Government procurement is a critical aspect of public administration and plays a vital role in delivering essential services and infrastructure to citizens. The UK, for instance, has established a comprehensive procurement framework guided by the Red Book, which sets the standard for public sector projects. This article will explore the importance of embedding a user-centered approach, common architecture, and delivering on customer commitments in the procurement process, while emphasizing the role of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and value-driven budgeting to ensure accountability. We will also examine examples from other governments and glean insights from renowned leaders in the field of government procurement.

The UK System and the Red Book

In the United Kingdom, the Red Book is a crucial reference for government procurement. It provides guidelines on value for money, transparency, and fair competition in public sector projects. The Red Book emphasizes the need for a structured procurement process that includes comprehensive planning, thorough evaluation of bids, and diligent contract management. This approach ensures that the government can effectively deliver on its commitments to citizens and stakeholders.

Examples from Other Governments

Governments worldwide have adopted various procurement strategies to ensure efficient and effective service delivery. The United States, for example, has the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), which governs the acquisition process for all executive agencies. Similarly, the European Union has established the Public Contracts Directive, which aims to create a level playing field for companies across the region.

As an Australian leader in government procurement, Jane Halton AO PSM, former Secretary of the Australian Department of Finance, highlighted the significance of procurement in her statement, “Effective procurement is at the heart of good government, and it is vital that we continue to innovate and improve to deliver better outcomes for the Australian people.”

A User-Centered Approach

In recent years, a user-centered approach has gained traction in government procurement. This methodology prioritizes the needs and expectations of end-users throughout the procurement process. As advocated by Professor Sue Arrowsmith in her article “Towards a User-Centered Approach to Public Procurement,” this approach helps to ensure that procured goods and services are fit for purpose and meet the intended users’ requirements.

One of the most influential leaders in government procurement, Dr. Mariana Mazzucato, emphasizes the importance of creating value through strategic procurement. She argues that governments must adopt a mission-oriented approach to procurement, setting clear goals and focusing on outcomes that benefit the public.

Common Architecture

A common architecture in procurement refers to the adoption of standardized processes, systems, and data structures that facilitate collaboration and information sharing among stakeholders. This approach reduces complexity, increases efficiency, and enables better decision-making. For instance, the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) has developed a common architecture for digital services, known as the Government as a Platform (GaaP) initiative. This initiative allows for the sharing of resources, knowledge, and best practices, leading to more effective procurement outcomes.

KPIs and Value-Driven Budgeting

Incorporating KPIs into procurement processes ensures that projects are aligned with desired outcomes and remain on track. This performance measurement approach facilitates continuous improvement and enables governments to assess the effectiveness of their procurement strategies.

Value-driven budgeting is another essential element in ensuring accountability in government procurement. By linking budgets to the value delivered to the public, governments can make more informed decisions about resource allocation and prioritize projects that generate the most significant public benefits.

Delivering on Customer Commitments

A great procurement experience is essential for delivering on customer commitments. This entails not only meeting contractual obligations but also fostering strong relationships with suppliers and stakeholders. As Sir Michael Barber, a leading expert in public sector reform, once said, “Only by putting the citizen at the heart of public services can we deliver the improvements in quality and efficiency we all want to see.”

The future

In conclusion, government procurement plays a crucial role in providing essential services and infrastructure to citizens. By adopting a user-centered approach, establishing a common architecture, incorporating KPIs, and implementing value-driven budgeting, governments can enhance their procurement processes and create better outcomes for their citizens. As leaders in the field of government procurement, we must continually strive to innovate, learn from best practices, and prioritize the needs of the people we serve. By ensuring accountability and focusing on delivering customer commitments, we can build a more effective and responsive public sector that truly serves the interests of its citizens.

1. Improving efficiency in processing and decision-making: AI can automate routine tasks and support data-driven decision-making by analyzing large amounts of information in a short time.
2. Enhancing public services: AI-powered chatbots can provide quick and accurate information to citizens, while virtual assistants can help with online services and transactions.
3. Predictive analytics: AI can help predict outcomes, trends and patterns in government data, enabling departments to make data-driven decisions.
4. Fraud detection and prevention: AI algorithms can help identify and prevent fraudulent activities in government departments.
5. Improved cybersecurity: AI-powered security systems can detect and respond to cyber threats in real-time, improving the overall security of government systems and data.
6. Streamlining resource allocation: AI can help allocate resources more efficiently by analyzing data from various sources and making predictions based on that information.
7. Improving citizen engagement: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can improve citizen engagement by providing quick and personalized information and support.

Overall, AI has the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of government departments, while improving the experience of citizens interacting with these departments.

One example of where AI has helped government is in healthcare. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service (NHS) has been using AI to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.

One specific application is the use of AI to diagnose eye diseases. The NHS has been using an AI system that uses deep learning algorithms to analyze retinal scans and detect signs of eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy. The system is faster and more accurate than traditional methods, allowing for earlier diagnosis and treatment. This has led to improved patient outcomes and reduced costs for the NHS.

This case study shows how AI can help government departments by providing more efficient and accurate services to citizens, ultimately leading to improved outcomes and reduced costs.

Making AI ethical involves several key considerations and actions:

1. Bias and fairness: Ensure that AI algorithms are designed and trained to be unbiased and fair, and eliminate sources of bias in data and algorithms.
2. Responsibility and accountability: Assign clear responsibility and accountability for the development, deployment, and use of AI systems to prevent harm and misuse.
3. Transparency: Ensure that AI systems are transparent and explainable, so their decision-making processes can be understood and evaluated.
4. Privacy: Protect the privacy of individuals by implementing appropriate data protection and privacy measures and ensuring that personal data is only used for the purposes for which it was collected.
5. Human oversight: Ensure that AI systems are subject to human oversight and decision-making, and that there are appropriate mechanisms for review and accountability.
6. Ethical considerations: Incorporate ethical considerations, such as respect for human rights and dignity, into the design and deployment of AI systems.
7. Continuous evaluation and improvement: Regularly evaluate and improve AI systems to ensure that they are ethical, responsible, and aligned with evolving ethical standards and values.

By implementing these key considerations, AI can be developed and used in an ethical and responsible manner, benefiting society and avoiding potential harm.

Here are some examples of unethical AI in government:

1. Biased decision-making: AI systems that are biased against certain groups, such as people of color, women, or elderly individuals, leading to unfair outcomes and discrimination.
2. Invasion of privacy: AI systems that collect and use personal data without consent, or in ways that are not transparent or accountable, violating individuals’ privacy rights.
3. Lack of accountability and transparency: AI systems that make decisions without adequate oversight, or in ways that are not explainable, leading to a lack of accountability and transparency.
4. Unjustified use of force: AI systems that are used to control and monitor populations, or to make decisions about the use of force, such as drone strikes or deployment of military robots, without adequate ethical oversight.
5. Predictive policing: AI systems that are used to predict and prevent crimes, but which perpetuate existing biases and discrimination, leading to unfair policing practices.
6. Unfair employment practices: AI systems that are used to make employment decisions, such as hiring, promotions, or layoffs, which are biased against certain groups, leading to discrimination and unfair treatment.

By avoiding these and other unethical practices, AI can be used in government in a responsible and ethical manner, benefiting society and avoiding potential harm.

Why would we approach the building of an enterprise, or the marketing function with science? Becuase science is very good at delivering outcomes from testing. By applying the scientific method we can structure our work to move towards an unbiased solution that delivers outcomes.

If you were looking to improve your marketing of your product then there are a few ways to do it. Design thinking comes from an apple approach which is very unscientific. They sit back and imagine what is possible and dream up something that will amaze the world and the user and then they just deliver and it works. This works for Apple, some of the time.

The other alternative is much more conservative and comes from a more humble place of curiosity and wonder. User Science is about saying I have a series of the hypothesis that I have made from the study and now I shall run experiments to deliver the solution.

Even before the hypothesis, there is a method to understanding of the problem that is scientific. The User Scientist collects a variety of data and interviews to understand the user from many angles. Interviewing the subject in focus groups with psychological tests, journeying into the wild like an anthropologist, and studying the human user in their natural habitat to observe behaviour. Collecting data on users from multiple sources like a data scientist to seek patterns, exceptions and annomolies.

Then with a hypothesis, they seek like all scientists to prove their theories right or wrong through testing. Aristotle is recognized as the author of the scientific method, Ibn al-Haytham proposed in the nine hundreds that something should be repeatable with the same inputs and outputs.

As marketers and product owners applying this method comes to a belief that we can test and discover indepentantly the best course of action for development and marketing a of a product.

With all products we now find this journey of a user to purchase and satisfaction has many steps. Me might be very good a developing a landing page that effectively signs up people to a free trial, but the product doesn’t match the offer and there are low conversions. Our problem in most cases is we have limited time and limited data to make effective scientific analysis.

This doesn’t mean we can’t find a good marriage of “Gut” marketing, or common-sense marketing and scientific testing and this balance need to be pragmatic about how we deliver.

The first step for becoming a user scientist is the problem statement, from here you establish what you are looking to solve, with the parameters of what is efficient. The next step is to collect data in all forms, and then make a hypothesis and then test.

There are an amazing array of software for split testing, but often the best split test can be just looking at one week to another week with different results.

Review the following software for an analysis of different ways to manage the testing process.

In the real world, telling people you are going to do a/b testing is a clear statement loud and clear that you have no idea what you are doing.

Or do you.

This takes positioning, and this is where the scientific method is the best pitch leading in.

“I don’t know what our customer’s right now want, feel, will respond to. But I know how to apply a scientific method to approach solving this problem.”

This response establishes you as a professional who knows how to learn and solve problems, through hypothesis, design thinking, then checking with numbers and then applying a series of tests to see what works and what doesn’t work.

Most marketers don’t move through this point of weakness, to then establish something even better on the other side. Proof.

It is a moment of weakness to say you don’t know and you will test. And you are going to brainstorm ideas, and talk to experts out side the company. BUt on the other side of that journey is the beautiful fruit plucked from the tree of experiments…….Proof.

Suddenly you start to see the results and you learn and you can take the tests back to the CEO/Executive team and deliver presentations on the user that explain behaviour, test that show what works and what doesn’t.

The testing takes time and dedication, and is best started slowly.

AB Testing Software

The following software can be used to assist in AB testing.

The best way to contextualize this with management is to let them know that you are mitigating the risk of change management. The biggest risk to any project is not having your product or service accepted by the people you are trying to serve.

Why are we not testing things and why are we not understanding the need and the ethics of the product we use that are horrible to use.

Usability is about how we serve, but user testing can be associated to testing the product, this is not research of the users.

To get incredible velocity in a dev team you need to find a good strong true north star to follow. A clear picture of your users and what they want on their journey with you.

Embrace the user research inside all your work, do that to de-risk your project and watch the velocity increase.

The new budgets you roll out need to completely reassess how the marketing landscape has changed. Events are dead, webinars are empty, people are not going to work so why buy billboards, everything is moving and you need to create an adaptive budget to meet this new landscape.

What do we know is true? People are in their homes and on their phones, they check their emails, watch tv, and order food.

This is an important time to invest into UX, not the ux team that sit in photoshop and image what a your user is doing. Real research, the psychiatry and anthropologists. You need some science.

Commission a study or do it yourself. Re discover what your users are doing with their life to find where to engage and how to talk.

This means widening the tests to include much more outliners. Don’t just split test “You are” and “You’re”. Try new mediums like sound search, AR, gifts, gamewebinairs, robot popups, drive through meetings. The ground has shifted beyond your old experiences.

All you have now is the ability to learn. Which means hunt experience beyond your normal.

Risk adverse no longer wins as the noise is so loud and the users are so hidden you need something amazing to awake their slumber.

Now, more than ever is the time for BOLD.

Now is the time for science.

Now is the time to change.

What is a Testimonial in 2021?

A very old-fashioned term that some may think has been replaced by online “Reviews” and “Likes”. But testimonials are still relevant and used by many companies.

Difference to Customer Reviews

While Testimonials are controlled by the company, customer reviews appear on third-party sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, Tripadvisor, and Employment Sites, and the company has little control over the reviews.

What’s in a name

For companies with a long history, using the word “Testimonials” on their website is part of their image of long history and stability. For others, another word might be preferable such as “Customer Reviews” or “Customer Comments”. One company even called them “Love Letters from our Customers.” It depends on the company’s style.

Benefits of Testimonials

The benefits of testimonials, if implemented correctly, are:

1. Assist in establishing trust with the customer.
2. Helps customers in their decision.
3. The customer can see the product will be successful for them.
4. The customer knows the benefits and pitfalls of the product.

Software for Managing Testimonials

There are a number of Reputation Management Platforms that can help a company control Testimonials as well as Customer Reviews.

These include Repuso, GetMoreReviews, or RapidReviews.

Influencer Marketing Description

Influencer marketing software is important for companies that invest heavily in influencer marketing. The software provides the ability to automate your influencer discovery process providing audience demographics on different platforms, assists in managing your relationship with influencers, and provides reports with campaign data and ROI.

Social media platforms (including Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, Linkedin) have contributors who influence buying decisions either because of their trusted authority, expertise, or the relationship they have built with their audience.

There are a large number of influencers and the software can help identify suitable influencers. And, with the trend to have many smaller influencers, the software will allow better reporting for testing and for managing the relationship with many influencers.

Problems with Influencer Marketing

Some of the problems of managing Influercer Marketing are:

1. Some companies have a narrow list of sources of influencers. It should not just be Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
2. An influencer of today, may not be the influencer of tomorrow.
3. To find good influencers requires more than looking at some keywords and number of followers.
4. Finding the right influencer is manually intensive and has to be repeatedly checked.
5. Some companies are not sure where to start.

Solutions

There is a range of influencer marketing software that will assist your company to get the best ROI on its influencer marketing.

Influencer Marketing Software should provide:

• ability to research influencers on a wide range of platforms
• information that enables you to select a suitable influencer for your company
• ability to manage communications with the influencers you select
• ability to determine your ROI on each influencer that you use.

Featured Marketing Influencer Software

First-Party is the data collected by your company directly from customers, visitors to your company’s website, or your company’s social media followers.

What is the Power of First-Party Data?

First-Party data will enable your company to build long-term relationships with your customers. The data will be the most accurate of all data sources giving your company unique insights to your customer’s needs.

Integrate First-Party Data into your Sales and Marketing software.

It is important every piece of information is automatically sucked into your marketing and sales software tools. including your CRMs.

Respect and Guard Your Company’s First-Party Data.

Your company’s customers expect their data to be secure and their privacy safeguarded. This is reinforced by the many privacy laws each country has introduced. As part of this respect, make sure your customers are aware of what data you are collecting, and the uses you have for the data. You need to get acceptance from your cusdtomers.

User-Generated Content (UGC) is content – whether it is text, audio, video, or images – posted to social media or websites by users. It is different to company or brand-created material although brands can curate and repost user-generated content.

Types of  User-Generated Content

Ten types of user-generated content:

1. Reviews of Products
2. Comments 
3. Photos uploaded to social media that use your business page or branded hashtag.
4. Tweets to your brand or about your brand.
5. Contests
6. Showcase social media material about the brand or product
7. Requested reviews and testimonials

Benefits of User-generated Content

UGC has the following benefits:

1. Builds trust with potential customers
2. Improves customer satisfaction
3. Raises brand or product awareness in a wider community
4. Improves brand or products SEO rankings
5. Helps with website engagement

Problems of  User-Generated Content 

1. Managing negative reviews
2. Copyright when re-using posted material
3. Ensuring retain authenticity
4. Stopping legal and privacy issues.

Interest Examples of  User-Generated Content 

1. Toyota leveraged UGC for their “Feeling the Streets” Facebook ad campaign and was able to increase their total ad engagement by 440%
2. Tourism Queensland ran a campaign encouraging users to apply for the “best job in the world” and be a caretaker for a tropical island, with the aim to increase social activity and exposure. More than 35,000 people created video applications, resulting in $368 million worth of media coverage, 8.4 million unique website visits, and 55 million page views.
3. Nike has had many great UGC campaigns. One was an app where runners could track their activity and which was linked to social media so users could share their results increasing brand visibility.
4. During the Xmas season, Starbucks runs the #RedCupContest allowing its customers to share their customized coffee cups and win a Starbucks gift card.

Stats on User-Generated Content 

USG has the following interesting statistics: 

1. 28% higher engagement rate
2. 84% of millennials impacted 
3. 90 percent more time on websites with UGC
4. 73% increase in email click-through-rates
5. 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions,
6. 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands
7. 50% drop in cost-per-click than average. UGC-based ads get 4x higher click-through rates and a
8. 80% of brands say that their community-building efforts have resulted in increased traffic
9. 88% of consumers trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from their personal contacts
10. 70% of consumers will read UGC reviews or ratings before buying
11.  29% increase in web conversions when websites featured user-generated content.
12. 73% more positive comments with Ads featuring UGC
13. 25% of search results for the biggest brands are linked to ugc
14. But …. Gen Z and millennial generations watch more user-generated content than Gen X and Boomer generations. 

Software to manage User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) platforms help brands collect visual product or company mentions from social media and other sources to repurpose for marketing efforts, 

Examples Are

 https://www.pixlee.com/home                                  

Gamification software is any tool or platform used for applying game mechanics to non-game contexts in order to engage people either for sales, training, employee loyalty or entertainment.

Gamification software can be used by Marketing to apply game concepts such as badges, achievements, points, leaderboards to engage customers. It can improve customer loyalty, advocacy, and engagement. Gamification software can be used to track and reward customers for sharing content, making purchases or other activities.

Gamification software can also be used to promote sound competition in sales teams and even provide motivation. It can also be used be with other marketing tools such as loyalty management or brand advocacy software.

There are different types of retargeting:

Pixel-based retargeting is a way to re-display your material to any anonymous site visitor. This is probably the most common type of retargeting. When someone comes to your website, an unobtrusive piece of JavaScript (often referred to as a pixel) is placed on their browser.

List-based retargeting works after you already have someone’s contact information in your database. You can also use lists of your existing contacts for certain types of retargeting ads. The way that works is you upload a list of the email addresses to a retargeting campaign (usually on a social network like Facebook or Twitter), and the platform will identify users on that network who have those addresses and serve retargeting ads just to them.

Dynamic retargeting will show prospects ads featuring the exact items they viewed or left in shopping carts. The more data you collect on your customers, the more focused your retargeting ads can be.

Problems with Ad Serving and Retargeting Platforms

1. Google Changes. The top problem are the changes by Google to prevent advertisers and ad networks from connecting browser cookies to websites they are not managing. While there are other browsers, Chrome has 63.8% of the market so it will have a large impact.
2. Irritating customers. Customers are very sophisticated about ads and too many ads at the wrong time can irritate customers.
3. Re-Using the same Boring Ad Repeatedly. Like irritation, boredom leads to a lower ROI.
4. Not Being Focussed Enough. Lack of focus can lead to additional costs and a low ROI.
5. Cookie Window Too Short or Too Long. The standard length is usually 30 days but for B2B customers the decision time is usually much longer.

Solutions

The problems can be aleviated by carefuly planning and monitoring to see which criteria are the best to use.

Systems

The follow are some of the systems that provide assistance in managing retargeting.

We all know what customer reviews are. But in marketing, it means those on-line reviews from customers on third-party sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Tripadvisor and many more. 

Reviews on your website that you control and seek out are usually called testimonials

Customer Review Problems

The main problems include:

1. No strategy to manage customer reviews.
2. There are a huge no of sites where reviews appear. 
3. Negative Reviews are not addressed.

Customer Review Solutions

Strategy – Ensure your company has a strategy, processes and people to handle customer reviews.

Selected Sites – Focus on a selected set of sites only – don’t try to cover every site. Focus on those with the potential to drive the best leads.  Check Google search to see what comes up when you search using keywords related to your product to identify sites to monitor and review. 

Customers – Ask friendly customers to give you a review on a specific site.  Survey existing customers and those with a positive review follow up and ask them to put their comments on a specific link – provide them with the link. 

Negative Reviews – Respond to negative reviews on selected sites.  If a genuine complaint, make sure the complaint goes to the right person for action and ensure the action is noted as a comment on the review. If misinformation, correct the information as a comment on the review.. Otherwise, if a Karen review, then ignore, as the bad review will sink to the bottom.

Tip:  Google+ doesn’t have a lot of reviews but, surprise – surprise, those reviews come to the top.

Software for Management of Customer Reviews

There are a number of Reputation Management Platforms that can help a company control Testimonials as well as Customer Reviews.

These include Repuso, GetMoreReviews, or RapidReviews.

It is most unlikely that the Russians will escalate the current conflict into a full out cyber war. But it is something that cannot be ruled out.

The types of cyber attack the Russians are known for include:

• DDOS attacks – Denial of service attacks on banks, energy and communication companies infrastructure and supply chains.
• Wiper attacks – Malware which deletes data.
• Dissemination of false information
• Ransomware.

Types of cyber attacks

Most cyber attacks have been one-off against individual countries mainly at government and banking systems. It has not been confirmed that all or any of these were organised by Russia and most are individuals. But there is a belief that Russia indirectly supported them.

• 2007 – Estonia – spam attacks that took a number of sites down
• 2008 – Georgia – first recorded cyber attacks coinciding with armed conflict
• 2009 – Kyrgyzstan – DDOS took nation offline
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber weapon called the Snake disrupted Ukraine gov systems
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber DDOS attack against Presidential election
• 2015 – USA – White House computers hacked
• 2016 – Poland – 3 year disinformation campaign
• 2016 – UK – Brexit referendum – govt voter registration site attacked
• 2015 – France – malicious software took down networks of a TV station
• 2018 – South Korea – cyber attacks against Winter Olympics
• 2018 – USA – penetrated energy, water, gov and aviation facilities collecting info
• 2020 – USA – Solarwinds attack against government agencies
• 2021 – USA – Ransomware took down US fuel pipeline
• 2022 – Ukraine – attacks against government and bank websites
• 2022 – Unknown  – HermeticWiper – wiper malware which removes  data

What you need to do:

• Reset your mind and the mind of your staff to think about cyber security
• Review your cyber security protection and make sure your firewalls and virus protection are secure 
• Look at your business supply chain and identify where any weaknesses may break it
• Review your business continuity plans
• For individuals and small business, two-factor authentication will be important in preventing 

Definitions: 

DDOS: Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are designed to knock a website offline by flooding it with huge amounts of requests until it crashes.

Wiper:           Malware designed to delete data.  Example Hermetic Wiper.

CRMs used to be expensive and largely unavailable, but along with the rise of the internet, they have rocketed to become the largest tech market of the decade. Every business, whether a start-up or freelancer or global corporation, needs a system that collects data to improve efficiency. 

However, it’s vital to choose the right CRM for your company – it’s a big investment that will help define your success. So what exactly should you look out for? 

1. Compatibility with existing software. Whether you’re adding your CRM to a Mac or Windows PC, it’s important to check that the new software is compatible with what you already have. 
2. Ensure it meets your needs. Not all businesses face the same challenges. What data are you hoping to collect, and which features will make that possible? For example, would you like to create more leads, or simply become more efficient overall? 
3. Find the right price. Due to the rise in popularity and importance of CRMs, the market is extremely competitive, resulting in lower prices overall. Available models range in price from free to $3000 per month. When choosing your CRM, make sure to pick one that is within your budget and has the specific features you need. 
4. Ease of use. Before you’re sold on a CRM, it’s vital to check that the program is easy to master. Employees may fail to fill out or skip using a complex program, and you’ll lose data integrity. Whether you’re a freelancer or an HR Manager, trying to figure out a complex CRM will only slow you down and cost you money. 
5. Provider support. Look out for providers that offer training and implementation and teach you how to use the system to meet your exact needs. This will save a lot of time and will ensure that you’re taking full advantage of your purchase. 
6. Customer support. Will the provider look after you once you’ve invested in their CRM? It’s a good idea to look into this before making the leap. For example, when and how often are they available, and how will you be able to reach them? Are they reliable? 
7. The trial before purchasing. The most fail-safe way to prove that a system is right for you is to ask for a demonstration or trial it yourself. Making decisions based on reviews is not the best option, as business needs are diverse. What didn’t work for one person might be exactly what you’re after. Ask as many questions as you can, and shop around before simply buying the most popular software.
8. Mobile phone access. Let’s face it: if it’s on your phone, you’ll be more involved. It’s a good idea to invest in a system that can be displayed on mobile as business waits for no one. Unfortunately, some of the cheaper plans don’t have this feature, so if you prefer round-the-clock access to your data then you may have to spend a little more. 
9. Metric reports. Having a solid grasp of your metrics is vital to making the right business decisions. Make sure that the CRM you land on provides in-depth reporting on your data. 
10. Social CRM features. As social media platforms have become important for lead generation, consider if you require the capability to interact with your social platforms via CRM. 

When it comes to finding a CRM that will optimize your business results, it’s important to consider the points listed above. With so many models on the market, you’re almost guaranteed to find the perfect match.

What are the questions when preparing a new Marketing Strategy?

1. History

It’s always important to go back and have look at how the last Marketing Strategy went – successes and failures. The most important is for the last year but given the drama of 2020, it would be wise to look at previous 5 years to get a picture of what might happen in 2021.

2. Goals

Next look at the goals for the next year. Increase in sales, of course. But will there be a revamp of products – will there be new products, will older products be discarded. What about ROI. What about extending reach of your client base or are marketing channels to be revised.

Once these have decided at a general top level, the detail can be examined. Looking at the detail may lead to a change in goals.

3. Products

What are the new products that are coming down the line. Do you need more new products. What new products can be developed in the coming year? Are there new vertical products that would support you’re existing base.

What products need to be retired? What are no long making a positive ROI. But be careful to ensure that a losing product is not actually support another winning product. Sometimes it is just better to modify a low or negative ROI, because it brings in customers that then are up sold to another product.

What current successful products need to be refreshed to ensure they continue with their positive ROIs.

4. Know Your Customers

Get full pictures of your exemplar customer. Know what are your exemplar likes and dislikes, how they like their stories told, where they hangout in social media, what shapes their buying decisions.

What types of experiences are you providing your clients. Do they want to keep coming back. What are your costs of obtaining customers from different marketing channels and what additional products do they acquire at what cost.

5. Marketing Channels

For the next year, where are you going to focus your limited budget (it’s always limited no matter how much your budget).

Are you going to extend your channels include more social media or reduce them. Are you going to change the type of influencers you use. Are you going to change to micro-influencers or try different influencers.

Are you going to change your approach in print, video, streaming, TV, email. Where will the advertising funds be focused.

6. Competition

Have a look at your competition. Identify the changes in their trends and where they are likely to head in the coming year. Where are their weaknesses that you can take advantage of and what strengths of your competition can you learn from.

7. A/B Preliminary Test

As part of creating your next marketing plan, do a small about of prototype testing on some way-out and eccentric ideas. They may lead you to a new approach.

8. Plan

You then need to get your plan together and identify what, when and where you want to do things.

9. Budget

And, last of all, when you have the basic strategy put together your budget for the strategy. This will, of course, lead to some changes in the strategy when full costing is done.

10. Refining

Now the long process of refining the plan starts with showing stakeholders the strategy and absorbing their changes. And, of course, when the budget round finally finishes and you know how big is your portion, the process of modifying the strategy to meet the funds available begins. Then its the final approval by all.

Project Management can feel like it is art rather than science and that people skills are the most important. However, the following need to be considered when looking for the keys to good project management.

Factors to be considered are:

• Project Management Tools
• Staff Relationships
• Mentorship of team members
• Stakeholder management
• Problem fixing
• Recovering from missed deadlines

Do You Need a Project Management Tool?

It takes time to use a project management tool. Some tools are complex and difficult to use. So why bother. Particularly if it is a small project. How does project management fit with agile.

However, a small effort returns enormous benefits. And yes even agile needs project management. It is just uses a different approach.

Which Project Management Tool?

There are so many tools to use. There is Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Jira, Microsoft Project or even Google Sheets. Each one has its advantage

There is a new tool available:

Forwardslash

Forwardslash is a new simple tool that makes it easier to create a project plan and manage staff.

Forwardslash

To create a project, you just select Create a New Project – add a name and start adding tasks.

It is easy to develop a plan.

We all know the tech debt that we collect when people want to move fast and lean. The speed at which we move to stay agile and disruptive often collects debts to be paid down the line.

The fear of the startup or the disrupter taking a segment often leads to a quick acquisition or a spin-off site or some new idea.

Here is where the debt grows. This is the start of what will start to catch on like a barnacle at sea on a ship. Till you are dragged underwater and struggling to breathe.

Cut to the multi brand multi product debacle that you know manage.

Create a foundations team that puts tools like abstract which is grit for designers. Start to think about a central repository for your design system that has reusable components.

Imagine how lean and fast you will be with a full quiver of logos, elements, atoms, and components to fire from your bow like a marvel superhero.

In some leading companies, they now have a page builder attached to the storybook to allow drag and drop of components from the business user.

New site, no problem… here build it yourself.

You don’t like that form build your own and we will run it through our testing to have it approved for accessibility.

This is where you get to when you plan for lean, when you are sensible about disruption and when you acknowledge the support and maintenance and ongoing product development that is needed to fill a full pipeline and grow your experience design.

Is There Really a Need for Data Cleansing?

The importance of clean data cannot be understated. Unfortunately, cleaning data is difficult to get on the agenda and to be allocated budget. Experian reports that on average companies data is only around 75% clean. This is costing significantly both in reputation and money. For example, in this day of strict privacy, having dispersed sources of data where the user may have consented at one point but not another, may lead to breaches of Privacy Laws.

The ROI on putting in place some data cleansing functions will be positive if the right steps are taken. But, it is only when senior executives call for “trusted” data that the problem can be seriously addressed.

What Types of Data Problems are There?

There are 5 types of data problems:

1. Incomplete Data.
2. Duplicate Data
3. Inaccurate data.
4. Inconsistent data
5. Outdated data

How Are Data Corruption Issues Prevented?

Solving each type of data problem needs a different approach. But let’s look at prevention. 

One of the best approaches is having a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) but this is an architectural solution that can only be addressed by a large IT Department change in strategy.  This ensures all – well as many as possible – use the same source of data for common data such as client data, address data and contact information. The data duplication, inaccurate data, inconsistent and outdated data cleansing still need to be done but it will be in one place and less of it. In the meantime, the following can be done. 

Another important tool in prevention is having standard approaches across all systems to ensure formats, rules and metadata are the same for the same type of data.

Reporting on Data Cleansing Problems

You will need to do data profiling providing adequate analysis reporting to identify data problems enabling measurement, visualisation and data profiling. Managers need to understand where the problems are located. Once problems are identified steps can be taken to fix the problems

How Are Data Cleansing Problems Fixed?

Whether it is incomplete, duplicate, inaccurate, inconsistent or outdata data problems that need to be tackled, there are many problems to assist in cleaning. 

For data duplication, this is perhaps the easiest because the tools allow selection of some fields to compare and identify duplicates.  Then making a decision on which of the duplicates is to be removed or merged with other data. This problem will require some manual intervention and oversight.

With outdated data, in some cases purging data after a certain date may be appropriate but usually not feasible.  Sometimes, these can be tackled by going to more up-to-date sources on the web and running updates. 

Inaccurate, incomplete and inconsistent data all need to be identified first. Then the decision can be made on the approach. One approach is to use externally sourced data, to update and improve the data. The other is to examine the data and apply a series of standards edits e.g. remove spaces and padding that is not needed, fix spelling mistakes, hot-deck (copy same data from other valid sources), fixing capitalization.  Once problems are identified manual intervention can allow you to do bulk updates.

Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Solutions

The solutions for cleansing data quality are improving. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Quality shows the top programs.

Data Cleansing Software List

There is now significant software and processes to help companies clean up their data including the following:

First, you start with your segmentation, the foundation of any customer thought. You might have a lens like a considerer, adorer, consumer if you want to focus your team on hows to sculpt the brand. You might have a segmentation based on product lines, if so then lock yourself in a room and redo your entire segmentation. Product line segmentation is an indicator of narcissist company syndrome.

From here you build out your GEL to contain everything you want your company to think of with useble resources to design products for the users. They can be internal or external and those are very different.

From the segmentation you can explain each segment in personas and videos that capture each segment.

This sets up your brand style guides as a designer will need to understand visually how we talk to the user. The language section will explain common terms of how we talk to customer, if its government you may want to always call people citizens fir example.

Down to the tools. This is where you load the fonts, the logos, but the more advanced GELs have the design systems.

Look at something like https://github.com/airbnb/Lona or https://www.invisionapp.com/design-system-manager to see how you can build a library of components that any one in the company internal or external can use to develop front end applications.

By making a central design system you can then be more agile as a total brand, if you suddenly want all buttons to be square like Microsofts brand not round like apple’s brand you can roll this out across everything if they have forked a central design system.

As with all great projects it is about the change management. As you build a central portal look to add a chat and do webinairs, build FAQs and reach out to market your GEL internally.

has been with us since the 50s but come into full force in 2001 with the creation of a formal methodology for software development.

Content Problems

Amount of Content: There is so much content, that grabbing and keeping the customer’s attention is difficult. What is the key to standing out and keeping customers engaged? Content is now the heart of inbounding marketing but how to keep the heart beating when there is a need to produce constant content or sink in the mire of the internet.

Inconsistency: Because content is churned out by different departments the information in different content can clash.

Credibility: Some content can damage brand and product credibility by throwing words into a mixer and then laying them out without any focus.

Coldness: Some articles are so painfully full of facts without any emotion or human connectivity. They lead the viewer uninterested and, even worse, bored.

Improving Content

One of the key ways to improve content is to add images. But just plonking down some random images will not help. The key is to use storytelling structure to tie your product details, images, and information together in a way that attracts attention and then remains in the customer’s mind.

1. Strategy. A long term picture needs to be set up with a base story structure.
2. Brand Story. At the top, there needs to be the brand story from which all other stories flow.
3. Content Stories. Each content needs to have a story around a relatable person, put the interesting elements at the start, some type of conflict is required to keep the reader engaged, the story needs to be authentic. And, as a bonus, if possible use a little bit of appropriate humor.

Software for Content Storytelling

One of the options for improving your content storytelling is the application Shorthand.

Shorthand is a digital storytelling platform for teams in marketing, communications, and media. Build stunning, interactive stories for the web without relying on a team of developers.

See the video below.

Daily companies are churning out content. The content is dispersed into many channels, social media, web pages, brochures, and many other vehicles including internal company usages. With so much content, it is hard to manage and ensure that it is not inconsistent or out of date. With remote work, the need to use systems to control content has become even more important.

According to Gartner, “there is increased focus on three trends that are present across organizations, regardless of industry:

• Tackling content sprawl: Organizations have a multitude of content repositories, and with the increasing prevalence of SaaS, more silos materialize on a regular basis.
• Delivering digital business transformation: CSP technology is in demand to underpin new operations and processes that utilize content as a key component in innovative ways.
• Modernizing work: Users’ expectations have changed for good, due to the ubiquity of compelling user experiences in consumer applications.”

The impact of Content Sprawl

There are a number of issues that are obvious. The following table shows the main reasons why customers unfollow brands. Content sprawl doesn’t figure explicitly in the list but it is behind many of the problems listed.

Tackling Content Sprawl

Processes and Standards: Most companies will have processes and standards to try to prevent content sprawl. It is important it is on the management list to monitor and responsibility for the management of content is recognized and assigned.

Co-ordination: To ensure customers are getting the same message and the brands of the company are protected, co-ordination is the key. It is necessary to ensure all marketing, sales, web, and social media teams have a clear picture of the brand values and the product functions and features.

Audits: Audits of public content will be essential. It is important any out-of-date or inconsistent content can be either removed for fixed quickly.

Target Persona: Building sets of the persona of the company’s targets is important. This may vary with each campaign but as well there needs to be a standard persona that encompasses all sets.

Systems that assist Sales Content Management

One of the keys to running smooth operations in marketing is to implement practical data governance. You need to make sure that any data that you are publishing has some standards and rigger to ensure your team is delivering to the internal brand reputation. If you lose trust in the data then you start to have very critical issues within the company.

Step one is to implement the basics, where that if any data is published then you require the basic understanding of the source of data and the time period, and the author. If you put the owner of the data, and when the data was published, when it was updated and where it was sourced from.

Google analytics for example would give you different data to straight awstats logs of hits on website. And you will find depending on the source of data if it is sales from a crm, then salespeople might backdate their sales. So you want to know the period of the data and then when it was updated.

From here you can step into creating a data dictionary, everybody has their own definition of profit and opportunity for example, if you can state the contentious headings and the formula you will find this is gives the transperancy.

People loved how with excel you could click and see the formula. If you can provide that level of discovery in modern stacks like tableau or powerBi you will maintain the trust of the employees.

This is a complete ROI issue, where you need a committee to monitor the level of mistrust, and issues and decide how much the rule need to be enforced to decide the level of data governance.

The next important step in the maturity journey is to look at an approval system. Governance needs to be treated with a mix of training, policing and automation.

Where you can you want to publish your standards, then police what people are doing and then automate the approval. You might have a dashboard with sales and marketing data. You can establish data stewards that approve the dashboard and a ux of data and then a nice workflow for approval for a dashboard that will be company wide. If it is just for the sales department then it may just need one person to approve before publishing.

As with all governance it is about balance and growth and building something while managing your risks.

So we make our plan to grow first year 1000 people, second year 50,000, third year 1,000,000. We get buy in from management, we start the content creation and we are six months in and we have THAT meeting.

“Show me the numbers on the website……….This is terrible it’s only 4000 hits. “

You are exceeding your targets, and the numbers are great. However you forgot management changes. Right now the average turnover of a manager is above 30% per year. So you you can guarantee that there will be one person who wasn’t sold in on what you are doing.

Strategy one. The best plan is to just keep selling and keep building. If you can do this you can keep your eye on the ball and deliver over three years of building.

Strategy two. Mitigate the risk by promoting content.

Quuu Promote. Quora Sendible BuzzStream Triberr Taboola outbrain

These all work well to promote your content and increase the return. Pay for youtube views, promote your content.

Strategy three. Capture an audience.

Invest in the email software, building out a chain of content, small autoresponders, and segment. If you can capture a list you can speed up how you promote new content.

HubSpot’s free forms tool Benchmark Moosend SendInBlue Stripo

Strategy four: Integrate your marketing with your sales to get hard numbers on which clients read what articles before buying. Software like marketo allows you to see what people saw before they become a client or signed up.

The important thing is to prove and sell early and every day. Find ways to justify the longer strategy. In the end creating great content for you customers is always going to be better than convincing them with a fancy ad. With all marketing it is often best to ask what value am I giving, and education trumps excitement. Mostly.

This data shows your average users usage of mobile vs computer. Clearly mobile is the number one place for search.

Previously google ranked the desktop first and then would make allowances based on the mobile performance.

Rankings will continue to pull in data from desktop or app content if required, but the primary focus is on mobile. Desktop will be used if it has additional ranking information but there’s no guarantee that it will be crawled. 

The focus on mobile simply aims to provide an optimal search experience for users. This has been a transitory process to date but as of September 2020 all sites will be indexed mobile-first.

Don’t fret just yet. Google’s already confirmed that most sites are ready for this transition and they’ve actually shifted 70% of sites over to mobile first indexing already (after checking they’re ready). 

So this means that your site should be mobile responsive and to design for mobile first. Speed is critical as not everyone has good internet or a fast phone.

• You can test your site  by typing the URLs of both versions into the Structured Data Testing Tool and comparing the output.
• Have your developer remove any unnecessary markup that isn’t relevant to the content of each page. 
• Verify your mobile version is accessible to Googlebot using the robots.txt testing tool 
• Ensure you have verified your mobile site in Google Search Console 

This will lead to you establishing a solid simple site that is light and simple to load.

Steps to Building Trust

1.  Professional certificates, awards, or thank-you letters help build trust in your product or service. In some areas such as education, law, and medicine, they are simply essential.

2. Establish that your credibility by explaining the benefit that you give to your customers.

3. Ensure that the advertisement matches that the landing page. Trust will be built if the two match and are consistent.

4. Images that explain your product will be important. When planning and selecting your images keep in mind that these must reflect stability and reliability.

5. Providing names, addresses, emails and phone to enable the customer to contact your directly will increase the customer’s confidence particularly if your brand is not well-known.

6. Real Customer recommendations and reviews will convince the customer of reliability and the ability to deliver.

7. There are easy to use landing page software which will help you put together a landing page quickly which meets all the above requirements.

Landing Page Software

Data Management Platforms (DMP) are changing and will be able to extend their capabilities to take account of the new technologies introduced by Google in the next couple of years.

There will be a change to analysing aggregating and de-identified data. This is similar to other sources such as Facebook. Google’s intention for the Privacy Sandbox  is to “Create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default.”

Demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), onboarders and data marketplaces will increase and thrive in the new environment. All these functions may be absorbed by DMPs.

Which means when deciding on a DPM, there are new questions to asking including:

1. What alternate solution is the DMP providing for the demise of cookies?
2. Does the DMP have look-alike functionality?
3. What are the second and third-party sources used by the DMP?
4. Does the DMP have cross-device identity management allowing stitching profiles across all environments.
5. Does your DMP stitch the user journey?
6. Has the DMP a solution to Wall Gardens? The rise of companies protecting their data has made marketing all that much harder. Even Google, Facebook and Amazon have walled gardens.
7. Is a Data Cleaning Room a feature of the DMP. This will allow a peak into the walled gardens to see how the ads of Google are performing.
8. Match rate testing is essential to enable ROI to be established accurately.

Benefits of DMPs

Digital media is growing more complex and DMPs have now become essential in the management of customer data. It allows the unification of data from many systems providing a cohesive view of customers. The DMPs enable you to have a long-term view of customers with consistent and continuous analysis and reporting. As well, these tools will help you identify new customers using audience extension and look-alike techniques. DMPs provide unique insights into your clients.

Problems of DMPs

With the change by Google to block third-party cookies in Chrome, some have felt this will impact DMPs severely. But the work of DMPs is to consolidate all data – first-party, second-party, and third-party data. As well, Google and other search engines are bringing in new technology that will replace cookies over the next year and DMPs will be able to take advantage of this change to continue to collect third-party data.

Solutions

There is a range of software with different features. Some of the platforms are listed below.

Our lunches have been on hold during the pandemic but they will be back soon.

They allow marketing software businesses to meet with senior executives during a sublime lunch at a top restaurant.

You can contact us at sh@trackita.com if would like to know when our lunches have started again.

But how? You imagine a company that is lean, scientific in its testing of the web apps, hunting to understand what is our unique satisfying experience that drives customers into raving fans, you imagine people fighting to create excellent UX.

Then you wale up.

And you see IT installing security, customer service saving money, finance trying to shave millions by saving cents.

The biggest journeys start with the first step, and learning from design thinking you need to pull people out and give them a taste of the sweet nectar of service to the customer.

What has worked for me is to arrange a center of excellence. I have polled leaders across many industries and the winners seem to follow a similar patten.

Arrange a sprint with a single focus, a part of a site, secondments of people from many teams, be it one day a week, on top of other duties or best case for a six week google sprint of three two week scrums.

Start by getting to talk to customers, have all the team do it. Use Airtasker, call customers, ask the sales guys to arrange meetings, go and talk. Qualitative then quantitive. Now look into the numbers and search across your company for related data. Look to competition and find best and worst. Build a clear problem statement. What are you solving for what imaginary customer?

Now forget everything and brainstorm, ask consultants, ask management, ask anyone to build ideas on how to solve the problem. Talk with suppliers. Make a list of ideas.

Now test, start by asking what if, build prototypes, lean build, check and test and measure.

Now iterate and iterate and record. With the right focus you will improve and the team will have learned how to test and how to think user first.

Now the hard part. Write up your success and sell it through the company. Send your team back and get the success numbers- we made x, we did x.

Have them teach the company of what is possible. Have management talk up the success and change kpis. And now you have begun the start of a center of excellence.

Subscribe for part 2 where we discuss the growth of UX building a machine.

Send a request to sh@trackita.com

1. Problem Identification

A company must first identify that they have a problem that needs to be fixed. There are many ways this can happen. Some of the ways that problems are identified are continuous improvement programs, annual budget capital analysis, consultant reports, audit reports, and management meetings.

2. Research Problem

The company will have set paths for researching the problem depending on the type of problem. For software expenditure, teams are usually set up to analyze the problem, scope the problem, detail the high-level requirements, identify and meet with stakeholders, prepare a rough budget, obtain capital and operational budgets and obtain senior management approval to proceed.

3. Solution Options Exploration

The next step will involve researching and evaluating solutions that fit with the company’s existing infrastructure and budget.

4. Requirements, RFP, and Tenders

Then detailed requirements will be put together with system architectural documents so that RFPs or tenders can be issued. Where possible, providing presentations on your product at this stage will allow the client to understand the benefits of software and what they are seeking.

5. Supplier Selection

Then there is what feels like the real meat of the sales task. Preparing the response to RFP or Tender, presentations, holding events. And many, many meetings to discuss and demonstrate your product with a wide range of people. And, of course, you will be the successful winner.

Implementation

Implementation is an important part of Sales. Ensuring the customer understands your product and implementation problems are minimized, will be essential in upselling other products and for recommendations that may give to other potential clients.

Your company will be burning money unless they take into account the new digital marketing trends. The pandemic has changed the world and has brought forward changes that would have taken a decade. There is no going back and the many changes of 2021 are here to stay.

1. Digital Events

2. 5G

5G will start to have an impact. Mobile has now become the chief means of communication. Google is now making mobile 100% of its display of websites – websites must look good on mobile. The demand for increased capacity can now start to be met and will start to impact digital marketing in 2021.

3. Social Media Continued Growth

Social media have increased the ability for the consumer to purchase on their platforms and this area will continue to grow. These platforms will require new learnings and approaches but will be vital for many brands. It will not just be brand awareness but actually selling on the social media platform. Facebook Shop where a shop can be created in both Facebook and Instagram will initially rule for small businesses but even large companies will use platforms like these.

4. Consumer Data Improved

Better Use of Consumer Data. Consumers are tired of being given a host of ads related to a purchase they have already completed. They want ads directed at what they want now and or even what they may want in the future. For example, if they have just bought a car they don’t want to continually see more car ads, they will want accessories for the car, trips they can take in the car, accident reducing tools. And in twelve months, they will want to see cheaper alternatives for insurance. These are the coming challenges that need to be addressed. Customer Development Platforms (CDP) will come to the fore this year. It will become more critical to be able to manage customer data and stop the fragmentation.

5. Social Media Channel Reduction

Reducing and consolidating the use of social media channels. Each social media platform is developing a personality and a target audience. Selecting and find the right set of social media will be key.

6. Community Caring

The tone has changed. The pandemic has changed the focus from personal flamboyance to community caring. Caring about those impacted severely by 2021 will become a focus and brands will need to show their caring side on digital media.

7. Still Working from Home

Working from Home will continue to rule and lead to a need for new approaches both for B2B and B2C. There will be many new approaches develop over this year with the continued use of working from home not just Zoom and Microsoft Teams. That will be just the start.

How do you choose the number?

Influencers can be a very effective way to reach a targetted audience. But making decisions about which influencer to choose, large or small, and how many to choose is difficult. More than 70% of campaigns use influencers to some extent and most use multiple influencers.

A marketing strategy for influencers needs to be developed. There will need to be testing to see what works for your company’s brand. Factors that will influence your choices are:

1. What are your niches?
2. The best approach for that niche – brand ambassador, gifting, blogging ads, video ads.
3. The type of adds – video,
4. Which influencers will your company be able to build a relationship?
5. How much compensation are you willing to pay.?
6. Detail what you want from the advertising and your expectations of the influencer.
7. Document guidelines for the influencer to follow.
8. Create a standard influencer agreement template.
9. Expected ROI.

List all the sizes and types of influences and look at what is best for your company. The trend at the moment is to have many smaller influencers and spread the risk. But this may not suit your company and selecting one or two brand ambassadors would be more effecdtive.

What are the different sizes of influencers?

STIM has identified five groups of followers:

• Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers.
• Micro-influencers: 10,000-50,000 followers.
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000-500,000 followers.
• Macro-influencers: 500,000-1 million followers.
• Mega-Influencers: 1 million+ followers.

Types of Influencer Collaboration.

There are a number of ways to collaborate with influencers:

1. Sponsored Social Media Content – your company provides content
2. Gifting – your company provides gifts
3. Brand Ambassador – the influencer commits to your brand long-term
4. Takeover – the influencer appears on your social media accounts
5. Sponsored Blog Posts – influencer blogs on standard websites
6. Guest Blogging -your company blogs on their website.
7. Video content – such as Youtube and Tiktok.

Costs of Influencers

The costing will varying significantly. Gifting, for example, can just the cost of providing the gift – but with no guarantee the gift will even be mentioned. Some indicative pricing is:

• 10,000 followers could charge $20 per post.
• 100,000 followers could charge $200 per post.
• 1,000,000 followers could charge $2000 per post.

Influencer Marketing Software

Software that you help you through the maze includes:

A large proportion of the ads on browsers are third party cookies. Rather than just blocking cookies, Google is planning a phased approach with new tools for advertisers without causing the current irritation to browser users.

At this stage, it is unclear what the full impact of the loss of cookies will be. And any changes will be gradual.

At this point, the only thing that can be done is to be aware. Trackita will monitor changes and keep you up-to-date.

Ad Serving and Retargeting Platforms enable you to remind your customers of your products and services if your customers leave your website without buying. These platforms also allow your company to show visitors relevant ads when they visit other sites. Retargeting works with apps and searches as well as website banner ads. These will adjust as Google makes releases.

What is ABM?

Account-based marketing (ABM) targets key accounts focussing on specific companies.

Get the ABM Strategy in place

The first step is for the Executive to agree that an ABM approach is one of the approaches in the Marketing Strategy and then look at the ways it will be done.

Get Sales and Marketing Communicating on ABM

A process for ensuring and measuring ABM needs to be identified that does not put an onerous load on Sales but allows Marketing to assess success. Sales feel they own accounts and particularly the key accounts and they will need to see outcomes from any additional efforts.

Audit the CRM data regularly

The company’s CRM data will need to be accurate. The third step is an audit needs to be done and a process for cleaning the data regularly. Otherwise, there will be time and costs wasted.

Set Up ABM Metrics

Executive, Sales, and Marketing all need to agree on a set of AMB Metrics and regularly review the metrics.

Software

The fifth step is to assess your company’s Sales and Marketing tools and determine if additional ABM software is required. The list of ABM software includes:

If you are in sales or marketing, you are going to be defined as a brand by the experience. This can be hard as it doesn’t seem like you control the experience.

This may be true but what can you do.

Build a brand dashboard. As the owner of brand, you need to find data to show the company what the experience is doing.

If you are insurance, you don’t control the claims department. However, this is hands down the number one way people build their impression and the number one thing people talk about.

Here you build out the segments and the journeys and what people are going through.

A customer is positioned with your storytelling, and then the experience delivers the brand. you can find ways for this to work with the other departments to lead and own the customer experience.

Creating a place for your company to understand what is happening in the minds of customers as they desire and experience the product is critical to success.

Who is Doing It?

And when people do start delivering the content it is hard to work out if you are delivering for search, for social or for a buyer to read to understand.

The selling of your content needs to address the problem in the customer’s head a the time they are reading.

Customer’s Problem

AN EXAMPLE OF REAL NEED VS VERBAL NEED Coaching businesses, for example; I helped deliver a study on what coaches did with their clients for $2K a month and they spent a lot of time fixing their psychological problems. One electrical engineer had capped his business at $10M turnover and the coach discovered that they have an issue with money being evil, and rich people being evil. The coach encouraged the ceo to give 10% of gross (!!!) to charity. Within three years the company was turning over $100M.

The issue is that CEO didnt walk in saying can you help me give away my money, or I think rich people are naughty. That CEO came in saying he had problems with marketing.

And you will have this in every business, why people talk to you is different to why people buy from you. Your content needs to have headlines for people to talk to you, the content is what you need to encourage people to buy with.

B2B Buying Journey

For this element it is really important to sell each step independently, the title you use on sites like facebook, twitter and other social sites are about grabbing 10 seconds of attention.

Which might be a great way to sell a trip to australia, but the article about the quokka is not what positions buying the trip.

Same with your product, finding the features, the what are the customer benefits. Now, what are the attention grabbers that hang off those stories? This is why it is important when you are spinning out content from articles and videos that are longer form, and creating the Instagram photos and tweets to find the shinny joke that catches the attention. Context and personalization and micro-targeting are important in this journey.

Software

Some software to manage this journey are

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		3dcart 3dcart is a customizable eCommerce platform designed to build an online store. Some features include Level 1 PCI security compliance, the same level used by banks and large financial institutions, along with search engine optimized templates and no transaction fees.	Marketing Software	15220	$1.00	3dcart quantity	Add to cart
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		ABM Inventory ABM Inventory is a SaaS system designed for retail, wholesale sectors. The aim of the system is to provide continuous product availability in required quantity at the right place and in due time; reduce excess inventories (over-stocks), decrease out-of-stock levels and consequently lost sales. Bas…	Marketing Software	15798	$1.00	ABM Inventory quantity	Add to cart
		Acadaca Acadaca is a front-end eCommerce platform with a flexible configuration with drag and drop merchandising.	Marketing Software	15255	$1.00	Acadaca quantity	Add to cart
		Accelevents Accelevents is an event registration, ticketing, and fundraising solution for all types and sizes of events, from the company of the same name in Boston. At basic it supports event ticketing, and it higher tier plans support event messaging, and provides an online giving app.	Marketing Software	16216	$1.00	Accelevents quantity	Add to cart
		Acctivate Acctivate is an inventory management software offering from Alterity, Inc. meant to integrate with QuickBooks, Intacct, and other platforms. It includes features such as barcoding & mobile, kitting & assemblies.	Marketing Software	15810	$1.00	Acctivate quantity	Add to cart
		Accumed EHR Accumedic Computer Systems in New York offers their Accumed EHR for behavioral health practices.	Marketing Software	16051	$1.00	Accumed EHR quantity	Add to cart
		ACES Web Audit Technology ACES Risk Management's (ARMCO) flagship product is ACES (Automated Compliance and Evaluation System) Web Audit Technology which enables full understanding of mortgage loan quality, how to control it and how to convey it. According to the vendor, their web-based solution includes highly customizable…	Marketing Software	15870	$1.00	ACES Web Audit Technology quantity	Add to cart
		Acomba ACCEO Solutions headquartered in Montreal now support the Acomba Accounting Suite, a software suite for SMBs featuring many integratable modules, including Acomba e-commerce, Acomba inventory and stock controls, Acomba orders management, and Acomba payroll module. Acomba is available exclusively for…	Marketing Software	15368	$1.00	Acomba quantity	Add to cart
		Acomba ACCEO Solutions headquartered in Montreal now support the Acomba Accounting Suite, a software suite for SMBs featuring many integratable modules, including Acomba e-commerce, Acomba inventory and stock controls, Acomba orders management, and Acomba payroll module. Acomba is available exclusively for…	Marketing Software	15812	$1.00	Acomba quantity	Add to cart
		Actionstep Actionstep in Richmond offers their flagship legal practice management software as an end-to-end solution, containing both matter management tools and business administration automation, with an internal billing and accounting system.	Marketing Software	15838	$1.00	Actionstep quantity	Add to cart
		ACTouch Technologies Pvt. Ltd. ACTouch is a Cloud-Based ERP Software Designed Specifically For Small Businesses, Providing Inventory Management, Billing & Invoicing, Payment Management, Manufacturing, Online Accounting,Sales and Purchases, Order Management,Budgeting, General Ledger etc.	Marketing Software	15800	$1.00	ACTouch Technologies Pvt. Ltd. quantity	Add to cart
		Acumin Acumin is a legal practice management system focusing on business workflow automation, from Dexco Corporation in Montreal.	Marketing Software	15830	$1.00	Acumin quantity	Add to cart
		Adagio Operational Suite Adagio Operational Suite is an inventory management software offering from Softrak Systems. It includes features such as 6 character part number, user-defined segmentation (maximum 4 segments) to allow powerful reporting, and both standard and user-specified costing.	Marketing Software	15699	$1.00	Adagio Operational Suite quantity	Add to cart
		add*ONE add*ONE is an inventory management software offering from INFORM. It includes features such as self-adapting forecasts and calculation of cost-effective order proposals.	Marketing Software	15724	$1.00	add*ONE quantity	Add to cart
		Aderant Expert Sierra Aderant’s Expert Sierra is a cloud-based legal management software solution designed for mid-sized law firms. This solution includes options for document management and financials. The vendor’s value proposition is that their software-as-a-service solution (SaaS) gives users access to the premier pr…	Marketing Software	15850	$1.00	Aderant Expert Sierra quantity	Add to cart
		Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) Adobe Business Catalyst is an all-in-one cloud-hosted system for building and managing web content and online stores. It has a built-in CRM framework in addition to sales, service, and marketing features including eCommerce and Email Marketing tools. It is scheduled to be shutdown in 2021.	Marketing Software	15203	$1.00	Adobe Business Catalyst (Discontinued) quantity	Add to cart
		AdvancedEHR AdvancedMD in South Jordan offers AdvancedEHR, an EMR / EHR solution providing HIPAA compliant e subscription support, a mobile app with collaboration tools and notepad, patient charting, and patient portal.	Marketing Software	16083	$1.00	AdvancedEHR quantity	Add to cart
		Advancepro Inventory Management Advancepro Inventory Management is an inventory management software offering from AdvancePro. It includes features such as apt cloud hosted service and inventory management.	Marketing Software	15814	$1.00	Advancepro Inventory Management quantity	Add to cart

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When I go to the bank I want my finance taking care of, but i talk to somoone from personal loans and someone from everyday banking and someone from home loans.

As a marketing and sales team inside a company you often inherit a dispersed company that is structured based on the manufacturing and supply of a product. The first job needs to be unifying this structure under customer needs. The customer need needs to structure the KPIs, and then at some point during the org structure, you need to switch to make supplying cost-effective by unifying who is supplying.

So the person who buys the reinsurance cant help the guy who is delivering credit cards in an organisation. So the reality though is where the flip happens and how the KPIS link up so that products can be bundled and delivered together.

Start with the customer mapping using software like

www.custellence.com

www.uxpressia.com

www.smaply.com

Start with mapping out the customer journey. Next part in the series we will take you through how to build a Center of UX Excellence to encourage a unified vision of customer desires.

3 Step Method for Targets

I will show you a simple 3 step method of creating a target for any team to hit and then how to automate it so your team keeps hitting their targets.

Learnings from a Grocery Company

This came from working with a large grocery company, I mapped the following lists of all the data they were working with. It was 30 systems and each system had up to 240 tables they were meant to be monitoring to get across supply, sales, rois, customer insights, and many other areas of the business they were managing.

The problem with this is with meetings and producing reports and managing the people under him, he wasn’t logging in to all the systems and he wasn’t monitoring what his KPIs were.

I delivered a system for him that allowed him to monitor all his KPIS on mobile and get email updates customised for him and his team. A simple system of management to automatically deliver KPIS.

This utopia seems unattainable and always has been at each company I have delivered for but I always deliver the same three steps.

Step One – Map KPIs

Step one map out each of your initial KPIs you measure and create a threshold for what is red, green, and yellow. It clearly marks what you think is an acceptable level for anything, I suggest even putting in things like customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction and use soft numbers like NPS or a simple survey for employee happiness. It is important to keep in mind you will improve. With one insurance company, I started with 20 metrics and within 8 weeks there were 114. The key is to check the data sources and put your metrics in quickly. Causal mapping is a great technique for this, start with what you want to achieve and then map that back to what will cause that. For example, if you want sales, you need proposals, which need meetings, which need calls.

Step Two – Create a Dashboard

Then run that into a dashboard, with each of the metrics. From here you can then create drill-downs that allow each metric to be investigated:

Step Three – Setup Emails

Now you build out the experience by setting up emails of the main dashboard with clickable links:

And ideally you make a searchable main home page or portal.

From here you can start to make a list of all the employees and which metrics they see and receive.

The Result is Metrics to Manage

You then have the metrics about your team you want to measure, they are being emailed daily/weekly/monthly. From here you put in the meetings to check the numbers and a facility for escalating immediate issues. For example, if you have a situation where a red can cause a problem you can create a trigger for an action committee to be brought together around an emergency to start moving to real-time response to problems.

Workflow Management

Once this is in place I suggest you move to workflow management to respond to these KPIs and data points.

You need to apply basic dataops principles to this, build it quick and simple first in excel, and improve with iterations.

Blueprint

If you need a blueprint please reach out and we can run you through the frameworks for how to make this work. Please email us at mc@trackita.com.