4 Design Terms Every Marketer Needs to Know

The transition from text-based to visual marketing is already well underway, as customer demand drives organizations to rethink how people communicate on the most basic level.

Cisco estimates video will constitute 80% of all consumer Internet traffic by 2019, and although marketers are racing to catch up, they’re still behind the times: in 2015, 52% of senior marketing executives believed that visual assets such as infographics, photos, videos and illustration could help them tell their brand story. But given that human attention spans dropped a whopping 33% between 2000 and 2015, from 12 to 8 seconds — and some report its dropped even lower — marketers no longer have any choice in the matter: eye-catching visuals that are quick to digest and easy to share will be an essential tool for any brand moving forward.

But what’s a brand to do when you have no idea what visual assets will be both effective and the right fit for your organization? This post will explain a few essential terms and tips you’ll need to get started.

1. Visual Communication

Visual communication may be the most form of all.

It may sound simple enough: visual communication uses images and visuals to create meaning.

Why?

Because it is likely to become the only way that the majority of marketers communicate with their audiences — so you need to know it when you see it. This isn’t just because people prefer video to text, and are more likely to share photos. It’s also easier than ever for any brand to reach an international audience. Just take a look at Google AdWords, which (finally!) launched a redesign in March, of which an essential part of the design was making it language-agnostic to remove obstacles for audiences with a wide variety of backgrounds and skill sets.

The new Google AdWords features clean visualization and icons that communicate the type of information being mapped, no matter what language you speak. Image Source

When necessary, limited text is included to explicate the meaning. Take a look at Starbucks’ visual communication strategy: one tweeted image incorporates autumn leaves combined with moss emblematic of their Pacific Northwest roots, announcing that the drink in hand is both seasonal and rooted in Starbucks’ larger tradition.

The holidays. When everything shows its heart. #HolidaySpiceFlatWhite http://pic.twitter.com/XIvy1ZFQMG

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) November 23, 2016

Starbucks’ visual communication strategy ensures every piece of visual content is immediately identifiable with their brand. In one of Starbucks’ most-liked tweets of the last few months, autumn leaves communicate the seasonality of the drink while moss connects to the company’s Pacific Northwest roots — no text necessary.

Another tweet reminds customers (without using a single word) that the brand is famous for just how personalizable their products are. Their stores and products project the same visual identity as their social pages. You know a Starbucks image immediately when you see it. That’s effective visual communication.

Find your holiday favorite: https://t.co/DgCc0G1fIS #RedCups http://pic.twitter.com/aXW1vNrYuz

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) November 12, 2016

Starbucks communicates its reputation for personalized drinks, the breadth of its product offerings, and its release of seasonal cups — all in a single, text-free illustration.

But it’s easy to fall short of this goal. A great piece of visual communication should communicate in just the same way as the AdWords interface now strives to: without reading a word, you should be able to look at the design and tell what the graphic is about — what message it’s trying to send.

Here are a few questions to ask to determine whether your visual content meets the standards that your audiences will hold you to. If the answer is “no” to any of these, rethink whether your content is really communicating effectively:

1. Ask someone unfamiliar with the graphic or video to glance at it for 5 seconds. Can she tell you what the theme is?
2. Are you using illustrations and assets custom-made for the content, as opposed to cookie-cutter graphics or clip art?
3. Is the content targeted toward achieving a single goal?
4. Are both the design and the copy calibrated to attract and interest your target audience?
5. Have you kept text to a minimum?

2. Visual Storytelling

Every brand has a story to tell, but with more stories to choose from than ever before, keeping an audience engaged can be a challenge.

The answer lies in what’s already interesting to your viewers: we’re living in the golden age of television and online video; game and virtual realities are becoming more complex every day; and websites encourage visitors to interact actively with their content. Storytelling today has to be something users can see, interact with or hear before they’ll share.

Take a look at Carrington College’s informational motion graphic on springtime allergies:

It transforms pollen, white blood cells, and even mast cells into humorous characters to reframe what could otherwise be a boring explanation as a story. Every audience is attracted to stories — it seems to be a part of our human DNA. And with the help of clever visual storytelling strategies, anything can become a story.

Visual storytelling uses visual communication to craft a narrative that explains a concept and often evokes an emotional response. It’s ideal for those marketers seeking to share an idea, promote a point of view, or convince potential customers of the quality and effectiveness of their product. As with visual communication, education is one of the end goals, but this approach aims to persuade the viewer to reach a specific conclusion.

Here are a few elements that make for a great visual story:

1. Plot: You should carefully guide your viewers from beginning to end.
2. Priorities: Only use the strongest data and arguments. Too much information is overwhelming.
3. Audience: Identify a single target audience and create a story they can relate to.
4. Goal setting: If you’re trying to make too many points at once, or share too many ideas, you’ll end up turning viewers away. A targeted, single goal promotes shareability and engagement.

3. Information Visualization

You’ve got more data than ever and no idea how to cull meaning from that data. Or maybe you do know what it means, but it’s nearly impossible to get your colleagues interested in what that data has to say — much less get your customers so excited that they’re willing to retweet that data to their followers. This is where quality information visualization comes in — and “quality” is the keyword.

Information visualization aims to convey meaning as quickly as possible. The primary focus is to educate the viewer, not to persuade them to form a specific opinion. Information visualization can also be aesthetically engaging and even interactive, as The New York Times proves with its visualization of deportation numbers.

Massive amounts of data are made meaningful in The New York Times’ visualization of U.S. deportation numbers. The graphic transforms as readers scroll down. Image Source

But to be effective, you need to use visualizations that stand up to scrutiny, follow mathematical and scientific best practices, and quickly communicate the big picture. Not everyone is up to this task. Here are a few essentials for when you’re visualizing information:

1. Check your graphs: Using a pie chart for something that’s not a percentage or setting inconsistent scales for your graphs are both big errors that could take center stage instead of your actual message.
2. Keep it simple: Don’t try to pack too much information into one image. One graph should have one takeaway.
3. Focus on the message: Getting lost in the data is the opposite of the point. Help readers understand what’s important and why through careful organization of the content, as well as icons and illustrations when necessary.

4. Visual Campaigns

What if you have a more complex story to tell? Most companies do. One piece of content just can’t say everything you need to say.

One piece of content — even if it’s a social post that goes viral or a video that gets thousands of likes — also isn’t likely to assure the long-term success of your company. That’s why more and more organizations are looking at improving their branding by placing more emphasis on visual content and creating a consistent look and feel that will span multiple marketing campaigns and a variety of content types, from motion graphics and interactive pages to infographics and social posts. At the same time, marketing campaigns are now expected to have a consistent and recognizable visual element — something that can be recognized instantly.

Take a look at how Coca-Cola’s one brand campaign launched this year. Its products were available in dozens of countries, with dozens of looks designed for maximum appeal wherever they were sold. It was a massive undertaking, but the company pared down its product design to just four universally recognizable packages.

Image Source

Coca-Cola’s old strategy was to create new branding for each new product. Now, they’ve united their global branding with four consistent, and instantly recognizable, colors, each of which is visible on all sides, no matter which way the bottle or can is turned on the shelf.

“When people see this new brand identity, they’ll know they’re buying a Coca-Cola,” explained James Sommerville, vice president of global design.

This is all to say that companies are redesigning all their customer-facing content to offer up a consistent visual message. Here are just a few of the benefits of undertaking a visual campaign:

1. The consistent use of quality assets across your brand communicates an overall dedication to quality that customers today are equipped to recognize and prepared to appreciate through engagement and sharing.
2. A single face for your visual content communicates that you’re committed to authentic and honest communication — not changing your stripes with every new piece of content.
3. Multiple visual assets can reach a broader audience because of their adaptability to different platforms.
4. A consistent look builds brand awareness.

Conclusion

In the end, visual communication is an indispensable tool for any marketer, but execution is key. Not just any visual content will do the job. Consumers ignore sloppily designed or cookie-cutter graphics in favor of those that inspire — not only in how they look but also in how they deliver their primary message. Armed with these essential terms and a list of dos and don’ts, you’ll be well prepared to avoid the pitfalls as you navigate to the visual communications agency that’s right for your brand.

About the Author: Erin McCoy is the Public Relations Manager for Killer Infographics.

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The Funny and Fabulous: 10 Best Video Marketing Examples of 2016

Every year we sit down and put together the best videos from the year that just passed. And every year we share them with you. Because, who doesn’t love to get a little inspiration from the greats who traveled before us? Or, maybe just spend another 15 minutes watching videos online? Yeah we get sucked into that black hole, too. Don’t worry.

This year, we present you with a mix of both B2B and B2C videos to give you the absolute best caliber of marketing to use … well, however you like in 2017!

10. Best Comedy

Chatbooks’ ‘Stop Wasting Hours Making Photo Books’

This video is Dollar Shave Club meets Poo Pourri. And that is saying something given that both of those videos seem to rein at the top of the charts years after they were published. This long-winded explanation of the automatic photo book app, Chatbooks, is a perfect mix of wit, charm, product description, and the honest truth of motherhood.

9. Best Personalization

Lenovo’s ‘I Fixed It – the IT Anthem’

Lenovo created this anthem for all the IT pros out there. And yep, it’s relatable as ever. Plus, they personalized the anthem so their prospects and customers received their own custom anthem. (The video below is personalized for Sangram Vajre at Terminus, so use your own imagination to replace his name or company name with your own!)

8. Best Online Celebrity Partnership

Zoom’s ‘Put Your Dongle Away’

Zoom is a cordless presentation and video conferencing solution that eliminates the need for ever plugging in your dongle again. That doesn’t seem like the most exciting fodder for good marketing content, but when you bring the online comedy team, Tripp and Tyler, into the mix, you have all the fodder you need for the perfect comedy sketch.

7. Best Parody

Conductor’s ‘SEO and Content Go to Couple’s Therapy’

If you’ve ever worked in, worked with someone who worked in, or heard anything about content or SEO, you’ll understand this video. Conductor, a technology solution for both of these worlds, parodies couple’s therapy and really resonates with the struggles of their target audience. And they’re not afraid to call them out.

6. Best Cause Campaign

AT&T’s ‘The Unseen, It Can Wait’

The ‘It Can Wait‘ campaign isn’t a new addition to AT&T’s line-up. I believe the series started in 2014. But it’s been such a success (and a key part of AT&T’s charitable arm) that they continue to release new videos every few months, and they never seem to decrease in impact.

5. Best Benefit Explanation

Purple’s ‘How to Use a Raw Egg to Determine if Your Mattress is Awful’

Anyone can go on and on about different kinds of mattresses, springs, or sleep technology, but until you see it in action in the context of something you can relate to (like raw eggs), it’s just kinda hard to get. Purple, a mattress company, did just this. Plus, they added some great tongue in cheek humor and a reference to Goldilocks to hit this one out of the park.

4. Best Use of Live Streaming

Virgin’s ‘Seize the Holiday’

Instead of showing the various destinations Virgin Holidays offers in a regular, blue-skied camera shoot, Virgin decided to show a handful of locations in real time. This seemed to hammer home, even more than usual, that viewers could actually be somewhere completely different in the world … right this very moment. And that other location might be a whole lot more interesting than what they’re doing right now!

3. Best YouTube Ad

Hotels.com’s ‘Skip this Ad’

Hotels.com is known for being quirky and humorous in all their ads, which is probably the exact reason they decided to have fun with the “Skip this Ad” button we’re all too familiar with on YouTube. While they purchased a non-skippable ad, they let viewers believe the opposite. When the viewers clicked “Skip this Ad”, they’d see the characters in Hotels.com ad begin to literally skip! The video below shows an example of what a YouTube viewer would experience.

2. Best Use of Immersive Video on Website

The University of Sydney’s 360 Degree Tour

The more that video becomes the predominant medium consumed online, the more we’ll see it seamlessly integrated into online experiences. And boy did The University of Sydney ever do that! Their 360 degree tour allows the user to explore the campus and see different students’ perspectives in a way that only video could allow.

To experience the full effect, go to their website here.

1. Best Use of Interactivity

Usher’s ‘Don’t Look Away’

I know, I know. You’re thinking: of course the number one spot goes to a celebrity who owns shoes that cost more money than the rest of our video marketing budgets. But believe me, this one made the list because it seriously breaks the mold and pushes the boundaries of video marketing. Not only that, it’s for a cause beyond Usher’s pocket.

Want more video examples? Check out all the other lists we’ve put together in the last year (or two!):

• The Best 5 Hope-Filled, Tear-Jerking Videos
• The Best 30 Examples of Personalized Video
• The Best 5 Holiday Videos of 2016
• The Best Video Examples from the Rio 2016 Olympics
• The Best of the Best: 2016 Video Marketing Awards
• The Best 10 B2B Marketing Videos of 2015
• The Best 10 Marketing Videos of 2014

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Learn From the Best: How Nordstrom, 1-800-Flowers and Sephora Pair Old School Marketing With New Marketing Technology

For brands to stay relevant in our fast-paced, mobile and multi-channel world, they must show more value, more novelty, and more values than ever before. The traditional marketing of old — TV commercials, catalogs and most importantly word of mouth, are still very relevant today. Consumer attention, even a second of it, is worth more than gold today, and consumers feel this.

Because of this pressure cooker of demand for their attention, consumers actually appreciate this more traditional type of marketing. The “slow” movements of today — slow food and slow travel, for example — are in reaction to the rapid-fire pace of modern consumer life. Traditional branding and marketing are the “slow marketing” of today, allowing brands and consumers to take a step back in time to a simpler consumer-brand relationship.

With that being said, we are now in a different time — the era of AI, VR and chatbots. If a brand exclusively relies on old school marketing, they run the risk of becoming irrelevant, stale or out of touch. The smart digital marketing, or marketing technology of today can actually help brands position themselves to be at the forefront in their industries.

Marketing Technology

Martech, shorthand for MARketing TECHnology, are tools that assist marketing professionals in reaching their target audience and marketing goals. These platforms can take the form of email marketing, inbound or outbound marketing, social media marketing, marketing automation, or customer data platforms. Some martech platforms strive to be all-in-one tools, whereas many others perform specific tasks such as user segmentation or landing page optimization. Martech’s use of AI and machine learning actually helps brands connect better emotionally with consumers, touching an important nerve that gives them an edge.

A marketing strategy that combines these two approaches is what really works. Covering all bases ensures a far-reaching approach that can gain all types of consumers, young and old, high-tech and low. Nordstrom, 1-800-Flowers.com and Sephora are three brands that have a well-rounded, varied marketing strategy that utilizes traditional marketing with the new martech to reach impressive heights with ROI, brand awareness and brand loyalty.

Let’s first take a look at how the luxury department store brand Nordstrom pairs its century-old traditional values with 21st century technology.

Nordstrom

Nordstrom, the beloved brand that is most known for its all-star customer service, exemplifies the marketing marriage between old school and new by maintaining its core value set while experimenting with new marketing and e-commerce technology.

Nordstrom opened its doors over a century ago, and has reigned as a customer favorite ever since. They are currently number one in customer satisfaction according to a wide-ranging Market Force survey. Their customer service reputation and brand loyalty is what sets them apart. They are known for a liberal and generous return policy; on the Nordstrom.com website, it states, “We handle returns on a case-by-case basis with the ultimate objective of making our customers happy.” There is no time limit for returns per se, and shopping is a full and pleasant experience. Nordstrom’s traditional marketing also includes the monthly Nordstrom catalog and Nordstrom credit card points.

Their new school marketing approach includes a Nordstrom branded app, their website with extensive user generated content and reviews, and their forward-thinking Pinterest buyable pins.

Let’s dig into each.

Pinterest Buyable Pins

Pinterest announced last year that users would be able to purchase pins directly on the platform. Nordstrom was one of the large retail brands to get on board. This is a way for a consumer to securely purchase the ‘pin’ or item they are interested in, directly on Pinterest without having to leave the platform.

User-Generated Content

Nordstrom.com has built up a robust and effective review and ratings system native to it’s website. A review consists of a written section, a 5-star rating system, the option to check boxes with qualities that describe the item, a scale to note if the item runs small or large, wide or thin (for shoes). There is also an option for the user to state whether the review was helpful or not. The user can sort reviews by rating, fit and even age! Just one pair of shoes can have a thread of over 500 reviews (see below). This is a massive amount of user-generated content, for users, by users.

Nordstrom’s branded app

Available for iOS and Android, Nordstrom’s branded app allows users to shop, check to see if a selected product is in a store nearby, and a Reserve and Try in Store feature, where users can put an item on hold and go into the store to try it on. Additionally, users can take a picture of a product they like to see similar items.

Cross-selling at its finest. See shoes you like? Take a picture and find similar items you may also like.

Users can browse, shop, and purchase all within the app.

With all that said, something is working for Nordstrom.

While other department stores taking a downturn (retail insiders point to Amazon’s dominance), Nordstrom’s sales last year were at a record high of $14.1 billion, up 35% since 2011.

1-800-Flowers

Just from the company’s name, you can tell that 1-800-Flowers started off in a simpler consumer world, compared to our mobile-dominated reality of today. However, from the get-go they were early adopters of the newest technology of the time; they were one of the first retailers to use a toll-free retail phone number for direct sales, and subsequently online. And as early as 2009, they were doing e-commerce on Facebook (where they were one of the earliest adopters).

The company’s classic relationship marketing has always been paired with the latest technology. From their founding, 1-800-Flowers has relied on word of mouth recommendations and a stellar reputation with consumers while simultaneously pushing the boundaries by adopting the latest technology of the time. Jim McCann, the company’s founder, discusses personal relationships with customers as key to their marketing and business strategy: “It is critical for us to create and maintain a much deeper, engaged, and trusting relationship with the customer.”

They are known for innovating in order to make it easier and more fruitful for the customer to get what they need. They have consistently been an early adopter in the realm of e-commerce and marketing technology in order to make the customer journey easier, through channels like Facebook, their own website and integrations with other e-commerce platforms.

Let’s see how they’re doing it.

E-Commerce on Facebook

Back in 2009, 1-800-Flowers set up an e-commerce store on their Facebook page, way before anyone was doing it.

Image Source

Now, the brand’s strategy to attract a younger generation on mobile and social is working very well. Their reasonable price points also contribute to this fact.

Since April of this year, 1-800-Flowers has a Facebook chatbot that can handle full transactions. They were one of the first two retailers to launch a chatbot on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg even used 1-800-Flowers as an example when demonstrating how the chatbots work, during the 2016 F8 conference.

Website

The 1-800-Flowers.com website is detailed, thorough and makes the customer journey very simple by offering themed arrangements sorted by occasion (i.e., Christmas, Birthday, Sympathy, etc.).

They also offer a special membership called “Celebrations Passport,” similar to “Amazon Prime” where the customer pays a set price per year and receives free shipping and a waived service charge on orders.

Integrations

Besides their Facebook chatbot, 1-800-Flowers has two other AI tools: integration with Amazon’s Alexa and IBM Watson’s concierge service, which have attracted over 10,000 users, most of them new — and young.

Amazon Alexa
1-800-Flowers got in on the Internet-of-Things action with their integration with Amazon’s Alexa, the voice-enabled personal assistant. Customers can order flowers and gifts through their mobile devices or on Amazon’s Echo (their smart speaker) by saying, “Alexa, ask 1-800-Flowers to send flowers to Mom before Christmas.” For this to happen, the customer must have a registered 1-800-Flowers account and provide the shipping and payment details beforehand.

IBM Watson
The flower brand launched a digital “concierge” service called GWYN (Gifts When You Need), right before Mother’s Day earlier this year. IBM’s Watson, an AI agent that uses machine learning to help consumers choose the perfect gift for someone, powers the service. The service is available on desktop and mobile.

It works by the customer typing something into GYWN to start the process, like, “I want to buy a birthday gift.” GYWN will then ask the customer follow-up questions to narrow down the search, such as “Is it for a female or a male? Age 25 or 30?” The more data GWYN collects over time, she becomes “smarter” and will be able to present better options to customers in the future.

Marketing software

1-800 Flowers are now using advanced martech platform Optimove, who recently announced a CRM optimization bot to help companies target their current customers better. This predictive analytics technology is key for the brand’s successful customer retention strategy. 1-800-Flowers uses this technology to present personalized deals and offers to their current customer base throughout multiple channels.

Sephora

Sephora is an innovative beauty brand that uses creativity and technology to connect with customers, while utilizing traditional marketing to stay grounded.

Sephora is popular with consumers via word of mouth recommendations — how much more old school can you get than that? Their rewards program is well-known for imbuing a traditional marketing strategy — a loyalty program — with life and personality. The program has three levels of membership based on the amount a customer purchases per year as well as a newly-introduced “Beauty Bazaar” with rewards twice per week. Rewards can range from regular beauty products to a makeover, to something over-the-top as a makeup class at Anastasia Beverly Hills.

Sephora has a cutting-edge branded app with highly interactive features, focusing on a fun and rich user experience. One Augmented Reality (AR) based feature is the “Product Try-On” (see below) where users can virtually try on beauty products like lipstick and eyelashes, to see what they would actually look like on their faces. They can then purchase the item from the app — pretty smart, right?

Sephora’s “Product Try-On” feature

Social Media

Sephora is winning at cross-channel social media. Here’s how.

Hashtags
The beauty brand has a popular hashtag that they use, #TrendingAtSephora, to market and connect with customers, even on different platforms. The tweet below highlights how the brand uses one channel — Twitter — to get traffic in another channel — Facebook — for a Facebook Live tutorial.

Learn about the next great wave of #TrendingAtSephora skincare from our experts—right now on Facebook Live: https://t.co/J2WxzkyL1e

— Sephora (@Sephora) October 6, 2016

Facebook chatbot
Sephora recently unveiled a Facebook bot that allows customers to book consultations or in-store makeovers.

The brand also just announced they will be rewarding customers with gift cards directly on social media through a partnership with CashStar, a prepaid commerce solution. This can be useful for customer brand ambassadors and customers who’ve had customer service issues.

Sephora’s mix of classic and trailblazing marketing techniques are their forte, which translates into branding success.

Find the Balance

Nordstrom, 1-800 Flowers and Sephora have done what most brands fail to do: combine time-honored marketing approaches with modern martech to ensure relevancy and a competitive edge while being respected in their industries and by consumers.

Starting with the traditional value of putting exemplary customer experience number one, while simultaneously extending their digital reach with cutting-edge e-commerce, branded apps and advanced marketing technologies, these brands find and maintain the balance. By learning from these top-tier companies on how to pair traditional marketing with new martech, companies can grow with the times while staying grounded — a feat that is challenging, yet possible.

About the Author: Shayna Smilovitz is a writer living in Tel Aviv, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area. She loves writing about the intersection between marketing, technology and culture. You can follow her on Twitter.

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Vidyard’s Home for the Holidays [Video]

The holidays are upon us. If you’re anything like us, you’re probably busy wrapping things up and getting ready for a few days full of festivities, reuniting with family, and eating more food than you can reasonably handle.

But at Vidyard, there’s a certain someone that doesn’t want us to go home for the holidays…

Happy holidays to you and yours from all of us at Vidyard!

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How to Get the Non-Technical People in Your Office Excited About Analytics

Analytics. Data science. Words and phrases like these tend to conjure up imagery of guys in thick glasses poring over stacks of spreadsheets with the smell of stale coffee permeating the office. But today’s data and analytics teams couldn’t be farther from the caricatures that we make of them. And the truth is, when you discover just what’s possible, it can be hard not to be excited about it!

So how do you get even the biggest technology trilobite in your office to not only embrace analytics, but share in your enthusiasm? Here are a few ways to make the whole idea of data science a lot more tempting.

Understand the Underlying Problems – Then Solve Them

Companies in nearly every sector, from B2B to B2C to B2B2C and everything in between has their reasons – good reasons – for wanting to keep their heads in the sand when it comes to analytics. Sales teams often don’t see the revenue needle budge enough to make it worth their attention.

Managers are busy managing and don’t have the time to trudge up a high learning curve, much less understand the data enough to make confident decisions using it. And even key decision makers are slow to adopt a culture of analytics because the protocols for decision-making are…you guessed it, made by committee.

The fact is, no field is changing or adapting faster than data science, and, much in the same way that the Internet revolutionized the way we communicate and do business, analytics are changing the way we make decisions, engage customers, develop products and much more. It’s as much an integral part of a successful business as having a commerce-enabled website was over a decade ago.

That means that yes, some jobs may have to be redesigned, some outdated protocols overhauled and some focuses shifted to accommodate the rapid growth of analytics.

Companies that embrace this chameleon-like adaptation are the ones who truly leverage the greatest benefits from data science and analytics. Those who fail to see its potential will continue to struggle as their competitors gain greater and greater data-backed insights.

In short, it’s uncomfortable but necessary to change.

Embracing the Democratization of Data

One of the biggest terms making the rounds in the data science world is the “democratization” of data. In other words, taking it out of the hands of the analytics geeks and putting it squarely in the hands of everyone from executives to managers to customer service and even the janitorial staff (okay, maybe not that last one). New tools and SaaS platforms are being developed and deployed faster than ever, and today’s data scientists can use visualization tools to map out different scenarios. Things like predictive analytics show everyone models of what can happen with the current data they’ve collected, so that new campaigns, new product ideas and overall business growth can happen in a way that’s both impactful and scalable.

And did I mention that all of this can be done without a single line of code?

But before you think I’m throwing data scientists and analytics gurus under the bus, keep in mind that they are still very, very pivotal and crucial to the entire organization. It’s their guidance that will lead to embracing the democratization of data on a much wider scale. Getting everyone used to and comfortable with the data leads to greater understanding and confidence. Greater confidence leads to excitement and uncovers new opportunities that one person or team alone may not have considered.

And knowing that, why would you want to restrict yourself by leaving all your analytics decisions in the hands of a few, when you can enjoy much greater insights and data-backed determinations when it’s in the hands of everyone?

Getting to the Large-Scale Benefits

One of the biggest issues that companies struggle with in their journey to become more data driven is getting to the large scale benefits. It’s one thing to comb through the data and get a few novel nuggets that can give you a slight conversion or revenue lift. It’s another thing entirely to try and revamp an entire company’s or organization’s structure from the inside out. It’s overwhelming and pretty much impossible, which puts a lot of people off adopting an analytics culture company-wide.

In these cases, start small. Start with the departments or areas that you feel could see the biggest benefit from analytics insights. Make sure to keep others in the loop through proper communication channels such as newsletters or email lists. Be patient. Remember, just a few short years ago, articles like this one were more focused on getting C-Suite buy-in than trying to transform an entire company culture.

Another common complaint is the use of tools. In many cases, companies invest in analytics tools but vendors are unable to accurately demonstrate how said tools integrate with the existing workflow. If the sales staff can’t understand it or advocate for it, they won’t use it – plain and simple. Whichever analytics tools you choose to adopt, make sure that they’re ones that can easily adapt to your existing processes – not the other way around.

Why Most Companies Get Bogged Down in the Analytical Mud

Many companies looking to embrace a data-driven culture (more on that below), look toward hugely profitable mega-corporations like Amazon and Facebook.

But these companies, in the overall spectrum of things, are relatively new and were built from the ground up on a culture of analytics. They can adapt quickly because it’s in their DNA.

For companies not rooted in data science at their core, the shift is going to happen gradually – starting with the departments suited to be most affected by it. It may even necessitate a change from the inside out – how decisions are made, who’s responsible and what’s the end goal. For example, if you invest in a data-driven module to help with dynamic pricing and items start to sell out quicker, you can’t very well hold your inventory managers responsible for it. Shifting to more data-driven decisions means changing how things are done – perhaps even drastically.

But by demonstrating how much more streamlined their job can become and their decisions can be made, people will begin to become more accustomed to using analytics information in their respective departments. As changes are implemented and new insights gleaned from the information, people begin looking for new angles and ways to use the data to further empower their staff and colleagues. It also helps improve their job security, their relationship with customers and the ease and confidence with which they do their job.

Become a Truly Data-Driven Company

Carnegie-Mellon recently conducted a LEAP study which determined that those companies getting the most out of analytics were those whose leaders concentrated on “team collaboration, along with the ability to easily share insights [thereby] instilling confidence in their teams and creating an active analytics community across all departments.” Much of this collaboration comes from self-service tools, which can be completed for specific industry verticals and niches and be deployed much quicker than an over-arching software program.

But becoming a truly data-driven company involves both tools and people – not focusing on one to the exclusivity of the other. As members of the company begin to learn and leverage analytical insights, their enthusiasm and knowledge start to spread out in a ripple-effect to other departments. It won’t happen overnight, but gradually, over time as people become more comfortable and attuned to how analytics can be used in their little corner of the company, they’ll begin to embrace and rely on the data to power their decisions more and more.

How are you using analytics to help encourage others in your company? Are you becoming driven by data, or is it an uphill climb against a more traditional workflow? Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

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6 Ways Brands Are Using Twitter Moments

In an effort to encourage users to better curate Tweets, this year Twitter has introduced their Moments feature allowing anyone to collect Twitter updates in a rich embeddable page. If a Twitter profile has Moments created, they will have a new tab on their profile called, unsurprisingly, “Moments”

The blog post announcing Moments explains:

Every day, people share hundreds of millions of Tweets. Among them are things you can’t experience anywhere but on Twitter: conversations between world leaders and celebrities, citizens reporting events as they happen, cultural memes, live commentary on the night’s big game, and many more. We know finding these only-on-Twitter moments can be a challenge, especially if you haven’t followed certain accounts. But it doesn’t have to be.

Moments helps you find the best of Twitter as easily – regardless of who you follow.

One of the first users of of the feature, DeRay Mckesson, explains it this way:

Moments allows us to collect and curate Tweets to tell stories in new ways. It’s a powerful Twitter feature, continuing to help build community as we engage specific topics and events.

It’s been a few months since the feature has been open to everyone on Twitter. Let’s see how brands are using moments and hopefully get inspired too!

1. Show what your users or customers are doing with your product

Startbucks curates their customers’ tweets showing their reaction to the red cups:

2. Create your product or feature walk-through

Somewhat relevant to the above one, you can use the feature to curate tips and tricks using your product, service or SaaS feature. Twitter is a great example here using Moments to show how to best use their new feature:

3. Recycle promo tweets to get more attention

Microsoft uses Moments to collect all their Black Friday promo tweets under one moment:

4. Tell the personal story of a founder / CEO / employee

Story telling has been a hit for a good reason: Customers relate with personal stories more than with anything else including testimonials or reviews. Personal stories build something better than direct sales: They build brand awareness and loyalty. Twitter Moments allow to tell personal stories effectively.

Allure Magazine uses Twitter Moments to show one day of their CEO life.

5. Engage your followers

Xbox encourages its followers to participate in brand content creation by inviting them to send them GIFs that best describe their Monday. Since it’s Monday today, here’s the whole collection in its glory:

Monday

6. Announce your social media contest winners

Lots of brands are using social media contests to build awareness and promote their products. Twitter Moments is the perfect platform to create a sharable and embeddable list of your winners to get the word out. @ProductHunt is doing just that with their top-voted product list:

More possible ways to use Twitter moments:

• Collect product reviews and testimonials to better showcase them on your Twitter profile and website (using the embedded code)
• Feature best tweets from an event or a Twitter chat.
• Showcase Twitter quotes from notable niche experts. This is also an effective influencer relationship building tactic.
• Bypass 140-character limit and collect your multiple tweets on the same topic. You can also pin the moment on top of your profile for more people to see it.
  

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If you want to try your hand at using the feature, click on “Moments” when on Twitter home page and from there select “Create a new moment”.

There you’ll be able to select a cover, search for Tweets to include in the moment and save your creation as a draft.

Are there any ways brands can use Moments? Share your ideas!

The post 6 Ways Brands Are Using Twitter Moments appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

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Do You Really Need to Test Your Site to Improve Your Conversion Rate?

Talk to almost any online marketer and you’d think that they held a PhD in psychology. At the drop of a hat, they can tell you all about what button colors, typeface, contrast, spacing, line of sight, hero shots, etc you should use to subconsciously drive a website visitor to convert.

But do marketers really have these incredible mind powers? Do they wield the awesome power of psychology to control the rest of the world?

Testing the Testers

Recently, Chris Dayley, my head of CRO, ran a little experiment at the SearchLove conference in Chicago. Chris wanted to see how well marketers could use their understanding of psychology, marketing best practice or even gut instinct to predict which landing page design would produce the best conversion rates.

So, he presented an example A/B test from a real client of ours. There were four page variants and one of them had generated a 146% increase in leads. The room of marketers was given a link to a survey where they could examine each variant and submit their guesses as to which page had been the winner.

Take a look for yourself. Which one would you have picked as the winner?

Here’s how the marketers voted:

• Original: 0%
• V1:32%
• V2: 42%
• V3: 26%

Now, only one of the variants actually produced 146% more conversions, so—if we assume that V2 actually was the winning variant—at least 58% of these marketers were wrong.

But that wasn’t the real trick of the survey.

While the marketers were guessing which page had won in Chris’s A/B test, he was actually running an A/B test on them!

Only half of the surveys showed the page variants in the order seen above. The other half saw a scrambled version with the original and V3 switched like this:

Here’s where things got a little crazy. In the second group of marketers, no one voted for the “original” page—even though that page received 26% of the votes in the first group!

Even more intriguingly, V2 received the most votes in both groups:

But here’s the thing, V2 wasn’t actually the top-performing page—V3 (the “Control” in group 2) was. That meant the actual champion only got 13% of the popular vote!

The question is, why? How did the vaunted best practices and gut instincts of so many marketers fail them? To answer that, let’s take a step back from marketing psychology and take a look at the psychology of marketers:

Newer is Better

The most obvious thing highlighted by Chris’s experiment was that all the marketers assumed that the highest performing page variant couldn’t be the original. In both groups, the variant labeled “original” didn’t receive a single vote…even when it was the actual winner.

Now, there’s a dangerous assumption at play here. Everyone who puts an A/B test together would like to believe that he or she is going to shake things up and make them better. But can you assume that newer is better?

Null Hypotheses

In scientific testing, there’s a concept called the “null hypothesis.” The null hypothesis states that whatever you change in an experiment won’t affect the results. So, if you change the button color from blue to red, your null hypothesis is that conversions won’t change at all (the effect will be “null”).

In a good study, you’re supposed to act as though the null hypothesis is true until the evidence proves this can’t be the case (kind of an “innocent until proven guilty” sort of thinking). Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen very often.

Selective Perception

Instead of assuming that a change won’t affect conversion rates, most marketers tend to focus on other hypotheses like, “if I change the button color, the conversion rate will go up.”

As a result, many marketers fall into the selective perception (only acknowledging one possibility) trap and assume that new and different will always be better. Clearly, that was the case with this group of marketers.

This is part of the reason why testing is so important. If you just assume that your new idea will perform better and make changes without testing, you could end up hurting your site performance without realizing it!

I Already Know What Works!

So in Chris’s experiment, maybe people didn’t choose the right variant because it was the “original” in one of the groups and they were biased against the null hypothesis.

But why did so many vote for V2?

It’s hard to be sure without tracking them all down and asking them, but chances are that V2 was just the closest representation of their mental image of what a successful page should look like.

Now, having a sense for what a successful page looks like isn’t a bad thing, but if it keeps you from testing, that’s when your marketing skills can get you into trouble.

Appeal to Authority

There are plenty of sources out there that will tell you how a high converting site “ought to look”, but just because something’s “best practice” doesn’t guarantee that it will work on your customers.

A blog post (even this one) or a study by an authority figure should not be the end-all-be-all for your marketing decisions. As helpful and well informed as an expert’s advice might be, it’s still no substitute for doing your own testing.

For example, the most famous example of misplaced trust in authority occurred in 1923, when world-famous zoologist Theophilus Painter incorrectly stated that the human genome had 24 pairs of chromosomes.

Now, future studies quickly revealed that humans have 23 pairs of, but Theophilus was so famous that these scientists threw out their results, assuming they must have been wrong. Textbooks were even printed with pictures of 23 chromosomes, captioned with the number 24!

This went on for over two decades before somebody finally decided that “Theophilus said so” was not a good enough reason to ignore cold hard facts.

Now, I’m not trying to rag on authority figures or studies. They can be extremely valuable sources of information and a great way to come up with testing ideas. However, if you are so focused on marketing “best practice” that you aren’t testing to see how those ideas play out on your own pages, you’re headed for trouble.

In the case of the marketers at Chris’s presentation, many of them may have voted for V2 because they felt like it met the criteria of a “best practice” page. However, “best practice” doesn’t always mean “best results.”

False Consensus Effect

Of course, just because you can’t rely on best practice doesn’t mean that you should just rely on your own know-how instead. In fact, the most dangerous authority figure that you can rely on is yourself.

The problem is, it can be easy to assume that “if the site looks good to me then it must look good to my customers,” when—in reality—customers and marketers are typically more different than alike.

After all, most of your customers have no idea what a landing page is, much less what makes a good one. A marketer might say that his or her site design caused a conversion, but I’ve never had a customer tell me “I converted because of your excellent hero shot.”

Psychologists call the tendency to assume that others think the same as we do the “false consensus effect.” The word “false” in the name ought to give you an idea of how accurate this assumption is.

For example, to many of the marketers at Chris’s speech, V2 may have seemed like the page that would get them to convert. That’s great, but our client wasn’t targeting SearchLove attendees. Their target audience was different and, as a result, converted better on a different page.

Again, this is why testing is so important. Without testing, it’s easy to assume that a page that fits best practice or your own personal preferences will be a slam-dunk with your audience. Sure, that could turn out to be the case, but it’s much more likely that your ideal page design will be just as unique and unpredictable as your audience.

I’ve Got a Feeling…

So, if we don’t know how other people think and we can’t necessarily trust what other people tell us will work best, why do so many marketers think they “know” what’s going to work?

Believe it or not, this is actually a very normal part of being a human. It is surprisingly easy to believe that you have cracked the code on how life works and that you have evidence to prove it.

For example, let’s say you have a theory—“Redheaded people have bad tempers”—originally taught to you in the second grade by a competent authority (Billy on the playground). For the rest of your life, every time you see a redhead lose it, you remember this theory and think, See? That proves it! Billy was right!

But Billy never told you the null hypothesis: “Redheaded people behave the same as everyone else.” So, when you see a levelheaded ginger you think nothing of it and soon forget about it all together. Over the years, you amass a lot of memories of angry carrot-tops, but can’t think of any calm ones, so you decide that your theory must indeed be true.

Psychologists call this behavior “confirmation bias”—the tendency to only pay attention to information that confirms our preexisting opinions.

Unfortunately, confirmation bias is probably where most “marketer’s intuition” comes from.

If you only pay attention to the data that backs up your “gut instinct,” you’ll wind up feeling right all the time. This might be great for self-esteem, but it’s not a real great approach to site design or marketing in general.

You might think you have a great “sense” for what your audience responds to, but if you haven’t tested those instincts, odds are that you’re subject to at least a little confirmation bias.

Conclusion: Stick to the Data

Can you just shortcut the whole testing process and “go with your gut?” Not really…at least, not if you want real results from your online marketing.

On the other hand, if you’re willing to put aside your biases and take a data–driven approach to site optimization, you’ll be in a good position to make a real impact for your business.

So, before you gather your marketing team in a dark room, hold hands, burn incense, and try to “channel” the customer, try putting your hands on some real data and give yourself a reality check.

Did you guess the winning page variant? How good are your marketing instincts? Do you have any examples of when biases held back the potential of a website?

About the Author: Jacob Baadsgaard is the CEO and fearless leader of Disruptive Advertising, an online marketing agency dedicated to using PPC advertising and website optimization to drive sales. His face is as big as his heart and he loves to help businesses achieve their online potential. Connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

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