Digital Transformation – Where to Start

Whatever the size of your organisation, you can always rely on digital transformation to turn the tables and change the game for your business. Every major company wants to achieve digital transformation, but it isn’t easy to acquire which is why so many businesses are looking for templates.

There is nothing more frustrating than failing at digital transformation, since that means valuable loss of time and resources. It is also a major setback for the organisation because it has to restart again after accounting for heavy losses.

The fear of losing out or failing at digital transformation is one of the main reasons why so many businesses decide to remain out of the game. However, there are ways you can counter that, which can only be done through digital transformation templates. The important thing is finding templates that have been proven to give results, and once you find templates you can rely on, things will become easier for you in the long-run. To help you achieve digital transformation success, we are going to be sharing digital transformation templates that you can rely on.

Where to Start Digital Transformationdigital-transformation-how-to

Getting ahead of your Competition

The main reason digital transformation is so important is so that you can overtake your competition, and that is what this template is based on. Success in digital transformation can only be achieved if you remove the fear of losing out of your competition. If that is the sole focus of your organization, you will never be able to achieve digital transformation, because it is much more than just beating your competition.

You need to expand your business operations to more than just competing with your competitors. For most businesses that is the definition of getting ahead of their competition. To do that, you need to adopt strategies that no one else has ever thought about, which means leading from the front. Xero created a very handy checklist which you can use before you proceed https://www.xero.com/content/dam/xero/pdf/Startup-guides/Digital-Transformation-checklist-Xero-TradeGecko.pdf

Engaging Customers

If you don’t understand your target audience, you will struggle to really provide them with services they appreciate, and as a result, you will lose out on potential income.

Engaging customers is the key to digital transformation because you need to design your organisation around your clients. Any business that places the needs of their customers over their own is going to see success, but you shouldn’t limit that to profits only.

Achieving digital transformation is difficult, but it is easier to implement if you are engaged with your customers. It will not only help you identify the key areas where you need to improve, but how you can bring value into the lives of your customers.

Adopt Automation

digital-transformation-aligning-goals-vision

One of the main reasons most businesses struggle with digital transformation is because they haven’t thought about automation for their business. You will not be able to adopt technological advancements if you don’t have any automation at all in your business operations. It will be a pointless exercise, which will be far removed from the culture of your organisation.

Therefore, it is smart to incorporate automation into the organisation at every level, so that you are able to introduce digital transformation practices that will eventually take the business onto the next level.

Make sure that you remove old processes in favor of new ones, and make sure that everyone in the organisation is comfortable with automation. You need to have everyone onboard because it will require a team effort. Therefore, you should train everyone in your organisation to learn about the latest digital marketing trends in the industry. It will help them become more comfortable with technology, and will ensure successful digital transformation for you.

Have Clear Objectives about the Business

Another thing that you will need to identify to ensure digital transformation success is having clear objectives about the business and its direction. Once you know what direction the business needs to take, you will be able to easily come out with strategies that are aligned with your digital transformation. There is no point in adopting digital strategies if that is not where you see business heading in the future. Any business that doesn’t commit to digital transformation will struggle to see results, because if you don’t plan on becoming the market leader in technology, then you won’t see much results.

That is why a digital transformation audit is necessary, because it helps iron out a clear path or direction for the business. It helps businesses realise what needs to be done for them to achieve complete digital transformation. Having clear objectives also helps the business in their daily operations, because they can easily incorporate measures that are targeted towards their success. That’s why it is important that you understand digital transformation, and the many templates that you can rely on to achieve that. Michael Connor wrote up a great article many years back which is still applicable today http://www.creatinginsanelygreat.com/digital-transformation-plan-preflight-checklist-ready-for-takeoff/

Using Smart Technology for Smarter Customer Service

Smart technology is rapidly changing the world we live in today. From smart houses to high-tech artificially intelligent robots, the world we live in is being saturated with advanced technology that simplifies our lives today. One industry that is fully embracing artificial intelligence is customer service. Companies across many different industries are jumping on board and using artificial intelligence and machine learning to create chatbots, remember customer problems, and create suggested responses. These are just some of the few incredible capabilities that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and other smart technologies are bringing to the field of customer service.

Learn how intelligent customer service works. Sign up for a customer Conversational Software demo now!

How Artificial Intelligence is Leading the Smart Technology Revolution?

quick-intro-ai-ml

Smart technology is transforming the customer experience, but there’s also a more self-serving business benefit from its use. Those teams enabled and empowered through the likes of AI and predictive intelligence have higher rates of employee engagement. This is because agents feel more empowered and experience first-hand the positive impact this personalized style of service is having on the customer. There are two main ways that businesses are augmenting their customer care units with AI: “front-end AI-powered bots” and “AI-assisted human agents.” A front-end AI-powered bot is a conversational computer program that interacts directly with a customer without human intervention. On the other hand, an AI-assisted human agent is a human customer service representative who is supported by AI technology. Both these models are being used in service departments across industries.

Here are the 4 Smart Technologies for Smarter Customer Service

1. Chatbots

Of all the fields in the chatbot-crazed world, customer service is one of the prime targets for automation. Virtual customer agents (customer service-focused bots, or VCAs) are intelligent systems able to understand what users ask via chat and provide them adequate answers.

In 2015, the number of people using messaging apps overtook the number using social media. Beyond communicating with friends and work colleagues, individuals are increasingly using messaging apps to interact with brands. Messaging services are a brand new space for organizations to connect with existing and future customers. Businesses now have the opportunity to create new revenue streams using real-time, customized customer service bots within messaging applications. More than 34,000 chatbots on Facebook Messenger alone are a reflection of this opportunity. The airline, clothing and tourism industries are already leveraging this space. Consumers are connecting with brands through messaging apps to purchase airline tickets, book hotel accommodations and receive fashion advice. It’s only a matter of time before the other industries catch up.

Related:
Smart Technology Around You
Using Smart Technology to Move Customers Down the Funnel

The WeChat Messenger bot deployed by China Merchant Bank, one of the largest credit card issuers in China, is another example of a front-end bot. According to the AI technology provider Xiaoi, the China Merchant Bank’s front-end bot handles 1.5 to 2 million customer conversations per day, an inquiry volume that would typically require thousands of additional employees to answer. As most questions relate to card balances and payments, automation via a bot interface presents a relatively easy and cost efficient solution.

These above examples of chatbots already in use give a great introduction of the possibilities that AI brings to the field of customer service. AI makes it possible to create these large indexes so that the bot can respond back with pre-understood phrases or suggest responses to the human controlling it.

2. Suggested Responses

AI and ML are frequently misunderstood in the business world. They are not taking over jobs, but further enhancing current human positions. With suggested responses, companies can get through all of the requests at a much faster pace. AI bots can be used to read through customer requests and find the problem they are having. If you have repeat customers, customer conversation history is extremely important tool for your AI and ML. It can learn from past experiences and more accurately detect the problem the customer is having.

3. Conversation History

Woveon, a startup that provides intelligent customer service, uses AI programs to enhance its customer conversation history. Conversation history is simply saving past conversations between the customer and the business. Customer service representatives can then go back and use this data to help future questions the customer may have. Woveon is using this to essentially make a 3D diagram to further help the representative. The program will be able to go into the conversation history and track down the problems. It will then make a web with the biggest points being recurring problems. Branching off of the bigger problems will be other related problems that customers often have. This program, though still in development, will change the way customer service is able to work with customers. Woveon’s software, as mentioned above, is an AI-Assisted Human Agent and proves the importance of human interaction as it simplifies and speeds up these interactions.

4. Smart Tech Integration to the Business World

“As humans, we advance, that’s what we do. And the rise of AI in the customer service field is just another step in our advancement and should be looked at as such. There might be some growing pains during the process, but we shouldn’t let that stop us from growing and extending our knowledge. When we look at the benefits these chatbots, suggested responses, and conversation history can provide to the consumer and the business, it becomes clear that we are moving in the right direction.”

customer service charter template download cta woveon

12 Ways You Can Use Psychology in Your Marketing

Ever wanted to get into the minds of your customers and figure out how they think? Ever wanted to know the best methods to convince someone to do something?

As the study of the human mind and behavior, psychology has answers to what you’re looking for. Psychology is applicable to a wide range of fields, from daily life to counseling to human resources. But what you’re probably more concerned about is the intersection of psychology and marketing. We’ve got answers to your questions with

12 Marketing Psychology Tricks to Subtly Convince Your Leads

1. Relate to your Customer

Goldstein, Cialdini, and Griskevicius (2008) conducted a study on Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels. In particular, they tried to determine what kind of messaging would get hotel guests to reuse their towels.

(Credit: http://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/118359.pdf)

They tested 3 different messages, paraphrased below:

Message Reuse rate
Commonly used message 35%
75% of guests in this hotel reuse their towels 44%
75% of guests in your room reuse their towels 50%

As you can see, the more the hotel related to its guests, the more effective its messaging was.

In another study by Burger, Messian, et al (2004), participants were asked whether they would help someone else with his/her essay. In one situation, they were told whether they had the same birthday as the essay writer. In another situation, they were told that they shared fingerprint similarities with the essay writer and whether their fingerprint similarities were common or very rare.

Comments Compliance to essay request
Different birthday 34%
Same birthday 62%

 

Comments Compliance to essay request
None 48%
Similar prints: common 55%
Similar prints: very rare 82%

Again, participants were more willing to help the essay writer if he/she seemed to be more similar to them. This phenomenon where people tend to view others who are similar to them more favorably is called in-group favoritism.

All in all, the best way to motivate your customers to do something is to say that customers in their situation have done so. Try to find common ground and draw similarities among your customers as well as between your company and your customers.

See also: Foolproof Marketing Strategy Tips to Increase Revenue

2. Start Small

This is commonly known as the foot-in-the-door technique. Freedman and Fraser (1966) knocked on doors asking if residents could do something small, such as sign a petition or put a sticker on their windows. For their control group, they skipped some houses and didn’t speak to them at all.

Some time later, Freedman and Fraser went to the exact same houses with a larger request, such as putting a large sign on their lawn, which was either related to the same issue as the previous request or related to a different issue.

Situation Compliance rate to large request
Controls 17%
Different issue / type of request 48%
Same issue / type of request 76%

They found that people whom they had already approached were much more willing to agree to their large request, nearly 3 times more willing if the request pertained to a different issue and more than 4 times more willing if the request pertained to the same issue!

Starting small and then gradually scaling up your requests is one way to convince your customers to do something. We see examples of this everywhere. First, a non-profit organization simply asks for your email address. Next, they keep you updated regarding their events and progress. Before you know it, they’re asking you to donate.

The opposite of the foot-in-the-door technique is the door-in-the-face technique, where instead of starting small, you start big. You make a large request from the get-go, maybe something ridiculous that the customer unsurprisingly turns down. Then, you make a smaller request. In this case, the customer is more likely to agree to your smaller request since it’s much less ridiculous than the large request you started off with.

3. Use Random Reward Schedules

You know those stamp cards that some restaurants and coffee shops give you that allow you to get a free drink on the 10th time you come? Actually, although those cards can be effective, they’re not the most effective way of incentivizing customers to come back. Instead of having a fixed ratio reinforcement schedule, where customers get rewarded every 10th time they come, you should have variable reinforcement, where customers get rewarded randomly.

This draws on a concept called operant conditioning in psychology, where we learn to associate our behaviors with events, for example, associating going back to a restaurant with getting a free drink. Operant conditioning commonly involves rewarding a behavior to get more of that behavior. (Like when you’re training your dog, you reward it every time it sits when you tell it to.)

Skinner showed this by rewarding a mouse with food in two different ways:

1) rewarding every 5th time it pressed a bar (fixed ratio schedule)

2) rewarding randomly (variable reinforcement).

He found that the second option was more long-lasting and required less reinforcement (less food)!

Although humans and animals are very different, we are also very similar. Imagine if a restaurant didn’t tell us when they’re going to give us a free drink. We’d probably be going back as much as we could to maximize our chances of getting that free drink! Cereal brands and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory take advantage of variable reinforcement by putting golden tickets in some of their cereal boxes or candy bars, spurring us to want to buy more for a shot to win!

4. Frame your sales pitches in an appealing way.

Consider two different situations below. The original price of the jacket is $125; $23 for the tripod.

1)  marketing psychology customer experience

2) marketing psychology customer experience

Which one would you be more willing to buy if you had to drive 20 minutes to the store?

This adapted example is based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1984) study. They found that 68% of respondents were willing to buy the tripod whereas only 29% were willing to buy the jacket. You might’ve realized that in both cases, consumers are saving the same amount: $11.50!

The point is that consumers think about gains and losses in relative terms, not absolute terms. In other words, they think in percentages, not dollars. A discount of $11.50 for the tripod is a larger percentage than a discount of $11.50 for the jacket.

When coming up with your sales pitches and marketing messages, be sure to take this into account! Think of more appealing ways of framing your messages – even if your messages are describing the same thing!

5. Appeal to your Customers’ Senses

Sight

visual long term memory psychology marketing

Sight comes first because it’s probably the most important and effective sense for us humans. Brady, Konkle, Alvarez, and Oliva (2008) conducted an experiment where they flashed images of objects to participants. The images below are examples of ones that they flashed.

After flashing a certain number of images, the researchers then presented 2 similar images to participants. One image was an actual image that was flashed but the other was one that looked similar to the actual image that was flashed. They then asked participants, of the two images below, which was the one that you actually saw?

marketing psychology two remotes

They found that participants were shockingly accurate at identifying the images that were actually flashed and were not fooled by images that were incredibly similar. In other words, they remembered the visual details of the images that were flashed and could distinguish subtle differences between the images that were flashed and the images that looked similar but were not actually flashed. In fact, for 2,500 images that were flashed, the accuracy was around a whopping 90%!

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy9

Participants’ responses were also very accurate when considering the number of items that appeared between the actual item and its match.

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy10

What does this mean for your marketing? USE VISUALS! A lot of them! Make all of your marketing material (ads, brochures, flyers, websites, emails, blog posts, social media, etc.) visually appealing and colorful. Don’t just overwhelm your audience with tons of text! Include images, videos, and other multimedia to spice things up whenever possible.

Smell

Ever walk into a busy shopping mall and immediately recognize the strong, signature cologne of Abercrombie & Fitch? That’s a successful marketing technique right there! We can smell an A&F from miles away before seeing it, and we then simply follow our nose the rest of the way.

This marketing technique is so effective that it creates a learned association between a specific smell and a brand. In psychology, odors have been found to be highly effective retrieval cues that evoke our memories. Just imagine walking back into your house and being hit by the aroma of baked cookies in the air, reminding you of your grandma…

Why is smell such an effective sense to appeal to? One hypothesis is related to anatomy: Signals from smell go from the olfactory bulb directly to the hippocampus and to the amygdala whereas signals from other senses take less direct routes. Another hypothesis is related to evolution: We as humans needed our sense of smell back in the day to hunt for food and survive. The last hypothesis is related to dilution: Try to imagine a smell. It’s harder than imagining a picture or sound, right? Because smells are harder to rehearse, researchers propose that this makes them stay stuck in the context in which you sensed them.

Hearing

1-877-KARS-4-KIDS

K-A-R-S Kars4Kids

1-877-KARS-4-KIDS

Donate your car today.

877-241-LUNA

I bet you sang those jingles in your head just now. The crazy thing is, the Luna jingle is at least 10 years old. How can we still remember it now?

All thanks to great marketing!

On top of that, the famous experiment with Pavlov’s dogs highlighted the phenomenon of classical conditioning. Pavlov rang a bell, served his dog with meat, measured the amount of salivation, and repeated this. After several trials, he found that even if he rang a bell and didn’t serve his dog with meat, his dog would still salivate. His dog had created a learned association betweeen the bell ringing and being served meat.

We, as humans, can be classically conditioned too. If you, as a marketer, can create a jingle that gets stuck in everyone’s heads for very long and creates a learned association between the jingle and your brand, then you’re golden. Think about the McDonald’s jingle!

6. Capture your Audience’s Attention

Time for a quiz! Which image below is the correct one for the penny?

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy5

Why is this quiz harder than expected? If you’re an American, you see tons of pennies regularly. Did our elementary school education go to waste?

Not to worry! 1) As you can see below, there are many people on the same boat.

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy6

2) This psychology study shows that it’s not the number of pennies we see that matters, but the amount of attention we devote.

In another study, Castel, Vendetti, and Holyoak (2012) surveyed employees in a building. Although the average time that the employees had worked in the building was 4.5 years, only 1 in 4 people knew where the nearest fire extinguisher was. Not devoting attention to these sorts of things could be very dangerous!

What does this mean for your marketing? Make sure to capture and direct your audience’s attention. If you’re writing a blog and want your audience to pay attention to an important call to action, image, video, or link, be sure to call your audience’s attention to that, maybe by mentioning it explicitly in your writing or by making it stand out on the screen.

Also, don’t clutter your webpages! I think we’ve all been victim to webpages with lots of ads and content, which can be incredibly overwhelming and make it difficult to find what exactly to focus on. In these scenarios, if I’m reading an article, for example, I find myself scrolling past and ignoring anything other than the text. But sometimes, I find out that there was an image or table I missed that was actually relevant to the article. You don’t want this to happen with the amazing content you’ve created! Especially in this age with information overload which has resulted in short attention spans, strive to engage your audience and capture their undivided attention. Appealing to the senses works here as well!

7. Use Eye Contact

Have you ever “borrowed” something from work or school without asking? Bateson, Nettle, and Roberts (2006) investigated how to prevent this from happening. They set up an “honesty box” in a coffee room at a university for people to pay for their coffee and put up either a control image (for example, a picture of flowers) or a photo of eyes.

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy4

It turned out that when eyes were displayed, coffee enthusiasts paid THREE TIMES as much! This shows the importance of the creepy feeling of being watched and how we care so much about our reputations.

How should you use eye contact in marketing without creeping out your customers? Uncle Sam can be seen putting this into practice.

uncle sam marketing psychology

If you’re pitching to a customer or investor, be sure to make eye contact with them. Try to incorporate eye contact into your ads and marketing material. Ever wonder why the Trix bunny and the Cap’n Crunch captain are looking down? To make eye contact with the kids who want the cereal!

capn crunch cereal eye contact marketing

8. Use the Power of 7

What’s so powerful about the number 7? Well, it’s the number of chunks of information that you can hold in your short-term memory.

What’s a chunk of information? Consider the phone number 877-241-LUNA from above. Luna was clever to chunk the last 4 digits of their phone number. So instead of remembering the last 4 digits as 4 separate chunks of information, you only need to remember LUNA as 1 chunk of information. Kars4Kids does an even better job of chunking their phone number into an easy-to-remember, catchy phrase.

This technique doesn’t just apply to phone numbers; it can apply to product specifications, websites, prices, and more! Chabris (1999) further showed that chess players use chunking to remember the setup of the board. They were better at remembering a setup that could occur during a game (taking the rules of chess into account) compared to a random setup (not taking the rules of chess into account).

How else can you chunk and make things easier to remember? Think back to how you remembered the orders of operation in math or the taxonomies in biology. Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally? (Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction) Did King Phillip Come Over For Good Spaghetti? (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)

Using acronyms or mnemonics and creating structure and constraints that limit the options are effective ways to help people remember things. Remembering an acronym is essentially chunking all those pieces of information into a single chunk!

In marketing, you’re going to have to be as memorable as you can to your customers. Make sure you don’t overwhelm them with too much information that they won’t remember. Keep the power of 7 in mind.

9. Throw your Customers an Anchor

“What?” you’re probably thinking. Let me explain what I mean by this. In psychology, there is a cognitive bias called “anchoring.”

Consider this question: Is the proportion of African nations that are in the UN greater than 15%? What is the actual proportion?

  1. 0-10
  2. 10-20
  3. 20-30
  4. 30-40
  5. 40-50
  6. 50-60
  7. 60-70
  8. 70-80
  9. 80-90
  10. 90-100

My psychology professor, Professor Daniel Swingley, asked his class this question and aggregated the results into the bar chart below.

Notice anything unusual about this chart? Nearly all the responses are clustered around 15%, with the range “10-20” having the highest percentage.

psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy11

This quick example question was modeled off of a study conducted by Englich, Mussweiler, and Strack (2006) called Playing dice with criminal sentences: the influence of irrelevant anchors on experts’ judicial decision making. German judges and lawyers rolled two dice and decided whether the sentence for a shoplifter would be higher or lower than the sum of the numbers on the two dice. Below are the results.

Condition Average sentence
Only {1, 2} come up on dice (sum = 3) 5 months
Only {3, 6} come up on dice (sum = 9) 8 months

These results are shocking because the decisions made by the German judges and lawyers were influenced by something as arbitrary as a dice roll. The higher the dice roll, the higher the average sentence decided on by the judges and lawyers.

Why does this happen? Well, when there’s a lot of uncertainty or not enough time to make a decision, we tend to succumb to unusual and shocking influences. Anchoring adjustment occurs when we start with a random number and adjust it a little based on what we know. Think about the question about the UN above. Unless you have a lot of experience with the UN and/or know a lot about it, you probably wouldn’t have any idea about the proportion of African countries in the UN. You scramble for a reference point or anchor to go off of, and if this is provided in the question, you immediately seize it and base/pivot your thinking off of that.

In psychology, this phenomenon, “activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task,” is called priming, which is one way to explain anchoring. The effort of adjustment also explains the small adjustments around the anchor.

But how is this related to marketing? As shocking as this is in terms of the ethics of deciding on a criminal sentence, you can still use this in an ethical way to maximize your revenues. Let’s pretend that you’re on the phone with a potential customer. Let’s also say that this customer might not be very knowledgeable of a suitable price range for your product. Maybe he/she doesn’t know much about the pricing of competing products or the prospective value of your product. With an email, your customer would have time to do some research and think through the pricing more, but when he/she is on the phone in the hot seat, time is constrained, and he/she needs to think and respond quickly on the spot.

This would be an ideal situation for you to use anchoring. What’s the best thing for you to do here? Maybe start off by suggesting a relatively high price (but not absurdly high) that sets an anchor for your customer to base off of. With little prior knowledge, he/she would use this as his/her single data point. Further thinking and discussion will likely be clustered around this reference point.

This overlaps with the door-in-the-face technique mentioned above, where you start high and then potentially negotiate a bit lower later on.

A word of caution: Be very careful in gauging whether or not your customer is knowledgeable about the field. You don’t want to risk angering a knowledgeable customer by assuming he/she wasn’t knowledgeable and offering a price that he/she knows is too high compared to competing products. Some knowledgeable customers might take it well, but others might not. Ultimately, starting with a relatively high price is merely a suggestion. Anchoring is backed up with empirical evidence, and you can feel free to keep it in mind and use your judgment to decide how best to adapt and apply it to your specific situations.

10.Put your Audience to Work

Again, you’re probably like, “What? Why would I do that to my audience when the tendency for all of us humans is to be lazy?”

But if you want someone to remember something longer, Craik and Tulving (1975) showed that you need to get them to work and put in more effort. In other words, the depth of processing is key.

Craik and Tulving showed subjects a list of words and asked them to do a task for each word. Then, they asked subjects to recall as many words as they could. The results are shown below.

Task Recall rate
Press button (a) if word is in caps, (b) if not 15%
Press button (a) if word rhymes with “train”, (b) if not 47%
Press button (a) if word makes sense in “He saw a _____ in the street.” 81%

As you can see, the more work the subjects had to put into their thinking (the greater their depth of processing), the more words they remembered.

So how can you put your audience to work, but not in a dreadful way? Think about the content in your Facebook or Twitter feed that piques your interest the most. Is it the ads that are mixed into the photos of puppies on your feed? Or is it the BuzzFeed quizzes such as “Which Disney Princess Are You?

Probably the latter! That said, think about how to incorporate similar quizzes and activities into your marketing campaigns. If you work for a laptop company, maybe you could create a quiz, “Which Laptop Are You?” In fact, if you’re at any company that sells a range of products, you can create a quiz that determines “Which _____ Are You?” to help customers with their buying decisions.

Another way to apply this psychology study is to ask your audience rhetorical questions. Why are rhetorical questions so effective in ads, presentations, and more? Because they get your audience actively thinking rather than passively observing. It increases the depth of processing.

Dale’s Cone of Experience summarizes this idea nicely in a visual.

dales cone of experience marketing psychology

The moral of the story is that making something more engaging and hands-on is more effective in getting someone to remember it. Remember: There’s always a way to make something more interactive. Strive to effectively engage your audience.

11. Invite your Friends

Consider the two networks of friends below.

Christakis Fowler smoking friend networks-psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy Christakis Fowler smoking friend networks2-psychology-marketing-cmo-online marketing strategy

Notice anything for the smoking groups?

Christakis and Fowler (2008) found that smokers tend to be friends with smokers and nonsmokers tend to be friends with nonsmokers. Smoking dropped by around 50% from 1971 to 2000, but these social groups didn’t change in size. Groups of smokers shrank in number, not size.

What does this mean? This means that smokers quit smoking in social groups. Christakis and Fowler also found that smokers moved more toward the social peripheral and became less likely to be a “hub” of a social group. For mutual friends, one friend quitting makes the other 43% likely to quit as well.

In terms of marketing, why do you think so many marketing campaigns are founded on “Invite your friends”? The truth is that your friends have a lot of influence on you. Think about all those times you tried something new just because your friends did it and encouraged you to do it too!

Harness the power of social groups in your marketing, and you can drive the next trend.

12. Ask your Customers to Pay in Advance

Think back to your favorite band 5 years ago. What is the maximum amount you’d pay to see them now?

Now think about your current favorite band. What is the maximum amount you’d pay to see them in 5 years?

What you’re realizing now is that you probably answered a higher amount for the second question than the first, even though it doesn’t really make sense rationally. Well, you’re in the same boat as the subjects in a study conducted by Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2013)

mean for first question $80
mean for second question $129

They concluded that “participants substantially overpaid for a future opportunity to indulge a current preference.”

You could potentially take advantage of this by asking your customers to pay in advance for what they want, before they have time to change their preferences!

Now, time to put theory to practice and apply psychology to YOUR marketing!

Smart Technology Around You

Smart technology is what makes up the future, where electronic device usage is concerned. What started with the smart phone, at least on the consumer level, has now progressed to smart entertainment systems, smart vehicles, and even smart industrial as well as healthcare technologies. Even the elderly care sector has benefitted to some extent, from the advent of smart technology, which is an incredible precedent, to be used in the favour of technologies of the future.

However, with better technology and smarter machines and devices, comes the question of whether or not we should depend on this technology for our daily tasks and guidance, as well as whether the technology you are about to purchase, in order to make your life more convenient, is right for you or not. The ideal answer to this is explained in the following paragraphs, after being broken down into some aspects of your life where you might use smart technology.

Smart Technology – It’s All Around You

1. Fitness and Sport

The fitness world has always been a very precise one, at least at the higher levels, where individuals train for months and months to shave off those fractions of a second that mean the difference between victory and losing. Even for those concerned about general fitness, tracking the body’s performance over a given period of time has become something of paramount importance. The measuring of steps is done religiously, and each calorie is melted off with hard work and determination, while the person is busy tracking the progress.

Smart technologies have made their market in the fitness world through the advent of wristbands and other equipment that track the progress of your body while performing whatever exercise you choose. A great many athletes and fitness enthusiasts swear by these technologies, as they have proven quite effective in the field. However, at the same time, there are some that regard smart fitness gadgets to be nothing more than accessories, and not viable purchases at all.

This is where the conflict lies on this front, as wearable gadgets have proven to be necessary to determine the performance of athletes in the higher echelons. However, the question of whether they are viable for the casual fitness enthusiast is still unanswered. It can be safely said though, that smart technology presents an edge, a slight advantage, where performance tracking is concerned.

2. Health and Longevity

Technology can aid in the promotion and development of longevity in individuals; that much has been proven over time. Be it the invention of smart new vaccines that combat an ever-increasing number of diseases and afflictions, to implants that monitor health and send out alerts whenever there is any major deviation from the normal; technology has contributed tremendously towards general health.

In recent times, technology, and more specifically smart technology, has proven to be invaluable in the race to prolong life and maintain good health for longer. This is an endeavour that is being taken at a national level in Australia and various other countries across the world, that are realising that smart technology is the way to go when it comes to advanced health and longevity management, for both the young and more specifically, the elderly.

This proves that it is of vital importance to bring more smart technology into the fields of health and longevity promotion for the elderly.

3. Home Improvement and Security

home-improvement-security-smart-technology

Home automation systems are already a major presence on the market, with offerings from some of the biggest tech giants, such as Amazon, Microsoft and Apple already making waves everywhere. As a whole, they have proven to be exciting additions to homes everywhere, and have already made their place in the homes where they have been installed. However, as beneficial as they are, the general public still seems averse to the idea of having a relatively expensive device that simply aids in a few tasks that can very easily be performed by the individual themselves.

Realistically however, if we look at all the benefits that smart technology provides in this regard, there should be no doubt that it is advantageous, and will continue to be increasingly so, since the technology, despite having been on the market for some years now, is still not very mature in terms of seamless home improvement and security.

Security is one area where smart technology can be actually beneficial. Advanced security cameras with instantaneous high-speed streaming and all-encompassing vision, motion, heat and expression tracking systems, are all viable applications of smart technology in the home security field.

All in all, smart technology has been found to be massively beneficial, when it has been released after considerable research and development. For now, the technology is still in the development phase across the world, although the future does look incredibly bright for advanced technologies.

Is Your Business Implementing VR?

The Virtual Reality market has been steadily growing and is expected to grow to an industry of $US 2.16 trillion by 2035 and plenty of organisations are taking advantage of the boom, for instance, Facebook bought Oculus for this very reason. There are also endless opportunities in this sector and the organisations that move quickly would have the advantage. Computer simulation has become an important part of the gaming industry and Telsyte estimated that by 2020 2.5 million households would own a VR unit. But its uses are far advanced to be just utilised in gaming.

Virtual Reality has and can be used for education and training as well. And it is slowly taking over the business world as well. With a plethora of benefits associated with implementing the technology in your business, make sure you don’t miss out on any one of them. How do you do that? By asking yourself if your business is implementing VR. Since Virtual Reality is one of the top trends in 2017, your business is going to benefit once you implement this technology. Whichever business enterprise you run, Virtual Reality can help you take it to the next level. And it’s not even that expensive!

To help make up your mind, here are some of the ways in which implementing VR will aid your business.

Employee Training for Design Related Businesses

vr accessories

Capturing and dispersing knowledge has become easier with Virtual Reality. The immersive way of distributing knowledge makes sure that all your employees remain up-to-date with the technicalities involved.

In the real estate industry, most businesses were early to catch up on the trend. They started with 360-degree virtual walkthroughs and made marketing properties easier. Even the construction industry has now caught up to the trend. Whenever a client demands some changes in the design, they can easily see the final look through VR. See KFC’s employee training below!

VR as a Marketing Tool

business-vr-virtual-reality

This immersive media also makes for a great marketing tool. Since most families are still new to the Virtual Reality experience, it’ll be the perfect tool for attracting them to your business. Such activities provide businesses with an opportunity to raise brand awareness and customer engagement.

Businesses like McDonalds, Samsung and Lowe’s have realised the efficacy of using VR as a marketing tool and they are making the best of this opportunity. See Jack Daniel’s marketing VR.

Adding a Twist to Print Media

Traditional print media has seen some setbacks since the internet has taken the market by storm. Although there are many people who still prefer the old way of reading the newspaper, there can be no denying that the new dimension of news and entertainment has gained immense popularity. Virtual Reality has also penetrated this industry.

The New York Times caught on to it early and in November 2015, produced a VR film, The Displaced. The film was distributed to over a million Sunday home delivery subscribers, along with Google Cardboard glasses. They repeated this in May 2016. Through their efforts, they were able to make the genre feature a fresh perspective and to gain interest of the youngsters as well.

Help Customers Make Informed Decisions

Gone are the days when customers had to choose home improvement pieces without any idea of their compatibility with their home and space. Lowe’s store had been working on this problem and through Lowe’s Innovation Lab, they have developed some creative augmented, mixed and virtual reality tools.Now their customers can easily use the VR tools for designing, visualising DIY skills training and even navigation of Lowe’s store. By implementing these technologies, they have made sure that customers can easily visualise what their home improvement projects are going to look like, even before they get started. With this power in hand, customers are now more informed and can thus take better decisions.

Gaining popularity wasn’t difficult for this technology, as people are more open to new experiences as they were before. Over time, the price of technology has also dropped and it keeps on dropping, which will make it easier for Virtual Reality products to gain access to households and businesses.

So far, the production of Virtual Reality gear hasn’t achieved a sustainable level yet, which raises a question about the industry as well. Although China has already invested billions of dollars for VR hardware, in Australia, the production hasn’t seen any significant rise.

Over the years, prices for Virtual Reality solutions are expected to become even lower. This can amount to great opportunities for small businesses, which are not ready to invest yet. There are no doubts to the first mover advantage in Virtual Reality technology, but there are plenty of organisations who have put the idea on hold till the full arrival of VR. With a digital formation strategy though, businesses can demonstrate product attributes, help consumers make better choices, and can also raise brand awareness.

Digital Transformation Top 5 Tips

Making a digital transformation is not easy for any business, particularly one that has been established without much reliance on digital media. While it is possible to make the transformation happen, it requires a lot of hard work. It’s not going to happen overnight.

On the other hand, digital transformations are much more than simply picking the best digital template and applying everything. You need to pay attention to a few aspects in order to ensure that your digital transformation is a success. Don’t let all that hard work go to waste.

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5 Tips on How to Apply a Digital Transformation Template to your Business

1. Aligning Your Goals and Vision

digital-transformation-aligning-goals-vision

Before you kick start a digital transformation, make sure it is in line with the company’s goals, vision, mission and other aspects. It is very rare where a business requires a business transformation by opting for a completely clean slate. In fact, you’re going to come across plenty of templates that allow you to make use of digital transformation in accordance with your goals and vision.

See also: Customer Experience Strategy

Keep in mind that just because you need to change doesn’t mean that you should abandon everything. A digital transformation should keep the good, minimize the bad and work out how to enhance the overall impact that your business makes. Once you’re able to do this, you’ll feel like your template is made from gold due to the value it adds to your business.

2. Enhancing the Customer Experience

customer-experience-centric

A digital transformation should focus on enhancing the customer experience as well. A major component of any template, you can see examples of successful digital transformations everywhere around you. However, they didn’t get this success just by springing it on to their clients. It took months of hard work, testing, tweaking and more, to be able to ensure a successful transformation.

For this reason, you need to ensure that you get your customers on board for your digital transformation too. Amazon.com and Apple are huge examples of businesses that enhanced their user experience by not only embracing digital transformation but also educating their consumer regarding their product offerings.

3. The Skill Level of Your Team

When you’re attempting a digital transformation, keep the skill level of your team in mind as well. If your team fails at embracing the change, it can be extremely problematic to ensure that your business will fare well. Often times, it can be detrimental towards productivity as well. For example: An office that largely uses Microsoft and Windows decides to go for a different platform such as Ubuntu that relies on other open source products that work like Microsoft Office on it. Unfortunately, the learning curve for Ubuntu is pretty steep and it might mean encountering plenty of problems which can cause a number of unproductive days before the staff and other employees get the hang of it. Yet, the payoff might not be large enough and it eventually will force the business to revert back to its old platform. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just exceedingly unproductive.

4. Picking the Right Digital Supplier

When you’re opting for a digital transformation, your services will only be as good as the service provider. Whether you’re incorporating the cloud, or streamlining your products, you need to work with a good digital supplier that prevents down time and lagging. Both of these can be costly since consumers expect sites to load and function within seconds.

Waiting for minutes, drives them away from your page or your offerings. By ensuring that the process is thoroughly streamlined, your digital supplier can boost your business in more ways than one. Moreover, they can also provide a number of different services such as security features, data storage and others that are especially suited to your business.

5. Creating Digital Leaders

Apart from relying on your digital supplier, you should also have a digital business leader who encourages the growth of your business. Digital leaders are people who’re going to be in the public eye and advocate your product. Traditional examples of digital leaders include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel and others like them.

Steve Jobs was a particularly great digital leader, successfully marketing iPhones and iPods since they were introduced to the market. Despite becoming synonymous with the brand, Steve Jobs actually had very little to do with the invention of the iPhone which was produced by Apple and was a product of its creative team. Steve Jobs just had the brilliance to recognize and support the idea when it was presented to him.

At the end of the day, these tips will help to make a huge impact on your own digital transformation. Keep in mind that these tips are not small ones. For many businesses, it has taken years to apply them properly. Nonetheless, the results you get with their help speak for themselves.

Are You Ticking Off These Essentials in Your Marketing Strategy?

Is your company including the essential parts of a marketing strategy? Do you know what to include? Chances are you’re missing some important parts that could help boost your business. Your marketing strategy is your business’s plan to gain new customers and to keep in contact with existing customers. This is essential when growing your small business. Summarized below are the most important bits of information that your business should be adding and targeting. If you are looking for different marketing templates, check out 8 Marketing Plan Templates to Blow Your Competitors Out of the Water.

Marketing Plan Essentials That You Should be Including

1. Identify your Goals

goal steps-marketing strategy-cmo-digital marketing-customer service-customer success

Identifying your goals when embarking on your marketing strategy is the most important part of the marketing strategy. Your goals are what you want to accomplish by performing this plan. These goals should be things that you can realistically accomplish with the budget and time frame you are giving yourself. You can look at what your company needs and then tailor your strategy to better accomplish this. For example, if you are trying to target a younger demographic, try using a more digital advertising campaign over social media. Your goals will evolve throughout the process, and that is just fine! It is important however, to strive toward the same area of growth or target the same people. This way, when you analyze your marketing strategy afterward, you can find out if it was successful or not.

Related: 8 Marketing Plan Templates That Will Blow Your Competitors Out of the Water.

2. Produce Content

In a world obsessed with technology and the Internet, content marketing and just producing content in general are becoming necessities. Your content should be over a wide range of topics to get as many people reading as possible. Your content should also be split up into the Viral, Discover, Consider, and Customer categories I have talked about in previous blogs.

Content is what drives people to your site and is often overlooked when it comes to building your business and getting traffic to your website. Remember, content is essential when embarking on your marketing strategy!

3. Distribute Content

content distribuiton - marketing strategy-cmo-digital marketing-customer service-customer success

After producing this content, you will have to distribute it. It is a good idea to distribute your content on multiple customer channels. At this point in your marketing strategy, you will have already figured out who you are mostly targeting. You can now look to different channels such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, and your company website. If you are targeting a younger crowd, maybe look towards Facebook. With such advancements in digital advertising, you can directly reach your target market when they search for topics related to your product or company.

4. Analytics

Throughout your marketing strategy you should be analyzing your progress. Google Analytics is a great tool you can use to understand all the incoming data. Google Analytics will provide you details such as average session duration, where the traffic is coming from the most, the demographics of the traffic, and even repeat customers vs. new customers. You can then take this data and see if you are on track to achieve your goal. It will also tell you if your target market is interacting with the content you have produced.

5. Ensure Brand Strength

thumbs up, brands strength, online marketing, cmo, customer service

Think of Nike, Apple, Google, BMW, or Lufthansa. These companies all have one thing in common: fantastic brand strength. They are the forerunners in the industries they compete in and have incredible customer loyalty. When a smaller company is trying to increase its brand strength, it is important to show consistency. This will prove to your customers what you stand for and over time will increase brand loyalty. It is also best to put your brand out as much as possible. Place your logo on all products, in your social media, and anywhere possible. This increases brand awareness and will, in turn, help promote your products.

6. Marketing Strategy Analysis

After exercising your marketing strategy, it is important to analyze your whole process. Start with your goals. Did they stay the same? Did you accomplish them? What data points are you measuring to define success? This should have been stated beforehand. Get your marketing team together and do a quick rundown to see what went well and what could be improved for next time. Your marketing strategy can be remade and remastered to better fit your future goals, but you always need the same basics to get started.

CTA marketing strategy template

8 Signs You Might Want to Switch Up Your Online B2B Campaigns

One of the worst things from a marketing perspective with B2B campaigns is when you look at big companies that have great products or services, but are unable to capitalize due to poor marketing campaigns. The name of your brand and your reputation, will only get your business so far. If you want to strike while the iron is still hot, then you need to focus on switching up your online B2B campaign.

Businesses no longer have the luxury of being oblivious to the latest strategies and tactics for B2B campaigns, because there is no shortage of accessible information online. However, there are many businesses that have marketing professionals who refuse to conform to the latest trends, and prefer to do things the old-fashioned way.

Learn more efficient ways to help your B2B campaigns, request a FREE conversational software demo today!

This is a foolish position to take because the strategies that initially brought them success are outdated, and the target audience has also changed and matured. By failing to adopt cutting edge digital strategies they are refusing to adapt and improve their online B2B campaigns. When put under the spotlight for lack of results, the common excuse used is poor execution by the teams.

However, if any business wants to remain competitive, they need to adopt new marketing strategies. All businesses need to adapt to their environment, and that can only be done when you decide to switch up your online B2B campaigns.

8 Signs that show your B2B Marketing Strategy is Outdated

1. You can’t seem to engage clients

If you’re failing to engage your clients, you’re failing to reach your potential as a business, which is why it is important that you offer them with a comprehensive contact page. This is important for capturing leads and customer satisfaction.

51% of people will not do business with a company that doesn’t provide them with thorough contact information.

You will lose more business if you’re not providing your clients with contact information, which is why it might be time to redesign your website and switch up your online B2B campaign.

2. You’re not capturing leads

You may not have any problems in attracting traffic on to your website, but you also need to convert that traffic into sales. Lead capturing is important for a business, otherwise they won’t make any money, and to do that you need to include landing pages, forms, and call-to-action buttons on your website. You won’t be able to convert leads without them.

3. Your website is cluttered

Having lots of content on your B2B website is a good strategy, but you can easily overdo it as well. A cluttered website is going to be an eyesore, and visitors to your website will run away, which is why it is important to balance things out. You should know about the value of whitespace, since it helps visitors focus on the important things on your website. It helps to improve readability, and also helps lead capturing as well.

4. Your website design doesn’t match your brand

Businesses must focus on their brand positioning as well, which means clearly outlining what the brand and the B2B website represent. The design scheme of your website needs to be in sync with your industry, and should include strong brand messaging. You should be clear about your goals as a business with your clients and customers, which will only help serve your B2B campaign.

5. Your website hasn’t been updated

When the digital revolution came about, and computers became mainstream, basic website designs were the norm. However, technology has grown rapidly over time, and that has also influenced website designs. If you want your B2B campaign to be successful, you need to update the website design as well. If you’re not sold on that, these statistics might change your perception:

66% of web users want websites with visually appealing designs

38% of web visitors won’t engage with a website with poor content or layout

79% of web users prefer going to websites that are mobile friendly

If you want your B2B campaign to be a success you will need to work on upgrading your website design.

6. You don’t upload fresh content

You need to frequently upload fresh content on your B2B blog, which is important for SEO, more visitors, driving organic traffic, and converting leads. If you don’t have any new content on your website, your website traffic will fall off a cliff. If you don’t have a blog on your website, you can add a ‘news section’, which will help provide visitors with helpful, informative, and relevant information.

7. The website is unresponsive and slow

One of the main reasons to switch up your online B2B campaign is if you have a website that is slow and unresponsive.

71% of mobile users stop going to websites that take too long to load or crash frequently.

The average web user only waits about 5 seconds for a website to load. If your website is slower than that, you are going to lose traffic and customers. So, make sure that your website is as fast and responsive as possible on desktop and mobile to keep visitors happy and conversion rates soaring.

8. You can’t update anything

Websites that are inaccessible or haven’t been updated in a long time will not attract visitors, which is why it is important to freshen things up. You can either upgrade your web design or design a brand new one from scratch to ensure that your website manages to attract more traffic.

How to Ensure Your Organization is Ready for Digital Transformation

Digital information focuses the enterprise to get closer to the right technology, and understanding what no longer works for your organization needs to be replaced or upgraded. It is a process for management to rigorously measure performance and embrace advancement in technology, to create impactful results in your organization. I decided to write this as a short checklist to consider the three main bottlenecks of processes and communication I encountered when undertaking digital transformation projects.

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In an organization, opting for and establishing new technological advancements, outlining a new digital roadmap, creating an innovative vision strategy and a smooth execution of these transformations is extremely challenging.

Why is this all Important?

To compete in the world’s economy, and to get familiar with new innovative technology, management of many enterprises, especially start ups in Australia, are constantly shifting their efforts in a new direction to become visionaries and leaders in their industries. Almost all business regulations, processes, and functions can be transformed with digital technology. The Government of Australia has outlined a number of initiatives for digital transformation in the Budget 2017-18, stating that they will consolidate and modernize their systems along with members of training staff in digital skills. Governments are usually slow to adopt new technology, so has your organisation transformed digitally?

Does your Organization need to Adopt?

digital-transformation-adopt

Unless any organization or let’s say, a start up in Australia, is really at its peak, the answer remains “Yes”. Regardless of the operating industry, the management cannot turn a blind eye to digital transformation, if the management and the enterprise lack vision, has no understanding of its customer, has poor employee engagement, is operating on outdated technology systems and is unable to deliver excellence and innovation in their services and products, amazing results cannot be achieved.

It is nonetheless, naive to expect an organization to spontaneously and suddenly transform itself especially when it relies on the old and comfortable ways of working. The Digital Transformation Agency worked towards the transformation of the Australian government for more than 16 months and there are still many more years ahead of it to achieve it’s agendas https://www.dta.gov.au/news/all/

While the majority of organizations and managements think of digital transformation as changing the technical aspect of business, which is quite right in its sense, all the focus on installing advanced technology and modern systems, signing up and shifting to cloud based technology and diversifying the services and functions of IT within the business, can all fail dramatically if you do not execute the transformation correctly.

1. Digital Transformation begins with the staff

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According to the Canon research, 78% of the businesses state that they are willing to improve the management and employee experience by adopting digital transformation – this is in contrast to the 55% of businesses which opted to focus on customer experience instead. 

Employees are a critical part of the digital transformation process – if employees are not on board, it is undeniably impossible to shift the organization’s practices and processes. A vast majority of the businesses feel that change of management is a huge barrier to digital transformation. Moreover, successful changes depend on employee experience.

Nitya Padmon – Customer Marketing Head – Canon Australia says that the observed impact on employee experience is due to businesses realizing the need for digital transformation. They understand the need of transforming the workflows and processes if they intend to retain and attract young expertise.

2. Digital Transformation from Top to bottom

“The big difference between the companies that are just doing technology initiatives and the companies that are leading a technology-based transformation is how they’re putting the leadership frameworks in place,” MIT’s George Westerman.

In spite of the role employees play in the digital transformation of a business in Australia, CEOs have the same role in shifting and driving this change successfully. However, as per the survey of MIT, only half of the organizations create cases to facilitate digital investment. Hence, transformation flows from top to bottom in the organizational structure and as a part of a comprehensive business strategy.

Set an innovative platform and keep holistic view for technology

The landscape of digital transformation is in its infancy indeed. No matter how much we defy our current practices as being the most suitable ones for tomorrow as well, it is not the case. Set up your transformational project with continual development and change in mind and eradicate the processes that are lagging behind the modern world.

Since digital transformation will take over all aspects of business growth and success, it is right for a management to lead at the front-end in order to cultivate a digital culture founded on the grounds of consistent change and innovation.

3. Get along with the other platforms to optimize business

digital-transformation-platforms

Unlike the conventional approach of management, there is a demand for digitally transforming businesses to use various advanced platforms to optimize business growth. Instead of developing custom solutions, depending on reasons such as security issues or to have a belief that these solutions will help in ensuring a competitive edge, it is time to reconsider your options and make use of modern processes innovatively. Create a solid relationship with a digital solutions provider and help your organization in keeping a steady track of business growth.

Ending Note

Ultimately, ensuring the start of digital transformation in your organization is by creating meaningful metrics, having tangible benchmarks and ensuring clear communication of the expected progress.

Dream A Little Bigger – Why Multi-Channel is Dead

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to help Professor Jerry Wind write his latest book, ‘Beyond Advertising.’ The research touches over a few concepts, including the need for businesses to create marketing campaigns and brand alignments resulting in benefits not just for themselves, but for their consumers and beyond. Backed with a worksheet-style framework and a slew of case studies, Professor Wind suggests that consistent messaging, distributed and orchestrated over a wide variety of channels, would lead to a consistent and altogether more effective customer journey.

Professor Wind was correct in his conclusion. In a generation where people have shorter attention span than goldfish, are forgetful and chained to their phones, and consistently lost and addicted to immediate gratification, it’s not enough to focus on how small interactions affect customer behavior. To move from these reactive, ineffective attempts at understanding people, marketers and customer service agents need to move away from analyzing points, tickets, and individual channels. The first step is cutting out this idea of marketing and customer service as multi-channel.

Multichannel Marketing and Customer Service is Dead

Bailing a Sinking Ship With a Solo Cup

To break into this concept of moving past multi-channel, it’s worth looking at a concrete example as to how and why multi-channel strategy doesn’t work in the first place. There are any number of case studies which address the topic. My personal favorite might be an onboarding study in the telecom business. A large telecom company tracked interactions that customers, such as an initial price consultation. In every given stage, customers were asked to rate their experience. Over all the polls, their experiences were positive. Viewed holistically, however, customers had a negative opinion of the process and the brand itself. Executives had to take a step back and think about not just the reaction of such calls, but the reasons behind them. By spending the time to examine the reasons why there were so many interactions, as well as bringing in customers to help them design a better process, they were able to engineer a far more effective onboarding process.

The brand needed to understand customers and their emotions rather than resolving sets of tickets. To compare this to the view of multi-channel considered originally, although consistency of quality was carried out over the different channels, the experience itself was not necessarily well-received.

A contrasting point is the success of healthcare IT company Flatiron Health. A large portion of their success is based in breaking down silos between patient touch points. By relating data between things such as EMRs and clinical research, as well as back and forth with patients, Flatiron is able to find successful trends in clinical and patient care. Additionally, by putting their product managers in hospitals to shadow nurses and doctors, Flatiron was able to listen more effectively to not just their clinic customers, but also to the patients their system is used for. By putting a focus on informing patients – not just doctors – both parties have an improved experience. Patients understood their therapy better and had easier ways to alert their doctor of changes while doctors had better information to inform future decisions. Flatiron’s astronomical growth rate and funding rounds speak for themselves in terms in contrast to the success and usability of traditional EMR systems. By focusing on net experience, rather than traditional touchpoint management, Flatiron was able to deliver better product and growth.

To formalize this into concrete business concepts, Chris Meyer proposes a possible explanation in Harvard Business Review about the customer experience

Multi-channel marketing and customer service is built on CRM management – tracking events, instances, and facts without focusing on the experiences and problems underneath. While there is a wide breadth of this information, it is still distinct from the concepts of motivation, experience and feeling. To really switch, businesses require a fundamentally different view towards how they try and get brands to align with people – or more simply, just seeing people as people.

While multi-channel itself an ineffective management strategy, it is worth mentioning how this thinking is ineffective for corporate sustainability as well. With customers using a wider number of channels – and methods of using those channels changing as well – thinking about channels as rigid entities sets a business up to be permanently behind the rate of change. In one Entrepreneur article, the writer posited that the rate of capturing the value of new platforms wasn’t as much of a problem anymore as the rate at which companies can adopt to them. Focusing on multi-channel will leave managers on an adoption rate treadmill, exacerbating the lack of visibility they have on their customers.

An Experience is Worth More Than 1000 Words

Nearly as soon as Professor Wind’s book came out, parts of its research were already bending to the breakneck speed at which digital marketing is changing. As IBM observed in their most recent CMO survey , the traditional silos – both in terms of industry and channel – are breaking down. CMOs are no longer the masters of ‘the campaign’ or creative geniuses, they are engineers of customer experience. Concisely, in the same survey, Mohamed AlTajer writes “There won’t be CMOs in the future; there will be Chief Experience Officers who are responsible for the overall customer journey.”

Relating to Professor Wind’s book, his work sets the stage for what will be a needed change in outlook and approach. People fundamentally expect the same experience over any channel we interact with. In other words, people don’t just want consistency when dealing with companies, they want an ongoing conversation. Too long has marketing and customer service focused on what is corporately efficient without realizing that by accommodating and listening customers, both succeed.

This is a relatively abstract concept that is illustrated well by clothing company Patagonia. Patagonia is built upon a number of principles including use of recycled materials, a permanent one percent of revenue commitment to grassroots activism, and a culture based off the mountain climbing past of it’s founder, Yvon Chouinard. They branded around the catchphrase “Don’t Buy This Jacket,” urging customers to consider the environmental implications of the clothes they were buying and to encourage them to buy use. In an act in line with their guiding principles, considerate to their customers, and seemingly flying in the face of a proper sales campaign, Patagonia’s sales actually exploded. () By sticking to their philosophy and informing their customers, Patagonia has maintained it’s shopper experience as an outdoors brand and continued to be a model brand of customer and corporate goals aligning.

Bottom of the Ninth

In an age where social media and customer management is an increasingly crowded landscape, what do businesses needs to change to actually understand their customers?

In part, the change in cultural. Think about the idea of the traditional sales team. The concept, although certainly profitable, is not always the most healthy extension of company culture. This introduces a risk of divide between the culture of the sales team and the rest of the team. In an ideal corporate structure, everyone in a company believes in their brand alignment and, through their work, help contributes to its success. To cite Michael Keller, CEO of Pearson’s Candy, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

To illustrate this, consider REI, the outdoor clothing and supply behemoth. REI seeks out employees passion about their products – in other words, ‘outdoorsy people’ – and the same people that would buy the products themselves. REI employees also lead sessions teaching things such as kayaking, get discounts on their products, and even days off to go outside and play. This unapologetic commitment to culture has led to a massive boon in sales, especially in comparison to some of their less-focused competitors. Rather than focus on channel-specific campaigns and tracking, by curating a culture, REI was able to drive sales effectively.

To tie this concept more directly to the sales and marketing front, Atlassian stands out. As one of the few Australian unicorn companies, their lack of sales team has generated a lot of buzz. While potentially alarming at first, it is relatively easy to see this success is attributed to founders devoted to the need for their own product, building a culture where people want to work, and making all aspects of the company, to some extent, marketing. By creating a product that they loved themselves and employees that wanted to work there, the marketing came from largely word of mouth. Combined with distributing their software for free, Atlassian blossomed into a massive company. Co-founder Scott Farquhar notes, “I passionately believe about giving experience. Mainly to employees but also to customers… People remember experiences that you give them.In other words, your own employees should be your brand’s biggest advocate, and their actions will help a product sell itself. In the same vein, Palantir, backed with a 0 dollar marketing budget, relies nearly entirely on the passion of its employees to drive and perfect it’s product. As one of the most valuable privately held companies in the valley, it’s safe to say the tactic is working.

A Product Is Worth a Thousand Words

Aside the more intangible changes of culture, the answer isn’t to stop tracking points – in fact, tracking is as relevant as ever – but to approach how we integrate conversations into marketing, sales, and, most importantly, product differently. As companies break down their multi-channel induced silos, they need to integrate customer interactions with how they build their product.

I think summary of all of this can come from a talk I went to with Eone Watch’s founder, Hyungsoo Kim. In his attempt to make a watch for the blind, he quickly realized that his perceptions of building and selling the product were completely wrong. He had made a series of assumptions about the blind, including that they could read braille and wouldn’t care as much about the appearance of the watch. In testing, soon realized how painfully wrong he was, with around 10% of his test users knowing braille and appearance being one of the most asked questions. Bringing the product back to the drawing board, the watch was re-designed to be appealing and usable to blind and sighted alike, an intuition that only came from having blind people work closely with the product team.

While companies talk to a variety of customers, usually not as specific of a market segment as the one targeted by Hyungsoo, it is easy to make a number of simplifications and projections based off what we as businesses feel like we should be focusing on and what people will want. Multi-channel, as Professor Wind examined and built on, is necessarily reactive. It precludes companies from seeing the underlying motivations behind customers and precludes them from building their best products. If we follow stories, rather than words and points, it’ll be much easier to predict the next chapter. So let’s stop thinking of marketing and customer service as pages, but rather books about people.