The 10 Challenges Facing a CMO Faces When Trying to Lead the Customer Experience

Today's CMO faces a multitude of challenges and at or near the top of the list is overseeing the customer experience, assuming you believe the CMO should oversee it in first place. Last week in fact we posed the question Should the CMO Oversee the Whole Customer Experience?

The entire topic is at the heart of a recently-released report entitled, surprisingly enough Should the CMO Oversee the Whole Customer Experience? The report addresses the rewards and risks for a CMO to step into an all-encompassing role to deliver the end-to-end customer experience. Conversations with CMOs highlight 10 challenges that can inhibit a CMO’s success if an organization decides the CMO should step into this expanded role without changing how the business is run and the role of the CMO.

The 10 key challenges are as follows:

1. Ownership of the customer experience. Confusion abounds on who should lead (own) the customer experience. Many organizations are facing the issue of who should lead the “collected” customer experience.

2. Agile, design- thinking. Agile, design-thinking is required to lead changes needed for successful customer experience. Design thinking fosters cross-organizational collaboration, brainstorming, and execution.

3. Communication vs. innovation. Marketing is often focused on communications rather than innovation, product development and business innovation.

4. Measurement and metrics. Marketing only recently became more accustomed to being highly measured, so building the business case for the additional responsibilities of the “new” CMO role may be difficult. 

5. Consumerization of IT. The Consumerization of IT has created often unfulfilled customer experiences.
Great customer experiences require technologies beyond traditional email and marketing optimization. 

6. Immediate analysis and action. The abundance of data requires immediate analysis and action to provide meaningful mass personalization at scale.

7. Data management and utilization strategy. The plethora of data requires a data management and utilization strategy. Digital media serves as a strategic resource for sharpening customer focus because it is full of highly differentiated market and customer data, providing critical information from around the world, 24/7 and at a minimal cost.

8. Breaking down isolation. Marketing can be isolated from other departments that affect customer experience and that isolation hurts the ability to lead change. It takes a village to deliver superb customer experiences because there are so many touch points along a customer’s journey that are not “owned” by marketing.

9. Customer experience drives top-and bottom-line. Customer experience means bottom-line business, so it should be taken more seriously. Research has shown that it is less expensive to keep existing customers than to obtain new ones.

10. Cross-functional collaboration. Customer experience requires a highly collaborative individual to lead cross- functional collaboration. The role of Chief Customer Officer is all encompassing and requires a varied and vast skill set.

Download Should the CMO Oversee the Whole Customer Experience? and learn a lot more including the risks that come with the rewards for the CMO who steps into the Customer Experience role. 

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Are You Creating Meaningful Content?

Everyone’s creating all this online content, but does it matter?

More importantly, are you accomplishing your goals with the content you deliver, or are you simply spinning your wheels?

Well, if you’re doing it right, your content is highly effective and tightly tied to your ultimate business objectives. Otherwise, you’re just filling up space on an ignored web page.

Content marketing is the most effective and lucrative form of online marketing, because it not only works, it also builds a media asset at the same time. So it makes sense to understand exactly what makes content effective, right?

The key is meaning.

Effective content is meaningful

The simple definition of content marketing is giving away valuable information in order to sell something related.

Value is a function of perception. You want the people you’re trying to reach to perceive your content as valuable, even if people you’re not trying to reach perceive it as worthless.

This is an important point, even though it seems simplistic.

The snarling enemy of meaningful content is the urge to water it down for the lowest common denominator, in hope to either:

• (A) Reach an unreasonably mass audience, or
• (B) Not offend anyone

The result of that approach is content that means very little to anyone.

Meaningful content is an experience

As Sonia Simone has discussed over the years:

Content (what you say) without copywriting (how you say it) can be a complete waste of otherwise valuable information. But no matter how you say it, what you say has to have meaning to the right people.

Meaning is a function of what people believe before you find them. What people believe is how they view the world, and your content has to frame that view appropriately to be effective.

As a function of belief, meaning is derived from the context in which your desired audience views your content. From there, your content has to provoke a desirable reaction.

For example:

1. Content: 10 Tips for More Productive Writing
2. Context: Your ideal prospect believes productive writing is important
3. Reaction: Your ideal prospect believes he can now write more efficiently

While everything we perceive is technically an experience, experiences begin to become meaningful at the reaction stage. It’s at that point that your content is good.

But is it great (meaning highly effective)?

No.

Meaningful experiences involve action

A higher grade of experience involves active participation from that ideal prospect. So, beyond the belief that your advice is beneficial, your ideal prospect actually acts on your advice.

1. Content: 10 Tips for More Productive Writing
2. Context: Your ideal prospect believes productive writing is important
3. Reaction: Your ideal prospect believes he can now write more efficiently
4. Action: Your ideal prospect implements your productivity tips

The action taken can vary. It can be acting directly on your advice, sharing your content, buying your software that helps implement the advice, buying your book for more details, or hiring you as a personal productivity coach.

At this point, your content is truly meaningful and truly aligned with your objectives. There’s only one level that’s better.

The content holy grail: results

What’s better than action? It’s action that leads to beneficial results.

Now, this won’t happen with every piece of content. In fact, it’s safer to say that reader (or viewer or listener) results happen thanks to the totality of the story you tell over time.

But let’s look at it in its simplest form:

1. Content: 10 Tips for More Productive Writing
2. Context: Your ideal prospect believes productive writing is important
3. Reaction: Your ideal prospect believes he can now write more efficiently
4. Action: Your ideal prospect implements your productivity tips
5. Result: Your ideal prospect is a more productive writer

It doesn’t matter whether or not you know about these results — you’ve now earned a true fan. Odds are, a true fan is going to tell someone.

That’s the fantastic last part of a cycle that repeats itself over and over in social media, all thanks to content marketing.

And all the while, you’re building a media asset on your own domain that has independent value beyond the cash flow you pull in every month.

You are building that asset, right?

Editor’s note: The original version of this post was published on January 12, 2011.

About the author

Brian Clark

Brian Clark is CEO of Rainmaker Digital, founder of Copyblogger, host of Unemployable, and evangelist for the Rainmaker Platform.

The post Are You Creating Meaningful Content? appeared first on Copyblogger.

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7 Ways to Use Cognitive Biases to Increase Email Signups

Are all of the decisions you make rational?

You’d like to say yes, but I’ll let you in on a secret: none of us make rational decisions 100% of the time. As human beings, we are not perfect in the way we act or in the way we think. As such, from time to time we make suboptimal decisions that we are unaware of! Our brain finds a way to stray away from rational thinking, and instead acts on cognitive biases as a result of trying to simplify information.

The existence of cognitive biases is not something you and I can change. What we can do is use these cognitive biases to increase email signups and the conversion rates of your sign up forms.

I don’t want to keep you waiting longer, so without further ado, here are seven cognitive biases that can be countered to help you hack your email signups.

1. Loss Aversion

This cognitive bias refers to the excess influence that the fear of losing out on something has over the positive effect of gaining something. According to Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (the first ones demonstrate the effect), the pain from losing ‘X’ is greater than the joy of gaining ‘X’.

Regardless of whether or not you actually sell a product/service, or just blog, this irrational way of thinking can be attacked to help you grow your email lists.

Bounce Exchange puts this bias to work by simply asking visitors if they are okay with losing out on revenue. The overlay does not directly ask the visitor if they want to monetize their traffic, rather points to the loss, and uses that as a trigger to persuade.

Use of loss aversion

In order to combat the loss aversion that visitors may have, you need to rewrite your copy to reflect the loss that visitors will encounter if they do not opt-in to your offer. If you convey a message to visitors that they are losing out on more leads and revenue you’ll strike fear and urgency in the visitor. When you are able to create a sense of urgency, your conversion rates are sure to increase. So let’s take a look at how to do that with the Framing Effect.

2. Framing Effect

The framing effect is an irrational way of thinking, in which people react to one offer, presented in different forms – depending on the light in which the choice is presented – in completely different ways.

The bottom line, in this case: people tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented.

Let’s go back to that last example.

“Do you want to convert your bounce traffic into revenue?” The question is asked in a positive frame; they don’t come out and state a risk rather they point to a benefit. As such, the large majority of the visitors will look to avoid risk, leading them to select, “Yes, let’s do this.”

3. Bandwagon Effect

The bandwagon effect is in essence the same thing as ‘social proof’. The bandwagon effect is what leads to an increase in the acceptance rate of ideas and trends based solely on an increase of acceptance by others.

Tapping into social proof is the best way to combat the bandwagon effect. When someone sees that either a large group of colleagues has bought in or a group of well-known influencers has joined the deal too, the visitor is likely to sign up for what you are offering.

The following is a partial view of the homepage of the 4 Hour Work Week. Aside from properly using the call to action, ‘Start Here’, the site also makes terrific use of all the site’s real estate. The two longer testimonials are placed to the right, while three shorter, and very well known publications are placed to the left. Coincidence? No, it’s capitalizing on the F-Pattern that ensures social proof is noticed.

Using social proof to hack email signups

Anyone doubting the benefits of GrowthHackers is instantly convinced otherwise. Not only do they mention the quantity, but they also mention the quality.

Social proof to increase email signups

Whether or not they were going to join before, the tide has turned to a point that not signing up seems almost inconceivable.

4. Commitment Heuristic

“Don’t be a quitter” is a statement that all of us have probably heard from others or something we tell ourselves. The commitment heuristic causes us to believe that since we’ve already invested in a decision or a certain project, we should continue to do so.

At the last startup I worked at I fell victim to the commitment heuristic. I worked at the same startup for almost three years, even though I could tell after a year and a half that it was going nowhere. Why did I stay? I did not want to be a quitter. I told myself that I had to stay the course as I had already invested time and energy into it.

When it comes to lead generation, your business should capitalize on this mindset. Here’s an example from Neil Patel from his website Quick Sprout. He knows that the majority of his visitors create content. He also knows that what they need is for their content to be “king”.

The phrase “better content” makes perfect sense. Pointing out to potential leads that they can take their game to the next level – whatever that might be – is a great tactic to implement in order to use this cognitive bias to increase email signups.

Getting the visitor to strive for improvement

5. Anchoring Effect

The anchoring effect is in essence our mind taking in a first piece of information and attaching to it too much weight when we then make a decision later on. That first piece of information is acting as an anchor (our brain is at a standstill).

The most common use of the anchoring effect for business growth is in sales. As pointed out by Neil Patel in an earlier Kissmetrics post on psychological tips that improve product pricing, “For example, if someone mentions “$300” in regards to a SaaS product that you are considering buying, then your mind is anchored by that number. Thus, when you see the true price — $30 — then you might think “Wow! That’s a great price!” Why? Because you were thinking $300 before”.

This idea however can also be implemented to increase email signups. For example, let’s say you sell a digital product. Either on the page that the visitor is on, or one he/she was directed from, the product was advertised for $59.99. Once the person has seen that price, this is the “anchor”. To convert the visitor into a lead, you offer the same product for $45.99 (for example) in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter.

Here’s an example from dapulse. You’ve got your standard pricing tables. No big deal.

Acts as an anchor

The goal is for every visitor to pick a plan. That however won’t happen. After seeing the above prices, the visitor continues to scroll down, and here is where DaPulse makes use of anchoring to instantly generate new leads.

The visitor came to their site knowing that he/she was looking to improve their project management process. The highlighted “Standard” plan acts as an anchor for this free offer, enabling the company to maximize email signups.

6. Confirmation Bias

The confirmation bias is, in short, one’s fear of new information, and thus leaning on current views to make decisions. Technically speaking, this is our tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms our current train of thought instead of trying to see if our current belief is correct or not.

Here’s a relevant example for our daily life: If you’re convinced that caffeine makes you more alert, you’re going to feel more alert when you take in caffeinated beverages —and you won’t when you are given anything else.

Like the other cognitive biases, in this case too, you can capitalize on this type of thinking in order to increase email signups by assuring the visitor that their current beliefs are correct. Singing up to your newsletter will only strengthen that belief.

Case in point, Groove. In the “Startup Journey” blog, the text refers to their success and uses it as a selling point to other entrepreneurs. The takeaway for me (someone that is subscribed to their blog) is that they are hitting these results. If we join them for lessons, we’ll be able to do that too. There is no need for me to go elsewhere.

Using the confirmation bias

Whether or not what they experience becomes reality for me and others is another story. The same goes for that third cup of coffee – that caffeine may or may not be kicking in (though you think it is).

7. Belief Bias

Have you ever come across an offer and skipped on opting in because it sounded “too good to be true”. Even if the offer is the exact same thing you are a promoting, an offer that gives off a vibe of being too good to be true won’t convert at as a high of a rate as you would have expected.

In order to capitalize on this bias, the email signup form that you are using must focus on showing visitors the overall result that the product or newsletter will have on them. Don’t promise anything or zoom in on the benefits, rather relay the realistic results of its use to the visitor (like in this example).

Here are two overlays from Cloudways, one older and one that was in action recently. I don’t have results for either campaign, but odds are that overlay number two was much more successful because it’s more realistic (sorry, don’t completely buy the “double” aspect).

Too good to be true
Believable offer

I’d like to think that I am rational, but this is one example in which I would have skipped a great offer because it was “too good to be true”.

Time to Implement

The different psychological tactics and strategies that we can implement are endless. In working on this post I was blown away by all the different biases and irrational ways of thinking that cloud our minds on a daily basis.

We are an imperfect breed and now it is your time to pick out one of these cognitive biases to capitalize on in order to grow your business. I’m curious, which one will you be choosing?

About the Author: Ty is a digital marketing enthusiast that can’t get enough social media marketing and content marketing. He is the inbound marketing manager at StoreYa where he spends his days searching for the newest social marketing scoop and creating amazingly awesome content. If you’d like to chat with him, feel free to connect with him on Twitter or LinkedIn.

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Top 10 Modern Marketing Posts of 2015

One of the best ways to understand your audience is to see what content resonates with them. And if you have a blog with analytics installed, which seems to be standard with all blogging software, you can look at the top posts of the year.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the most successful blogs get significant traffic from older posts. When an older post starts getting lots of search traffic, it becomes a gift that keeps on giving. So rather than just look at our top 10 or top 20 posts, we are going to look at two different top 10 lists.

Today we will review the top 10 posts that were published in 2015. Later this week we will look at the top 10 posts that were published prior to 2015.

1. 100 Things You Are Doing Wrong on Social Media

This post is exactly what the title says it is. One-hundred things that you should not be doing any more on social media. There's no introduction. No links. No GIFs. Just a list. And it attracted a lot of visits. If you are interested in the behind-the-scenes, this was the second post I wrote after joining the Oracle Marketing Cloud. And I wrote it on my iPad while traveling in Africa. 

2. Oracle Marketing Cloud: Leading the Way in Modern Marketing Execution

3. Oracle Chosen as Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant

These two posts were both announcements of high performing results in Gartner analyst reports. If you are wondering if this stuff matters. It does. If a prospect is reviewing your solution, this provides third-party validation. Customers also appreciate these types of reports because it confirms their decision, and they can point to the reports if anyone needs more information about their marketing technology choices.

4. 12 Awesome Content Marketing Ideas That Aren’t Blog Posts

2015 was the year when marketers wanted to create more content, and that number grows even bigger in 2016. This infographic provided marketers with new ideas how to create more content.

5. Celebrate the 2015 Markie Award Finalists!

The Markie Awards are a big deal at the Oracle Marketing Cloud. They honor the best modern marketers and everyone wants to know who the finalists were. It is interesting that this post performed better than the post announcing the winners. And speaking of Markies, nominations are now open.

6. 2015: The Modern Marketing Year in Review

Our two crowd-sourced ebooks reviewing 2015 and looking forward to 2016 were launched with this post. We wanted to set an ungated ebook up against a gated ebook to see which could reach a wider audience. The ungated ebook was embedded in this post, and nearly all visitors to the post viewed the ebook. It has also recently exploded on Slideshare.

7. The Path to Adaptive Marketing: An Introduction

A thoughtful, high-level post that introduces readers to the latest thinking in modern marketing from our head of product marketing.

8. Avoid these 10 Marketing Automation Rookie Mistakes

One of our superstar marketing automation customers wrote this post to alert new users of any marketing automation platform of the pitfalls they need to avoid when getting started.

9. Why Your Team Needs a Lead Scoring Model

A good post about how you can begin to think about creating your own lead scoring model.

10. Facebook Integration a Win-Win for Consumers and Marketers

A post about a product update snuck into the top 10. This post announced the latest integration between Facebook and the Oracle Marketing Cloud. The launch of lead ads connected ads on the world's largest social network with our cross-channel marketing software. Again, this shows that our readers care about product innovation and announcements.

Look for that other top 10 of older posts that continued to attract readers in 2015 soon. In the meantime, download the Modern Marketing Essentials Guide to Content Marketing.

 

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Join the Copyblogger Team for Our First Content Challenge

Starting a week from today, the Copyblogger team is doing something we’ve never done before … and we want you to join us.

We’re hosting our first three-week Copyblogger Content Challenge. These brand-new challenges are designed to give you in-depth education around key content marketing topics.

The goal of our challenges is simple:

We help you master each topic — and you put that information directly to use to grow your business.

Challenge #1: Create your cornerstone content

For the January 2016 challenge, we’re teaching you how to create powerful, audience-building cornerstone content for your website.

The three recent articles below will help you understand what cornerstone content is and why it’s important to have it in place on your site.

• Your Cornerstone Content Blueprint: Answers to 9 Common Questions
• A Practical Approach to Using Powerful Cornerstone Content on Your Site
• 11 Essential Ingredients Every Cornerstone Content Page Needs [Infographic]

How much does this in-depth cornerstone content education cost? Nothing.

Join us for the Copyblogger Content Challenge

Why is cornerstone content important?

Website owners use cornerstone content to answer the most important questions their newest prospects have.

Cornerstone content pages are informative, instructive, and they help your prospects understand the crucial information they need to interact with your business.

Once you have your cornerstone content in place on your website, you’ll begin benefitting from better search engine rankings for the terms you target. And cornerstone content builds your authority, too.

Here’s what you get when you join us for the Copyblogger Content Challenge:

• In-depth instruction on planning, writing, and creating cornerstone content pages
• Support and encouragement from the Copyblogger team: Sonia Simone, Pamela Wilson, Stefanie Flaxman, and Demian Farnworth
• Community support from your fellow challenge members in our temporary “pop-up” forum
• A live educational webinar about cornerstone content — exclusive to our challenge participants

As we mentioned above, there’s absolutely no cost to join us for this challenge. We only ask that you commit to devoting a little time each day to working through the materials.

Our promise is to keep things fun and easy, so you make fast progress and enjoy the process.

We’d love to help you set up your cornerstone content and sail into 2016 with a powerful, content-driven website!

Join us for the Copyblogger Content Challenge

Remember, there’s no charge. Register to get started! We’re looking forward to having you in January’s Copyblogger Content Challenge.

About the author

Pamela Wilson

Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital. Follow her on Twitter, and find more from her at BigBrandSystem.com.

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Value Proposition Copywriting: 5 word pictures that got more people to buy

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Writing a value proposition is a lot like drawing a jellyfish in a game of Pictionary. Let me explain …

I was at a party recently where several people were playing a fiery game of Pictionary. One person who was particularly bad at the game started drawing a cylinder with a label on it.

Thick befuddlement settled on the guessing team.

After several wild guesses, the team rightly guessed that it was a jar of jelly. Then, much to the team’s dismay, the artist began to draw another picture. This time, luckily, his drawing clearly depicted a standard fish.

The word he held in his hand (the team finally discovered) was “jellyfish.” Jar of jelly + fish = jellyfish

What the artist failed to realize in the heat of the game was that jellyfish are much easier to draw than either of those two things separately or together.  It’s a half dome for the body; squiggly lines for the tentacles. Jellyfish. Next!

Too often, when trying to communicate something (like our value proposition) to our customers, we take the long way around. We use abstract language. We get lost in details that aren’t important.

People use their senses to experience the world. People’s thoughts are usually pictures of those sensate experiences (reality).

 

So when:

1. A picture that closely resembles

2. An actual jellyfish

gets drawn in a game of Pictionary, the team is more likely to get a point. It’s only once removed from the reality of a jellyfish.

 

But, when:

1. A picture closely resembles

2. The two component sounds that make-up

3. A word that symbolizes

4. A picture that closely resembles

5. An actual jellyfish

gets drawn in the game of Pictionary, the team is less likely to get a point. It’s four times removed from the reality of a jellyfish, so it’s harder for the team to connect the artist’s depiction to a real jellyfish.

 

Most language happens twice removed from the reality. Necessarily then, a value proposition is the reality of value twice removed.

As Wittgenstein proposes twice (bordering on thrice) removed, “the proposition is a picture of reality.” (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 4.01)

1. The proposition is

2. A picture of

3. Reality

Our goal as marketers/copywriters, is to use language to communicate our offer in a way that minimizes the distance between these levels of symbolism.

 

In other words, the better your prospect can visualize the value you are proposing with your … wait for it … value proposition, the more likely they are to say “yes” to your offer.

This is true at every type of value proposition (primary, prospect, product, process) MECLABS teaches.

The point is, if you want to be clear about your own value proposition, use pictures. If you’re a copywriter (which everyone in a business should be), use word-pictures.

How do we do that?

Below are five quick examples of great value proposition word pictures you can pull from for inspiration.

 
You might also like

MarketingSherpa Summit 2016 — At the Bellagio in Las Vegas, February 22-24

Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions

Value Proposition: Lessons from interviews with 50 business leaders

Value Proposition: How to use social media to help discover why customers buy from you

Value Proposition: A simple spreadsheet to help you categorize your products’ value

Powerful Value Propositions

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New Features & Updates: Free Images, Quicker List Building, and Faster Delivery

We’ve added new features, made some enhancements and bug fixes. Check out the highlights of the December 9th, 2015 release:

Editor

Finding the right, high-quality image for your email is important, and also challenging. A nice visual can help you communicate your message and get your reader to engage more. The quality of the image can affect how subscribers perceive your email – whether it is professional or not. This is why in our latest release, we’ve integrated Pixabay free, high-quality image search into the VerticalResponse email editor. Now you can:

• Browse by category and search over 530,000 royalty free images
• Automatically insert images into your email without copying and pasting, or downloading and uploading

Contacts

List growth is a major component of successful email marketing. Our new quick ‘add contact’ widget allows you to type or paste contacts in seconds. You can enter names and email addresses up to three at a time, or cut and paste (up to 50 email addresses at once). This is great if you used to send your newsletter from your own email client but have since “upgraded” to sending from VerticalResponse.

Signup Forms

Signup forms on the web are another great way to grow your email list. The best practice is to clearly explain why the visitor should join your list and then ask permission to collect whatever data is necessary (email address, name, location, etc.). With our new update, you can choose, right up front, if you want to publish your signup web page on Verticalresponse.com, or if you would rather indicate the data you want to collect during signup and generate the HTML code that can then be embedded on your own website. The choice is now yours.

Billing

New credit card? No problem! It happens, your credit card expires, and you get a new one. Or perhaps as a marketing consultant you want to charge VerticalResponse account fees to a client’s credit card. Now you can log in and update your billing info: add, update, and delete cards from your account.

Chrome Browser

Google recently updated the Chrome web browser, and some customers had difficulty with the email editor. We’ve resolved these issues by improving compatibility with the Chrome web browser. Creating emails is now back to smooth sailing.

Delivery

Customers with large audiences (greater than 50,000 contacts) can now get campaigns out faster – twice as fast in fact! Contact us to learn more about our high-volume pricing plans!

All product updates can be found here.

© 2015, Linzi Breckenridge. All rights reserved.

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