Update: Google has begun ranking websites higher which have AMP pages (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Please be sure to include an AMP plugin in the HTML page templates. They are to be found within the Web Content Management platforms, Template section. Please reach out to your WCM partner or your internal IT resource. If you have a WordPress site, a plugin from the WP Plugin directory should do the trick. The AMP pages provide greater visibility (higher ranking) of your web and mobile pages on mobile and tablet devices
Nudge theory economist from the Boothe School of Business recently won the much deserved Nobel prize for economics, in this case behavioral economics. I was so fired up this Oct 9th, when the award was announced; I believe must have woken up half of Boothe at 5.30 AM EST.
At the core of behavioral economics is the idea that we are not always rational beings. Our decisions are driven by a range of factors beneath our subconscious (desires, habits, social norms) and these factors are consistent, predictable and can be understood. This principal can be used to influence consumer decision making. It’s often called “nudging” which involves an effective little help to adopt a desired behavior either consciously or subconsciously. This is achieved by leveraging subconscious drivers (such as framing, loss aversion and reciprocity) and making a certain behavior easier than an alternative path.Fintech and insurtech products which show a degree of distinction and nuance are terrific candidates for Nudging.
Here are two typical retail examples of nudge theory at work:
Shoppers who came across a tasting booth with a limited selection (6 jams) were
substantially more likely to purchase a jar of jam versus those who had visited a booth with
a wide selection (24 jams). When there are too many unfamiliar options, consumer confidence in their selection is diminished, and thus they avoid making a decision altogether.
The addition of a small sign that read “no more than 12 cans per customer” actually doubled the amount of soup shoppers bought, by effectively “anchoring” their decision process. Anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor.
Both of these examples did not involve strongly enticing or cajoling people into changing their behavior, they simply made a desired behavior “easier” than an alternative choice.
It’s important to keep in mind 3 principals when applying nudging to marketing:
Nudging compliments rather than replaces traditional marketing. Marketing creates the desire while nudging facilitates the follow-through.
Nudging involves creating new habits as many human behaviors are a function of our ingrained habits. Therefore, nudging is best suited to category-level behavior (adopting a new product) not brand preference (which brand of salad dressing should I buy?). Fintech and insurtech products which show a degree of distinction and nuance are terrific candidates for Nudging
Nudging works most effectively when it is used for good, creating a “win-win” situation for both companies and individuals. (ex. nudging people to eat more fresh produce through a series of large green arrows on the floor, making a trail to the produce section.)
Where can nudging be used most effectively? First with regards to digital adoption as this area provides benefits of convenience and cost to both consumers and marketers. (ex. Use a digital app to buy insurance rather than going through a broker.) This is a change many people want to make but need help with. Another area is in the shopping aisle to drive incremental purchases and to nudge consumers to consider additional product categories. Lastly nudging can be used to educate marketers and hopefully make it part of the marketing toolbox.
In summary, nudging holds the potential to shift the marketing paradigm. In this increasingly competitive world, consumers can’t be influenced through claims, features and benefits alone. Nudging may make marketing more effective as it shifts the focus towards creating new habits rather than constantly fighting for brand share.
Inspired by: Anne Stephenson, Partner, Explorer Research
How well is the C-Suite, the digital office, the business strategists, the futurists and the forecasters prepared, for where we are today, and for what we may witness well into the future?
The future is not the next shiny object or some fancy new jargon, but still remains the Long Term Value the (LTV) of the customer, we all desire – it is a digital transformation ‘outside looking in’ approach, rather than focusing on internal efficiencies first (my school of thought). Internal efficiency potential targets surface to the top organically, when employing and deploying this approach and execution.
A Digital Customer Centricity vision proposes to define the next generation of ‘a best in class organization’. With this proactive lens, a healthy NPS score is something we must stitch.
The role of the product manager is expanding due to the growing importance of data in decision making, an increased customer and design focus, and the evolution of software-development methodologies.
Product managers are the glue that bind the many functions that touch a product—engineering, design, customer success, sales, marketing, operations, finance, legal, and more. They not only own the decisions about what gets built but also influence every aspect of how it gets built and launched.
Unlike product managers of the past, who were primarily focused on execution and were measured by the on-time delivery of engineering projects, the product manager of today is increasingly the mini-CEO of the product. They wear many hats, using a broad knowledge base to make trade-off decisions, and bring together cross-functional teams, ensuring alignment between diverse functions. What’s more, product management is emerging as the new training ground for future tech CEOs.
As more companies outside of the technology sector set out to build software capabilities for success in the digital era, it’s critical that they get the product-management role right.1
Why you need a product manager who thinks and acts like a CEO
The emergence of the mini-CEO product manager is driven by a number of changes in technology, development methodologies, and the ways in which consumers make purchases. Together, they make a strong case for a well-rounded product manager who is more externally oriented and spends less time overseeing day-to-day engineering execution, while still commanding the respect of engineering.
Data dominates everything
Companies today have treasure troves of internal and external data and use these to make every product decision. It is natural for product managers—who are closest to the data—to take on a broader role. Product success can also be clearly measured across a broader set of metrics (engagement, retention, conversion, and so on) at a more granular level, and product managers can be given widespread influence to affect those metrics.
Products are built differently
Product managers now function on two speeds: they plan the daily or weekly feature releases, as well as the product road map for the next six to 24 months. Product managers spend much less time writing long requirements up front; instead, they must work closely with different teams to gather feedback and iterate frequently.
Products and their ecosystems are becoming more complex
While software-as-a-service products are becoming simpler for customers, with modular features rather than a single monolithic release, they are increasingly complex for product managers. Managers must now oversee multiple bundles, pricing tiers, dynamic pricing, up-sell paths, and pricing strategy. Life cycles are also becoming more complex, with expectations of new features, frequent improvements, and upgrades after purchase. At the same time, the value of the surrounding ecosystem is growing: modern products are increasingly just one element in an ecosystem of related services and businesses. This has led to a shift in responsibilities from business development and marketing to product managers. New responsibilities for product managers include overseeing the application programming interface (API) as a product, identifying and owning key partnerships, managing the developer ecosystem, and more.
Changes in the ‘execution pod’
In addition to developers and testers, product-development teams include operations, analytics, design, and product marketers that work closely together in “execution pods” to increase the speed and quality of software development. In many software organizations, the DevOps model is removing organizational silos and enabling product managers to gain broader cross-functional insights and arrive at robust product solutions more effectively.
Consumerization of IT and the elevated role of design
As seamless, user-friendly consumer software permeates our lives, business users increasingly expect a better experience for enterprise software. The modern product manager needs to know the customer intimately. This means being obsessed with usage metrics andbuilding customer empathy through online channels, one-on-one interviews, and shadowing exercises to observe, listen, and learn how people actually use and experience products.
Three archetypes of the mini-CEO product manager
There are three common profiles of the mini-CEO archetype: technologists, generalists, and business-oriented. These three profiles represent the primary, but not the only, focus of the mini-CEO product manager; like any CEO, they work across multiple areas (for instance, a technologist product manager will be expected to be on top of key business metrics). Most technology companies today have a mix of technologists and generalists (Exhibit 1).
Exhibit 1
As these three archetypes emerge, the project manager is a fading archetype and seen mainly at legacy product companies. The day-to-day engineering execution role is now typically owned by an engineering manager, program manager, or scrum master. This enables greater leverage, with one product manager to eight to 12 engineers, versus the ratio of one product manager to four or five engineers that has been common in the past.
Common themes across the three archetypes
An intense focus on the customer is prominent among all product managers. For example, product managers at Amazon are tasked with writing press releases from the customer’s perspective to crystalize what they believe customers will think about a product, even before the product is developed. This press release then serves as the approval mechanism for the product itself.
There are, however, differences in how product managers connect with the users. While a technologist may spend time at industry conferences talking to other developers or reading Hacker News, the generalist will typically spend that time interviewing customers, talking to the sales team, or reviewing usage metrics.
A new training ground for CEOs
Modern product managers are increasingly filling the new CEO pipeline for tech companies. Before becoming the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Marissa Mayer were product managers, and they learned how to influence and lead teams by shepherding products from planning to development to launch and beyond. Such experience is also valuable beyond tech: PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi started her career in product management–like roles at Johnson & Johnson and Mettur Beardsell, a textile firm.
While today such a background remains rare among CEOs, product-management rotational programs are the new leadership-development programs for many technology companies (for example, see the Facebook Rotational Product Manager Program, the Google Associate Product Manager Program, and the Dropbox Rotation Program). Any critic of the analogy between product managers and CEOs will point out that product managers lack direct profit-and-loss responsibilities and armies of direct reports, so it is critical for product managers with ambitions for the C-suite to move into general management to broaden their experience.
The product manager of the future
Over the next three to five years, we see the product-management role continuing to evolve toward a deeper focus on data (without losing empathy for users) and a greater influence on non-product decisions.
Product managers of the future will be analytics gurus and less reliant on analysts for basic questions. They will be able to quickly spin up a Hadoop cluster on Amazon Web Services, pull usage data, analyze them, and draw insights. They will be adept at applying machine-learning concepts and tools that are specifically designed to augment the product manager’s decision making.
We anticipate that most modern product managers will spend at least 30 percent of their time on external activities like engaging with customers and the partner ecosystem. Such engagement will not be limited to consumer products—as the consumerization of IT continues, B2B product managers will directly connect with end users rather than extracting feedback through multiple layers of sales and intermediaries.
Agile is a state of mind. Developing agile habits is crucial. The agile lines between the business and IT are blurry. Business and IT conduit talent knows this well. I know I have to speak with multiple audiences and and agile thinking starts from the business and eventually ends there. Here are some thoughts on the agile state of mind
Speaking agile
1. Put some skin in the game.
In an agile environment, some business-unit leaders will be tapped as product owners—that is, the business-unit stakeholders most accountable for shaping the products. These leaders must make the development and success of a product their highest priority—and they must be given the leeway to do so. That might mean shifting schedules and commitments so product owners can attend key agile meetings: scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint planning sessions (see the sidebar “Speaking agile”). Additionally, senior management may need to redeploy resources so that business units can assign product owners to individual agile-development initiatives.
Product owners not only set the aspirations and vision for the product but also colead decision making about features and development goals with colleagues in IT. They should be able to live in two worlds. They must have some understanding of technology and the ways it is transforming their industries. They must also have a strong sense of market needs and the product features that would be most valuable to end users. (Typically, that’s not an issue for most product owners who come from the business, because they interact more frequently with end users than IT managers do.) Product owners can pair this market knowledge with the engineers’ feedback on the technical feasibility of specific product features to create a clear development plan.
2. Shape the product together.
Under traditional approaches to product development, IT leaders interview business-unit leaders once to collect business requirements—for instance, what novel features are required in the new software or applications being created, and on which platforms will the new applications need to run? IT managers capture these requirements in jargon-filled documents, and the next time they reach out to the business unit, it’s with a mostly completed prototype in tow.
By contrast, agile product development is less about taking orders and more about sharing information. The business and the IT organization must codevelop products every day, side by side, in an ongoing process. Senior business leaders can establish this level of collaboration by investing in tools to improve interactions—for example, visual aids instead of lists of requirements.
At one company, a product owner from a business unit and a technology leader used sketches to trade feedback on software under development. IT professionals sketched a prototype that the product owner could page through. The product owner could circle what he liked or draw alternative versions of the elements he didn’t. The team refined the design together in a way that everyone could understand and contribute to.
3. Cheer for your own team.
Leaders in the C-suite and the heads of business units have a critical role to play as evangelists for the software products they codevelop: they must hold product owners from the business units accountable for the successful rollout of any new release and its effect on the business. They should encourage product owners and IT engineers to educate their business colleagues about the benefits of new software and reasons to adopt it. Agile teams can share introductory videos at the launch of a product, demonstrate it at town-hall meetings for employees, and listen to their colleagues’ frustrations with and ideas about it. All the while, they should explain that this input is valued—and demonstrate that it is by incorporating feedback into product revisions. Such transparency, encouraged and modeled from the top down, can produce a culture in which joint efforts at problem solving, rather than complaints about IT, are the norm.
4. Think like a user.
Sometimes, senior business leaders may very well be the users of the product they are shaping—if it’s an executive dashboard, for instance. But usually they are not. To help build software and products that transform the way a company operates or appeal to customers, product owners from the business must be unwaveringly committed to users’ needs. Senior executives can encourage this kind of outlook by asking targeted questions during product reviews. Who are the users? How are they using the product? Do they primarily work in an office or remotely? What are their biggest frustrations? Software-development teams should also think through these questions as they design tools and experiences to ensure that they are addressing the idiosyncrasies of end users.
5. Learn to live with ‘good enough.’ Senior executives are typically a risk-averse group. Traditional product-development models emphasize multiple check-ins at various stages of development—a time-intensive but comprehensive way to ensure that products include all the desired features and don’t contain bugs and other flaws. By contrast, agile development emphasizes a test-and-learn approach—for instance, releasing a minimally viable product that delivers value to end users in the short term but is expected to change on the fly.
In this case, chief information officers may need to help senior business executives come to terms with the release of a good-enough product by redefining their expectations and thresholds for risk. A CIO could, for example, highlight agile success stories—instances where a company released a good-enough product, shifted strategy midstream in response to feedback, and ultimately delivered a winning solution. In addition, the CIO can be open about accepting minimally viable releases refined by IT line managers—prompting similar behavior across the company. And at least initially, technology leaders could press for time-to-market schedules that give the business units no option but to pursue good-enough products.
The CIO should also help senior business leaders understand that even under a good-enough approach, agile teams will not deliver everything immediately. The process is actually more rigorous than most executives can see. Agile teams must work exhaustively to collect feedback to determine what’s working, what’s not, and how to make incremental improvements that will enhance the product or the customer’s experiences with it. And they must repeat this process over and over again.
Making the case for agile
6. Broaden the mandate.
As scrum teams ramp up their performance and experience, they will inevitably bump up against slower teams and processes elsewhere in the organization. These slower teams, such as high-volume sales organizations, use more traditional, rigid work processes. To maximize the impact of agile methods, senior leadership must consider ways to transfer lessons from agile teams to different areas of the company. Working with the CIO and other technology professionals, senior business executives can identify the processes and products that are most critical for delivering business value to customers and consider which agile principles would help to speed things up (see the sidebar “Making the case for agile”).
The TL is a part laundromat, part high-end coffee bar, and it’s just around the corner from this year’s Martech conference at the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco. It’s the type of place that can dry your undergarments while also serving you a delicious cup of java.
James Thomas, CMO of ultra-hot marketing technology startup Allocadia, is there, sipping his cappuccino out of a paper cup. The seven-year-old company, with clients including Microsoft, GE and Phillips, provides insights into things like the return on investment for sponsored events. It also aims to show what type of return brands get when they advertise on Facebook, among other things.
Thomas, a curly-haired man with a slim build from Vancouver, is giddy because in a few hours Scott Brinker, editor at ChiefMartec.com, host of the Martech conference and godfather of all things marketing technology, will crown Allocadia for having one of the best “martech stacks.”
I don’t know exactly what a so-called martech stack is, so Thomas explains.
“Think about a car,” he says. “It has a collection of parts and technology, but ultimately, its job is to get you from point A to point B.”
“A martech stack, in this case, is a number of different technologies from a number of different companies that’s meant to attract and retain customers in the most efficient way possible.” To combine into a machine, that is, that gets marketers all the way from point A to point B.
Allocadia is just one of 5,381 different companies that operate in the marketing technology space, up from 150 in 2011 by Brinker’s count. And nearly all of them are laser-focused on providing brands data in areas like workflow management, content, social media or analytics.
Over at the Martech conference expo hall, 4-year-old email marketing company Iterable claims they’re snagging clients like AT&T and Yelp away from behemoths like Salesforce because it’s easier to use and take less time to integrate data than competitors.
“Say someone starts creating a profile on CareerBuilder, but exits out before uploading their resume,” an Iterable salesman says. “That’s a hole in the funnel. We specialize in plugging that hole by messaging the person on whatever device they’re on. We get them to come back to CareerBuilder and finish building their profile.”
Wrike, which specializes in workflow management, says its customers include Tesla, Sony Playstation and Hulu.
“It just blows my mind when I go on LinkedIn Jobs and see how many of them require applicants to know how to use Wrike,” says a sales associate. “Slack is one thing when you’re managing one or five people, but how do you manage hundreds for a big project? That’s where Wrike comes in.”
Companies like Allocadia, Wrike and Iterable are among the 30 or 40 — sometimes more — different parts that make up a marketing technology stack. Outfits like these are aggressively pursuing a new breed of marketer called “chief marketing technology officers,” whose primary duties include selecting different vendors to assemble the stack. Microsoft, for one, has added such roles to build out its stack.
“It’s chaos,” Thomas says of choosing vendors to make an optimal martech stack. “We’re making it really hard for marketers.”
To hear Thomas explain it, picking which vendors to work with is difficult because there are so many, and most can’t easily integrate with one another.
The whole idea of having a martech stack is to create a one-to-one relationship with the consumer. And imagine knowing when the best time to reach that person is, on which device and with what creative.
That’s martech’s sales pitch, and legacy brands like Nestlé, for example, are buying into it. Microsoft recently described the companies that it has pulled together into the marketing stack that it uses for its own marketing, which consists of several dozen different companies. An operation of such scale, Thomas says, would cost at least $15 million per year.
And that’s not including the cost of maintaining a team with the chops to integrate and make sense of all the “Big Data” that’s going to come through.
“The idea of the stack is to bring order to the chaos,” Thomas said. “There’s so much data and things like AI are helping make sense of all of it, but we’re still one or two years away.”
Each stack is built around a “core” — think Marketo, for example. But it then branches off into different areas like data acquisition and management, content creation, SEO and social. None of this is integrated into one giant, easy to use platform, either. Instead, teams are put in place for each of the branches, experts at using and understanding each of the different companies’ offerings. Data from the different branches eventually gets plugged into the “core” of the stack.
Of course, there’s a lot more to it and it’s still too early for many brand marketers to start worrying about what their martech stack will look like. Ultimately, though, they’ll get there, according to Thomas.
“The people who say, ‘Half my money spent on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half’ are going to get fired,” he said. “Why? Because the technology to measure it is already out there.” CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article said Allocadia was two years old. The company is seven years old.
Yesterday, I read a report that Gen X are ahead of Gen Y, as it relates to their engagement with #Digital #Retail Asset Management. #Fintech and banks jumped ahead from the supply side, each with their individual nuances.
Most are not surprised. It is the slice of the Gen Digital pie after all. A counter school of thought which I subscribe to is: Gen X jumped on the ETF style #robo-advising, in some cases human-‘aided’. OK, super. All the hype has been about Gen Y, the millennial as the demographic and its audience. So, why has this not transpired as projected, a conundrum indeed.
The supply side has been nitpicked, sliced, diced and almost sautéed to a burn with no minimums, rock bottom asset management fees, with an attempt to capture the market share strategy.
This supply side audience is apparently the shale rock, and it has yet to deliver some more oil from the untapped pockets.
On the demand side, the pundits have yet to sit with the behavioral psychologists or the Customer experience guys. Most all are casting the bets on User Experience. I wonder what more can the pundits deliver.
The demand side yet, dares to inquire – Are the #millennials being served with the couture retail asset management fusion flavor which catches and captures their style, their fancy, their persona, their social diet.
The highlighted left side of the image (CC McKinsey) above is seemingly a blank slate.
The opportunity exists. As long as the unmet needs, mostly unidentified and undelivered, are set to a higher bar first, well thought of, well understood and applied, this time with a realistic #personas, experiences alone shall not deliver the forecasts.
How well is the C-Suite, the business strategists, the futurists and the forecasters prepared, for where we are, and may witness well into the future. The future is not the next shiny object, but still remains the Long Term Value (LTV) of the customer, we all desire.
digitalbrine.com | Ernest Paul |CC-SA-2
Are we narrowing the Net Promoter Score (NPS) gap? Are we addressing the unmet, and yet unidentified needs of the customer?
Social Monetization is best personified by its own special innate DNA, earned and amplified by the brand organically, not exercised necessarily by social media marketing, nor social engagement. It manifests itself organically, a powerful green aroma spread by the winds, savored and shared by the #collectivetrust.social
