Welcome to Episode Two of tech power ups, the elevator pitch for today’s installment can be if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Now, that’s a simple statement. But there’s actually a lot packed in there.

You have to know:

• Where you want to go.
• What you want to measure to get there.
• And how you’re going to measure it.

Defining and executing on all of that is absolutely crucial to the success of any business. But putting that all together is no small task.

Today we’re going to break it all down, and help you make better decisions about how to start measuring and improving your marketing, and business processes.

Podcast Transcript

Today we’re talking about measuring your impact.

When it comes to measuring anything, we have to understand the different components that make up the thing that we’re we’re measuring: What are the drivers? What are the underlying concepts that actually change that particular variable.

So the way we look at this, is we look at three different levels: We look at goals, we look at objectives and key results, and we look at KPIs.

So these are three distinct different tools to use to measure, monitor, and manage impact, change, growth.

We’re going to start with goals, because that’s what most people understand. They think of a goal as something that, you know, you put a goal out there for this week. We put a goal out there for this month. We put a goal out there for this quarter. And there’s a lot of different ways to to create goals, and to follow them down the rabbit hole. But the the underlying concept around goals is: what’s the rhythm that works for what you’re after?

Is the timeline that you’re creating for this rhythm — let’s call it monthly goals — are we choosing things that can appropriately be completed within that timeline? Or are we choosing too aggressive of goals? And are we kind of reviewing them and re reviewing them and pushing them out frequently?

When it comes to goals, it’s just about being realistic of what can be accomplished.

There’s a famous Bill Gates quote, that people overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. And that problem, you could say kind of leads to discouragement for the individual, and for any of us, that tend to get into that mindset of letting our ambition kind of these things in a way that’s just unrealistic.

So the balance between being a realist and being a optimist, it’s really key to understand that about yourself when it comes to setting goals and just making sure that you’re not doing this over estimating of what can be done.

With the whole arc of building anything, you have to think about it like a piece of art. And business is art. It’s one of these things that you have to sit with, and become part of. You can’t just control it from the outside. And goal setting is one of those areas that often gets sort of destabilized because people often don’t do that. They think they should be “X.” They think they should get “XYZ” done by “X” date. And that’s just not how art works. Art is an emergent phenomena of the creator, and you kind of ride the wave of it.

Jumping on from goals to OKRs.

OKRs are taken from John Doerr’s book, “Measure What Matters.” And these are Objectives and Key Results.

I thoroughly love the objectives and key results. These objectives have some characteristics to them. And it’s that they’re: significant, concrete, action oriented, inspirational, and really a vaccine against fuzzy thinking.

That last one is my absolute favorite. It means making a statement, a clarifying direction so concrete, that it will influence all the other decisions downstream that anyone in the company can make, surrounding what they’re doing. Meaning we can always bring it back to that objective, and it will help guide us.

That’s what a real clear objective is. And the key result component of this is, that they’re specific and time bound. They’re aggressive, yet realistic. That ties a bit back to the goals that we talked about a bit ago. And they’re measurable and verifiable.

So a lot of companies end up with mission statements that can kind of like drive the direction. They can have a purpose statement. These objectives and key results I think are some of the best. It really is one of the best ways to align the direction of a company and to collaborate movement, and an aligned direction. It’s highly worth listening to Doerr’s TED talk on this, it’s a good 10 minute riff that digs into this.

In the last tool we’re going to talk about is KPIs (key performance indicators).

KPIs are variables that we choose to measure, that indicate performance in different areas.

So as an example, for us as a tech company, one of the KPIs that we actually measure is called “Running 30 Billed Hours.” We’re looking at the running 30 day average, always rolling forward, and what that shows us is sort of the velocity of the company. The speed of the car. And it gives us an insight. When it starts to dip, it’s a red flag going off.

Now we can look at daily hours as well, but the monthly has proven to be a really good measure for us to just monitor the company’s health, and we kind of know what’s going on.

But KPIs in the digital marketing sense, are often:

• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)  and cost per sale
• Cost Per Lead (CPL)
• Cost Per Click (CPC)
• Earnings Per Click
• etc

All of these different KPIs that we choose have limitations to them as well. So arbitrarily picking your which KPIs to look at inside of a company doesn’t really work.

Years ago we worked with a client that was using a measurement called Dollars Per Lead (DPL). And the calculation that they were doing was the dollars that they made today, divided by the leads they generated today. When you think about that, you’re like, “well, what’s going on with that?” And that’s, that’s an interesting kind of measurement.

With a more of like a scientific hat on we can say, “well, that number doesn’t actually tell us any solid data about the company,” because the leads generated today didn’t contribute to the dollars earned today. It wasn’t a day zero revenue situation, they were using leads not sales. And when we questioned them about it, they pushed back and said, “No, this is the measuring stick that we like to use.”

As we dug deeper, it turned out that they were using it as sort of an intuitive measurement of the company. The leadership was was using it in that manner. And that’s not a bad thing. But it’s really important to know that it’s not a scientific measure of the company’s performance. And that was a very interesting situation, because they were running on a lot of intuition in the leadership, as opposed to the tangible factual bits that KPIs are normally designed to measure.

In fact, we were unable to work with them in a scalable, successful manner to help them add automation that they were looking for, because their whole alignment around what they were measuring, and how they wanted to act on it, was a little different than the scientific approach that we start with.

So that’s kind of the three, aspects of measuring your impact.

You’ve got the goals. You’ve got the Objectives and Key Results. And then we’ve got KPIs. Y

The OKRs are kind of goals on steroids. It really is the overarching concept, the company goals really are kind of a better realistic breakdown to help measure progress over the course of time.

And then our KPIs really represent individual variables that will let us know if we’re being successful in specific areas. And if we don’t put KPIs in place, we just can’t measure it. We can’t improve it.

And the place really to start with with all of this stuff is getting clear on where you want to go.

The simplest dashboards and reports from your ecommerce platform, or CRM, or Google Analytics really is a great starting point.

If we’re looking at the pure digital businesses, one of the things we really care about, is knowing the data points that represent the business flow. And I don’t mean to say that an abstract way, but we’re really talking about starting with traffic to a website itself. What’s the origin of that traffic? How are we tagging or tracking or dissecting that?

And then where are we doing with that traffic? Are we dropping a remarketing pixel into that browser to market to them additional content to what they’ve already looked at? Are we serving them up pure content right off the bat? Are we attempting to generate a lead? Do we have a real thought-out process that leads towards a sale?

Fundamentally, it’s about serving and just understanding what people are wanting when they’re stepping into engaging with you.

So using tools like the UTM tracking capability of Google Analytics, really lets you slice and dice in segments and get really get quite fancy with the different visitors that could be coming to a website.

You know, most of our work is in the digital landscape, but the same concepts apply to physical businesses — to every person that walks in the door. Every person that picks up the phone and calls in, people still do use phones and call businesses and ask questions. Other incoming sources can be texting too. We’re seeing a big rise in being able to be texted as a company and communicate.

In international travels, the use of WhatsApp everywhere is impressive. It’s the medium of communication for businesses, and you can text them. In my last trip to Central Asia, there was a lot of this. So it’s continuing to change and diversify.

So it really is about understanding what we should be tracking that feeds into our business model. And really, then what are we after? And how are we serving people?

If you’re interested in learning more about today’s topic, or having Our expert team perform a tech and marketing audit on your business, feel free to give us a call at 888-372-8823 or go to techguys.co/track and you’ll be able to schedule a chat with us at a time that works best for you. And with that, we’ll see you next time.

The post Tech Power-Ups #2: Measuring Your Impact with Goals, OKRs and KPIs appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

Welcome, everyone to the first episode of Tech Power-Ups. Tech Power-Ups is a *micro* podcast about marketing and technology designed to help you make smarter decisions.

Podcast Transcript

Today’s topic is customer avatars. That’s just a fancy name for your ideal customers.

Knowing who your ideal customers are informs every step of your marketing and technology needs. Without properly defining and understanding your customers, you’re flying blind. Your ads, funnels, and customer experience, will never work as well as it should. So with that frame of mind — grab something to take notes with — and here’s Mike Cline with today’s podcast.

Improving anything starts by identifying where it’s broken and the process of doing that is one that’s really uncomfortable for a lot of people.

It’s not uncomfortable for people like us — that are digital mechanics — that like the act of taking things apart, and asking questions of it, and poking it with a stick.

But when something is really close to home, and you’re emotionally tied to it, we can kind of stay in this wishful thinking sort of mindset, as opposed to looking at things candidly for what they are.

Improvement starts by identifying your troubled areas. And one of the first areas that we really start with is understanding who the avatar is. So it’s a two part problem. One is looking at the products and services that are being offered. And the other is saying, “well, who is that serving?”

Products and services often get a lot of focus, and we go down the rabbit hole of what are the benefits? What are the features of those products and services?

A lot of times, features get harped on instead of benefits. That’s kind of one of the classic things to take a look at and review and say Are we talking about features versus benefits and the jump there is that you can only state a benefit if you understand the avatar.

Who’s the human you’re serving? Like, really get to know them, like what is in their head, heart and home? What are they afraid of? What brings them joy? Where do they shop? What magazines do they read? What state of mind are they in most of the time?

Is your avatar currently paralyzed by fear, because of what’s going on in the outside world? Do they spend the majority of their day thinking about the future, the present or the past?

This might seem really abstract and you might say, “well, I don’t have any idea.”

If you sit down and think about your your best customers that really, that really love the products and services that you offer that are just the raving fans of your products and services. You’ll come up with a few things.

So I invite you right now to just think about that, like, grab a piece of paper, well, maybe not a piece of paper, you’re just on a phone here listening to computer, but maybe pull up your little notes. And you could pause this recording for a minute and just jot down some of some of these little nuggets who are who are these people? What do they really care about? What do they really love.

Take 60 seconds to do that, right now.

The purpose of this exercise is to get you in the mindset of understanding this ideal customer so you know, what else to sell them and when to sell them, how to reach them, how to actually better connect them, like what kind of little nuggets cropped up from from the exercise, just jotting a few things down there.

Did the timing of when you should engage them change in your own mind?

Did you have a new insight to say, “oh, actually, we ought to be following up with them to ask if they need this upsell,” or, “this upsell product we have two days later.”

Or maybe you’re being too aggressive. This is something that we see a lot of in the digital information marketing arena, where there’s massive emphasis on getting average order value up. Because you’ve got to break even on your direct response, marketing ads, we can’t float cash very long, and that aggressiveness can really turn off the customers.

If we’re not really asking these longer term questions about what’s really going on with them, really thinking about them, we can accidentally and unintentionally be predatory to a market.

That translates into customers that aren’t referring other people. They take your product and service, and had just a so-so experience with it. They’re not going to tell anybody about it. And if they do, it’s going to be a, “Yeah, I tried it and it didn’t work.”

I consider that predatory in the marketplace, meaning that we’re not serving at our highest and best needs of the customers themselves. This isn’t to throw anybody under the bus, or use the word predatory in this derogatory kind of way. It just means that we need to sit and think about this a little bit more.

We need to figure out how, in the words of Stephen Covey, we can keep sharpening our own saw, because the market out from underneath us.

We, as a tech and marketing company have experienced this ourselves just in the last handful of years.

That’s the purpose of this exercise: To really understand your customers and understand Do you have multiple customers? Right? Are you really serving too many people?

The number of avatars you actually have is your choice. But making sure that it’s a conscious choice is the key here, because the unconscious problem is that things get scattered. And then we don’t know what we’re measuring. And we don’t know who that avatar is.

So the goal of today’s podcast is really about understanding and building your ideal avatar out, getting to know what’s in their head heart in their home. What are they afraid of? What brings them joy? Where do they shop? Where do they find information?

You did 60 seconds thinking about it. But now you need to talk to other people in your company. Talk to your employees, talk to your entire team. Talk to everybody else.

Talk to the buyers and survey them. Do some market research, and really dig in and refine your avatars.

And then step into asking, “are we selling the right product or services?” Does that match our avatar?

This is something that you can kind of put on, put on a piece of paper or a little line down the middle. You’ve got products and services in the left, you’ve got avatars on the right. And just understanding as we lay these words out on paper, are they matching up? Do they really sync up and match?

If they don’t, what improvements, additions or exclusions Do you need to make to the products or services or to the avatars?

This kind of an exercise lets us know if we’re playing in the right pool. Are we aligned with how we’re showing up to the market, in today’s market? Knowing that tomorrow’s market is going to be different than today’s market.

The post Tech Power-Ups #1: Understanding Your Customers appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

With this months podcast, Mike and Tom kick off a mini-series surrounding privacy in the new age.

This is episode one: Exposing Your Exposure

Are data companies always watching? How much can they see? And can you shut the blinds to prevent them from peeping in on your data? Or is privacy, as we know it, gone for good?

Comment with any of your own tinfoil theories!

Translated by our fuzzy robot friend otter.ai

The post Tech Guys Podcast EP 103 appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

Another 10 min podcast has hit the airwaves! This go around, listen to our CEO, Mike and Lead Designer for Conversions, Tom attempt to answer the question of: Will Augmented Reality impact marketing reality?

The conclusion: AR actually stands for Antiproductive Reality.

Translated by our fuzzy robot friend otter.ai

The post Tech Guys Podcast EP 102 appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

Listen to our CEO, Mike and Lead Designer for Conversions, Tom attempt to answer the question of: Was Trump on brand with bringing burgers into the White House?

Although polarizing, we’ve concluded yes (whether you love him or hate him).

Let us know your thoughts and reactions to our rant!

The post Tech Guys Podcast EP 101 appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

CMT’s champion greater experimentation and a more-agile management approach. They are change agents across the company to create competitive advantage.

Which software you choose, how it operates, and how creatively your team applies it, matters. Marketing might not understand how to fully leverage what IT can offer, and IT might not understand how to accurately translate marketing requirements into technical capabilities.

Instead, marketing technology must be managed holistically. In a virtuous cycle, what’s possible with technology should inspire what’s desirable for marketing, and vice versa.

The right structure will help marketing become proficient with the array of software it must use to attract, acquire, and retain customers. It will help marketing leadership recognize how new technologies can open up new opportunities. And it will allow marketing to handle the technical facets of service provider relationships in both contract negotiations and day-to-day operations.

The CMT’s job, broadly, is to enable this holistic approach.

We hope this gives some clarity as to the changes we see happening in the world. Give this some consideration as you begin and continue to set goals for 2019.

The post What is a CMT and Why it Seriously Matters appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

As 2019 approaches faster than you can say Tech Guys Who Get Marketing, now is the time for growth planning. Here at TGWGM, we believe that virtually any company growth initiative or problem can be solved with effective marketing. Our sources indicate that there could be a dramatic shift in digital marketing. In a constantly changing high-tech era, companies continue to wrestle for attention online.

In this post, we’ll discuss 8 Critical 2019 Marketing Trends to Know For Growth, according to SmartInsights.

1. Digital marketing strategy and planning trends
   A key trend in overall digital strategy development is the ongoing popularity of digital transformation programmes. A recent poll on a members’ webinar in digital transformation showed that a third of businesses are planning transformation within the next 12 months with a quarter already had embarked on them. This is similar to what we’ve seen in our more general surveys.
   
   Within digital marketing strategy, there is continued interest in developing integrated digital marketing strategies across multiple channels. Digital transformation programmes are a response to the challenges of digital silos in some companies where there has been a failure to integrate digital across a company. Instead, we recommend using a customer-centered approach to audit your approach for different personas across the lifecycle as shown below.In today’s omnichannel marketing world there are many marketing techniques across paid, owned and earned media that we advise reviewing across the customer lifecycle.
   
   From digital marketing to multichannel to omnichannel marketing
   
   This visual highlights a broader trend in marketing, which is the wider use of ‘omnichannel communications’ centered around the customer to describe marketing strategies outside the retail and travel sector where the omnichannel term originated. If you’re wondering ‘why omnichannel’, Omni, based on the Latin Omnis meaning ‘all, every, the whole, of every kind’ emphasizes the importance of seeking to reach and interact with customers across touchpoints in all channels. It shows a more forensic approach to reaching target audiences but should recognize that budget needs to be prioritized for the most effective channels. This quote from John Bowden, Senior VP of Customer Care at Time Warner Cable explains how omnichannel strategies are more customer-centric.“Multichannel is an operational view – how you allow the customer to complete transactions in each channel.
   Omnichannel, however, is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless, integrated, and consistent.Omnichannel anticipates that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress to a resolution. Making these complex ‘hand-offs’ between channels must be fluid for the customer. Simply put, omni-channel is multi-channel done right!”
2. Marketing strategy and planning
   Ultimately, it is the business, marketing, and brand development strategies which drive the growth of a business, so it is important to have a sound marketing strategy and branding in place before working on the digital tactics. Otherwise, it’s likely your hard work on the digital tactics will be wasted if they are directed at the wrong audience and your value proposition isn’t strong enough. The key trend here is the way digital technologies and media offer opportunities for digital disruption. Yet digital marketing is not always used as a disruptor. As I discuss in my Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice book, digital marketing is more often used for market penetration than a new product or market development (these are the classic Ansoff growth strategies ). To give you a benchmark, this new CMO Survey research from Duke University Fuqua Business School, Deloitte and the American Marketing Association based on the views of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) in large US organizations is useful. It’s interesting since it translates the theory of Ansoff into practice, showing how businesses are mainly investing, but other strategies are significant.
   Digital Experiences
   Creating mobile responsive website designs for the dominant use of smartphones is now old news. We see future innovation in digital experience in the areas of speed and personalization and conversational user interfaces based on improved insight. I’ll illustrate this with a couple of examples.Google has long proclaimed the importance of download speed and despite the widespread use of RWD, performance Google’s benchmarks show that many businesses are falling short of the required speeds.Using technologies like Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) which we introduced in last years webinar on trends have seen many successful examples implemented this year.Here’s a visual example from Mobify visually showing the impact of implementing PWA on experience at this UK-based retailer:The positive impact of implementing these technologies is shown by this case study showing how retailer George at ASDA boosted site speed and advanced customer engagement with PWAs and AMPs leading to 31% increase in mobile conversion since upgrading to PWA, a 1.71X faster site speed and a 32% improvement in click-through rate from organic mobile traffic for top 500 AMP queries plus a 15% increase in page views per visit. Asda has 65% of its visitors on a smartphone.An interesting example of the ongoing importance of creating interaction and personalization to improve your digital value proposition is Stitch Fix , a US fashion retailer that since its 2017 IPO has grown its active client accounts to 2.7 million, an increase of 614,000 and 30% year-over-year.
   
   
   In its filing before going public, the company pointed to its team of over 75 data scientists, many of whom have Ph.D degrees. CEO Katrina Lake explains that improving experience is at the heart of her growth plans:“The engines we’re focused on are improving and innovating on the client experience: how to be deeply personalized, how to use data science to get clients more of what they want. The second engine is new launches; we launched plus sizes, men’s and premium, and we’re excited to see those grow.” The first step in this process happens as soon as the customer creates their Stitch Fix account. Customers who set up an account, either through their email or by connecting to Facebook, are led through an extensive questionnaire called the Style Quiz which is an example of a conversational UI.
   
3. Search marketing trends
   Since Google dominates the results that businesses get from search engine marketing our summary of the search trends here focuses on Google. Carolanne Mangles reported for us back in August on some of the biggest changes Google made in 2018 , many of which will be deployed and evolve in 2019. The most obvious change is the launch of the Google Marketing Platform which saw AdWords renamed to Ads and the Doubleclick ad platform and analysis tools like Google Analytics, Data Studio, and AB testing through data studio more tightly integrated.
   
   
   For organic search the update to keep an eye on in 2019 is Google’s Speed Update which penalizes slower sites and was released after months of trials. While this will initially only affect the slowest sites, from past experience, we can expect Google will change the weighting on the algorithm to affect more sites that don’t improve their speed within time.Another ongoing organic change to track in 2019 is the evolution of Google’s search snippets which I track adoption of via the Mozcast SERPs features analysis:
   This shows the importance of the features integrated into the organic SERPS of which related questions are currently at an all-time high with images and featured snippets remaining important. The prominence of these features shows the importance of understanding and answering the questions your audience ask as a more conversational search develops via smartphone and voice-activated smart speakers. The chart also shows the near complete switchover to secure https amongst leading sites the Mozcast monitors in its review of SERPS for 10,000 commonly used keywords.
4. Social media trends
   The government-commissioned annual Communications Market Review is one of the best sources for compiling data on Internet and Social Media usage.The latest report, published last month has a good visualization summarising the most recent changes in age-related usage of social networks use of the main social networks between 2016 to 2018:
   
   
   The visualization gives a great summary of the changes in three of the main consumer network:
   Facebook – Static or declining in most age groups except the older (55+ age group) which is now the biggest group of users. Instagram – Increase in usage across all age groups with the largest, the 25 to 34 age group followed by 18 to 24. Snapchat – The largest increase and biggest user group is again the 25 to 34 age group showing that Snapchat isn’t just for teens. Indeed, there are also increases in users in older age groups which are not far behind the younger age groups in adoption levels. However, the frequency of use isn’t considered in this compilation.We can expect that Instagram ad spend continues to increase in line with increased usage and better advertising options on the platform. This shift in ad spend is indicated by a Merkle report of their clients’ investments that showed that while Facebook ad spend grew 40 percent year over year in Q2 2018, ad spend on Instagram jumped 177 percent during the same time period.Within Facebook, increased use of Messenger is an opportunity. The latest statistics from Facebook show the importance of Messenger: with 1.3 billion people use Messenger every month; 8 billion messages exchanged between people and businesses every month and 78% of people with smartphones using messaging every month. As well as targeted sponsored ads, use of Messenger for conversations is a major trend. Nike has one of the most advanced commercial chat applications and well used implementations I have seen that is worth checking out.
   
   What about B2B social media?LinkedIn and Twitter are not shown in the OfCom compilation data. For B2B marketers, LinkedIn is likely to grow in importance, although the 2016 acquisition by Microsoft makes it harder to determine how platform revenue is split up between advertising and recruitment. The most recent Q2 2018 trading report suggest the growing importance of the platform with LinkedIn revenue increasing 37% (up 34% in constant currency) with LinkedIn sessions growth of 41% and users of 562 million users in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.Although Twitter’s future is often painted negatively, it will still be a significant for engaging across relevant B2B and B2C audiences. The latest Q2 2018 reports show daily active user growth of 11% and a revenue increase of 24% YoY.
5. Email marketing and marketing automation
   Of all the channels we cover in this article, finding new innovation in email marketing techniques is the most challenging. Most email marketing techniques are well established and most recent trends related to improving relevance and interactivity on smartphone. This recent report benchmarking email experiences of retail and travel brands gives a good summary of the state of the art.In terms of techniques, Striata has a great summary of Email trends , which is how I see innovation in email marketing – it’s all about integrating email with content marketing at the right time in customer journey across omnichannel touchpoints
6. Analytics and reporting
   We’ve been banging the ‘ Actionable Analytics ’ drum for nearly 10 years now since we believe in the power of data-driven marketing based on digital analytics and customer research. It’s why we’re called Smart Insights!Systems such as Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are relatively static in terms of reports and functionality. For me, the main trend here is using softer measures to get customer feedback. For example, I’ve been taking a look at some really interesting case studies from Vision Critical (Disclosure: A Content Marketing Partner of Smart Insights) which show how savvy brands are using customer communities to feedback.Another trend here is the adoption of dashboard reporting and analysis systems. At Smart Insights, we have adopted Google’s Data Studio (since it came out of Beta) for our monthly and weekly trading reports alongside the Google Sheets Add-In for the Google Analytics API, which we use for pulling the data through for our RACE digital marketing dashboard.Data Studio can create more granular visualization like this CrUX dashboard. This type of analysis was never really possible in Google Analytics.In this discussion of Content Auditing we show another example of content engagement (outliers omitted).
   
   Systems to gather unstructured feedback from customers are also increasing in popularity with larger brands. This case study from Vision Critical gives an example of how How Prudential Singapore accelerates product growth with customer insights. The company launched the PRU for You (PFY) community in July 2016 to allow greater engagement with customers and to give them a voice in developing new products and services. PFY has 4,500 members: 88% are customers and 12% are agents.I like this example, since it translated into product improvements, not only improvements to the experience. In May 2017, PACS launched two products resulting from PFY feedback—PRUman and PRUlady, covering illnesses specific to men and women. Customers diagnosed can receive up to a S$100,000 payout, ensuring they get the treatment they need without financial concerns. PFY was instrumental in structuring these products by identifying customer interest in eliminating “nice to have” benefits, leading to more affordable prices for everyone. Community feedback also showed that simplified health questionnaires made it easier for customers to purchase the products.
7. Content Marketing
   The Content Marketing Institute does a great job of showing trends within content marketing via its research and case studies. This case study covering
   How Cisco Merges Martech With Creative Content, summarizes their process for creating content to integrate with activities.
   
   The research section on CMI shows similar patterns within content marketing compared to previous years. Taking technology content marketing as an example, this chart shows that key trends are:A more strategic approach to content marketing with many businesses now having a holistic content marketing strategy to support audience engagement and commercial goals of leads and salesFocus on content quality based around deeper understanding of personasNew roles and structure to support content marketing activities as investment increasesImproved measurement of content marketing effectiveness
   
8. Paid and earned media
   To complete the picture of digital channels, we need to review advertising and PR. We finish here, since although digital media are hugely important to demand generation and branding, discerning trends on cross-industry data is difficult in this sector where there is a reporting lag, which means that reports for ad types aren’t published until the next quarter. The most recent at the time of writing is this breakdown from the IAB.
   
   
   The big winners are native advertising and video advertising which we can expect to continue to be important into 2019 after video advertising overtook display for the first time.
   Source: https://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-innovation/business-critical-digital-marketing-trends/

Are you ready for 2019? Do you have a defined growth plan that includes some of the top marketing trends that will help your company grow, like native advertising and video?

The trends above suggest that while adapting is important, one thing remains a boundless and timeless principle, which is having the right strategy and technology aligned so you can achieve our 2019 goals.

As marketing becomes one of the most technology-dependent functions, having the right tech and marketing team that understands both has never been more relevant. Would you like to chat with our team about how we can help you grow in 2019? Contact us now.

The post Critical 2019 Marketing Trends To Know For Growth appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

As we come to the end of 2018, now is a time for both reflection and planning for 2019. So you can start the year with a clear and focused initiative, which will be the engine to drive the goals you set out to accomplish as the leader of your company. For any leader, this begins with reflection. To help you with this, below are 8 reflective thoughts to consider for 2019:

1. Don’t make it all about yourself – Your contribution will be important in the upcoming years but make sure that it is not about your contribution all the time. Remember that stepping away at times can help you build a strong team that should be in a position to tackle new challenges and gives you the level of confidence to achieve new Heights. This is also important because you’ll be in a position to test every member of your team and give them the task they are best with. At the same time, it will be an opportunity for you to reshape the responsibilities and work together as a team.
2. Start embracing new styles to lead your team – It is possible that you have a fixed pattern in which you lead a team, and you’re happy with the same. However, understand that there are many leadership styles that diverge from yours and can be even more effective as far as your team is concerned. With this being said, you should start understanding different leadership styles and adopt them, if it can have a positive impact on your team. Change is important, and if you do not change your leadership style, it can have a negative impact on your team, and we know you do not want it to happen.
3. Be a good listener – It is important to listen to your team members and let them know that you’re listening. You cannot follow a pattern where you’re the only one speaking, and you expect everyone else to follow. Remember that no matter how big your company may be, you’ll still find people who will get better opportunities outside your company. So, you need to make sure that you’re listening to every member of your team and act upon their thoughts if it can have a positive impact on your team.
4. Motivate your team – Motivation is required in every field. Let’s take an example of David Michigan, personal trainer fitness coach, who motivates his followers regularly on Instagram. He makes it a point to make sure that every follower gets the necessary dose of motivation on a daily basis. Motivation is extremely important, and you need to be sure that you do not mess things up by assuming that your team will get the necessary motivation on their own. They might be motivated to some extent but your words and interaction will help them get a boost, and it will not only help them work efficiently but also help your company move in the right direction.
5. Get constructive feedback from your team members – When we talk about constructive feedback, many CEOs make the mistake of shortlisting employees and get feedback from them. This is not the right thing to do because most of your selected employees might have a positive thought for you. You need to get into the minds of every employee and let them know that you all willing to make necessary modifications if we have suggestions that can be good for the company and team as a whole. Another point to be noted in this case is that when you get feedback from your employees, make sure that you do not react aggressively to the feedback.
6. Adapt to the changing environment – We know that nothing is constant in just hold and, so it is important to make necessary modifications in the plants to stick to your ultimate goal without facing too many difficulties. Being ready for the challenge and the change will help you in getting it the necessary to upgrade your company. With this, it is also important to understand that you should have a flexible plan in mind that is good enough to Cater to the short-term goals set by you.
7. Have a clear vision in mind – Having set short-term goals, you should know that the ultimate objective of your effort is to achieve the long-term goal that will change the future of your company forever. For this, you should have a clear vision in your mind and make a realistic roadmap for the same. In this case, it is advisable to stay focused on increasing your clarity and get the necessary suggestions to make sure that you’re not moving in the wrong direction. Getting a review of your ultimate plan will also help you in making the necessary modifications to make the most of the opportunity. The best thing to be noted is that there will be many people who would be willing to review your plans and you need to select the right people so that you do not regret getting your plans reviewed.
8. Don’t try to be special with everything you do – You’ll find people in the business world who want to make their every Move special, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, you should make it a point to understand that it will not be good for you if it turns into a habit and you get used to it. Offering something special all the time is not important because there will be times when your target audience will demand simplicity and if you’re not in a position to offer the same, you’ll face failures. The soundest thing to do in this case is to maintain an ideal balance and keep track of your target audience. If you notice a change in the requirements, make quick changes to your parents and offer them exactly what they want.

Source: https://ceoworld.biz/2017/11/22/ceo-goals-for-2018-whats-next

Here at Tech Guys Who Get Marketing, we bridge the gap between technology and marketing. As you think and write down your goals for 2019, you might want to consider our team to help you, improve your marketing initiatives, improve your technology, so you can continue to drive growth and ensure the achievement of 2019 goals. Want to have a quick chat with our ream? Contact us.

The post CEO Goals: 8 Reflective Thoughts to Consider For 2019 appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

 
Here are 12 marketing campaign ideas that say…Happy Holidays!

1. New Traditions. Instead of spending time at the mall, encourage clients to make some new traditions that focus on budgeting for the holidays. Provide them with some tips, like those from the AICPA’s Benjamin Banks and using a subject line like “Yule Adore These Tips!” Image tip – exhausted shopper.
2. Send a Message. Invite clients to your office to make (or donate) holiday-themed decorations for the less fortunate in your area. Then donate the decorations to your local shelter with a holiday message about caring.
3. Wrap it Up. Like #2, this one focuses on a gift-wrapping party for children in your area. The firm could collect donation and have a gift-wrapping party that clients are invited to attend.
4. It’s a party. Consider a “block” party in your building or local geographic area. Invite local business pros to your event – consider giveaways or a charitable angle to the event. It’s a great way to provide those who work near you with insight into what your business does, which could generate leads.
5. Host an 8- or 12-Day Giveaway. Create an email campaign that is sent to clients. Each day the client has an opportunity to “win” something from the firm. The prizes could range from a business highlight in your next newsletter, to a banner ad on your site, a free webinar for their company, or even a percentage off a service.
6. Spruce it Up. If you’re running AdWords or Facebook campaigns, adding holiday-related terms could help increase exposure during the gift-giving month. One way to do this is with Google Trends, which will show you holiday-related terms in your geography. When you combine those with a service line, it’s like a gift to you. Here’s an example for a text ad. “Did you overspend at the holidays? Don’t worry. You might be able to claim a gift expense on your taxes. Call us to find out.”
7. Share the Wealth. The holidays bring out recipes that have long-standing traditions. Ask staff and clients to send in their best recipes to create a recipe book for sale in the spring. Then have the proceeds donated to the food pantry in your area.
8. Tell Us. If you have a Facebook or Instagram page, ask staff and clients to share their most favorite memory about the holidays, including photos and/or video will make the post memorable. Be sure to use a firm-specific hashtag, such as #[firmname]Holiday to help track engagement.
9. Thinking of You. Many companies send out holiday cards to clients. Have you also considered buying a few boxes of cards and sending them to the local retirement community? You could ask the facility for people’s first names and have staff sign cards for them for delivery prior to the holidays.
10. Wow, That’s Ugly. Host an ugly holiday sweater photo contest in conjunction with a local small business. The prize would be from the business. The promotion would happen on your social media profiles. It’s a win-win for both companies and helps to promote both businesses.
11. Update It. If you have social media profiles and/or a website, create cover images that are holiday themed. If you’re really feeling excited about the holidays, create several of them and switch them out throughout the month.
12. Put a bow on it. Create a services package and promote it only during the holiday season. This will require two dedicated landing pages on your website; one with a promotional code or something you can tag to new clients only; and second a referral page for existing clients. If a new client signs up for the package deal, he/she gets a 10-percent discount on the services. For example, if you offer individual and business tax services, combine the offer. Promote it online and ask existing clients to share the promotion—also offering them 10 percent off their next service if they do it and their referral signs on.
    Source: penheel.com/holiday-marketing-campaigns-for-businesses

Whether your business is online or offline, B2B or B2C…those are 12 campaigns that you can use to promote your business during the 2018 Holiday season. Use them, tweak them to make the Holiday season less stressful and you can take full advantage of the buying mindset that we all have during that time of year.

Do you need help planning and executing marketing campaigns? Our team of highly skilled marketing and techs can help you do just that. Contact us now for a FREE consultation with one of our marketing experts so you can get our recommendations.

The post Holiday Marketing: 12 Marketing Campaigns That Happy Holidays! appeared first on Tech Guys Who Get Marketing.

Nuff’ said

Here are 3 key Facebook Ads Changes that are affecting your campaigns:

1. No more Partner Categories (Not all true, more of this in a bit)
   Likely the most upsetting change that Facebook is making is the removal of Partner Categories, which are targeting options provided by third-party data firms, like Acxion, Experian, Cambridge Analytica and more. This data allowed advertisers to target offline behavior, like persons buying a home or purchasing a car.You could imagine the uproar from people who felt compromised after learning about the removal of these targeting options, but it is important to note that this is a fairly common practice in digital advertising. These data firms, or data brokers, created detailed profiles using various methods that you may have opted into unknowingly. In addition to large purchases, they also know what offline and online stores you have visited, your political or religious affiliation (despite whether you’ve disclosed this on Facebook), income and socioeconomic status, and much more.

   This feature is what made Facebook Advertising so effective, attractive, and affordable for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Now, if you want that kind of targeted information, you will have to work with the data brokers themselves, going directly to companies like Acxiom and purchasing their services directly.

   Facebook may be removing this feature, but it doesn’t mean it won’t come back. The main lesson from the data scandal is not that people do not want to share this information, it’s that people just need to know what exactly they are sharing and why (the basis for GDPR).

   If you’re using Partner Categories in your current Facebook Ad campaigns, you had until August 30, 2018, to complete those campaigns with the targeting options still available.  

2. Informing site visitors of Facebook Pixel use
   It’s common now to visit sites and see a “cookie banner” pop up asking you to accept the fact that your activity will be tracked on that site. That is because GDPR is requiring companies to ask for explicit consent from European Union visitors and customers to collect and use their data, even if it is just website activity.Facebook Pixel is code that you can place on your site that helps Facebook collect information about your website visitors so that you can use it to target them later using Facebook Ads.

   Even if you don’t have many website visitors from the EU, this is good practice anyway. There’s no telling if the U.S. will follow in the same footsteps, but if large companies like Facebook are making these changes, other companies will follow suit to avoid trouble in the future.  

3. Tighter restrictions on Facebook Custom Audiences
   Another great feature of Facebook Ads is the ability upload your own list of email addresses that you can either specifically target using ads, or create “lookalike” audiences to find new, similar people to those on your email list.Facebook will now require advertisers to receive prior consent from the individuals on your email list before you’re allowed to use them as a Custom Audience. That means you can no longer use the downloaded contacts from LinkedIn, emails you’ve collected from business cards at a recent networking event, purchased lists from email brokers, etc. — unless that is, you have received explicit consent from those contacts.

   How Facebook will police this in the future is uncertain, however, they will be placing the responsibility on you, the advertiser. That means you should meticulously document the actions from your list so that if a GDPR representative were to ever approach you, you’ll have the information you need to prove your compliance.

   Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/318077

   Yes, it is true that partner categories for targeting are no longer available for new advertisers and most were removed from being accessible at all. You should know, that if you’ve never used them before, they were a GOLD MINE!

   But, a handful of advertising agencies are slowly getting access to these “gold” categories and by application only. Tech Guys is proud to say that we are one of those agencies and this is how we can provide an unfair advantage to our clients so they can get, not only an ROI but a great ROI that beats all expectations!

Would you like us to analyze your Facebook advertising campaigns for free? We can show you where there is room for improvement and the small tweaks that create a large impact. Contact us today to schedule a quick call with our head of Facebook ad management.

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