Today's marketers are facing a paradox: We have better intelligence and tools for driving growth than ever before. Data-driven digital marketing, programmatic and audience buying are proven to be delivering results. But if return on investment ROI » is going up, why are sales in decline?
There are some simple causes and effects: Media inflation continues to increase across all channels, while reach has declined for most every channel and publisher. Rising costs combined with declining reach drives up Cost-Per-Point CPP » , which means creative needs to be exponentially more effective to deliver the same results (and that's before attenuation of media attention is factored in). In most cases, even the best creative cannot offset the decline in efficiency. It's just math. And as the math suggests, in most cases we'd expect to see a decline in payback. Yet most channel-specific measurements show a positive ROI. Why?
http://adage.com/article/neustar/marketer-s-paradox-roi-sales-decline/310415/
Conversational or Chat Based UX is a new and exciting trend that gives you insight into what your customer is thinking and what they are looking for. Yet we see plenty of applications that build walls to keep away all kinds of user feedback.
As a user it is difficult to find something more irritating than a non-functional UI and no easy way to notify the builder that they should fix it. We can find signs that interacting with the users and collecting their feedback is becoming more and more important. With the next iOS 10.3 release developers and users will be able to interact through App Store reviews. Although, it would be best if users do not need to escalate their negative ratings to the App Store at all.
https://uxplanet.org/collect-user-feedback-or-die-fb3a312f39b1/
As a nascent marketer, I misjudged how crucial feedback was to success. But when I was promoted to head a marketing and communications team, that lack of appreciation for feedback slowly eroded my team’s functionality. While I had a leadership philosophy founded on open communication, I underestimated how intentional and vigilant I needed to be.
But a few months into my then new role, an employee informed me things were not operating as smoothly as they once had. I was shocked! Weren’t we producing exceptional campaigns? Weren’t we meeting deadlines and making revenue goals?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2017/08/25/your-most-valuable-tool-your-teams-feedback-loop/#1bed88a95690/
Within my talk I shared the approach that I take to deliver successful content marketing campaigns that can be easily scaled, don't break the bank and have an extremely positive effect on your search engine visibility, social media and email marketing campaigns. There's also a short case study that shows a practical application of the technique in action.
Overall, the conference was a huge success and I'd strongly recommend checking out their upcoming events (they're free, by the way!) as they offer some seriously valuable insights for marketers and businesses alike.
https://www.matthewbarby.com/sme-content-marketing/
One of the most popular passwords in 2016 was “qwertyuiop”—the string of horizontal letters from the top line of a keyboard. Even though most password meters suggest that it's weak, none offers advice on how to strengthen it. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Chicago have unveiled technology that offers real-time feedback and advice to help people create better passwords. To evaluate its performance, the team conducted an online study in which they asked more than 4,500 people to use it to create a password.
“Instead of just having a meter say, ‘Your password is bad,’ we thought it would be useful for the meter to say, ‘Here’s why it’s bad, and here’s how you could do better,’” said study co-author Nicolas Christin, professor in engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2017/05/09/research-utilizes-data-driven-feedback-help-users-strengthen-passwords/
Local SEO competition is heating up. 2018 is the year for you to really raise your local SEO game to enjoy the sweet fruits of high visibility for local searches on Google. Here are 5 strategies you can trust. Read more...
http://www.business2community.com/seo/5-strategies-improve-local-seo-2018-01944760#GT1BkxoUUZEhSsDX.97/
To be subjective, or to be objective, that is the question, and the best product managers already know the correct answer is “both.” As product managers, we constantly face situations where the unknowns outnumber the knowns that we can rely on. It’s our job to drive out that uncertainty and ensure that both people and efforts align toward a common objective. Sometimes these discussions flow smoothly, as the goalposts that we set can be quickly and easily agreed upon – things like providing a quality user experience, solving valuable problems for our customers and our market, and introducing competitively differentiating capabilities are hardly controversial.
What does become controversial, however, is how we go about those things as a team, what exactly we should do, and who we should be building those products for. And when those discussions come up, it’s inevitable that everyone at the table will have different ideas about what those things are – and, unfortunately, the vast majority of those ideas will not be based on hard data. Hence why we, as Product Managers, need to make it our business to ensure that we’re bringing data to the table as we represent and advocate for our customers and our market in those conversations; to do so, we must provide stakeholders with the right mix of qualitative insight and quantitative data that will not only help win them over to our preferred course of action, but also minimize the risk of later changes of course.
https://community.uservoice.com/blog/qualitative-and-quantitative-product-feedback/
Beware of the HiPPO in the room. When a HiPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) is in play, your organization is most likely not relying on data to inform decision-making. In fact, I believe the HiPPO effect is one of the biggest barriers to more evidence-based and data-driven decision-making. With the quantity and quality of data available today, it is just poor business for organizations to ignore data in favor of making decisions solely based on what the HiPPO wants done...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/10/26/data-driven-decision-making-beware-of-the-hippo-effect/#1131f38280f9/
Successful mid-size service firms, those with $3 million to $30 million in revenue and 15 to 150 staff, often grow by way of referrals. These referrals come from clients, partners, networks and associations. While referrals still work and have always worked, are they the best way or the only way to grow a mid-size service firm? Do CPA, law, technology consulting, management consulting, financial service and AEC firms have to rely on referrals as the primary source of new clients? Is this all there is today? I think not.
Digital disruption is real. Over the last 10 years or so, there has been an explosion of digital devices, tools, apps, communication networks and social media properties. This is creating an ecosystem of prospective clients who could be a great fit for your firm. But can all of this new technology really help you acquire new clients?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/11/01/why-mid-size-service-firms-need-the-ultimate-digital-marketing-stack/#176dff401641/
The following is a short extract from our book, Researching UX: Analytics, written by Luke Hay. It’s the ultimate guide to using analytics for improved user experience. SitePoint Premium members get access with their membership, or you can buy a copy in stores worldwide.
To understand why your users behave the way they do, you first need to get to know them. You may make assumptions about who those users are, but you should be constantly challenging those assumptions, or at least be backing them up with facts...
https://www.sitepoint.com/getting-to-know-your-users-with-analytics/
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