We all know the tech debt that we collect when people want to move fast and lean. The speed at which we move to stay agile and disruptive often collects debts to be paid down the line.

The fear of the startup or the disrupter taking a segment often leads to a quick acquisition or a spin-off site or some new idea.

Here is where the debt grows. This is the start of what will start to catch on like a barnacle at sea on a ship. Till you are dragged underwater and struggling to breathe.

Cut to the multi brand multi product debacle that you know manage.

Create a foundations team that puts tools like abstract which is grit for designers. Start to think about a central repository for your design system that has reusable components.

Imagine how lean and fast you will be with a full quiver of logos, elements, atoms, and components to fire from your bow like a marvel superhero.

In some leading companies, they now have a page builder attached to the storybook to allow drag and drop of components from the business user.

New site, no problem… here build it yourself.

You don’t like that form build your own and we will run it through our testing to have it approved for accessibility.

This is where you get to when you plan for lean, when you are sensible about disruption and when you acknowledge the support and maintenance and ongoing product development that is needed to fill a full pipeline and grow your experience design.

First, you start with your segmentation, the foundation of any customer thought. You might have a lens like a considerer, adorer, consumer if you want to focus your team on hows to sculpt the brand. You might have a segmentation based on product lines, if so then lock yourself in a room and redo your entire segmentation. Product line segmentation is an indicator of narcissist company syndrome.

From here you build out your GEL to contain everything you want your company to think of with useble resources to design products for the users. They can be internal or external and those are very different.

From the segmentation you can explain each segment in personas and videos that capture each segment.

This sets up your brand style guides as a designer will need to understand visually how we talk to the user. The language section will explain common terms of how we talk to customer, if its government you may want to always call people citizens fir example.

Down to the tools. This is where you load the fonts, the logos, but the more advanced GELs have the design systems.

Look at something like https://github.com/airbnb/Lona or https://www.invisionapp.com/design-system-manager to see how you can build a library of components that any one in the company internal or external can use to develop front end applications.

By making a central design system you can then be more agile as a total brand, if you suddenly want all buttons to be square like Microsofts brand not round like apple’s brand you can roll this out across everything if they have forked a central design system.

As with all great projects it is about the change management. As you build a central portal look to add a chat and do webinairs, build FAQs and reach out to market your GEL internally.

Content Problems

Amount of Content: There is so much content, that grabbing and keeping the customer’s attention is difficult. What is the key to standing out and keeping customers engaged? Content is now the heart of inbounding marketing but how to keep the heart beating when there is a need to produce constant content or sink in the mire of the internet.

Inconsistency: Because content is churned out by different departments the information in different content can clash.

Credibility: Some content can damage brand and product credibility by throwing words into a mixer and then laying them out without any focus.

Coldness: Some articles are so painfully full of facts without any emotion or human connectivity. They lead the viewer uninterested and, even worse, bored.

Improving Content

One of the key ways to improve content is to add images. But just plonking down some random images will not help. The key is to use storytelling structure to tie your product details, images, and information together in a way that attracts attention and then remains in the customer’s mind.

1. Strategy. A long term picture needs to be set up with a base story structure.
2. Brand Story. At the top, there needs to be the brand story from which all other stories flow.
3. Content Stories. Each content needs to have a story around a relatable person, put the interesting elements at the start, some type of conflict is required to keep the reader engaged, the story needs to be authentic. And, as a bonus, if possible use a little bit of appropriate humor.

Software for Content Storytelling

One of the options for improving your content storytelling is the application Shorthand.

Shorthand is a digital storytelling platform for teams in marketing, communications, and media. Build stunning, interactive stories for the web without relying on a team of developers.

See the video below.

Daily companies are churning out content. The content is dispersed into many channels, social media, web pages, brochures, and many other vehicles including internal company usages. With so much content, it is hard to manage and ensure that it is not inconsistent or out of date. With remote work, the need to use systems to control content has become even more important.

According to Gartner, “there is increased focus on three trends that are present across organizations, regardless of industry:

• Tackling content sprawl: Organizations have a multitude of content repositories, and with the increasing prevalence of SaaS, more silos materialize on a regular basis.
• Delivering digital business transformation: CSP technology is in demand to underpin new operations and processes that utilize content as a key component in innovative ways.
• Modernizing work: Users’ expectations have changed for good, due to the ubiquity of compelling user experiences in consumer applications.”

The impact of Content Sprawl

There are a number of issues that are obvious. The following table shows the main reasons why customers unfollow brands. Content sprawl doesn’t figure explicitly in the list but it is behind many of the problems listed.

Tackling Content Sprawl

Processes and Standards: Most companies will have processes and standards to try to prevent content sprawl. It is important it is on the management list to monitor and responsibility for the management of content is recognized and assigned.

Co-ordination: To ensure customers are getting the same message and the brands of the company are protected, co-ordination is the key. It is necessary to ensure all marketing, sales, web, and social media teams have a clear picture of the brand values and the product functions and features.

Audits: Audits of public content will be essential. It is important any out-of-date or inconsistent content can be either removed for fixed quickly.

Target Persona: Building sets of the persona of the company’s targets is important. This may vary with each campaign but as well there needs to be a standard persona that encompasses all sets.

Systems that assist Sales Content Management

So we make our plan to grow first year 1000 people, second year 50,000, third year 1,000,000. We get buy in from management, we start the content creation and we are six months in and we have THAT meeting.

“Show me the numbers on the website……….This is terrible it’s only 4000 hits. “

You are exceeding your targets, and the numbers are great. However you forgot management changes. Right now the average turnover of a manager is above 30% per year. So you you can guarantee that there will be one person who wasn’t sold in on what you are doing.

Strategy one. The best plan is to just keep selling and keep building. If you can do this you can keep your eye on the ball and deliver over three years of building.

Strategy two. Mitigate the risk by promoting content.

Quuu Promote. Quora Sendible BuzzStream Triberr Taboola outbrain

These all work well to promote your content and increase the return. Pay for youtube views, promote your content.

Strategy three. Capture an audience.

Invest in the email software, building out a chain of content, small autoresponders, and segment. If you can capture a list you can speed up how you promote new content.

HubSpot’s free forms tool Benchmark Moosend SendInBlue Stripo

Strategy four: Integrate your marketing with your sales to get hard numbers on which clients read what articles before buying. Software like marketo allows you to see what people saw before they become a client or signed up.

The important thing is to prove and sell early and every day. Find ways to justify the longer strategy. In the end creating great content for you customers is always going to be better than convincing them with a fancy ad. With all marketing it is often best to ask what value am I giving, and education trumps excitement. Mostly.

Steps to Building Trust

1.  Professional certificates, awards, or thank-you letters help build trust in your product or service. In some areas such as education, law, and medicine, they are simply essential.

2. Establish that your credibility by explaining the benefit that you give to your customers.

3. Ensure that the advertisement matches that the landing page. Trust will be built if the two match and are consistent.

4. Images that explain your product will be important. When planning and selecting your images keep in mind that these must reflect stability and reliability.

5. Providing names, addresses, emails and phone to enable the customer to contact your directly will increase the customer’s confidence particularly if your brand is not well-known.

6. Real Customer recommendations and reviews will convince the customer of reliability and the ability to deliver.

7. There are easy to use landing page software which will help you put together a landing page quickly which meets all the above requirements.

Landing Page Software

Who is Doing It?

And when people do start delivering the content it is hard to work out if you are delivering for search, for social or for a buyer to read to understand.

The selling of your content needs to address the problem in the customer’s head a the time they are reading.

Customer’s Problem

AN EXAMPLE OF REAL NEED VS VERBAL NEED Coaching businesses, for example; I helped deliver a study on what coaches did with their clients for $2K a month and they spent a lot of time fixing their psychological problems. One electrical engineer had capped his business at $10M turnover and the coach discovered that they have an issue with money being evil, and rich people being evil. The coach encouraged the ceo to give 10% of gross (!!!) to charity. Within three years the company was turning over $100M.

The issue is that CEO didnt walk in saying can you help me give away my money, or I think rich people are naughty. That CEO came in saying he had problems with marketing.

And you will have this in every business, why people talk to you is different to why people buy from you. Your content needs to have headlines for people to talk to you, the content is what you need to encourage people to buy with.

B2B Buying Journey

For this element it is really important to sell each step independently, the title you use on sites like facebook, twitter and other social sites are about grabbing 10 seconds of attention.

Which might be a great way to sell a trip to australia, but the article about the quokka is not what positions buying the trip.

Same with your product, finding the features, the what are the customer benefits. Now, what are the attention grabbers that hang off those stories? This is why it is important when you are spinning out content from articles and videos that are longer form, and creating the Instagram photos and tweets to find the shinny joke that catches the attention. Context and personalization and micro-targeting are important in this journey.

Software

Some software to manage this journey are

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	Thumbnails	Products	Category	SKU	Price	Quantity	Action
		1ShoppingCart 1ShoppingCart is a shopping cart and eCommerce software featuring integrated eCommerce, email, and online marketing software tools. The platforms is owned and supported by Web.com.	Marketing Software	15219	$1.00	1ShoppingCart quantity	Add to cart
		3dcart 3dcart is a customizable eCommerce platform designed to build an online store. Some features include Level 1 PCI security compliance, the same level used by banks and large financial institutions, along with search engine optimized templates and no transaction fees.	Marketing Software	15220	$1.00	3dcart quantity	Add to cart
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		ABM Inventory ABM Inventory is a SaaS system designed for retail, wholesale sectors. The aim of the system is to provide continuous product availability in required quantity at the right place and in due time; reduce excess inventories (over-stocks), decrease out-of-stock levels and consequently lost sales. Bas…	Marketing Software	15798	$1.00	ABM Inventory quantity	Add to cart
		Acadaca Acadaca is a front-end eCommerce platform with a flexible configuration with drag and drop merchandising.	Marketing Software	15255	$1.00	Acadaca quantity	Add to cart
		Accelevents Accelevents is an event registration, ticketing, and fundraising solution for all types and sizes of events, from the company of the same name in Boston. At basic it supports event ticketing, and it higher tier plans support event messaging, and provides an online giving app.	Marketing Software	16216	$1.00	Accelevents quantity	Add to cart
		Acctivate Acctivate is an inventory management software offering from Alterity, Inc. meant to integrate with QuickBooks, Intacct, and other platforms. It includes features such as barcoding & mobile, kitting & assemblies.	Marketing Software	15810	$1.00	Acctivate quantity	Add to cart
		Accumed EHR Accumedic Computer Systems in New York offers their Accumed EHR for behavioral health practices.	Marketing Software	16051	$1.00	Accumed EHR quantity	Add to cart
		ACES Web Audit Technology ACES Risk Management's (ARMCO) flagship product is ACES (Automated Compliance and Evaluation System) Web Audit Technology which enables full understanding of mortgage loan quality, how to control it and how to convey it. According to the vendor, their web-based solution includes highly customizable…	Marketing Software	15870	$1.00	ACES Web Audit Technology quantity	Add to cart
		Acomba ACCEO Solutions headquartered in Montreal now support the Acomba Accounting Suite, a software suite for SMBs featuring many integratable modules, including Acomba e-commerce, Acomba inventory and stock controls, Acomba orders management, and Acomba payroll module. Acomba is available exclusively for…	Marketing Software	15368	$1.00	Acomba quantity	Add to cart
		Acomba ACCEO Solutions headquartered in Montreal now support the Acomba Accounting Suite, a software suite for SMBs featuring many integratable modules, including Acomba e-commerce, Acomba inventory and stock controls, Acomba orders management, and Acomba payroll module. Acomba is available exclusively for…	Marketing Software	15812	$1.00	Acomba quantity	Add to cart
		Actionstep Actionstep in Richmond offers their flagship legal practice management software as an end-to-end solution, containing both matter management tools and business administration automation, with an internal billing and accounting system.	Marketing Software	15838	$1.00	Actionstep quantity	Add to cart
		ACTouch Technologies Pvt. Ltd. ACTouch is a Cloud-Based ERP Software Designed Specifically For Small Businesses, Providing Inventory Management, Billing & Invoicing, Payment Management, Manufacturing, Online Accounting,Sales and Purchases, Order Management,Budgeting, General Ledger etc.	Marketing Software	15800	$1.00	ACTouch Technologies Pvt. Ltd. quantity	Add to cart
		Acumin Acumin is a legal practice management system focusing on business workflow automation, from Dexco Corporation in Montreal.	Marketing Software	15830	$1.00	Acumin quantity	Add to cart
		Adagio Operational Suite Adagio Operational Suite is an inventory management software offering from Softrak Systems. It includes features such as 6 character part number, user-defined segmentation (maximum 4 segments) to allow powerful reporting, and both standard and user-specified costing.	Marketing Software	15699	$1.00	Adagio Operational Suite quantity	Add to cart
		add*ONE add*ONE is an inventory management software offering from INFORM. It includes features such as self-adapting forecasts and calculation of cost-effective order proposals.	Marketing Software	15724	$1.00	add*ONE quantity	Add to cart
		Aderant Expert Sierra Aderant’s Expert Sierra is a cloud-based legal management software solution designed for mid-sized law firms. This solution includes options for document management and financials. The vendor’s value proposition is that their software-as-a-service solution (SaaS) gives users access to the premier pr…	Marketing Software	15850	$1.00	Aderant Expert Sierra quantity	Add to cart
		Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) Adobe Business Catalyst is an all-in-one cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores. It has a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It is scheduled to be shutdown in 2021.	Marketing Software	15203	$1.00	Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) quantity	Add to cart
		AdvancedEHR AdvancedMD in South Jordan offers AdvancedEHR, an EMR / EHR solution providing HIPAA compliant e subscription support, a mobile app with collaboration tools and notepad, patient charting, and patient portal.	Marketing Software	16083	$1.00	AdvancedEHR quantity	Add to cart
		Advancepro Inventory Management Advancepro Inventory Management is an inventory management software offering from AdvancePro. It includes features such as apt cloud hosted service and inventory management.	Marketing Software	15814	$1.00	Advancepro Inventory Management quantity	Add to cart

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3 Step Method for Targets

I will show you a simple 3 step method of creating a target for any team to hit and then how to automate it so your team keeps hitting their targets.

Learnings from a Grocery Company

This came from working with a large grocery company, I mapped the following lists of all the data they were working with. It was 30 systems and each system had up to 240 tables they were meant to be monitoring to get across supply, sales, rois, customer insights, and many other areas of the business they were managing.

The problem with this is with meetings and producing reports and managing the people under him, he wasn’t logging in to all the systems and he wasn’t monitoring what his KPIs were.

I delivered a system for him that allowed him to monitor all his KPIS on mobile and get email updates customised for him and his team. A simple system of management to automatically deliver KPIS.

This utopia seems unattainable and always has been at each company I have delivered for but I always deliver the same three steps.

Step One – Map KPIs

Step one map out each of your initial KPIs you measure and create a threshold for what is red, green, and yellow. It clearly marks what you think is an acceptable level for anything, I suggest even putting in things like customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction and use soft numbers like NPS or a simple survey for employee happiness. It is important to keep in mind you will improve. With one insurance company, I started with 20 metrics and within 8 weeks there were 114. The key is to check the data sources and put your metrics in quickly. Causal mapping is a great technique for this, start with what you want to achieve and then map that back to what will cause that. For example, if you want sales, you need proposals, which need meetings, which need calls.

Step Two – Create a Dashboard

Then run that into a dashboard, with each of the metrics. From here you can then create drill-downs that allow each metric to be investigated:

Step Three – Setup Emails

Now you build out the experience by setting up emails of the main dashboard with clickable links:

And ideally you make a searchable main home page or portal.

From here you can start to make a list of all the employees and which metrics they see and receive.

The Result is Metrics to Manage

You then have the metrics about your team you want to measure, they are being emailed daily/weekly/monthly. From here you put in the meetings to check the numbers and a facility for escalating immediate issues. For example, if you have a situation where a red can cause a problem you can create a trigger for an action committee to be brought together around an emergency to start moving to real-time response to problems.

Workflow Management

Once this is in place I suggest you move to workflow management to respond to these KPIs and data points.

You need to apply basic dataops principles to this, build it quick and simple first in excel, and improve with iterations.

Blueprint

If you need a blueprint please reach out and we can run you through the frameworks for how to make this work. Please email us at mc@trackita.com.