Why would we approach the building of an enterprise, or the marketing function with science? Becuase science is very good at delivering outcomes from testing. By applying the scientific method we can structure our work to move towards an unbiased solution that delivers outcomes.

If you were looking to improve your marketing of your product then there are a few ways to do it. Design thinking comes from an apple approach which is very unscientific. They sit back and imagine what is possible and dream up something that will amaze the world and the user and then they just deliver and it works. This works for Apple, some of the time.

The other alternative is much more conservative and comes from a more humble place of curiosity and wonder. User Science is about saying I have a series of the hypothesis that I have made from the study and now I shall run experiments to deliver the solution.

Even before the hypothesis, there is a method to understanding of the problem that is scientific. The User Scientist collects a variety of data and interviews to understand the user from many angles. Interviewing the subject in focus groups with psychological tests, journeying into the wild like an anthropologist, and studying the human user in their natural habitat to observe behaviour. Collecting data on users from multiple sources like a data scientist to seek patterns, exceptions and annomolies.

Then with a hypothesis, they seek like all scientists to prove their theories right or wrong through testing. Aristotle is recognized as the author of the scientific method, Ibn al-Haytham proposed in the nine hundreds that something should be repeatable with the same inputs and outputs.

As marketers and product owners applying this method comes to a belief that we can test and discover indepentantly the best course of action for development and marketing a of a product.

With all products we now find this journey of a user to purchase and satisfaction has many steps. Me might be very good a developing a landing page that effectively signs up people to a free trial, but the product doesn’t match the offer and there are low conversions. Our problem in most cases is we have limited time and limited data to make effective scientific analysis.

This doesn’t mean we can’t find a good marriage of “Gut” marketing, or common-sense marketing and scientific testing and this balance need to be pragmatic about how we deliver.

The first step for becoming a user scientist is the problem statement, from here you establish what you are looking to solve, with the parameters of what is efficient. The next step is to collect data in all forms, and then make a hypothesis and then test.

There are an amazing array of software for split testing, but often the best split test can be just looking at one week to another week with different results.

Review the following software for an analysis of different ways to manage the testing process.

In the real world, telling people you are going to do a/b testing is a clear statement loud and clear that you have no idea what you are doing.

Or do you.

This takes positioning, and this is where the scientific method is the best pitch leading in.

“I don’t know what our customer’s right now want, feel, will respond to. But I know how to apply a scientific method to approach solving this problem.”

This response establishes you as a professional who knows how to learn and solve problems, through hypothesis, design thinking, then checking with numbers and then applying a series of tests to see what works and what doesn’t work.

Most marketers don’t move through this point of weakness, to then establish something even better on the other side. Proof.

It is a moment of weakness to say you don’t know and you will test. And you are going to brainstorm ideas, and talk to experts out side the company. BUt on the other side of that journey is the beautiful fruit plucked from the tree of experiments…….Proof.

Suddenly you start to see the results and you learn and you can take the tests back to the CEO/Executive team and deliver presentations on the user that explain behaviour, test that show what works and what doesn’t.

The testing takes time and dedication, and is best started slowly.

AB Testing Software

The following software can be used to assist in AB testing.

The best way to contextualize this with management is to let them know that you are mitigating the risk of change management. The biggest risk to any project is not having your product or service accepted by the people you are trying to serve.

Why are we not testing things and why are we not understanding the need and the ethics of the product we use that are horrible to use.

Usability is about how we serve, but user testing can be associated to testing the product, this is not research of the users.

To get incredible velocity in a dev team you need to find a good strong true north star to follow. A clear picture of your users and what they want on their journey with you.

Embrace the user research inside all your work, do that to de-risk your project and watch the velocity increase.

The new budgets you roll out need to completely reassess how the marketing landscape has changed. Events are dead, webinars are empty, people are not going to work so why buy billboards, everything is moving and you need to create an adaptive budget to meet this new landscape.

What do we know is true? People are in their homes and on their phones, they check their emails, watch tv, and order food.

This is an important time to invest into UX, not the ux team that sit in photoshop and image what a your user is doing. Real research, the psychiatry and anthropologists. You need some science.

Commission a study or do it yourself. Re discover what your users are doing with their life to find where to engage and how to talk.

This means widening the tests to include much more outliners. Don’t just split test “You are” and “You’re”. Try new mediums like sound search, AR, gifts, gamewebinairs, robot popups, drive through meetings. The ground has shifted beyond your old experiences.

All you have now is the ability to learn. Which means hunt experience beyond your normal.

Risk adverse no longer wins as the noise is so loud and the users are so hidden you need something amazing to awake their slumber.

Now, more than ever is the time for BOLD.

Now is the time for science.

Now is the time to change.

It is most unlikely that the Russians will escalate the current conflict into a full out cyber war. But it is something that cannot be ruled out.

The types of cyber attack the Russians are known for include:

• DDOS attacks – Denial of service attacks on banks, energy and communication companies infrastructure and supply chains.
• Wiper attacks – Malware which deletes data.
• Dissemination of false information
• Ransomware.

Types of cyber attacks

Most cyber attacks have been one-off against individual countries mainly at government and banking systems. It has not been confirmed that all or any of these were organised by Russia and most are individuals. But there is a belief that Russia indirectly supported them.

• 2007 – Estonia – spam attacks that took a number of sites down
• 2008 – Georgia – first recorded cyber attacks coinciding with armed conflict
• 2009 – Kyrgyzstan – DDOS took nation offline
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber weapon called the Snake disrupted Ukraine gov systems
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber DDOS attack against Presidential election
• 2015 – USA – White House computers hacked
• 2016 – Poland – 3 year disinformation campaign
• 2016 – UK – Brexit referendum – govt voter registration site attacked
• 2015 – France – malicious software took down networks of a TV station
• 2018 – South Korea – cyber attacks against Winter Olympics
• 2018 – USA – penetrated energy, water, gov and aviation facilities collecting info
• 2020 – USA – Solarwinds attack against government agencies
• 2021 – USA – Ransomware took down US fuel pipeline
• 2022 – Ukraine – attacks against government and bank websites
• 2022 – Unknown  – HermeticWiper – wiper malware which removes  data

What you need to do:

• Reset your mind and the mind of your staff to think about cyber security
• Review your cyber security protection and make sure your firewalls and virus protection are secure 
• Look at your business supply chain and identify where any weaknesses may break it
• Review your business continuity plans
• For individuals and small business, two-factor authentication will be important in preventing 

Definitions: 

DDOS: Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are designed to knock a website offline by flooding it with huge amounts of requests until it crashes.

Wiper:           Malware designed to delete data.  Example Hermetic Wiper.

CRMs used to be expensive and largely unavailable, but along with the rise of the internet, they have rocketed to become the largest tech market of the decade. Every business, whether a start-up or freelancer or global corporation, needs a system that collects data to improve efficiency. 

However, it’s vital to choose the right CRM for your company – it’s a big investment that will help define your success. So what exactly should you look out for? 

1. Compatibility with existing software. Whether you’re adding your CRM to a Mac or Windows PC, it’s important to check that the new software is compatible with what you already have. 
2. Ensure it meets your needs. Not all businesses face the same challenges. What data are you hoping to collect, and which features will make that possible? For example, would you like to create more leads, or simply become more efficient overall? 
3. Find the right price. Due to the rise in popularity and importance of CRMs, the market is extremely competitive, resulting in lower prices overall. Available models range in price from free to $3000 per month. When choosing your CRM, make sure to pick one that is within your budget and has the specific features you need. 
4. Ease of use. Before you’re sold on a CRM, it’s vital to check that the program is easy to master. Employees may fail to fill out or skip using a complex program, and you’ll lose data integrity. Whether you’re a freelancer or an HR Manager, trying to figure out a complex CRM will only slow you down and cost you money. 
5. Provider support. Look out for providers that offer training and implementation and teach you how to use the system to meet your exact needs. This will save a lot of time and will ensure that you’re taking full advantage of your purchase. 
6. Customer support. Will the provider look after you once you’ve invested in their CRM? It’s a good idea to look into this before making the leap. For example, when and how often are they available, and how will you be able to reach them? Are they reliable? 
7. The trial before purchasing. The most fail-safe way to prove that a system is right for you is to ask for a demonstration or trial it yourself. Making decisions based on reviews is not the best option, as business needs are diverse. What didn’t work for one person might be exactly what you’re after. Ask as many questions as you can, and shop around before simply buying the most popular software.
8. Mobile phone access. Let’s face it: if it’s on your phone, you’ll be more involved. It’s a good idea to invest in a system that can be displayed on mobile as business waits for no one. Unfortunately, some of the cheaper plans don’t have this feature, so if you prefer round-the-clock access to your data then you may have to spend a little more. 
9. Metric reports. Having a solid grasp of your metrics is vital to making the right business decisions. Make sure that the CRM you land on provides in-depth reporting on your data. 
10. Social CRM features. As social media platforms have become important for lead generation, consider if you require the capability to interact with your social platforms via CRM. 

When it comes to finding a CRM that will optimize your business results, it’s important to consider the points listed above. With so many models on the market, you’re almost guaranteed to find the perfect match.

What are the questions when preparing a new Marketing Strategy?

1. History

It’s always important to go back and have look at how the last Marketing Strategy went – successes and failures. The most important is for the last year but given the drama of 2020, it would be wise to look at previous 5 years to get a picture of what might happen in 2021.

2. Goals

Next look at the goals for the next year. Increase in sales, of course. But will there be a revamp of products – will there be new products, will older products be discarded. What about ROI. What about extending reach of your client base or are marketing channels to be revised.

Once these have decided at a general top level, the detail can be examined. Looking at the detail may lead to a change in goals.

3. Products

What are the new products that are coming down the line. Do you need more new products. What new products can be developed in the coming year? Are there new vertical products that would support you’re existing base.

What products need to be retired? What are no long making a positive ROI. But be careful to ensure that a losing product is not actually support another winning product. Sometimes it is just better to modify a low or negative ROI, because it brings in customers that then are up sold to another product.

What current successful products need to be refreshed to ensure they continue with their positive ROIs.

4. Know Your Customers

Get full pictures of your exemplar customer. Know what are your exemplar likes and dislikes, how they like their stories told, where they hangout in social media, what shapes their buying decisions.

What types of experiences are you providing your clients. Do they want to keep coming back. What are your costs of obtaining customers from different marketing channels and what additional products do they acquire at what cost.

5. Marketing Channels

For the next year, where are you going to focus your limited budget (it’s always limited no matter how much your budget).

Are you going to extend your channels include more social media or reduce them. Are you going to change the type of influencers you use. Are you going to change to micro-influencers or try different influencers.

Are you going to change your approach in print, video, streaming, TV, email. Where will the advertising funds be focused.

6. Competition

Have a look at your competition. Identify the changes in their trends and where they are likely to head in the coming year. Where are their weaknesses that you can take advantage of and what strengths of your competition can you learn from.

7. A/B Preliminary Test

As part of creating your next marketing plan, do a small about of prototype testing on some way-out and eccentric ideas. They may lead you to a new approach.

8. Plan

You then need to get your plan together and identify what, when and where you want to do things.

9. Budget

And, last of all, when you have the basic strategy put together your budget for the strategy. This will, of course, lead to some changes in the strategy when full costing is done.

10. Refining

Now the long process of refining the plan starts with showing stakeholders the strategy and absorbing their changes. And, of course, when the budget round finally finishes and you know how big is your portion, the process of modifying the strategy to meet the funds available begins. Then its the final approval by all.

Project Management can feel like it is art rather than science and that people skills are the most important. However, the following need to be considered when looking for the keys to good project management.

Factors to be considered are:

• Project Management Tools
• Staff Relationships
• Mentorship of team members
• Stakeholder management
• Problem fixing
• Recovering from missed deadlines

Do You Need a Project Management Tool?

It takes time to use a project management tool. Some tools are complex and difficult to use. So why bother. Particularly if it is a small project. How does project management fit with agile.

However, a small effort returns enormous benefits. And yes even agile needs project management. It is just uses a different approach.

Which Project Management Tool?

There are so many tools to use. There is Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Jira, Microsoft Project or even Google Sheets. Each one has its advantage

There is a new tool available:

Forwardslash

Forwardslash is a new simple tool that makes it easier to create a project plan and manage staff.

Forwardslash

To create a project, you just select Create a New Project – add a name and start adding tasks.

It is easy to develop a plan.

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.

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.

This data shows your average users usage of mobile vs computer. Clearly mobile is the number one place for search.

Previously google ranked the desktop first and then would make allowances based on the mobile performance.

Rankings will continue to pull in data from desktop or app content if required, but the primary focus is on mobile. Desktop will be used if it has additional ranking information but there’s no guarantee that it will be crawled. 

The focus on mobile simply aims to provide an optimal search experience for users. This has been a transitory process to date but as of September 2020 all sites will be indexed mobile-first.

Don’t fret just yet. Google’s already confirmed that most sites are ready for this transition and they’ve actually shifted 70% of sites over to mobile first indexing already (after checking they’re ready). 

So this means that your site should be mobile responsive and to design for mobile first. Speed is critical as not everyone has good internet or a fast phone.

• You can test your site  by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
• Have your developer remove any unnecessary markup that isn’t relevant to the content of each page. 
• Verify your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot using the robots.txt testing tool 
• Ensure you have verified your mobile site in Google Search Console 

This will lead to you establishing a solid simple site that is light and simple to load.

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

Data Management Platforms (DMP) are changing and will be able to extend their capabilities to take account of the new technologies introduced by Google in the next couple of years.

There will be a change to analysing aggregating and de-identified data. This is similar to other sources such as Facebook. Google’s intention for the Privacy Sandbox  is to “Create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default.”

Demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), onboarders and data marketplaces will increase and thrive in the new environment. All these functions may be absorbed by DMPs.

Which means when deciding on a DPM, there are new questions to asking including:

1. What alternate solution is the DMP providing for the demise of cookies?
2. Does the DMP have look-alike functionality?
3. What are the second and third-party sources used by the DMP?
4. Does the DMP have cross-device identity management allowing stitching profiles across all environments.
5. Does your DMP stitch the user journey?
6. Has the DMP a solution to Wall Gardens? The rise of companies protecting their data has made marketing all that much harder. Even Google, Facebook and Amazon have walled gardens.
7. Is a Data Cleaning Room a feature of the DMP. This will allow a peak into the walled gardens to see how the ads of Google are performing.
8. Match rate testing is essential to enable ROI to be established accurately.

Benefits of DMPs

Digital media is growing more complex and DMPs have now become essential in the management of customer data. It allows the unification of data from many systems providing a cohesive view of customers. The DMPs enable you to have a long-term view of customers with consistent and continuous analysis and reporting. As well, these tools will help you identify new customers using audience extension and look-alike techniques. DMPs provide unique insights into your clients.

Problems of DMPs

With the change by Google to block third-party cookies in Chrome, some have felt this will impact DMPs severely. But the work of DMPs is to consolidate all data – first-party, second-party, and third-party data. As well, Google and other search engines are bringing in new technology that will replace cookies over the next year and DMPs will be able to take advantage of this change to continue to collect third-party data.

Solutions

There is a range of software with different features. Some of the platforms are listed below.

But how? You imagine a company that is lean, scientific in its testing of the web apps, hunting to understand what is our unique satisfying experience that drives customers into raving fans, you imagine people fighting to create excellent UX.

Then you wale up.

And you see IT installing security, customer service saving money, finance trying to shave millions by saving cents.

The biggest journeys start with the first step, and learning from design thinking you need to pull people out and give them a taste of the sweet nectar of service to the customer.

What has worked for me is to arrange a center of excellence. I have polled leaders across many industries and the winners seem to follow a similar patten.

Arrange a sprint with a single focus, a part of a site, secondments of people from many teams, be it one day a week, on top of other duties or best case for a six week google sprint of three two week scrums.

Start by getting to talk to customers, have all the team do it. Use Airtasker, call customers, ask the sales guys to arrange meetings, go and talk. Qualitative then quantitive. Now look into the numbers and search across your company for related data. Look to competition and find best and worst. Build a clear problem statement. What are you solving for what imaginary customer?

Now forget everything and brainstorm, ask consultants, ask management, ask anyone to build ideas on how to solve the problem. Talk with suppliers. Make a list of ideas.

Now test, start by asking what if, build prototypes, lean build, check and test and measure.

Now iterate and iterate and record. With the right focus you will improve and the team will have learned how to test and how to think user first.

Now the hard part. Write up your success and sell it through the company. Send your team back and get the success numbers- we made x, we did x.

Have them teach the company of what is possible. Have management talk up the success and change kpis. And now you have begun the start of a center of excellence.

Subscribe for part 2 where we discuss the growth of UX building a machine.

Send a request to sh@trackita.com

1. Problem Identification

A company must first identify that they have a problem that needs to be fixed. There are many ways this can happen. Some of the ways that problems are identified are continuous improvement programs, annual budget capital analysis, consultant reports, audit reports, and management meetings.

2. Research Problem

The company will have set paths for researching the problem depending on the type of problem. For software expenditure, teams are usually set up to analyze the problem, scope the problem, detail the high-level requirements, identify and meet with stakeholders, prepare a rough budget, obtain capital and operational budgets and obtain senior management approval to proceed.

3. Solution Options Exploration

The next step will involve researching and evaluating solutions that fit with the company’s existing infrastructure and budget.

4. Requirements, RFP, and Tenders

Then detailed requirements will be put together with system architectural documents so that RFPs or tenders can be issued. Where possible, providing presentations on your product at this stage will allow the client to understand the benefits of software and what they are seeking.

5. Supplier Selection

Then there is what feels like the real meat of the sales task. Preparing the response to RFP or Tender, presentations, holding events. And many, many meetings to discuss and demonstrate your product with a wide range of people. And, of course, you will be the successful winner.

Implementation

Implementation is an important part of Sales. Ensuring the customer understands your product and implementation problems are minimized, will be essential in upselling other products and for recommendations that may give to other potential clients.

Your company will be burning money unless they take into account the new digital marketing trends. The pandemic has changed the world and has brought forward changes that would have taken a decade. There is no going back and the many changes of 2021 are here to stay.

1. Digital Events

2. 5G

5G will start to have an impact. Mobile has now become the chief means of communication. Google is now making mobile 100% of its display of websites – websites must look good on mobile. The demand for increased capacity can now start to be met and will start to impact digital marketing in 2021.

3. Social Media Continued Growth

Social media have increased the ability for the consumer to purchase on their platforms and this area will continue to grow. These platforms will require new learnings and approaches but will be vital for many brands. It will not just be brand awareness but actually selling on the social media platform. Facebook Shop where a shop can be created in both Facebook and Instagram will initially rule for small businesses but even large companies will use platforms like these.

4. Consumer Data Improved

Better Use of Consumer Data. Consumers are tired of being given a host of ads related to a purchase they have already completed. They want ads directed at what they want now and or even what they may want in the future. For example, if they have just bought a car they don’t want to continually see more car ads, they will want accessories for the car, trips they can take in the car, accident reducing tools. And in twelve months, they will want to see cheaper alternatives for insurance. These are the coming challenges that need to be addressed. Customer Development Platforms (CDP) will come to the fore this year. It will become more critical to be able to manage customer data and stop the fragmentation.

5. Social Media Channel Reduction

Reducing and consolidating the use of social media channels. Each social media platform is developing a personality and a target audience. Selecting and find the right set of social media will be key.

6. Community Caring

The tone has changed. The pandemic has changed the focus from personal flamboyance to community caring. Caring about those impacted severely by 2021 will become a focus and brands will need to show their caring side on digital media.

7. Still Working from Home

Working from Home will continue to rule and lead to a need for new approaches both for B2B and B2C. There will be many new approaches develop over this year with the continued use of working from home not just Zoom and Microsoft Teams. That will be just the start.

How do you choose the number?

Influencers can be a very effective way to reach a targetted audience. But making decisions about which influencer to choose, large or small, and how many to choose is difficult. More than 70% of campaigns use influencers to some extent and most use multiple influencers.

A marketing strategy for influencers needs to be developed. There will need to be testing to see what works for your company’s brand. Factors that will influence your choices are:

1. What are your niches?
2. The best approach for that niche – brand ambassador, gifting, blogging ads, video ads.
3. The type of adds – video,
4. Which influencers will your company be able to build a relationship?
5. How much compensation are you willing to pay.?
6. Detail what you want from the advertising and your expectations of the influencer.
7. Document guidelines for the influencer to follow.
8. Create a standard influencer agreement template.
9. Expected ROI.

List all the sizes and types of influences and look at what is best for your company. The trend at the moment is to have many smaller influencers and spread the risk. But this may not suit your company and selecting one or two brand ambassadors would be more effecdtive.

What are the different sizes of influencers?

STIM has identified five groups of followers:

• Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers.
• Micro-influencers: 10,000-50,000 followers.
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000-500,000 followers.
• Macro-influencers: 500,000-1 million followers.
• Mega-Influencers: 1 million+ followers.

Types of Influencer Collaboration.

There are a number of ways to collaborate with influencers:

1. Sponsored Social Media Content – your company provides content
2. Gifting – your company provides gifts
3. Brand Ambassador – the influencer commits to your brand long-term
4. Takeover – the influencer appears on your social media accounts
5. Sponsored Blog Posts – influencer blogs on standard websites
6. Guest Blogging -your company blogs on their website.
7. Video content – such as Youtube and Tiktok.

Costs of Influencers

The costing will varying significantly. Gifting, for example, can just the cost of providing the gift – but with no guarantee the gift will even be mentioned. Some indicative pricing is:

• 10,000 followers could charge $20 per post.
• 100,000 followers could charge $200 per post.
• 1,000,000 followers could charge $2000 per post.

Influencer Marketing Software

Software that you help you through the maze includes:

What is ABM?

Account-based marketing (ABM) targets key accounts focussing on specific companies.

Get the ABM Strategy in place

The first step is for the Executive to agree that an ABM approach is one of the approaches in the Marketing Strategy and then look at the ways it will be done.

Get Sales and Marketing Communicating on ABM

A process for ensuring and measuring ABM needs to be identified that does not put an onerous load on Sales but allows Marketing to assess success. Sales feel they own accounts and particularly the key accounts and they will need to see outcomes from any additional efforts.

Audit the CRM data regularly

The company’s CRM data will need to be accurate. The third step is an audit needs to be done and a process for cleaning the data regularly. Otherwise, there will be time and costs wasted.

Set Up ABM Metrics

Executive, Sales, and Marketing all need to agree on a set of AMB Metrics and regularly review the metrics.

Software

The fifth step is to assess your company’s Sales and Marketing tools and determine if additional ABM software is required. The list of ABM software includes:

If you are in sales or marketing, you are going to be defined as a brand by the experience. This can be hard as it doesn’t seem like you control the experience.

This may be true but what can you do.

Build a brand dashboard. As the owner of brand, you need to find data to show the company what the experience is doing.

If you are insurance, you don’t control the claims department. However, this is hands down the number one way people build their impression and the number one thing people talk about.

Here you build out the segments and the journeys and what people are going through.

A customer is positioned with your storytelling, and then the experience delivers the brand. you can find ways for this to work with the other departments to lead and own the customer experience.

Creating a place for your company to understand what is happening in the minds of customers as they desire and experience the product is critical to success.

When I go to the bank I want my finance taking care of, but i talk to somoone from personal loans and someone from everyday banking and someone from home loans.

As a marketing and sales team inside a company you often inherit a dispersed company that is structured based on the manufacturing and supply of a product. The first job needs to be unifying this structure under customer needs. The customer need needs to structure the KPIs, and then at some point during the org structure, you need to switch to make supplying cost-effective by unifying who is supplying.

So the person who buys the reinsurance cant help the guy who is delivering credit cards in an organisation. So the reality though is where the flip happens and how the KPIS link up so that products can be bundled and delivered together.

Start with the customer mapping using software like

www.custellence.com

www.uxpressia.com

www.smaply.com

Start with mapping out the customer journey. Next part in the series we will take you through how to build a Center of UX Excellence to encourage a unified vision of customer desires.