bottom line. That’s a great business insight steeped in data. This is our future, and it’s the reason chief marketing technologists will be in high demand for the foreseeable future.

/by
, ,

Why, Despite Simon Sinek’s Best Efforts, You Still Don’t Know Your Why

You were inspired by Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, but since then you’ve struggled to put into action the great advice he shared with the world. Here is the simple action you need to take to get it right.

The Trouble You’re Having with Articulating Your Why
I admit it. I am complete guilty of everything I’m about to share with you. As the CEO of a fast-growing company, I was inspired by Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action”. As of the publishing of this article, he’s inspired more than 24 million people with his simple phrase, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy whyyou do it.”

And yet, as moved as you were by this Ted Talk, I’m willing to bet that since that inspirational speech, you’ve been obsessing over your company’s purpose by thinking deeply and trying to clearly articulate the “why” of your business. That was the point, after all, wasn’t it?

Actually, no, it wasn’t.

You see, people are visual learners. As the Chinese proverb goes, “Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.” Simon Sinek told us exactly what to do, but he DREW a concentric circle with the word “Why” in the middle. While you were moved by his words, it’s that bullseye with the word “Why” that keeps you obsessing about your company’s purpose. And yet, if you listen to the words he says, you’ll come away with a much different conclusion.

It’s What Your People Believe That Truly Matters
Imagine my surprise, when I discovered what was right there in front of me all along. Go back and listen to his Ted Talk (without watching the video) and pay attention to what Simon Sinek actually says. I didn’t discover this on my own. No, my coach, Chad Cooper, sent me a link to Roy H. Williams “The Wizard of Ads” video who broke it down for me, and it’s embarrassingly simple.

Rather than focusing on clearly articulating your company’s “Why” statement, fold a piece of paper in half and on the left-hand side write, “We believe” several times. On the right-hand side write down ONLY statements that are observable by your employees and customers alike (as opposed to something that is “global and ambiguous”). The example Mr. Williams used was, “We believe in doing our best” or “We believe in doing the right thing not the easy thing”. The problem with these statements is that while they may be true, they are not observable and therefore do not reinforce a true belief system.

Instead, Mr. Williams walked through several small business examples of belief statements that are, in fact, observable by your employees and customers. For Goettl, an air conditioning company, these belief statements looked like this:

  • We believe in showing up on time.
  • We believe in super-sealing the air ducts because no one needs to air condition their attic.
  • We believe in eliminating every squeak, rattle and hum, because if you don’t bigger problems will come.
  • We believe in replacing every screw–even the ones other people left out–so that we can tighten the unit up like new.
  • We install everything level, plumb and square because this is the signature of asuperior technician.

Take a minute to stop and absorb what you just read. Every one of these belief statements are observable and measurable are they not? Does this feel like fluffy “shareholder value” doublespeak? Would you want to hire this company to come in and fix any and all problems related to your air conditioning unit?

And that’s the point, isn’t it? So I ask you, would Simon Sinek agree that this company has found their “Why”? Does this company not remind of the part in Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs where Steve Jobs talks about how important getting the INSIDE of the computer right? This is when his young team was complaining about no one ever seeing the inside of their computer. But Steve Jobs was obsessed with making every component neat, tidy and representative of the best company in the world–because we know better and we don’t take short cuts.

Turning Belief Statements to an Actionable Reality
But Mr. Williams didn’t stop there. He suggested that once you identify these observable belief statements, have your team recite them every day, as a group, similar to the pledge of allegiance. It’s easy to ignore management-led mission statements and dismiss lofty, “global and ambiguous” doublespeak. You simply can’t recite these statements each day and then go out and do the opposite. As human beings, we are compelled to act out the things we really believe. If you worked at Goettl as an air conditioning repair person and repeated these belief statements before you started your day each day, is there any chance you’re going to cut corners while out in the field? Not likely.

What’s more, Mr. Williams advises his clients to ditch their “About Us” link on their home page and instead replace it with a “We Believe” link. Not only will more prospective customers click on it, but when a real person can envision in their head a core belief system that benefits them directly, it’s really hard to sign on with anyone else.

If you could clearly envision an air conditioning repair person showing up on time, replacing screws on the shoddy work someone else did, super-sealing air ducts, and installing everything level, plumb and square, wouldn’t you even pay more for that piece of mind? Now, imagine a video where each one of those belief statements were recited by a different employee and you, as a prospective customer, could see the honesty and integrity first hand. Yeah, that’s powerful.

Feel free to watch Simon Sinek’s Ted Talk again with these new insights, but first, do yourself a favor and watch the Roy H. Williams “The Wizard of Ads” video. Then, take the time to run through his simple exercise. You will be living the very mission that Simon Sinek wanted you to in the first place.

/by

LinkedIn on the 3 Best Ways to Attract Your Ideal Customer

If you’re not using LinkedIn for social commerce (i.e. B2B Sales), you’re missing out on a tremendous growth opportunity. Here are the 3 best ways to get in the game.

In a previous article (see The 4 Secrets of Social Commerce From the Head of Social Selling at LinkedIn), I interviewed Mike Derezin, VP of LinkedIn Sales Solutions. Given the incredible insights he shared, I went back again and talked to Mike about what you should be doing to attract your ideal customer on LinkedIn.

Step 1: Find The Right People via More Intelligent Search
“Most people think of LinkedIn as a recruiting tool” says Mike Derezin, “and while that’s been an incredible part of our growth story, the another key opportunity for most businesses is the social selling aspect of LinkedIn. And that starts with right search.” You might be interested to know that LinkedIn processes around nine billion searches per year or around 750 million per month.

Seems obvious enough, but the highest ROI of your time starts with knowing who you should be talking to. If you know the name of a person you want to do business with and you do a Google search, more often than not you’ll find their LinkedIn profile where you can get all kinds of insights about that person. “Finding common ground is one of the most powerful ways to connect with people” explains Mr. Derezin. “I have many stories of deals getting done because a salesperson took the time to research and discover interests outside of their top prospects job function. Let’s say you are a soccer coach, for example in your off time. You can connect with someone else who’s also a soccer coach and you then have a shared experience that can serves as a great foundation.”

And within LinkedIn, you can do advanced searches around: (1) Geography so that you can pinpoint physical locations where you’d like to focus your efforts, (2) Industryso that you are focused on the right companies interested in what you have to offer, (3) Titles so that you are connecting with the right level, (4) Keywords to get really specific around what you’re looking for, and several other attributes. When you useSales Navigator (the paid version of LinkedIn for sales professionals) you can go even deeper with things like Look Alike Leads–as the average sales has more than five decision makers to influence.

Step 2: Build a Strong Profile
One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is treating their LinkedIn profile like an online resume (even when they ARE looking for a job). Having a list of your accomplishments is an out-dated concept and you need to up your game. Ask yourself what your ideal prospect is looking for? What specific keywords would they use to look for someone who solves the problem you and your company solve? Then update your profile so that it speaks directly to your superpower.

“Your LinkedIn profile should not be a laundry list of your accomplishments,” advises Mr. Derezin. “Instead, it should be a powerful statement about who you are and what problems you solve.” Exactly. If you are a real-estate agent, why should I hire you versus every other agent out there? If you are a lawyer, what can I count on from you to ensure the outcomes I seek? If you are a coach, how will you empower me to breakthrough and reach any goal I set for myself? I don’t care how many clients you have, how much revenue you’ve secured, or which companies you’ve worked for. What I DO care about is what you can do for me and how you add more value to my business. Do that and you’re sure to stand out from everyone else in your field.

Step 3: Share More and Sell Less
This one is a bit counter-intuitive, so let me explain. Imagine you’re sitting at your desk and the phone rings. Out of force of habit, you accidentally answer the phone before checking Caller ID. Immediately the person on the other end of the line launches into a sales pitch. At this moment, all you are thinking is “How quickly can I hang up on this person and get back to what I was doing?”

When you constantly try to sell on LinkedIn, you seem like a pushy used car salesman trying to close a deal–so don’t do it. Instead, take some time to really think about what you client wants (not from you, but from anyone). What they truly want is an expert who can help guide them through their (buyer’s) journey.

“Rather than jump right into selling your product or service, take some time to curate really great content that your ideal customer is interested in” explains
Mr. Derezin. “You can start really simple by identifying an article that you think is insightful and publish it to your network with a one sentence description of why you think it’s important. This will help you add real value and begin to attract the people you want to connect with on LinkedIn.”

And, of course, if you are really passionate about a particular subject, you always have the option of publishing a long form post on LinkedIn. The more you share, the more value you add and the more likely you are to attract your ideal customers.

Don’t Hesitate–Get in the Game!
A final word of advice from Nike, “Just Do It!” It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the cool things you can be doing on LinkedIn, so most people end up doing little to nothing. One of my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins is, “Knowledge isn’t power; it’s potential power. Execution trumps knowledge any day of the week.” You have the knowledge, but if you do nothing with it then you’re not putting the power of LinkedIn to work for you and your business.

Schedule just 30 minutes a week to implement what you just learned and track the incredible growth of your business. You’re almost through the first quarter of 2016. If your sales aren’t where you want them to be, it’s not too late to change the trajectory of where you are today and finish strong. So I’ll ask another favorite Tony Robbins question, “When would NOW be a good time to get started?”

/by
,

Digital Marketing’s Top 3 Trends per Digital Marketer’s CEO

Digital Marketer finished 2015 with more than $30 million in revenue and expects to close out 2016 with over $50 million. So, when Ryan Deiss shares what he believes to be the future of digital marketing, you’d be wise to listen up.

Ryan Deiss, the CEO of Digital Marketer, is a bit of badass. Having launched his first company in college as a means to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend, he finished 2015 with more than $30 million in revenue and expects to close out 2016 with over $50 million. I had the chance to speak with Mr. Deiss before his keynote address at the Traffic & Conversion Summit, and he identified the 3 biggest trends in digital marketing.

Trend #1: Professionalization of Digital Marketing
2016 is the year more companies choose to professionalize their digital marketing efforts. “For far too long, companies have outsourced and off-loaded their digital marketing to someone else,” explains Mr. Deiss. “The biggest thing driving this trend is that consumers are demanding transparency and authenticity. That, and the fact that traditional branding isn’t working anymore.”

Mr. Deiss points to the role of the in-house digital marketing professional as truly emerging and creating a new class of marketing professional. “Businesses are bringing the function of digital marketing in-house with the idea of working with agencies on larger projects,” Mr. Deiss explains. This is leading to the need to train, certify and support the needs of in-house digital marketing experts, which is one of the fast growth areas that Digital Marketer experienced in 2015 and expects to see continued growth around in 2016.

“If you take a look at the hottest most in-demand jobs on Yahoo right now, you’ll see Product Marketing hovering around the #5 spot,” says Mr. Deiss. “If you drill into the job description you’ll see there’s a heavy emphasis on digital marketing knowledge. This is one of the best jobs you can get without a graduate school degree. The trouble is, universities have fallen behind in their ability to train for this position.”

As more companies look to add digital marketing professionals to their staff, they are finding that these individuals are in high demand and tend to have wide variance between their skill levels. Some may be experts at social media while others are better trained in the area of search, for example. Digital Marketer is doing what it can to level the playing field through its own certification program.

Trend #2: More Shopping via Native Commerce
Yes, you read that subhead correctly. I know you understand the ins and outs of Native Advertising, but Native Commerce is different. As brands look to balance their branding efforts with direct response, they are seeing some interesting opportunities around Native Commerce.

In Mr. Deiss own words, “I say bring on the complexity! Native Commerce is tough, but it’s about how we can serve our customers best.” He broke it down for me this way:“Native Commerce is about attracting passionate buyers of different categories of products through building content-driven communities”. Think of it this way. If you’re into the latest fashion trends, you want to stay up on trendy nail colors and beauty tips. If a business wants to attract you to buy their products, they will work to build a content-rich community in which it makes total sense to sell products that support that community.

Contrast most ecommerce company’s retargeting efforts versus Native Commerce. You go onto an ecommerce site, look at a product and maybe even put it in your cart. God help you if you don’t check out and buy that product as you’re going to see a ton of ads retargeting you and luring you back to that ecommerce website to complete your transaction. Yuck! Now, what if you had a content rich community where you could ask questions about the products you’re interested in. Rather than receiving the hard sell, you get honest feedback from community members which include representatives of the brands, but not exclusively. Over time, Mr. Deiss is betting that you will shop your passions with other Native Commerce communities and spend less time purely transacting.

Trend #3: Emergence of Customer-Centric Business
A great quote I heard from Tony Robbins at his Business Mastery conference was, “Fall in love with your customer, not your products”. This idea was echoed loudly when talking with Mr. Deiss who urges you to, “Define your business based on who you serve vs. what you do.” He went on to explain that most companies define their business by the product or service they sell rather than the audience they serve. Mr. Deiss believes that this is a major difference that will lead to your success or failure.

“Think about Channel,” Mr. Deiss explains, “they know exactly who their woman is and they live to serve her. Apple became hugely successful only when they stopped defining themselves based on selling computers but rather to serve a specific demographic. That’s why it’s not weird for you to buy a phone, watch or even a car from Apple.”

And we went on to think about the most successful companies out there and they all had a clear picture of their ideal customer and continued to change their products and services to fit the changing needs of that customer. Those who fall in love with their products eventually disconnect from the needs of their customers.

Think about Facebook versus Twitter. While Twitter has struggled to grow and remain relevant as a dominant social media platform, Facebook continues to innovate, reinvent itself and jump to the next place where their customers want to be–from the desktop to mobile to virtual reality. They anticipate the future needs of their customers and ensure they continue to serve them now and in the future.

“I can’t stress how important it is to build your product around the audience you serve,” says Mr. Deiss. “If you’re not a customer-centric business, then you will struggle to remain relevant in the future.”

So ask yourself, “Where can I serve my customer best?” and you will realize that there are things you’re probably not doing now that you should be doing (and things you are doing that will not serve you in the future). As I said, Ryan Deiss is a bit of a badass and you would do well to heed his three predictions. As a 22 year old digital marketer myself, I agree wholeheartedly with these assertions and urge you to implement them in your business immediately if you haven’t already.

/by
,

Influencer Marketing Delivers 11X ROI Over All Other Forms of Digital Media

Influencer Marketing has been at the forefront of Digital Marketing for the past few years, but attribution modeling has proved challenging. Nielson Catalina Solutions proves that Influencer Marketing drives measurable retail sales lift for CPG brands.

Nielsen Catalina Solutions in partnership with TapInfluence and WhiteWave Foods released a case study that proves Influencer Marketing delivers $285 incremental sales per 1000 views, and TapInfluence shows this to be 11 times ROI over all other forms of Digital Media.

This is music to the ears of content creators and social media influencers who have, for years, known that authentic promotion of brands is substantially more impactful than say a banner ad. Until today, however, they couldn’t prove it.

I happened to be on-site with TapInfluence when this news was announced. I also had the chance to speak directly to Rustin Banks, the Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of TapInfluence, who is leading the measurement practice. What I’m about to share with you will forever change the nature of the Influencer Marketing conversation. Now we can prove, definitively, the measurable sales lift that the right content delivered by the right influencers has on retail sales volume.

Why Influencer Marketing Is So Powerful
I believe Francesca Cruz, VP of Sales for TapInfluence, said it best, “Great content is expensive to create and yet it rarely gets seen because most companies publish it on their own channels. Brands end up paying for distribution and content creation. Influencer Marketing, however, delivers both content creation and distribution for a much cheaper price, is more authentic, more engaging and drives ROI at an order of magnitude greater than all other forms of digital media.”

Read that last part again, because it’s the crux of the study and is the start of a conversation you’re going to be hearing about for the next 3 to 5 years.

Clinging to the Embarrassing Results of Banner Ads
Knowing this, why do so many smart companies cling to a marketing tactic that has been proven to be 99.9% ineffective? Look, I have a soft spot in my heart for banner ads because I build one of the very first ones for MasterCard on Yahoo in early 1995. Back then, we were seeing double digit click-through rates and so there was no wonder the banner ad industry exploded. But when you’re seeing 0.06% effectiveness, it’s downright irresponsible to keep moving forward with a totally ineffective digital marketing tactic.

So why do CMOs and VPs of Marketing still cling to the banner ad? Because, despite the continual rise of ad blocking and the massive amount of ad fraud, the banner ad is the unit of currency that has proliferated the publishing world and has delivered billions of “impressions” programmatically.

This is the rub. Programmatic media buying is built on banner ads and has become the lazy marketers solution to digital media buying. Until today, it was an acceptable solution to a brands request to advertise online. And while it’s known that banner ads deliver a 0.06% CTR, at least it’s measurable, right?

Influencer Marketing is the Viable, Measurable Alternative
Rustin Banks, Co-founder of TapInfluence, says “Companies like Disney have told me that the last step for big dollars to flow into Influencer Marketing is measurement. With this study, we’re about to see a sea change in media dollar allocations.”

With the data to prove it, I would agree. And as Banks points out, this is not earned media value. This is actual sales lift. Real revenue directly tied to marketing spend. Below is the infographic that they prepared as part of this announcement. I encourage you to read the full report as you’re going to want to know more about the measurable impact Influencer Marketing will have on your business.

I’m so excited about this historic report. Let’s take this conversation to Facebook and discuss the many implications of this study. This is only the beginning.

The Lifeline

/by

3 Reasons Digital Advertising Is Going Native

Despite industry concerns, spending on native advertising is growing at a rapid clip. Here’s why.

Native advertising has historically gotten a bad rap. John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, did a particularly poignant segment on why native advertising threatens the very fabric of journalism. In a recent study by the University of Georgia, “fewer than one in five users recognized native advertising as ads.”

And yet, despite industry concerns, spending on native advertising is growing at a rapid clip. Globally, native advertising “is expected to almost double over the next three years, rising from $30.9 billion in 2015 to $59.35 billion in 2018,” according toAdyoulike. In the U.S., Business Insider says, “Native ads will reach $7.9 billion this year and grow to $21 billion in 2018, rising from just $4.7 billion in 2013.”

So what’s fueling the substantial growth of native advertising? I sat down with Henry Lau, co-founder of Instinctive, a leading native advertising and content syndication firm, to better understand. He broke down the cause into three succinct drivers:

  1. Digital advertising’s shift from intrusion to storytelling. For well over a decade, we’ve followed the steady decline of the banner ad click-through rate. Interruption tactics may have worked early on, but consumers have become savvier at avoiding them. “Lately, it’s gotten ridiculous,” says Lau. “Consumers have never wanted to be interrupted, but with the rise of auto-play video advertising and aggressive retargeting, people are getting annoyed.” And consumers are doing something about intrusion via an increase in ad-blocking technology. “Today, as much as 30 percent of all digital ads are being blocked,” says Lau. “As interruption technology has grown, so too has ad-blocking technology.” Last year, The New York Times covered a report from Adobe and PageFair that claimed almost 200 million people worldwide now regularly use ad-blocking software, and that “the levels of ad-blocking activity now top more than a third of all internet users in some countries, particularly in Europe.”Instead of ads, consumers are actively seeking out great content in the form of storytelling. “When done well, native advertising provides real value to consumers,” Lau explains. “By putting the consumer’s needs first, brands are finding compelling ways to engage with the power of stories.”

    Essentially, companies are turning to the laws of attraction with native advertising rather than attempting to interrupt their audience. Great content will attract while aggressive ads will repel. This leads to the second driver of native advertising.

  2. An increased focus on quality time versus tonnage. Programmatic advertising, projected to represent 63 percent of total digital display advertising, has created a market for tonnage (see related article “Problematic Programmatic Media Buying“). Companies that leverage programmatic media buying are looking to maximize media impressions at the lowest possible cost. But there’s a catch. “When it comes to programmatic, there’s simply too much junk and not enough value being delivered,” says Lau. “Everyone is passing the buck, because no one wants to be responsible for the actual result of the digital ad. This is not to say that programmatic couldn’t work in the future, but today, in its current state, it isn’t working that well.” So I asked Lau what he believes the alternative is to a growing tonnage model. “Time,” he answered. “I think time spent is a great way to measure how compelling your advertising and content truly is.” Agreed. Time is the most precious commodity we all have. If your company has something to say that is truly valuable, your intended audience will listen. And Instinctive, Lau’s company, is putting its money where its mouth is by creating an entirely new way to bill clients, by time spent rather than impressions, which have a host of viewability challenges, including the claim that more than half of all digital ads are not seen.
  3. Publishers reaping premium pricing. And last, but not least, are the publishers themselves. While initially attracted to programmatic platforms because of the promise of maximizing profits, many publishers feel that their value has been greatly diminished. The downside of the growing programmatic media trend for publishers is that much of their inventory has been commoditized. To try to combat that trend, many publishers have exacerbated the problem by increasing the amount of available inventory. Native advertising provides an attractive alternative with a limited inventory (by design) and premium pricing. “Native advertising promises premium pricing for publishers amidst downward financial pressure on a cost per impression basis,” says Lau. “Publishers like native advertising because our content is seen as adding value to their site while also providing premium revenue when compared to display ads.”

For these reasons, native advertising is a growing trend and likely to continue to be for the foreseeable future. So before you resign yourself to following the well-worn path of programmatic display advertising, consider what metrics are most valuable to your business. Are you looking for cheap impressions or are you looking for quality engagement time with your target audience?

Lastly, when it comes to the ultimate arbiter of success, native advertising is succeeding there too. In a recent Nielsen case study, native advertising drove “an overall 88.6 percent increase in brand awareness among those exposed to the campaign.” Lau also notes that “beyond brand awareness, several of our clients are leveraging native advertising successfully to drive sales.” These clients include Lenovo, NetApp, Jack in the Box, BlackBerry, and Sky.

The bottom line is that native advertising is a growing trend. While you need to follow the FTC guidelines to stay compliant, you’re going to want to put more of your marketing dollars toward compelling content that can be featured via native advertising versus investing in a fire hose of tactics in an attempt to interrupt your audience.

/by
,

Winning the War for Talent: The Best Companies Use Training

Training will help your business grow despite the ever increasing talent shortage. Nothing beats having happy employees that see your company as a place where they can grow and advance their careers.

In the coming decade, we’re going to see an increasing talent shortage. As the baby boomers retire, there simply aren’t enough qualified candidates to replace them. Generation X may have the appropriate amount of experience, but there are far too few of them. Millennials are eager to take the reigns, but often lack the critical skills necessary to fill the gap left by the now retired baby boomer formerly in that role.

How can entrepreneurs compete effectively with their larger, more established counterparts? One way is through training. The future of your business depends on the next generation of workers who need mastery of increasingly complex skills. To avoid being caught flat-footed as the talent war heats up, it’s important to train your next generation of leaders now.

For the past 20 years, Tracey McCormack, CEO of McCormack Media, has been teaching media courses as part of a UCLA Extension program as well as designing custom training workshops for companies such as Creative Artist Agency, Fox, Hulu, NASCAR, NBC, and ZenithOptimeida.

“Training is a long-term investment and you have to plan and set aside time and resources for it, in order for it to be effective” says Tracey McCormack.

Most entrepreneurs struggle with consistent training as the needs of a growing business often take precedent. When done correctly, training can sharpen the skills of your team, break down internal silos and, in doing so, deliver new levels of growth for your company. But not all training is the same. So what should you look for when considering training resources for your company? When speaking with Tracey McCormack about this, she illustrated the key differences between short-lived and sustainable, high-impact training programs.

5 Aspects of Best-In-Class Training:

  1. Holistic. Successful training programs tend to include all levels of an organization and every department. While one-off training tends to be short-lived, holistic training galvanizes an organization around new areas of growth. When training is seen as a strategic investment in a company’s growth, everyone’s participation matters and ensures that the appropriate changes permeate not just the people being trained, but the process that allows for ongoing improvement well after the training has ended.
  2. Hands-On. The most effective training programs need handled in person. Despite all the great screen share technology out there today, nothing beats person-to-person, hands-on training. When you’re in the room, you’re usually not multi-tasking. A good facilitator ensures engagement and doesn’t allow outside distractions. This creates a highly interactive and engaging forum that leads to breakthroughs. These discoveries allow for immediate implementation internally and externally with new and current clients.
  3. Qualified Expertise. There are many people who claim to be experts. But the information being taught is just as important as the person conducting the training. Your training should be conducted by industry experts who are current on the latest trends and platforms. It helps if they can share their real-world experience so that the training goes beyond theory and can be applied to immediate opportunities your company is considering today.
  4. Individual Attention. While most training programs are conducted in groups, it’s important that each individual have the one-on-one support they need. Consider the needs of each person in the room, and ensure the training efforts are appropriately matched with the amount of time needed for each trainee so that there is an individual and practical application of the skills learned.
  5. Accountability. Before you engage, be sure you know what outcomes you see for your training. If you’re not sure, speak with the organization you’re considering to get clear on what you’re looking for. This should lead to follow through of the key strategies, tactics, and techniques learned so that they are applied against pre-defined and measurable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). This is how you can measure the return on investment (ROI) of your training investment.

“Your training can and should be personalized and customized for your needs and measured upon actual, measurable goals and results”, says Tracey McCormack. While most companies view training as an expense to the business, it’s clear that Tracey McCormack views training as an investment with an expected return. She sees training as an investment in the long-term success of your business. And, according toa study by the National Association of Advertisers, capability development has the strongest correlation to revenue growth, brand health, and ROI.

Winning the Talent War with Training
In addition to the near-term ROI of your training investment, having happy employees that see the company as a place where they can grow and advance their careers builds loyalty and will help your business grow despite the ever increasing talent shortage. Most businesses will agree that your talent is your most expensive and most important company asset. Training is an investment in that talent that builds a strong corporate culture. Training cultivates loyalty and creates a corporate culture for success.

/by