10 SIGNIFICANT THINGS YOU LIKELY DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA BUT SHOULD YOU PROBABLY WON'T BELIEVE SOME OF THESE FACTS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES, BUT THE STUDIES DON'T LIE (WE HOPE). TEST THEM YOURSELF. BY KEVAN LEE 0 COMMENTS EMAIL We love to make decisions and form strategies based on statistics. It’s why we A/B test and how we change directions on our social sharing. Who doesn’t love a good statistic, especially one that has an actionable next step? You’re likely to find a sea of statistics for social media--I know I’m amazed at how many are out there. My favorite finds are those that are just a bit surprising or unique or even counterintuitive. I’ve saved some of the best social media stats I’ve found over the past few months and I’m happy to share them here with you. Keep reading to see some fun, surprising, and (you guessed it) actionable stats for how you can better share on social media. Got any stats that you’ve found helpful? I’d love to hear about them in the comments. 1. YOUR BIGGEST ADVOCATES HAVE THE FEWEST FOLLOWERS When looking at your social media monitoring strategy, note that your brand/company mentions on social will likely not come from social’s biggest players. Very few, in fact, will. Social monitoring website Mention analyzed over 1 billion social mentions from the past two years, and in their analysis they found that 91% of mentions come from people with fewer than 500 followers. And these are potential brand advocates--only 6% of the mentions in this study were deemed overtly negative. What you can do with this stat: Putting this stat another way, fewer than 1 out of every 10 mention will come from a power user. You can prioritize these power users if you want, but it’s also important to give a quick and delightful response to those with few followers--the vast majority of those talking about you. 2. TWITTER HAS 6 DISTINCT COMMUNICATION NETWORKS The Pew Research Center and the Social Media Research Foundation combined on a report that analyzed thousands of Twitter conversations to come up with six distinct communication networks. Which of these six do you most closely identify with? What you can do with this stat: Tight crowds and community clusters seem like apt groupings for brands interested in a lot of engagement. Support networks, too, can be a type of communication network for brands, especially if you are doing customer support on Twitter. Analyze your own place in these Twitter networks to see where you fit and if you need to change your strategy to mix with a different group. 3. MARKETERS SAY WRITTEN CONTENT TRUMPS VISUALS Social Media Examiner’s annual survey of nearly 3,000 marketers leads to a ton of insights into how marketers think about social media and sharing. Interestingly enough, in a social landscape dominated by visuals, it is written content that most resonates with marketers. Over half of marketers (58%) claim written content is their most important form of social content. Visual content came in second (19%.) What you can do with this stat: Original written content can be a great opportunity for thought leadership, authority, and brand awareness. When you’re creating new content to share, keep in mind the power of storytelling. If you’d rather zig while the others zag, this stat shows you some fertile ground for developing lesser practiced strategies, like focusing on visual content. 4. YOU HAVE LESS THAN AN HOUR TO RESPOND ON TWITTER Consumers expect a lot from you on Twitter, as recent research by Lithium Technologies confirms. The real-time nature of Twitter has led to incredible expectations. According to Lithium, 53% of users who tweet at a brand expect a response within the hour. The percentage increases to 72% for those with a complaint. What you can do with this stat: Tools like Must Be Present can help you track your response time on Twitter, or you can invest in software like Spark Central to stay on top of your customer support tweets. At the very least, consider the timeliness of your response to your Twitter followers: Either grab a monitoring service to manage your timeline or get really good at checking your Twitter email alerts. 5. LATE NIGHT IS THE BEST TIME FOR RETWEETS TrackMaven analyzed over 1.7 million tweets to come up with data behind the best practices for earning a retweet. The best time of day to tweet for a retweet? After-hours, between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. ET. This advice follows the Late-Night Infomercial Effect (share when share volume is lower, and your content has a greater chance to stand out), so it makes sense to see that engagement after hours would be highest. Track Maven also found that Sundays are the best day of the week to get retweets and that tweeting with the word “Retweet” or with all caps or exclamation points leads to more retweets. What you can do with this data: Test out the after-hours theory with some of your own tweets and see how engagement changes based on the time of day and day of week that you tweet. If you’re feeling particularly bold, you can try all caps and exclamation points, too. 6. FRIDAYS ARE FACEBOOK’S BEST DAY FOR ENGAGEMENT The Social Intelligence Report from Adobe analyzed over 225 billion Facebook posts from the past two years to come up with some data-backed recommendations for Facebook marketers. Their research on the best day to post pointed to a clear winner: Fridays, which receive more comments, likes, and shares than any other day of the week. What you can do with this stat: Be sure that your posting schedule includes a Friday post, and you might even consider saving your best stuff for the end of the week. 7. PHOTOS DRIVE ENGAGEMENT ON FACEBOOK PAGES It’s likely that a stat about the power of visual content is not surprising to you, but how about a stat of this magnitude? According to Social Bakers, 87% of a Facebook page’s interactions happen on photo posts. No other content type receives more than 4% of interactions. What you can do with this stat: The obvious takeaway here is to post more photos--and not just any photos. Choose photos that support your post or tell a story on their own. Certainly, Facebook pages are already embracing photos as posts: 75% of page updates are photos. 8. FACEBOOK, PINTEREST AND TWITTER DRIVE THE MOST TRAFFIC Social sharing site Shareaholic revealed an interesting split in the way that social media sites refer traffic back to a website. Turns out, the data points to social being a source of either quantity or quality. In terms of quantity, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are the top three referrers of traffic. The Shareaholic study looked at a four-month period of data (December through March), covering more than 300,000 websites. In their study of engaged traffic, the lowest-performing sites for referral volume came out on top for engagement. YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn ranked as the top three sources for referrals in terms of time on site, pages per visit, and bounce rate. Social referrals engaged What you can do with this data: Get involved in social media accordingly. If you’re after a big reach and spreading brand awareness, go with Facebook and Twitter, and think long and hard about joining Pinterest, too. If you’re interested in more qualified traffic, then be sure to invest time in Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. These stats recommend a broad social strategy, if you have the time and resources to pull it off. 9. AIM FOR 28, 118 OR 385 INTERACTIONS PER POST (IT DEPENDS ON YOUR TOTAL FANS) As Facebook page reach has declined, we marketers are left wondering what constitutes good engagement these days. Earlier this year, Social Bakers analyzed more than 40,000 pages to see exactly where the average engagement lies for pages of all sizes. Pages with 1 to 9,999 fans: 28 interactions per post 10,000 to 99,999 fans: 118 interactions per post.100,000 to 499,999 fans: 385 interactions per post. Interactions represent the total of comments, shares, and likes. In addition to the benchmark data above, Social Bakers also found that interactions on a particular post are directly correlated to a post’s reach. The more engagement a post gets, the more people will see it. What you can do with this stat: Measure your Facebook page’s success against the benchmarks in this Social Bakers study. As time goes on, reach and interactions may continue falling, so these targets could be great to aim for but not the end of the world if you miss. 10. THERE’S A BEST DAY FOR EVERYTHING ON PINTEREST The Pinterest blog recently revealed which categories get the most engagement on each day of the week. Here’s how the calendar lays out: Monday: Fitness Tuesday: Technology Wednesday: Inspirational quotes Thursday: Fashion Friday: Humor Saturday: Travel Sunday: Food and crafts What you can do with this data: If possible, create a Pinterest board that touches on each of these seven topics, then build this sort of specific sharing into your Pinterest schedule. RECAP Data and statistics like these can give you a good starting point for testing out your own action steps and strategies. Start with these stats, test them for yourself, and find the best system that works for you. Then come back and share! I’d love to hear how it goes for you. Which of these social media stats stood out to you? Which ones might you act on? Do you have any favorite stats that have driven your social media decisions lately?

10 SIGNIFICANT THINGS YOU LIKELY DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA BUT SHOULD

YOU PROBABLY WON'T BELIEVE SOME OF THESE FACTS ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIES, BUT THE STUDIES DON'T LIE (WE HOPE). TEST THEM YOURSELF.

BY KEVAN LEE

0  COMMENTS

EMAIL

We love to make decisions and form strategies based on statistics. It’s why we A/B test and how we change directions on our social sharing.

Who doesn’t love a good statistic, especially one that has an actionable next step?

You’re likely to find a sea of statistics for social media--I know I’m amazed at how many are out there. My favorite finds are those that are just a bit surprising or unique or even counterintuitive.

I’ve saved some of the best social media stats I’ve found over the past few months and I’m happy to share them here with you. Keep reading to see some fun, surprising, and (you guessed it) actionable stats for how you can better share on social media. Got any stats that you’ve found helpful? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

1. YOUR BIGGEST ADVOCATES HAVE THE FEWEST FOLLOWERS

When looking at your social media monitoring strategy, note that your brand/company mentions on social will likely not come from social’s biggest players. Very few, in fact, will.

Social monitoring website Mention analyzed over 1 billion social mentions from the past two years, and in their analysis they found that 91% of mentions come from people with fewer than 500 followers.

And these are potential brand advocates--only 6% of the mentions in this study were deemed overtly negative.

What you can do with this stat: Putting this stat another way, fewer than 1 out of every 10 mention will come from a power user. You can prioritize these power users if you want, but it’s also important to give a quick and delightful response to those with few followers--the vast majority of those talking about you.

2. TWITTER HAS 6 DISTINCT COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

The Pew Research Center and the Social Media Research Foundation combined on a report that analyzed thousands of Twitter conversations to come up with six distinct communication networks. Which of these six do you most closely identify with?

What you can do with this stat: Tight crowds and community clusters seem like apt groupings for brands interested in a lot of engagement. Support networks, too, can be a type of communication network for brands, especially if you are doing customer support on Twitter. Analyze your own place in these Twitter networks to see where you fit and if you need to change your strategy to mix with a different group.

3. MARKETERS SAY WRITTEN CONTENT TRUMPS VISUALS

Social Media Examiner’s annual survey of nearly 3,000 marketers leads to a ton of insights into how marketers think about social media and sharing.

Interestingly enough, in a social landscape dominated by visuals, it is written content that most resonates with marketers. Over half of marketers (58%) claim written content is their most important form of social content. Visual content came in second (19%.)

What you can do with this stat: Original written content can be a great opportunity for thought leadership, authority, and brand awareness. When you’re creating new content to share, keep in mind the power of storytelling. If you’d rather zig while the others zag, this stat shows you some fertile ground for developing lesser practiced strategies, like focusing on visual content.

4. YOU HAVE LESS THAN AN HOUR TO RESPOND ON TWITTER

Consumers expect a lot from you on Twitter, as recent research by Lithium Technologies confirms. The real-time nature of Twitter has led to incredible expectations. According to Lithium, 53% of users who tweet at a brand expect a response within the hour. The percentage increases to 72% for those with a complaint.

What you can do with this stat: Tools like Must Be Present can help you track your response time on Twitter, or you can invest in software like Spark Central to stay on top of your customer support tweets. At the very least, consider the timeliness of your response to your Twitter followers: Either grab a monitoring service to manage your timeline or get really good at checking your Twitter email alerts.

5. LATE NIGHT IS THE BEST TIME FOR RETWEETS

TrackMaven analyzed over 1.7 million tweets to come up with data behind the best practices for earning a retweet. The best time of day to tweet for a retweet? After-hours, between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. ET.

This advice follows the Late-Night Infomercial Effect (share when share volume is lower, and your content has a greater chance to stand out), so it makes sense to see that engagement after hours would be highest. Track Maven also found that Sundays are the best day of the week to get retweets and that tweeting with the word “Retweet” or with all caps or exclamation points leads to more retweets.

What you can do with this data: Test out the after-hours theory with some of your own tweets and see how engagement changes based on the time of day and day of week that you tweet. If you’re feeling particularly bold, you can try all caps and exclamation points, too.

6. FRIDAYS ARE FACEBOOK’S BEST DAY FOR ENGAGEMENT

The Social Intelligence Report from Adobe analyzed over 225 billion Facebook posts from the past two years to come up with some data-backed recommendations for Facebook marketers. Their research on the best day to post pointed to a clear winner: Fridays, which receive more comments, likes, and shares than any other day of the week.

What you can do with this stat: Be sure that your posting schedule includes a Friday post, and you might even consider saving your best stuff for the end of the week.

7. PHOTOS DRIVE ENGAGEMENT ON FACEBOOK PAGES

It’s likely that a stat about the power of visual content is not surprising to you, but how about a stat of this magnitude? According to Social Bakers, 87% of a Facebook page’s interactions happen on photo posts. No other content type receives more than 4% of interactions.

What you can do with this stat: The obvious takeaway here is to post more photos--and not just any photos. Choose photos that support your post or tell a story on their own. Certainly, Facebook pages are already embracing photos as posts: 75% of page updates are photos.

8. FACEBOOK, PINTEREST AND TWITTER DRIVE THE MOST TRAFFIC

Social sharing site Shareaholic revealed an interesting split in the way that social media sites refer traffic back to a website. Turns out, the data points to social being a source of either quantity or quality.

In terms of quantity, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter are the top three referrers of traffic. The Shareaholic study looked at a four-month period of data (December through March), covering more than 300,000 websites. In their study of engaged traffic, the lowest-performing sites for referral volume came out on top for engagement.

YouTube, Google+, and LinkedIn ranked as the top three sources for referrals in terms of time on site, pages per visit, and bounce rate. Social referrals engaged What you can do with this data: Get involved in social media accordingly. If you’re after a big reach and spreading brand awareness, go with Facebook and Twitter, and think long and hard about joining Pinterest, too. If you’re interested in more qualified traffic, then be sure to invest time in Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. These stats recommend a broad social strategy, if you have the time and resources to pull it off.

9. AIM FOR 28, 118 OR 385 INTERACTIONS PER POST (IT DEPENDS ON YOUR TOTAL FANS)

As Facebook page reach has declined, we marketers are left wondering what constitutes good engagement these days. Earlier this year, Social Bakers analyzed more than 40,000 pages to see exactly where the average engagement lies for pages of all sizes. Pages with 1 to 9,999 fans: 28 interactions per post 10,000 to 99,999 fans: 118 interactions per post.100,000 to 499,999 fans: 385 interactions per post.

Interactions represent the total of comments, shares, and likes. In addition to the benchmark data above, Social Bakers also found that interactions on a particular post are directly correlated to a post’s reach. The more engagement a post gets, the more people will see it.

What you can do with this stat: Measure your Facebook page’s success against the benchmarks in this Social Bakers study. As time goes on, reach and interactions may continue falling, so these targets could be great to aim for but not the end of the world if you miss.

10. THERE’S A BEST DAY FOR EVERYTHING ON PINTEREST

The Pinterest blog recently revealed which categories get the most engagement on each day of the week. Here’s how the calendar lays out:

• Monday: Fitness
• Tuesday: Technology
• Wednesday: Inspirational quotes
• Thursday: Fashion
• Friday: Humor
• Saturday: Travel
• Sunday: Food and crafts

What you can do with this data: If possible, create a Pinterest board that touches on each of these seven topics, then build this sort of specific sharing into your Pinterest schedule.

RECAP

Data and statistics like these can give you a good starting point for testing out your own action steps and strategies. Start with these stats, test them for yourself, and find the best system that works for you. Then come back and share! I’d love to hear how it goes for you.

Which of these social media stats stood out to you? Which ones might you act on? Do you have any favorite stats that have driven your social media decisions lately?

How to Grab Mobile Marketing’s Low-Hanging Fruit While Avoiding the Bad Apples – Part 1

How to Grab Mobile Marketing’s Low-Hanging Fruit While Avoiding the Bad Apples – Part 1

JUN 24TH, 2014 — BY MARK KERSTEEN

Recently, I was interviewed by our friends at MobileTechCreate. If you’re interested in mobile (and how could you not be?), we highly suggest you give them a look. They rule.

Mobile is always on my mind. It takes up more of my mental real estate with each passing day. I go to bed, I wake up, and I stumble onto something like this infographic that Kelsey Jones at SearchEngineJournal posted from WebDamSolutions on the state of the mobile landscape. I can’t be the only marketer who read that, sat up, and took (even more) notice. The stats tell quite a story: Americans spend 2 hours a day looking at their mobile screens, 57% of people will NOT recommend a company with a bad mobile website, and 85% of users prefer native mobile apps to mobile websites.

Think about that. If those three reasons don’t have you considering mobile-izing your marketing, I don’t imagine anything will.

And, from what I’ve seen, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I can’t speak for every marketer, not even close. But, I have witnessed a strong shift in the way many marketers think about reaching their customers. At the recent Incite Summit: West, customer-centricity was a major theme. Many of the biggest brands—from SAP and Old Navy to Yahoo and Facebook—touched on how new technology and mobile are helping them reach this goal. After all, it makes sense to go where your customers are going, and in many cases, they’re all over mobile.

However, there is a right way and a wrong way to do mobile marketing. Whether you’re just getting started or you live and breathe “mobile first,” the following examples and advice will help shape your mobile strategy.

Customer-Centricity

Marketing executives say that “customer-centricity” will have the biggest impact on their role this year. Yet 92% of those we polled at Incite Marketing and Communications say they have work to do to get closer to their customers. Focusing on mobile is one way to take a big step towards your audience.

After all, the goal of mobile marketing is to reach customers at the right time with the most relevant offer. Isn’t that what customer-centricity is all about?

I spoke with Brent Cohler, Director of Mobile Product Marketing for SAP, who brought up an excellent example of mobile marketing done right.

La Société de Transport de Montreal (STM), the public transportation agency for Montreal, used mobile to reach and exceed their customer-centricity goals. Faced with the hefty remit of increasing ridership by 40 percent before 2020, STM went way beyond just printing new posters to attract their most underrepresented demographic: young people who prefer the freedom of their cars to public transportation.

STM worked with SAP to create Merci, an app targeting this younger demographic. It provides “instant gratification” for users, including alerts about delays using geo-location tools and the best times to arrive at a station to get a seat. Most innovatively, STM partnered with over 350 local merchants and thousands of events throughout Montreal to provide app users with relevant offers. These offers were not just based on an individual’s profile and preferences; they were geo-targeted and time-based. For example, they provide riders with, discounts on coffee on the way to the office, and happy-hour specials on the way home.

The results: in just the first six months of the pilot program, Merci’s 20,000 users spent more time on public transit, and 43 percent were using public transit for new reasons like going out on weekends, in addition to commuting during the week.

The takeaway here is that STM grabbed their low-hanging fruit by implementing a new strategy through mobile, reaching an untapped demographic. Equally important, they avoided the “bad apple” of inundating their users with offers they didn’t want or need.

I’ve seen many a marketer get tempted into taking the “If it works once, do it again (and again, and again)” approach. However, that’s… Well, that’s pretty much the exact opposite of customer-centricity.

Mobile Email Marketing

Yes, that’s correct. Good ol’ email marketing is still an important part of your marketing mix, even in the mobile universe. However, there is one big difference. 51% of email opens now happen on a mobile device.

And while it may not be as sexy as some of the other strategies you can implement through mobile, there is significant, low-hanging fruit for mobile email marketing: Responsive Email Design (RED).

RED deserves an entire how-to guide of its own, but it boils down to a collection of techniques, such as media queries, fluid grids, and fluid images. These aim to provide the optimal viewing experience across various platforms (thanks toJustine Jordan at litmus for the succinct definition). RED ensures that, regardless of what device or platform your customers use to read your email, it always looks as good you knew it could.

The bad apple in the bunch is that mangled, Frankenstein’s monster of an email that makes us cry a tiny bit inside when we find it abandoned in our inbox. Broken images, jagged columns, unreadable text. The person behind it undoubtedly had the rosiest intentions, but, alas, “The best laid plans of marketers and men…”

In part 2 of this article, we’ll examine additional low-hanging fruit, including how CMOs should think about their roles, Jose Cuervo and brand awareness, and how marketers can be TOO good at knowing their customers.

7 Reasons Marketers Are Not Innovating Fast Enough

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This article is by Mark DiMassimo, chief of DiMassimo Goldstein.

“Follow the money.” – Deep Throat

You know this. You talk about the new realities of social, mobile, video, content, and the advisability of restructuring to seize these them – but, what are you doing about it?

We marketers are choking on talk. Today, each of us is a brand, competing to interest an audience with millions of content options. It’s an audience with a short attention span and a bottomless appetite for the new. So, we exhale our idea-rich content. We talk the talk.

The result is a conversation that has gotten far ahead of the reality of most marketing organizations. Meanwhile, examples of fundamental restructuring to adjust to these new realities are few and far between.

So, why so much talk and so little do?

In my experience working with fast-moving, innovative companies, I’ve seen CMOs face the following top roadblocks to doing:

1.      Follow The Money. As a CMO, you’re measured on the efficiency of your marketing spend. When you set aside dollars for innovation, the immediate result is a decrease in efficiency. As a result, you often doom tests with inadequate funding and too-tight timelines. Under pressure to justify your experiments, you may place too high a burden of proof on new programs – often higher than you apply to your more traditional expenditures. All of this is a recipe for delay, failure and, ironically, inefficiency. A quarter of a year like this, and your conservatism is likely to be reinforced.

2.      New Realities, Old Structure. This whole budgeting problem is accentuated by the structure of most organizations, in which the CMO runs marketing and someone else runs the development of the product or service. This can be a director of engineering, the head of product management, a development leader or other title, depending on industry. This structure developed when the role of marketing was to sell the product that the company chose to make. Of course, that isn’t the world we work in today. So, who should fund the budget for innovation? We delay while we try to figure that out.

3.      One Little Letter (CEO vs CMO). There is enormous tension between the CMO and the CEO on these issues. The CMO may perceive the CEO to be sending mixed messages. On one hand, the CEO expects significant gains in marketing efficiency. On the other hand, s/he is enormously impatient to see evidence of a new model in marketing. Does your CEO watch TED Talks and viral marketing videos? If so, you are likely in this vise. If not, this is a good time to start getting ready for the new CEO.

4.      Chickens Eating Eggs. The challenge with the budget ends up being a chicken and egg conundrum. You can’t budget because you can’t project. And you can’t project because there are no tests from which to safely extrapolate. If the efficacy could be proven, the money would be there. But without the money, the efficacy cannot be proven. In this scenario, the chickens are eating the eggs. Until that changes, the future of chickens is in doubt.

5.      The Fog of Novelty. There’s a novelty bonus in marketing that can be huge. The first time a brand – Oreo, for example – does something novel and promising, such as live tweeting the Super Bowl, they get so much more than a bump in engagement and brand energy. They get to own a story that becomes one of the guiding parables of social marketing. Opportunists, entrepreneurs and agencies will further hype the innovation, adding to the noise and uncertainty. Deep down, the marketer knows that these results can’t be extrapolated into an ongoing program. Starting a bandwagon is much more profitable than jumping on one. So, what to do?

6.      Too Much Change to Manage. There was a time when the innovations arrived like babies, one at a time, and only occasionally in twos or more. That couldn’t be further from the way things are today. While undoubtedly there is a huge amount of hype obscuring the true story of innovation, I do not doubt that that true story exists. I have helped my clients upend entire industries. The old certainties really are in doubt. There are so many real, immediate and urgent changes to manage, you have little time for speculation or for planning ahead.

7.      The Hole In The Org Chart. My mission is to close the gap between the CMO and the CEO. One approach is to create a new C-level position encompassing both product and marketing – The Chief Growth Officer. The business of business is growth, and organic growth will be the Chief Growth Officer’s mandate. Marketing insight will better inform the development of the product or service, helping change leaders to penetrate the fog of novelty to perceive what is really important to audiences. Which in turn will create more decisive advantages for marketing to promote. The conversation will then be truly a two-way conversation, not just about trivialities but about fundamental things. The budget bifurcation will be mediated by a single manager.

At least one of my client organizations has adopted this model, and one of the first unexpected windfalls has been a goldmine of content. The product development organization had been sitting on a mountain of news of true interest to customers and other publics as well. And the product people are beginning to seek out the insight of marketers. It’s really helped.

The organization has gotten so interested in its own users and so fired up about creating the future of its industry that its outward expressions have become much more searching, mission focused and realistic.

With the doers and the talkers working together in an integrated way, the audience perceives a very different company. NPS scores and tracking study results show it. Marketplace results do too. In a word, what these publics perceived is a company that is doing it for real.

Short of getting promoted or reorganizing your company, here are some things you can do to lead your organization to more successful marketing innovation:

First off, call it what it is: Innovation.

Something magical happens when you change the label. Sit down with your CEO, your key colleagues, your team and say this, “What we are doing here is different from what we often do. We’re trying to innovate, and innovation really is different.”

It doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it works like magic, because it makes people pause and think. It makes them question their assumptions. It opens them up. It prepares them for the very real commitments involved in innovating.

Second, decide between one large experiment and many small ones. Early viral marketing success eluded most marketers. But some early winners changed the game when they realized that the results of any one effort were too hard to predict, so they would instead play a numbers game. OfficeMax OMX NaN%funded twenty simultaneous, relatively small experiments with then agency, Toy. “Elf Yourself” was one of those experiments and its success more than paid for the innovation effort, as it lived and engaged for years to come.

Third, take a realistic look at how you measure and budget for more traditional marketing programs and channels and then commit to setting an equal or lower standard for innovations. If you are like most marketers, you’ll find a lot of ambiguity and doubtful relevance in your measurements for your mainstay programs. Focus your skepticism and perfectionism there rather than on the new, and you’ll buck the trend of too-slow evolution.

English: This is a picture of Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Finally, celebrate the things you actually do! More experiments mean more brand energy, which in itself can be a game changer. And revolutions can start with almost invisible little changes. Google GOOGL +0.65%started with a slightly faster search bar. Zappos took off after two-way free shipping. Oreo didn’t plan a mid-game blackout, just a little experiment in creative live tweeting. Dollar Shave Club couldn’t afford to pay for advertising, so they did a funny video, which is still the core of their direct response advertising program.Netflix NFLX +4.93% thought, “Never a late fee.” Uber founders were willing to pay more not to have to wait for a cab.

Sure, you might miss some posting, tweeting, pinning and general opining while you’re working on your experiments. On the other hand, it won’t be long before you have real accomplishments to talk about.

Here’s to less talk and more do!

Marketers Weigh In on the App Experience

The results are in! As part of our recent webinar on Mobile Experience Management with the American Marketing Association, we polled participants on their own mobile app experiences. Here’s what we found.

Analytics and an Easy-to-Use Platform Top Marketers’ Priority List

Marketers overwhelmingly said they need comprehensive user analytics and an easy-to-use platform in order to create a compelling app experience.

• More than 70% listed comprehensive user analytics as a critical need
• More than two thirds of respondents (68%) said they need an easy-to-use platform in order to drive results from their mobile apps
• 50% or more said they need A/B testing capabilities, the ability to personalize apps, and the ability to use mobile push notifications

Mobile App Optimization is an Immediate Marketing Need

When asked whether app optimization was a critical priority in marketing efforts, survey respondents agreed it was an immediate and essential need.

• 76% agreed that mobile apps are critical to marketing efforts and must be optimized now or within the year
• Only 13% disagreed or strongly disagreed

Until Now, It Hasn’t Been Easy to Manage Mobile Apps

• More than 60% said either they had had limited experience with managing a mobile app, or that their experience to date has been frustrating
• An additional 10.8% said their experience has been very frustrating
• Only 8.1% said their experience had not been frustrating at all

10 Brands That Brilliantly Differentiated Themselves From the Competition

by Bethany Shepard

June 30, 2014 at 12:00 PM

This post originally appeared on the Insiders section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to Insiders.

Today’s winning brands aren’t playing it safe. They never say “that’s how we’ve always done it,” and they know their brands are more than just a sleek logo or a cool website.

The brands that crush their competition are those who understanding that strategic branding goes much deeper than pretty visuals and responsive code. Branding is layered, sculpted, and tested.

To create a layered, brilliant, and competition-killing brand, three things must align.

1. Understanding of your brand (internal beliefs and communications)
2. Understanding of your best potential audience(s)
3. Understanding and differentiating from your competition

Combined, these elements create brand magic. To see these three things in action, keep on reading. Below I’ve curated some brilliant companies that are great at differentiating themselves from their competition.

1) Lush

Why They’re Brilliant

• They're unlike any other makeup brand on the marketplace.
• They have international reach with a local "warm and fuzzy" approach.
• They are advocates of ethical buying and the purity of handmade things. They value social and corporate responsibility over a luxurious and out-of-reach image.
• Their branding is simple and genuine.
• They have a massive cult brand following.

How They're Doing It

• They understand their customers. They appeal to the girl who’s "had enough" of standard beauty products and has strong beliefs. 
• They're selfless with their products -- they offer free samples and in-store trials on nearly everything.
• They aren’t selling a product -- they’re selling a viewpoint on how they define beauty.
• They offer a one-of-a-kind retail experience that feels like you’re walking into an Etsy store in real life.

2) Airstream

Why They’re Brilliant

• Airstream has been a cult classic since 1929.
• They're one of the most recognized RVs on the road. The image is iconic.
• They have a massive audience following that embraces the "retro" side of life.
• Their product has a great blend of the past meets the future -- classic exterior, modern interior.
• They offer a "silent" luxury -- it doesn’t scream "I’m rich" until you get inside.

How They're Doing It

• They focus on quality, image, and community -- the product is expensive, but rarely loses value since it's built to last.
• They relaunched a new website and digital experience in 2014.
• They offer endless community and dealership events where you can sit in an Airstream to experience it yourself.
• Their campaigns focus on their following using the tagline "Live Riveted."

3) Oscar Health Insurance

Why They’re Brilliant

• They make health insurance feel friendly, personable, and easy-to-understand.
• They consider the UX behind buying and understanding health insurance.

How They're Doing It

• They use bright visuals, large concise copy, and a parallax scrolling site to make digesting information easy on desktop, mobile, and tablet.
• They focus on a small, niche network just in New York.
• They're transparent -- they partner with doctors and allow you to customize your quote immediately.
• They make customer-benefit promises like “Talk with our doctors for free, one will call you within the hour.”

4) T-Mobile

Why They’re Brilliant

• They're a cellular company that is changing what it means to be a cellular company.
• They're catering to a smaller, niche audience that is young and urban -- those who don’t want to be tied down and "owned" by their cellular company.
• They listen and follow the behaviors of their core customer.

How They're Doing It

• They create messaging that aims directly at customers' biggest pain points (being tied down to a carrier) and away from their biggest flaw (the size of their network).
• They have a strong and unique color palette -- think pink!
• They pay ETF’s -- the biggest hurdle in switching carriers.
• They allow customers to bring in unlocked phones to switch to T-Mobile.

5) Whole Foods 

Why They’re Brilliant

• They go beyond being a grocery store -- they're also content generators and thought leaders.
• They use their site to offer a whole new experience for customers offline and online.
• They understand why people shop at Whole Foods in the first place -- because it's a wholesome food source.

How They're Doing It

• They're sharing ideas and generating meaningful content that isn’t boastful -- they understand what their customer is looking for.
• They're promoting a "greener" lifestyle -- they got rid of plastic bags in 2008.
• They focus on local stores, taking away that feeling of the big chain.
• They use bright, unique, and cheerful design that is easy to understand.
• They partner with shows like Top Chef to promote their food.
• They hosts events, run multiple blogs, and have an app -- showing they're way ahead of their competition.

6) Zendesk

Why They’re Brilliant

• No longer is customer service some person in the back of the building like Kelly from The Office -- it’s immediate, digital, and genuine with Zendesk.
• They're a one-stop shop customer service platform that empowers the whole organization.
• They help customer service agents prioritize. Companies no longer give off a “take a ticket" message.
• They're destroying the stereotype that customer service is something that’ll take forever.

How They're Doing It

• Customer service is made beautifully simple.
• Their software brings all customer feedback into one place.
• They have a clean and intuitive site design that makes it easy to learn -- and form and content are aligned.
• They offer best practices for their customers, positioning Zendesk as a industry thought leader.

7) Yoh

Why They’re Brilliant

• They look absolutely nothing like any other recruiting site and company.
• They steer away from conservative, stuffy pictures, and copy.
• They make learning about their company fun and engaging -- the brand has a pulse. 

How They're Doing It

• They use bold messaging that speaks to “you” and not about “we.”
• They use little-to-no industry jargon.
• They use a consistent and striking brand look and feel.
• They use original website design that is hyper-visual.
• They feature downloadable content and clear CTAs.

8) Four Quadrants Advisory

Why They’re Brilliant

• They cater to a niche market and audience just for dental practices.
• Their customers call them the “Dental Guys.”
• They go beyond numbers and become advocates and consultants for the best interest of dentists.
• They take away the “behind the practice” stress for dentists.

How They're Doing It

• They're transparent about their process, and it's laid out in a simple way using user-benefit statements.
• They offer more than just financial planning, but practice and capital planning.
• They empower their team to create valuable content for their website.

9) The Middle Finger Project

Why They’re Brilliant

• They are reimagining copywriting and messaging consulting.
• They're a confident and sometimes outlandish advocate for being fearless in writing -- especially business writing.
  

How They're Doing It

• They use frequent email blasts called “Just the Tip” that share a tactical nugget of information.
• They value a bigger cause -- going with your gut in writing.
• They make writing great copy a lifestyle within an organization.
• They offer kits, classes, tools, and smart ideas for any business to use.