How to Fight Our Caveman Impulses to Create a Positive Customer Experience

This is not your granddad's customer service advice says Adam Toporek, author of the book, Be Your Customer’s Hero: Real World Tips and Techniques for the Service Front Lines. Toporek recently was on C-Suite TV where he talked about how organizations should train and motivate their front-line employees in order to increase sales.

Front-line employees are the employees that are the first to deal with customers such as the cashier, those working on the service floor or anyone dealing with customers face to face in the store, phone or email. It's the first level of dealing with the customer at the lowest level in the organization.

Motivate, Don't Educate

I think education is really focused on imparting knowledge. With front-line employees knowledge isn't enough, you need to be showing them how to use that knowledge and showing them how to understand their own feelings and their own emotions. The motivational part is actually about getting them confident with the tools and the techniques so they feel more motivated to want to go out and do a good job.

A lot of front-line employees really have difficulty with the challenges of front-line service. And when they do they sort of turtle up and shell in and you want to bring them out of that and give them that confidence.

Customer Service Versus Customer Experience

Customer experience is the entire journey, the entire experience a customer has with the organization. Customer experience involves a marketing piece they may get or an email, it's not just a point in time. Customer service in the traditional lens is a part of customer experience. It's more about that one to one interaction and helping to serve you in the moment.

But that may not be the entire experience. Let's say I'm working at a bookstore and I'm behind the counter, the customer service would be while I'm helping you. Customer experience may be were the isles cleaned, were they neat and organized? All of that feeds the experience or as we talked about the customer journey.

Mentality and Mindset

Mentality and mindset is what I really wish I knew and understood when I was young and on the front-lines. Not only understanding the customers mindset but what makes them tick and why they do what they do. Also my own mindset, why am I taking something personally, why can't I depersonalize the situation, why am I getting upset when I don't need to be? So many front-line people, they're not experienced in the world or in business in a lot of cases and they don't have these skills and this lens on how we all think.

We Still Have Caveman Brains

If you look at it from the standpoint of experience, what does every experience have in common? The are all filtered through this imperfect organ called the human brain, so it behooves us to understand how that human brain works. The good news is that we live in the golden age of psychology. We've learned more about neuroscience and what makes humans tick in the last few decades than we have probably ever known before. The bad news is what we have learned is that we are all basically irrational. Our mind is designed to take shortcuts.

If you look at sociology, society, digital technology, all of these things have evolved very rapidly, but our brains have evolved pretty slowly. We still have, unfortunately, caveman brains which are designed to make snap judgements to survive. These snap judgements aren't that firm when it comes to customer experience.

Making Our Caveman Brains Work For Us

Here's how you can apply these principals to customer experience. We've all heard of first impressions and their is a ton of research on first impressions and they all basically say the same thing. No matter what the study is, first impressions happen subconsciously and they happen very quickly.

There is another principal called confirmation bias and that is the principal that we all want to be right, which is why politics is so much fun. What we do is ignore the evidence that tells us we're wrong and we accept the evidence that tells us we are right. When you combine those two things that's an important factor when you are designing a customer experience. You take a first impression and you combine that with confirmation bias and what do you have? You have a bad first impression and you are already in the hole.

The human brain is trying to tell them that that first impression and what they already believe is correct. Similarly, there is something called negativity bias which is why the evening news always leads with something like 'your microwave is going to kill you'. We are attuned to negative information, we are always looking to what's a threat. We give more credence to negative information than to positive information, meaning if you give a bad experience it is going to be weighted heavier than a positive experience.

What I find fascinating from a customer experience standpoint is that you can use all these psychological principals and evaluate each touch point, each place where you come in contact with a customer and say how are we violating them, how are we prepared if we set those off? How are we prepared to deal with that or our team trained for that?

The Customer is the Customer

Customers can not only be wrong, they can be nuts and mean at times, all kinds of different things. The problem with the traditional concept of 'the customer is always right' is that the principal behind it got lost and the phrase carried over. That was from a time that their wasn't customer service and they were trying to teach people that the customer is valuable, their opinion is valuable.

We try to look at it as the customer is the customer. That means that you and the customer are not on the same level. It's called customer service and we are there to serve the customer. They are our focus and they are not there to give to us. They should be decent of course and there are some lines they shouldn't cross, but big picture, it's customer service and we're there to serve.

We know what a customer is in modern times and if you are a customer centric organization, what you are doing, your actions, your processes, your systems should all be revolving around the customer.

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3 Ways to Gauge Your Team’s Marketing Maturity

Author: Jessica Minasian

Are you on top of your marketing game?

Knowing what a seasoned marketing professional looks like helps you analyze you and your team’s expertise and, for managers, hire the right individuals. By understanding your team’s marketing maturity, you can assess where you are now and where you want to go.

As an Enterprise Business Consultant, I work directly with many of our customers—some who are just getting the ball rolling and others who are marketing veterans. By understanding their techniques and practices, I’m able to get a good feel for their level of expertise and where there may be room for improvement.

In this blog, I’ll share three signs I’ve seen that indicate whether marketers are on the path to success or may need to take a detour:

1. The Blacklist Whiteboard is Front and Center

If you find yourself in an office that has a “blacklist whiteboard,” listing the number of the days you’ve stayed off a blacklist, then you most likely have a battle-tested marketing team. Some teams might not have a physical whiteboard, but are nonetheless tracking this data in some way or form. At Marketo, we use a partner solution to check the health of IP addresses and blacklist status. If your team would rather do this in-house, you can consider sending weekly internal marketing emails that highlights the specific strategies you’ve used to stay off of a blacklist with the total number of days your team has been successful to keep the momentum going.

Marketers who keep track of this data are fluent in email deliverability, which is key to your email marketing success, especially when you consider that one in every five emails is blocked from ever reaching your subscribers’ inboxes, according to Return Path. The two leading spam houses are SpamHaus and SpamCop, and if either of these flags you, it could put your sender reputation in jeopardy. Inherent features of most marketing automation platforms block communications from going to invalid emails, although sometimes massive email blasts can skirt the edges of built-in logic to stop a send, causing the ‘spam police’ to raise a red flag: a blacklist.

Now, if you’ve ever been blacklisted, you know the heart-pounding sensation it can cause. Too many blacklist warnings and your email service provider (ESP) or marketing automation platform may be restricted or even terminated. Accordingly, email marketers who are using an ESP or marketing automation platform should devise a plan to keep everyone in the team up-to-date on best practices to stay off a blacklist.

A targeted marketing strategy not only keeps you off the dread blacklist, but also helps create lasting relationships with your buyers. By taking steps towards keeping your database clean and email sends targeted, you can ensure that every send is something that your subscribers want to hear about and not just waiting to hit the unsubscribe or spam button for. Placing higher importance on a targeted audience changes the way marketers can look at marketable verse unmarketable records in their database. Suddenly, verifying a prospect’s email and other qualifying criteria becomes more important than blasting to an enormous, unidentified audience.

2. Have a Handle on the Right Metrics

As a marketer, you have to know how to wear an analyst hat to review and analyze data that will help you enrich the buyer’s journey. At first, tracking the right data might be difficult because not everyone defines key metrics in the same way. B2B marketers might focus more on moving leads through the funnel, while consumer marketers might be more concerned with increasing customer lifetime value. Or an email marketer might be tracking click-to-open rates and bounce rates, while a digital marketer might care more about cost-per-click, and both might be interested in click-through rates.

The key is to understand your team’s business objectives and what results will drive those outcomes. Then, pinpoint the right set of metrics to track and agree on the definitions of them. Seasoned marketing teams set definitions early and review them often to ensure consistency across teams, both within marketing and with other key stakeholders. Marketers should speak the same language, per say, and understand what is being asked of them through shared definitions.

These kinds of conversations around the right metrics might not happen overnight, but you should keep adding to the overall business discussion by communicating beyond soft metrics and digging deeper to prove how you’re bringing money to the tables. It’s up to you and your team to lead the pack towards real and influential discussions within marketing, and you can start by getting a handle on the right metrics.

3. Data Never Looked So Good

Often, reports on key performance indicators (KPIs) are the driving force behind many seasoned marketing teams. It’s how they can share measurable results from all of their hard work. By tracking and sharing metrics with the right stakeholders, marketing teams and executives can get a visual pulse check of how each campaign is doing and stay aligned with other cross-functional teams (e.g. customer support, sales, service).

At Marketo, we have a dedicated monitor in the middle of the marketing floor that shows a dashboard of our marketing campaign performance. But even if you don’t have access to television monitors, you can still share reports in effective ways. For example, you can email reports to key stakeholders on a consistent cadence (though if you do this, we recommend that you’re able to answer questions and verify numbers). Whether you send reports, create metric summaries, or display them for all to see, all options keep everyone on task, and that’s a good thing.

We encourage marketers to understand which reports matter the most to specific teams. Each team will want to see different reports so they can make decisions that are unique to their needs, so it comes down to asking “What are the most important metrics you base your decisions on?” Then, you can build a ‘menu’ of reports that teams can choose from and review.

Knowing the telltale signs of an experienced marketing team is more than a way to impress your colleagues, it can be used as a benchmarking tool to measure how far you’ve come as a marketing team and how far you want to go. It can help you understand the steps you should take, or have taken, to run your marketing initiatives successfully and hire stellar marketing professionals that understand these signs of excellence.

What other factors indicate a successful marketing team? Share your thoughts below!

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3 Ways to Gauge Your Team’s Marketing Maturity was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Google Says Its "Mission Impossible" Cloud Platform is the Most Secure

Neal Mueller, Security and Networking lead for Google Cloud, recently was interviewed about security and other important aspects of using the Google Cloud Platform to host websites, online retailers and other data intensive applications.

Should I move our online applications to the cloud and is it secure?

We get that question less and less these days. There are big advantages to moving to the cloud. You get to have all of the scale that you want immediately when you want it. You don't pay for it when you don't use it. And you don't have to worry about the maintenance of the underlying machines. The advantages are so big, in fact, that we seldom get the question of, should I move to the cloud? More often, the question that we get is, how can I move to the cloud safely?

Where does Google's responsibility for security begin?

It's simple. Google's responsibility is to control the underlying infrastructure. Your responsibility is to secure the data on top.

Why use Google as a cloud provider?

One of the reasons that we talk about a lot is that Google is the right cloud provider for you because we've got over 500 security engineers. These are 500 people that are foremost in their fields. They've been in peer-reviewed journals, they're experts at security.

Let me give you an example of just one team within the 500. It's called Project Zero. These are forward-facing engineers whose job it is to discover 0-Days, that is, new vulnerabilities, never before seen or disclosed. They discovered Heartbleed, which affects anybody with a browser. It's a TLS vulnerability. They discovered rowhammer, which affects anybody that has a computer with RAM and they discovered 15 of the last 21 KVM vulnerabilities, which is really important to Google because we use KVM as our chosen hypervisor technology. All of these vulnerabilities, as soon as we discover them, we immediately disclose them so that the world is a safer place thanks to the work of Project Zero.

Can you tell us more about this?

Let's talk about the word provenance. It's a word in English that means come from. It's a fundamental tenet of how we think of secure systems. We don't just buy hardware that's off the shelf. We return to first principles, figure out what functionality we need from the hardware and which ones we don't, because functionality that's included in the hardware off the shelf might introduce vulnerabilities that we don't want. This leads us in many cases to custom-build secure systems. So we have custom-built ASICs, custom-built servers, custom-built racks, custom-built storage arrays inside custom-built data centers. All of this leads to a much more secure data center.

Infrastructure security, doesn't that go beyond hardware?

Sure. It extends to the people inside that data center, too. These are full-time, badged Googlers that have submitted to a background check and have an array of physical security to make their job easier. We're talking about stuff that you've seen in "Mission Impossible"-- biometrics, lasers, vehicle barriers, bollards. All of this is custom-built, also, to make the data center more secure.

So is this unique to just Google?

Yeah, it's unique to Google, but not for long. Part of being Google is giving back to your community. So as part of the Open Compute Project, just last week with Facebook, we released our design for a 48-volt rack. This is a very high-density, highly efficient, highly green rack. And although Google is the only one that can build it, now that everybody has the designs, everybody can build data centers as efficient.

What other cool stuff is Google Cloud doing?

What's next? So with 500 security engineers on staff, there's a lot that's up next. But let me tell you about just two things that spring to mind. The first one is BeyondCorp. Here, we have separated ourself from the traditional enterprise security model. Traditional enterprise security has a hard firewall to guard the perimeter. However, we've seen what happens with recent breaches-- what happens when an adversary gets inside that perimeter. He has relatively unfettered access to the resources inside the internet. What Google does is device authentication which allows our applications to be accessible by the internet, but be just as secure as if they were only accessible by the intranet. We believe that this makes our public cloud more secure.

What's the second initiative?

On Google Cloud Platform, data at rest is encrypted by default. This is a real differentiator for us. We believe it's good practice and good business. We've seen what happens when adversaries get a hold of breached PII and we think that encryption by default is a good preventative measure against that.

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New Google Merchant Center Launched

Google introduced a new version of its Google Merchant Center today that offer more efficient navigation and makes additional shopping programs easier to find. The Google Merchant Center enables online retailers to connect their products to Google so that their products are included in search results, YouTube and partner websites.

Responsive New Interface

"With updates to Merchant Center, you’ll see a fast, responsive new interface, aligned with the modern look and feel of the rest of Google’s products," says Sven Herschel, Product Manager for Google Shopping at Google. "We’ve changed Merchant Center navigation by bundling common tasks and actions. For example, you can use the new Home page to view recent announcements and dashboard data for your account, and you can find consolidated product feed and product data quality information under the Products page."

The Merchant Center is the place for ecommerce sites to upload their product data to Google, literally letting millions of shoppers see their online and in-store inventory.

Explore Google Programs for Your Products

"Merchant Center now lets you discover new ways to apply your data to promote and sell your products," said Herschel. "Use Merchant Center to explore additional Google programs for your products, including Local Inventory Ads, Merchant Promotions, Product Ratings and more, while continuing to manage and configure your product data for Shopping ads."

Additional Updates to Merchant Center Features

Google has also made updates and improvements to improve speed and functionality so that retailers can get their products online more quickly including Feed Rules, their Diagnostics Page and Currency Conversions. Find more info on those here.

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Every Business is the Same. Seriously.

One of my favorite audience poll questions when speaking goes like this: “How many of your truly believe your business is different than the person sitting next to you?” What’s funny, is everyone always raises their hand. And truth be told, they’re all wrong. Sure, we may all be special, different, and unique– but when…

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4 Reasons Why You Can’t Miss Marketing Nation Online

Author: Rick Siegfried

Aren’t trade shows so much fun? All of the thought-provoking sessions, tips and tricks to bring back to the office, friends and colleagues in your industry, and, of course, a bunch of sweet prizes to win. Unfortunately, this all comes at cost–both in time and money. Sure, you might be able to expense the ticket, travel, hotel, and meals, but then there’s the epic backup in email and work that piles up while you’re off gallivanting around whatever summit, conference, or expo you happen to be at. The point is, live, in-person trade shows have their pros and cons.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to get all of the perks of a live event, without all of the investment?

Well, there is! There truly is! I’m obviously referring to Marketo’s annual virtual event, Marketing Nation Online. This year’s affair falls on Wednesday, September 14, and is themed around tomorrow’s marketer. To be tomorrow’s marketer is to be innovative–both with the marketing strategies you incorporate to meet your goals and the tools you use to implement those strategies. That’s exactly the type of experience you’ll have at Marketing Nation Online.

Are you still on the fence about joining this free event that you can experience from the comfort of your own worn-in La-Z-Boy recliner, lovingly pretentious coffee shop, or even at your perfectly cluttered desk? Take a gander at some of the best reasons to attend:

1. Thought Leader Conference Sessions

There’s more than something for everyone at Marketing Nation Online. Whether you’re interested in hearing about the future of content or about the three T’s for success in the digital age, the thought leadership shall be strong in this one.

Here are just a few of the questions that will be answered along the way:

• How can more experienced generations, Gen X and above, best groom an emerging team for a high degree of success, rather than get in the way? Find out with Anantha Narasimhan and Jennifer Clegg from CA Technologies.
• How can digital marketers capture buying signals at events to increase attendance, accelerate the buyer’s journey, and generate revenue? Kristen Alexander and Beki Scarbrough from Certain have the answers.
• How do healthcare marketers keep pace with the speed of digital innovation while also meeting the consumer’s growing expectation for personalized and relevant engagement? Discover how with Jeremy Duncan from Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island.
• How can marketers deliver content that audiences actually crave? Tom Davis from Forbes Media has got you covered.

And the coup de gras: keynotes from Visa and Facebook. Check ‘em out!

A Women-Targeted Strategy: Lara Balazs, SVP North America Marketing at Visa, will discuss her passion and commitment to female leadership in business and how it helps ensure that, as marketers, you’re keeping one of the most powerful audiences top-of-mind in your marketing strategies.

Building Your People-Based Marketing Strategy: Martin Gilliard, Global Head of MarTech and Data Partnerships at Facebook, will share his vision of omni-channel marketing and how brands can provide seamless experiences, regardless of channel or device.

2. Exclusive Marketing Insights

Okay, let’s get down to the nitty gritty. The other 10+ sessions include a multitude of marketing mastery for those of you who are already living in ‘the tomorrow’ (for me personally, I’m not sure if I’m in “the tomorrow”, but it certainly sounds like we should all be onboard).

Are you a B2B marketer looking to generate some demand? We’ve got a track dedicated to helping you learn how to attract buyers, nurture them, and deliver win-ready leads to sales. Maybe you’re trying to stay on top of the latest digital trends? We’ve got sessions about how to grow lifetime value by engaging buyers seamlessly across digital channels. Or maybe you’re just interested in the best tips and tricks on how we do Marketo at Marketo. Well, we’ve got some treats for you too.

And those are just the sessions! Don’t forget about all of our sponsors’ virtual booths that are packed with great content on topics ranging from video marketing and account-based marketing to event marketing and beyond!

3. Networking Lounge

Sure, face-to-face interactions at in-person events are key, but imagine the speed at which you can network at Marketing Nation Online, with the ability to hop in and out of sponsor booths and networking lounges in seconds. This all can be done without leaving the conversation because of each area’s chat box. You barely even have to pay attention (but I would definitely recommend it).

And who is on the other end of those chat messages? More than 15,000 like-minded marketers ready to engage with the same content and topics that you’re interested in. It’s a match made in heaven! You can even stay in touch post-event by exchanging your virtual business cards that you 1) won’t forget and 2) will never run out of.

4. Free Stuff

Did I just catch your attention with the word ‘free’? If you’ve ever been to a tradeshow, you already know that one of the best parts is the free swag and chance to win a bunch of sweet prizes from whatever games or contests you participate in. Fear not, Marketo has over 100 giveaways for our  Marketing Nation Online attendees! You could be the lucky new owner of an iRobot Roomba (not the DJ Roomba edition), an Oculus Rift, an iPhone 7 (be the coolest kid on the block), a ticket to the Marketing Nation Summit 2017 (back to the Bay!), and other great giveaways.

Did I mention that EVERYTHING I’ve talked about above is free? Probably, but it’s worth saying again anyway. That’s right, all of this amazingness is free of charge. While I might sound like an informercial at this point, the truth is you have no reason not to register right now and join us for an awesome, interactive and educational event all from the comfort of wherever you want! DO IT!

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4 Reasons Why You Can’t Miss Marketing Nation Online was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Facebook Founder on Top 3 Qualities to Reach the Top

Zuckerberg was recently asked what he thinks are the top 3 qualities an entrepreneur should have when starting a successful business.

1. Focus on Making an Impact in the World

"I think if you want to build something great you should focus on the changes you want to make in the world. That to me is number 1. I see too many entrepreneurs decide that they want to start a company before they actually know what it is that they want to build, and to me that seems backwards."

"In building a company you are going to change a lot and you are going to learn a lot along the way, so it really makes sense to go in with an idea about what the impact is that you want to make and not just that you want to have a bunch of people working for you or that you just want to start a company."

2. No One Does It Alone

"The second is that no one does it alone. You need to build the best team that you can. There's this myth in the world of the founder or the individual. For instance, a lot of people talk about me and Facebook and it drives me a little crazy because I think this understates that this is a big team effort. We have thousands of people working on Facebook now and even at the beginning there were a bunch of people working on it."

"When you look at most big things that get done in the world they are not done by one person. You are going to need to build a team. You go in with the idea of what you want to do in the world and the next most important thing you are going to do is to surround yourself with the best people that you can to learn from."

"You are going to need to learn over time and you are going to need people with complimentary skills because no matter how talented you are there are just going to be things that you don't bring to the table. That's certainly true for me. Our company works because we have a really talented core team of people who compliment me that have different skills that I don't have."

3. Persistence!

"The third thing is just persistence. Nothing ever goes the way you want it to. People talk about overnight success and that's not the way it works. Overnight success only happens after you've worked for a long period of time to build something and then one day you wake up and people say, "Oh this is successful," like it just appeared. That's never how you experience it when you are actually working on it."

"When you are building something you go through all these trials and tribulations along the way and I think a lot of people simply give up. And that takes different forms, you don't push through to what you believe, some people sell their company before it reaches its full potential, some change the direction and some people leave."

"I think that the biggest things that have gotten done in the world tend to be done by people who primarily believe in a mission and are not trying to just build a company, by teams and not by individuals and by people who just don't give up."

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Zuckerberg: Virtual Reality will be the Most Social Platform Ever!

Mark Zuckerberg says that virtual reality will be the most social platform that ever existed. Zuckerberg hosted an in-person Q&A in Rome, Italy Friday when he focused in on virtual reality when asked if Facebook change our lives as much as Pokemon Go. "The real reason I came to Rome was to find some rare Pokemon," Zuckerberg replied. "In all seriousness, I think that virtual reality and augmented reality are going to be the most social platform that has ever existed."

Last year Facebook paid $2 billion for crowd-funded Oculus Rift in order to enter the space running. "Oculus's mission is to enable you to experience the impossible," proclaimed Zuckerberg when announcing this acquisition. "Their technology opens up the possibility of completely new kinds of experiences."

Clearly, Zuckerberg sees VR as a huge boon for social but even more for advertising where it is believed to have great potential. According to research by Digi-Capital augmented reality and Virtual Reality are predicted to be a $150 billion industry by 2020. That's why so many companies are focusing on VR and AR including Google.

"This is why advertisers are so interested in VR," said Aaron Luber who is in charge of Google and YouTube partnerships. "Emotion sells products much more than utility and that reality positions Virtual Reality as a game changer in the advertising industry."

Facebook recently bought another small VR startup called Two Big Ears, which helps bring an immersive audio experience into VR and AR. Facebook is calling it the Facebook 360 Spatial Workstation which can be downloaded for free.

"If you think about the history of computing every 10 or 15 years a big new computing platform comes along," Zuckerberg added. "We had desktop computers, then browsers and the internet, now we have mobile phones and each one is better than the one before it, but what we have now is not the end of the line. We are going to get to a point in 5-10 years that we are all using augmented or virtual reality."

Zuckerberg explained how virtual reality makes you feel like you are really there or "present" as he put it. "If you look at a photo or a video on a screen, TV, computer or phone and you are trying to get your mind set in this perspective as if you were there," he said. "You see the photo and you are trying to imagine what it's like to be there. Virtual reality is different, because it's programmed to work exactly the way that your brain does. When you look at it you feel like you are in that place, like you are present and you are trying to convince yourself that you aren't actually there because if you look around what you are seeing feels like the real world."

He sees a future that is vastly improved socially because VR will make the social experience feel like reality. "You can imagine in the future you are going to feel like you are right there with another person who couldn't actually be with you," says Zuckerberg. "I think about my family when I'm not there such as my daughter who is in California right now. I miss her and to really feel like I am there right now would be a really powerful experience that I would want to have."

He noted the differences between virtual reality where you feel completely immersed and augmented reality where you are adding virtual elements onto the world. Zuckerberg predicts that AR will come to mobile phones first "before we get some kind of smart glasses that overlay stuff on the world." He says that we going to see more apps like Pokemon Go and that Facebook itself tested a form of AR with its Masquerade Filter that was test launched at the Olympics in Brazil and in Canada, where people could support their country by putting face paint on.

"I feel there are going to be a bunch of tools like that overlay real things from the world on top of your experience and help you share things that we are going to see soon," says Zuckerberg.

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SnapChat to Offer Advertisers Behavioral Targeting

SnapChat will soon offer behavioral targeting options to its advertisers, according to an eMarketer report referenced by BusinessInsider. SnapChat Director of Revenue Operations, Clement Xue, said in the report that SnapChat was going to launch behavioral targeting capabilities by the end of September.

Per BI, SnapChat will initially based all of its behavioral targeting on what a user does within the app and not aggregate data from other sources. Unlike most social media apps such as Facebook and Twitter, SnapChat only is available on mobile devices, making cookie data inaccessible for them because cookies don't work on certain devices and browsers and don't function at all within mobile apps. Other social apps which have a desktop presence can use cookies to add to their behavioral data by following a user around as they go to various websites.

The behavioral data likely to be offered will be based on who a user follows, especially industry specific interests, such as a certain type of music entertainer. Record labels could then use that data to reach a more likely consumer of a singers music they represent. Advertisers already have data from SnapChat related to the age, gender and geo location of users, so behavioral data will simply add to the mix.

In order to make their behavioral data more robust SnapChat will have to obtain web browsing data which they have already made the first moves toward by introducing a "Login with SnapChat" button on its recently acquired Bitmoji Keyboard app.

This could be the beginning of SnapChat becoming another login option, similar to the Google or Facebook login's seen all around the web and apps. This would give SnapChat a tremendous amount of behavioral data beyond the small amount that is usable based on in-app follows.

SnapChat Continues to Grow Amazingly Fast

A new report by eMarketer, "Snapchat Advertising: A Roadmap for US Brand Marketers and Digital Agency Executives," predicts continued huge growth for SnapChat. SnapChat sees itself as a photo app combined with social connectivity and its mostly young user base certainly agrees. "We’re like a camera company,” said Bryan Kim, manager of Snapchat’s strategy group. "And we encourage creativity, which is why there are so many creative tools on our platform—doodles, geofilters, stickers and lenses."

The eMarketer report "projects 58.6 million US consumers will use Snapchat at least once per month in 2016." This equates to 28.3% of US smartphone users and 18.1% of the entire US population, which is nearly double the use estimated only 2 years ago. eMarketer is predicting that this kind of growth will continue over the next 4 years.

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Social Media and SEO: When and How They Work Together

Author: Nate Dame

The connection between social media marketing and SEO can be confusing. Do social media signals impact search rankings? Should the social media team have a stake in SEO?

Common misconceptions have led some marketers to lose focus on what will effectively benefit both strategies to get the most out of every effort. In this blog, I’ll clear the air and explain how social media and SEO work together and how they can benefit each other:

Social Media Signals Are NOT SEO Ranking Factors

A big misconception about social media marketing and SEO is that signals from social media—including links, likes, and follows—have a direct impact on a page’s SEO ranking. Part of the confusion here comes from the fact that Google treats social media posts as individual web pages when it comes to search. If it’s effectively a web page, the same rules of SEO should apply to them, right?

Well, not exactly. The thing is, Google doesn’t like signals that they don’t have a lot of confidence in, and social media signals are too easy to manipulate. We know, for example, that links are a top ranking factor, but Google also knows how easy it is to create links on social networks—so no, all those social links aren’t the same as links from high-quality websites.

But just because those signals don’t directly impact your page ranking doesn’t mean that social media and SEO don’t work together. In fact, any good marketing strategy should have them working together. You just have to focus your strategy on what they can do for each other, which I’ll get into in more detail below.

Social Media Can Drive Page Views and Engagement

Social media is the easiest and most effective way to push out your SEO-based content. While the incoming links from your social media shares don’t have the same impact of authentic links from high-quality sites, they can have an effect on your bounce rate and time-on-site engagement. If your content is good and people stick around to read it, those engagement metrics communicate value to search engines.

Social media can also lead to authentic, high-quality links from influential websites. Influencers use social media as much as (or even more than) anyone else. With your content out there on the same channels they’re on, there’s a good chance they’ll see it and link to it from their own websites or blogs. That kind of high-value link building from influencer marketing can be difficult to land without social media.

Social Media Can Be a Valuable Barometer

Once you’ve got your posts up and running, you should keep an eye on engagement metrics (e.g. the number of likes, shares, and comments per post). This can gauge which topics and content formats your audience is most interested in and which may be a waste of time.

• Clicks: Social media posts that generate traffic to your site may or may not end in conversions, but you do know that the content you posted to social—the image or the teaser text, etc.—spoke to your audience. At the end of the month, review the tweets and posts that got the most clicks and look for common themes. Are there certain pain points, solutions, or promises that seem to engage your audience the most?
• Shares: Content that earns shares represents something that your audience identifies with enough that they are willing to make that content part of their own, personal brand. Watch for which types of content, on which themes and platforms, earn organic shares. Then, create more of what works.

Again, no direct SEO value, but some very valuable insights to hone your strategy moving forward.

Social Media Can Be an Amazing User Intent Research Tool

Keywords are useless today without a thorough understanding of the user’s intent in choosing that keyword. If someone searches “marketing automation,” for example, does he want to learn what the term means or does he want to buy software? Google aims to deliver the best results for every search, which means they are heavily invested in understanding user intent. Creating content that ranks well, then, means that marketers have to understand it as well.

There are a lot of ways to listen to your audience—to find out what questions they’re asking, what terms they’re using, what misconceptions and/or problems they have, etc.—and one way is through social listening. You should be reporting on what conversations your audience is having about your industry, product, brand, and more on social media. Those insights can drive a content marketing strategy that speaks directly to your target market’s needs, which is exactly the kind of content that search engines love to deliver.

Google Plus and Twitter Posts May Appear in Search Results

There is some ambiguity about whether Google Plus posts will still appear in search results, but they generally do not.

When the platform launched, some activities of Google Plus connections—such as reviews and Google Plus postings—would show up in related search results when users were logged into Google. In the fall of 2015, after much criticism, Google announced they would pull Plus posts off of search engine results page (SERP). More recently, Google Plus posts have been cited in Google’s “In the news” section on page 1 for certain terms, but it happens so seldom that it’s difficult to replicate on command. It’s a long shot and not really worth the effort for most brands.

Google does, however, have a partnership with Twitter. You may occasionally see relevant tweets in Google search results, especially for branded searches: 

A SERP for “Propecta” includes a carousel of our most recent tweets.

So, while social posts showing up in search results don’t impact your site’s SEO, it can improve brand awareness and authority. If you want to drive any kind of traffic this way, just make sure to include links back to relevant content on your site.

Social media and SEO may not work in conjunction as far as directly building your website’s page rank, but a modern understanding of SEO makes social media an extremely valuable channel for your brand. As a social media marketer, you should be actively involved in your SEO strategy and perhaps even be represented in your SEO team. Stop blindly creating links and direct SEO signals, and get to work on promoting content and monitoring feedback for real, long-term SEO value.

Looking to elevate your social media marketing beyond increasing SEO? Download our Definitive Guide to Social Media Marketing for a deep dive into how to create an effective social media strategy that drives value across the customer lifecycle—from awareness to advocacy—and throughout the organization.

 

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Social Media and SEO: When and How They Work Together was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Hubcast 106: Live Chat, INBOUND Growth? & Big 5 E-Books

Welcome back to The Hubcast, folks: A weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below, including some new HubSpot video tutorials ...

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5 Things Marketers Can Learn From Man’s Best Friend

Author: Katie Pope

Happy National Dog Day! For all of you dog lovers out there, you know that today’s just another excuse to show our friendly canines some extra lovin’. Our furry companions hold a special place near and dear to our hearts. Simply put, they know exactly how to put a smile on our faces, whether they mean to do it or not.

Affectionately named (wo)man’s best friend, dogs have a lot to offer us. But what you may not know is that dogs are actually a marketer’s best friend and can teach us lessons that we can apply to our careers.

In honor of National Dog Day, we asked our advocates, Purple Select, what they’ve learned from their dogs. Here’s their take on it:

1. Know Your Audience

Some people might argue that dogs are some of the best marketers of all time. They know how to read their owners’ emotions down to a tee and understand when it’s a good time to ask for some cuddles or whether they’ve been a naughty dog and need to give us some space.

Marketers need the same sort of intuition—the ability to understand when is the best time to engage their buyers. As Joe Reitz, Strategist at Fathom, put it, “Tango is the most dedicated dog I’ve ever known. He’s like a comfort dog…he knows when you want to play and when you just need a buddy to hang out with. I’d say the takeaway there is to know your audience and have precognition when it comes to their needs.”

Just as important as knowing when to engage your buyers is knowing when to give them some space. Your prospects and customers don’t want to be bombarded with marketing messages 24/7. They only want to see your communications when it’s relevant and convenient for them. Rachel Egan, Marketing Manager at TubeMogul, says “I don’t have a dog, but I love all my furry friends around the office! This is Louie and she teaches me that there is a time to be excited and overzealous when you see people (or market to them), but there is also a time to sit back and let them go about their business. Chances are, if you are patient, that person will pay attention to you again soon.”

While we may not have canine instincts, with a sophisticated marketing automation platform, you can listen and respond to your buyers based on who they are and their actions and activity so that when they’re finally ready to make a purchasing decision, you’ll be top-of-mind.

2. Be Consistent and Dependable

Dogs are used to the same routine every day: wake up, go on a walk, eat a bowl of the same dog food, play fetch at night, go for a walk before bed, and repeat. Imagine if you suddenly stopped walking or feeding your dog. It would definitely cause some disruption and you could potentially lose their trust. The same concept applies to marketers. Marketers need to be dependable, according to Keith Nyberg, Marketing Operations Specialist at SugarCRM.

We need to be consistent across channels, reinforce our positioning to gain the trust of prospective customers as well as maintain the trust of our current customers. Granted, your messaging may change over time, but it’s important that the changes are reflected across all channels for a seamless experience. And if your company has created a regular cadence of publishing content, it’s important to stick to that since your buyers start expecting it.

3. Focus on the Customer Experience

As Dan Prokop, Marketing Manager at MECCO, put it, marketers need to learn how to focus more on the customer: “My dog’s always telling me that. Except the customer is him, and by focus, he means give him more treats.”

It’s important to spend time with our dogs: take them on walks, play fetch with them, and give them lots of attention. If you don’t, they may become lonely, sad, and grow distant from you since you’re not actively working to maintain and grow the relationship. According to Gartner’s survey “Gartner Predicts 2015,” 89% of companies expect to compete mostly on the basis of customer experience. It’s more important than ever to focus on your customers, continuing the conversation with them and ensuring satisfaction beyond their first purchase. I mean, you wouldn’t ditch your dog after adopting him, would you?

4. Be Loyal

As you can see, Director of Marketing Operations at Skyword, Adam Vavrek’s dog is loyal and has stuck with him through everything, even through some playful roughhousing. This is an essential component of long-term business growth: create a great customer experience to increase retention and loyalty.

By continuing to nurture your customers and provide them with value, you can build a loyal customer base. And once you have their loyalty, you can incentivize them to advocate for your brand through programs that generate reviews, referrals, testimonials and much more, while also allowing them to build their personal brand—a win-win for all.

But loyalty isn’t just for your existing customers. With prospective customers, it’s crucial to commit to nurturing them and continuing to educate them until they are ready to purchase. Even if they’re not interested in buying from you at the time, they need to know they can count on you to reach their company objectives when they are ready to make a purchase or speak to your sales team.

5. Always Sniff Out a Situation Before You Act

As one of our advocates, Melanie Chapman, Marketing Manager at Jellyvision, suggested, “Always sniff out a situation before you act and never trust a doorbell.”

Just as dogs will spend time sniffing around on a walk, it’s important for marketers to take a step back and assess situations. What does that look like? Before you run any campaign, establish your goals and choose the right metrics to measure them with. Look at past program results to help you optimize a similar campaign, rather than blindly deciding what will make a large impact on the success of your organization.

What other marketing lessons have you learned from your dog? Share your stories in the comments below!

 

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5 Things Marketers Can Learn From Man’s Best Friend was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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Amazon's New Car Hub: Amazon Vehicles

Amazon is getting into the auto business with Amazon Vehicles, but not by becoming a sales platform for the cars themselves, but by being a car information center, automotive community and promoting the sales of parts and accessories. They are seeking to become the hub for car buying enabling customers to find crucial information when shopping for vehicles, parts, and accessories.

Amazon is only showing the suggested manufacture prices of cars since they aren't actually selling the cars themselves. The Amazon Vehicles site does however sell everything else including headlights, brake drums, and radiator hoses. They are using the platform as a marketing tool to become a major supplier of automobile parts and accessories.

Our prediction is that Amazon will next start selling used cars themselves and eventually push legal changes allowing them to sell new cars as well, perhaps starting with Tesla which isn't currently connected to a dealer network.

"Our goal is to support customers during one of the most important, research-intensive purchases in their lives by helping them make informed decisions every step of the way," said Adam Goetsch, Director of Automotive at Amazon.com. "Amazon Vehicles is a great resource for customers who are interested in car information or looking for a broad selection of parts and accessories – all enhanced by the ability to tap into the knowledge, opinions, and experiences of other car owners within the Amazon customer community."

Amazon Vehicles features:

• Research Tools: Customers can now view comprehensive detail pages complete with specifications, images, videos, and customer reviews for thousands of new and classic car models. Finding cars on Amazon Vehicles is simple – just search like you would any other product or browse by year, make, model, customer rating, MPG, towing capacity, and more. Customers can begin researching vehicles today at www.amazon.com/vehicles.
• Community Engagement: Customers can browse tens of thousands of customer reviews on Amazon Vehicles, including uploaded images and videos, as well as submit their own. Customers can also ask other car owners questions about their vehicle – anything from “Can you fit two car seats comfortably?” to “How does this car perform in the snow?”
• One-Stop Shop: Amazon Vehicles is an extension of the Amazon Automotive store, which enables customers to add information about their current car to the Amazon Garage for shopping parts and accessories designed specifically for that vehicle. To-date, more than 35 million customers have saved their car(s) to the Amazon Garage.

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WhatsApp Begins Sharing Data with Facebook

In a reversal of previous pledges, WhatsApp is going to begin sharing data with Facebook in order to connect accounts, detect spam and improve ad targeting. This includes sharing your phone number and usage information for Facebook's internal use, but not sharing any actual texts, since they are encrypted and neither Facebook or What's has access to them.

WhatsApp is giving existing users 30 days to grandfather themselves into not sharing their data with Facebook. After that all users will be subject to their new Terms and Privacy Policy.

Here's how WhatsApp describes the sharing of data with Facebook in the new Terms:

We joined the Facebook family of companies in 2014. As part of the Facebook family of companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, this family of companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings. This includes helping improve infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our Services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads. However, your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and providing our Services.

WhatsApp is seeking new ways for its users, especially businesses, to utilize WhatsApp which will open up additional magnetization opportunities in the future. They are exploring the use of WhatsApp in business transactions with customers related to online orders and sales, appointments and reservations, delivery and shipping notifications, business updates to customers related to their products and services as well as integrating WhatsApp in company marketing.

"For example, you may receive flight status information for upcoming travel, a receipt for something you purchased, or a notification when a delivery will be made," posted WhatsApp. "Messages you may receive containing marketing could include an offer for something that might interest you. We do not want you to have a spammy experience; as with all of your messages, you can manage these communications, and we will honor the choices you make."

"But as we announced earlier this year, we want to explore ways for you to communicate with businesses that matter to you too, while still giving you an experience without third-party banner ads and spam," added WhatsApp."Whether it's hearing from your bank about a potentially fraudulent transaction, or getting notified by an airline about a delayed flight, many of us get this information elsewhere, including in text messages and phone calls. We want to test these features in the next several months, but need to update our terms and privacy policy to do so."

"We're also updating these documents to make clear that we've rolled out end-to-end encryption," they said. "When you and the people you message are using the latest version of WhatsApp, your messages are encrypted by default, which means you're the only people who can read them. Even as we coordinate more with Facebook in the months ahead, your encrypted messages stay private and no one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else. We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won't sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers."

"But by coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp," the company stated. "And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you've never heard of."

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The Top Skills In-Demand for Today’s Hybrid Content Marketer

Author: Ashley Carlisle

Ask any veteran marketer how their job has changed in the past decade, and you’ll find out just how dramatically technology has changed the expectations of their skillsets. From search engines to social media, digital technology has played a huge role in growing and shaping our industry. As marketers, we must constantly master new strategies, skills, and even software.

Fueled by the internet boom, content marketing especially has seen explosive growth over the past five years. Last year, job listings for content marketers grew nearly 350% on Indeed.com between 2011 and 2015. This year, Fractl did a follow-up study on the hiring climate that showcases the rise of the hybrid content marketer—part artist, part technician. Paired with other industry reports, there are some pretty interesting insights on how the role of the content marketer is evolving.

So what are the qualifications for the ideal hybrid content marketing applicant? These are the top skills in-demand for content marketers today:

Experience vs. Education: Settling the Debate

While some professions–such as those in medicine and engineering–require extensive education on top of experience, marketers fall into a different category. They don’t necessarily need to have multiple degrees to stand out. A report from the Chronicle of Higher Education reveals that the media and communication industry places more weight on experience over traditional education and that companies in this industry are more flexible about hiring without any degree if the candidate’s a great fit. For new college grads, internships are the single most important credential.

Fractl’s study, which analyzed 3,300 job postings on Indeed.com specific to content marketing, revealed similar results—employers often don’t require a formal education beyond a bachelor’s degree. At the same time, the higher seniority the role is, the more likely a master’s degree is preferred.

Jack of All Trades: Growing Emphasis on Hybrid Skills

Since experience and on-the-job skills go hand in hand, it’s important to understand what the top in-demand skills are so you can identify which areas you already excel in and which skills you may need to improve. LinkedIn’s analysis of its user data, which highlights the most common skills listed on the user profiles of marketers and the most in-demand skills specified by marketing employers, reveals that companies are seeking a combination of tangible technical skills like SEO and creative skills like marketing strategy.

Our findings at Fractl are consistent with LinkedIn’s, and with over half of the content marketing job postings on Indeed.com calling for both technical and creative skills, we found that today’s ideal marketer must be part technician, part artist.

LinkedIn’s findings also reveal another interesting trend: most of the employee-listed skills and employer-demanded skills don’t correlate. While the most common skill listed by marketers is social media marketing, SEO/SEM is the top in-demand skill by employers—a skill that doesn’t even appear on the other list. Fortunately, low- and no-cost resources are becoming readily available for marketers of all levels to build and perfect these in-demand hybrid skills.

Technical Skills and Resources

According to a recent labor market outlook report from Indeed, talent is getting harder to find even as the rates of tertiary education are increasing. The report cites that the latest generation to enter the job market is lacking relevant job skills, especially technical skills. Yet employers report that they are hiring prospects who have yet to prove their professional tech competency even as the public becomes more familiar and reliant on technology in their personal lives.

Our study ranks SEO, HTML, Google Analytics, CSS, and programming as the most common technical skills that today’s content marketers need to master. With the help of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs), marketers can earn technical certifications through reputable institutions and instructors. Codecademy, for example, has become an established authority when it comes to teaching programming and coding skills ranging from basic HTML to more advanced languages like Python. Additionally, resources like Udemy boast a huge portfolio of courses in marketing, development, and more, while Coursera offers more advanced certifications for SEO and other specializations in conjunction with top institutions like UC Davis and Northwestern University.

Creative Skills and Resources

Top marketing executives are increasing their recruiting efforts for the second half of 2016 with content marketing topping the list of specialties in demand, according to a recent study by The Creative Group. The same report, however, reveals that 41% of executives are finding it difficult to hire skilled creative professionals to fill these vacancies. So, how can applicants prove they’re competent?

Creative skills differ from practical, technical skills because they’re less tangible and more conceptual. Our study at Fractl ranks the top five creative skills as writing, marketing strategy, content strategy, thought leadership, and brand development. Such skills are best learned through hands-on training, often acquired through experience; however, marketers can also learn from authoritative industry resources. Sites like Copyblogger are goldmines when it comes to free guides and widely recognized certifications, while marketing blogs like Marketo, MarketingProfs and Contently are valuable sources for staying current on industry news and best practices. Again, MOOCs also offer lectures and courses on creative skills like content marketing and branding.

Other important skills for content marketers that are creative/technical hybrids of their own include digital marketing and demand generation, which are often done in a marketing automation tool. Even if you’re not going to be the one pushing out the content you develop across marketing campaigns, you’ll still need a solid understanding of how to track its impact so you can optimize your content, not to mention prove its ROI.

With the marketing landscape constantly evolving, content marketing professionals trying to enter and advance their careers must understand and master the top tools and skills that employers demand. Regardless of your seniority or experience, a crucial takeaway is the importance of continuing education, especially outside of the traditional college setting. Luckily, there are many inexpensive resources and role-specific certifications to help you meet these demands and grow your skillsets.

What are the top skills that have proven to be critical to your success as a content marketer? Share them below!

 

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The Top Skills In-Demand for Today’s Hybrid Content Marketer was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com

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