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Hint – there’s Google’s version of User Experience which is things that they can measure like keyword density, functionality, load time, how your site adapts to mobile devices, etc. And then there is the actual user experience for, well, users. 

What do website visitors think about your company when they first see your site? Google can’t measure “look and feel”, but visitors to the site sure will. They will have an impression of your company based on your site within seconds. If they decide to stick around, how easily can they find what they’re looking for? Does the site have real value or is it so focused on getting the visitor to take an action that you’re missing some crucial steps visitors may want to take before they commit to filling out a form or clicking through to a commitment.

Don’t worry – user experience does take into account your business goals and objectives, it just makes sure best practices are used to achieve them in terms of the quality of the user’s interaction and their perceptions of your products and/or services. 

Here are some aspects to keep in mind when planning a new website, or refreshing your current one. 

• Useful: Your content should be original and fulfill a need. As part of this, content strategy should be very focused. You don’t need to over-elaborate, but you need to remember that new visitors to your site don’t start with knowledge about your company, products or services, so don’t forget the basics. And before you can sell your company, sometimes you have to sell the concept itself. For instance, a site for a solar installation company can’t just focus on why choose them, but must start with “why solar?”.
• Usable: The site must be easy to use. This should go without saying, but not every visitor will understand all the modern ways to show where menus are, or what is clickable. Try to see your site from a technically-challenged point of view as needed.
• Desirable: The image, identity, brand, and other design elements are used to evoke emotion and appreciation. If it’s just screenshots or stock product images, then where’s the emotion? Can you show people using your product or benefiting from your service? 
• Findable: The content needs to be easy to navigate and to find onsite and offsite. Don’t forget internal links when talking about a topic. Users shouldn’t always have to look back up to the menu to get to another element of the website. 
• Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to people with disabilities, but don’t forget basics like font contrast against backgrounds and type size, especially if you have or target older potential customers.
• Credible: Users must trust and believe what you tell them. A lot of hyperbole with no factual information will generally not sit well.

Reggie Colalongo found out the hard way that the last step in manufacturing – packaging – can be the most critical.

She began her cultivation career on farms – growing and extraction, which naturally stemmed from her background in community gardens and agriculture. Then she met Bret Burroughs on a farm in Mendocino County and they saw the market changing. Reggie and Bret opted to enter the California recreational CBD edibles market and created Solstice and Sun, with a desire to create and offer artisanal products that would be vegan and organic, gluten free, as well as customized with different textures and flavors. 

Of course, the packaging needed to reflect the uniqueness as well, and included a special paper compression wrapper from Japan for each piece with everything packed into stately matte black boxes that they felt met compliance guidelines. What they didn’t count on was that in a dispensary, their stately boxes kept being placed near the bottom of display areas, with more colorful options getting front and center placement. In addition, their boxes were smaller than many others and the elements on the outside weren’t really giving potential customers a good sense of the goodness inside.

Realizing the issue, they went back to the drawing board and commissioned much more colorful, larger vertical bags featuring a serene landscape of rolling hills, with the sun high in the sky and bordered with fruits representing each flavor, with an overlay of their logo and information. They also sourced the bags in California, rather than having boxes printed in China. Another upside, the bags were easier to fill than boxes, and lowered their labor costs.

The changes were immediate – their products began to command much more prominent spaces in dispensaries, and an increase in sales followed. 

As Packhelp co-founder Konrad Kwiatkowski wrote in an article for Fleximize as his #1 tip – “Keep packaging eye-catching so that it immediately stands out and is remembered by the customer.” He also shared, “Packaging is also an opportunity to tell customers who you are as a brand and what you believe in. Product packaging cannot scream at the customer – ‘buy me!’. It needs to be intriguing, create a mood and prompt a range of emotions.”

“It was a great lesson for us,” explained Regina. “The packaging has to do the selling for you in the store because no one is there to explain the product. And if you can’t get someone to pick up your box and read about what’s inside, you’ve lost before you’ve even begun.

Email marketing can be one of the most effective ways to connect with your customers, engage with potential clients and really educate people about your brand and its unique aspects. But none of that matters if people don’t open it. So after the list itself, it’s the subject line that needs to be the focus, not an afterthought.

According to Invespro, 47% of email recipients open email solely based on the subject line and 69% of email recipients report email as spam based solely on the subject line. 

Here are some best practices we’ve found from deploying hundreds of thousands of emails:

Decide what you want the email to accomplish

Are you looking to generate immediate sales? Bring a prospect further along as part of a nurture campaign? Introduce your product or service to a new audience? Make sure you understand the desired outcome before crafting the email and the subject line.

Make sure the subject line matches the content

No one likes to be misled. If the subject line promises or hints at one thing, and the email focuses on something different, recipients will feel tricked and that does not reflect well on your company.

Double and triple check the spelling, grammar and links

No one wants to issue a follow up email with the subject line – “Oops – open this one instead.” Multiple tests and taking nothing for granted are crucial.

Use emojis sparingly

They can add interest to a subject line, but don’t use them instead of a word. And make sure they are relevant to the subject line in a quickly identifiable way. Also check your emails that incorporate them to make sure your platform will deploy them correctly. They must carry a unicode. You can’t just copy and paste one in place.

Make sure the words fit the audience

If you’re writing a 60+ audience, stay away from trendy words they may not understand, for example. It’s crucial you speak to your recipients in ways they understand and relate to.

Use a subject line that will generate an emotion

Will someone miss out if they don’t take action? Is it a limited opportunity in terms of space or products? Is there a limited timeframe in which to act? Fear of missing out (FOMO), missing a deadline or not getting in on the ground floor of a great opportunity?

Personalize the subject line if you can

Subject lines with a person’s name get opened 22% more often, according to Invespro.

Consider lists and numbers

If you have some impressive numbers to share, incorporate them. “25,684 opens can’t be wrong – sign up for our subject line course”. They also help subject lines stand out in a sea of words.

Use capitalization sparingly

It’s like yelling at someone so you can do it for the first word or to really emphasize something, but you shouldn’t use it for the entire subject line. 

Use powerful action words

Use words that tell the reader what you want them to do, and how they will benefit. “Sign up for Acme’s conference. Afterwards your promotion awaits!

Consider using a relevant question

It’s engaging and makes the reader want to “answer” it and learn more because they’re curious.

If it works with your topic, incorporate “we”/“we’re” or “you”/”your 

This can make the reader feel like they’re part of something that you’re sharing together, and that you’re speaking directly to them.

Make your subject line the right length

Shorter is better, but you still need to share enough to compel someone to open it. Aim for a subject line between 6 and 11 words, as these perform the best with an average open rate of 21% on a warmed list, according to Invesp. This can also make sure enough of the subject line appears on mobile devices for readers to understand what you’re trying to communicate.

Incorporate a compelling emotional trigger word

You see them a lot because they work – words like “free”, “professional”, “limited”, “exclusive”, “innovative”, “urgent” and more. Search for words that make your subject line jump off the page without rising to the level of hyperbole.

Test subject lines against each other

Narrow down your choices to the best two that represent different approaches and send them to a good sized sample size. If one performs much better than the other in terms of the open rate, then use that subject line for all the remaining emails. No one says you can’t send emails out in smaller batches, and it may even make more sense in terms of your sales department following up.

Write, write and write

You probably won’t hit on a great subject line on your first try. It may even make sense to write the draft email first to see what direction it’s headed before you start trying to craft subject lines. Think about them from all angles and write at least 10 before you start narrowing them down and see if you can convey the same message in a shorter, more direct, more compelling way.

LinkedIn is becoming an increasingly important tool to build your company’s brand. Remember that Spot Digital Marketing’s social media management services are always here to help – just call us at 503.477.4355 to learn how we can help your brand’s online presence take off. We’re currently working with a number of businesses on enhancing their LinkedIn practices. In the meantime, read over these LinkedIn marketing priorities for 2019 from Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today to see if your brand is on track!

“Are you planning to make LinkedIn a focus of your digital marketing efforts in 2019?

For those that are looking to get more out of the professional social network, it can be helpful to know what others are doing on the platform, and what they’re looking to achieve with LinkedIn’s tools. That’s the focus of this new infographic from LinkedIn – the platform recently surveyed its members to get more insight into expectations, priorities and more, related to platform use.

There are some interesting insights here. The questions are obviously LinkedIn-specific, but it’s worth noting the most popular topics (the platform’s ‘Matched Audiences‘, which combines your data with on-platform insights, is a key focus) and what other marketers are using LinkedIn for.

You can read LinkedIn’s full report here, or check out the graphic below.”

All credit to Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today. Please find the original posting here.  

The Harvard Business Review stresses that great innovation needs great marketing. Read on to hear from Denise Lee Yohn on the importance of marketing!

“Innovation is a top priority for almost every organization. But to achieve success through innovation, companies must put as much energy and investment into marketing new offerings as they do in generating them.

The role of marketing in some companies seems to have diminished in recent years, with the growth of artificial intelligence-driven algorithms and predictive analytics that offer up information, goods, and services to customers. The popularity of private label goods and products from companies like Brandless and others that seem to eschew marketing also seems to make the argument for less marketing, rather than more.

But marketing is and should not be executed merely through tactical functions of acquiring and retaining customers, as many companies practice it today. The search, content, and loyalty campaigns that most managers call marketing these days are common downstream tactics for generating or maintaining awareness or repeat purchase; the full, business-growing power of the marketing function comes way upstream — from creating markets. Understanding people’s fundamental needs and drivers, identifying customers, and developing the entire go-to-market and usage ecosystem are the essential aspects of marketing — and the ones that the success of innovations, especially breakthrough ones, hinge upon. Marketers need to be included in development discussions earlier in the innovation process.

Consider what has happened when a revolutionary product or service has been launched without the full power of marketing: Google Glass. These smart glasses were a stunning technological advancement — which ultimately failed. Among its missteps, Google didn’t identify the burning consumer needs that would drive Glass adoption. It needed to know the “can’t-live-without-it” use cases that would motivate people to overlook or work around the product’s early shortcomings. Plus, the product was initially sold only to “Glass Explorers,” a group comprised mainly of tech geeks and journalists who were important in the industry, but not the kinds of aspirational role models that mainstream consumers wanted to mimic. The company failed to create a robust and durable market for the product, it had to discontinue it less than two years after its launch.

Strategic, upstream marketing that is incorporated into the innovation development process can clearly define who to sell the new offering to and how to sell it in ways like this:

Identify unmet and even unknown customer needs. Oftentimes, people don’t know they need a new-to-the-world innovation — and sometimes they have been settling for a workaround or poor substitute for so long that they don’t realize an alternative is possible. Before the smartphone, for example, people thought nothing of having to wait to use their computer to access the internet and use email. The marketing disciplines of anthropologically-based research and needs-based segmentation uncover the most significant holes in people’s lives that new products can fill. So instead of making assumptions about potential customers and their needs, marketing might help identify entirely new or different customers for innovation teams to consider.

Understand the deep-seated drivers of perceptions and behavior that are relevant to a product’s appeal. A robust marketing trend analysis reveals the cultural, social, and psychological dynamics that should be addressed in the development of and communication about an innovative product. For example, the adoption of virtual reality has been much slower than technologists expected it to be for many reasons, not the least of which is the design of existing headsets. They’re big and clunky — not something mainstream users want to wear much. A greater emphasis on the marketability of VR products, instead of their capabilities and content, could focus VR innovators on improvements that would make their products more appealing.

Engage with customers through use cases and benefits instead of functionalities and features. If an innovation is truly breakthrough, people need to be educated on how to use it and why — particularly mainstream customers who are compelled less by what a product does and more by what the product helps them do. Marketing helps companies address this through 1) customer research, which tests the appeal of various use cases and often uncovers new ones; 2) insight development, which explores beyond the functional benefits of use to identify the higher-order, more valuable ones; and 3) positioning work and communications framing, which determines how best to convey those uses and benefits to customers compellingly.

Develop the entire customer experience ecosystem. Innovators usually become so wrapped up in what they’re developing that they overlook all the other elements necessary to make delivery and experience of the offering successful. Take the first e-reader to be developed, the Sony Reader. The product was a technologically-advanced product, but it failed because Sony didn’t enlist the book publishing industry as a partner to provide the content the hardware required. Sony hadn’t tapped the customer and customer experience orientation inherent in marketing to ensure the ecosystem around its product would be as well-developed and well-designed as the product itself. When Amazon later launched its Kindle device, it offered an integrated experience of hardware, software, service, and content that made it seamless for the customer to buy and use it — thus producing a successful launch.

Use a go-to-market strategy appropriate for the innovation and its customer. The lackluster performance of the Sony Reader also resulted from the company’s misguided channel strategy. Sony tried to sell the device through traditional consumer electronics stores such as big box technology retailers instead of channels that book readers naturally use. Marketers know the importance of attending to all “4 Ps”: price, place, and promotion, in addition to product.

Another example of integrated marketing and innovation is the story of the K-Cup coffee pod from Keurig. One of the K-Cup inventors, John Sylvan, was motivated to solve a common problem: the stale, bitter sludge that coffee becomes after sitting in a pot in the office breakroom all day. People had been tolerating the problem for years. But Sylvan understood that there must be a solution and, after he and Keurig co-founder Peter Dragone developed one, they convinced office managers, their wisely-chosen target market, of the possibility too.

Sylvan and Dragone also were keyed into people’s emotional connections to coffee enough to recognize that coffee preferences varied significantly by region and that local roasters had locked in loyal customers. So they enrolled regionally-known coffee roasters such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Diedrich Coffee, and Tully’s to provide the coffee for the K-Cups. By appealing to different customers’ flavor preferences, they not only tapped into the broader context of coffee culture, but also increased the perceived value of coffee made a single cup at a time.

They pitched their machines to corporate accounts on the benefit of saving costs (money on the coffee itself as well as the loss of productivity of employees leaving the office to get a fresh cup from the local coffee store). Keurig developed partnerships with other players in the K-Cup product world, enrolling existing local distributors to install machines and subsequently entering into distribution deals for its K-Cups with coffee retailers Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks. It is also developing more eco-friendly products. These are the kinds of strategies that help get innovative products in front of the right customers at the right time.

Today’s advanced innovations such as 3D printing, bitcoin, and virtual reality have gotten some traction, but they and other revolutionary products and platforms like them need the right marketing expertise to generate the depth and breadth of market engagement they seek. Innovation alone may be enough to initiate the adoption life cycle, but marketing remains the bridge necessary to cross the chasm between early adopters to the wider group of people who will form a viable, valuable customer base.

The bigger the innovation, the bigger the risk of failure. Because marketing can reduce those risks, it matters as much as innovation — perhaps even more.”

All credit to Denise Lee Yonh of Harvard Business Review. Please find original posting here.