Innovating in an Age of Personalization

When Mayer left her executive role at Google (GOOG), she knew she was taking on what might be the hardest job in the Valley. Yahoo has had a lost decade, laboring under a series of failed product strategies and CEOs. It was a Web directory under founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, then a Web portal under Tim Koogle. Terry Semel made it a tech company with Hollywood pretensions, and, most recently, it languished under Carol Bartz and Scott Thompson as a dot-com relic known mostly for losing its top talent to competitors.

Now Mayer wants to transform it into a media company for the mobile age. She’s refocusing her 11,500-employee company on the kind of personalized, habit-forming content that people view on tablets and phones. That means new kinds of e-mail, messaging, and news applications, tailored to the location-aware and always-on nature of the mobile experience. “I hope that at some point we are looking at a world where mobile is a majority of our revenue,” she says.

When it comes to sussing out the future of enterprise IT, you gotta talk SMAC.That would be:Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud.(A little shout out to Malcolm Frank at Cognizant for this acronym.)

This is hardly new news, of course, but what is still in play is exactly when any given enterprise places its bets and exactly how far “all in” it goes. Here are some thoughts to help calibrate these technology adoption decisions.

Social. For consumer brands, this is way past the chasm and inside the tornado—like it or not. The big questions now are: How well can you listen? How fast can you respond? And can you really keep from seeming like a dork?

For B2B enterprises, on the other hand, here the goal of social is to tap into tribal knowledge in an ad hoc and timely way, social is still crossing the chasm. Some segments, like telco tech support and IT consulting, have been using community-based forums to such effect that they are in the bowling alley. Elsewhere the millennials are still waiting for the elders to get the memo (OK, email, I mean, text, I mean post—well , you know), but it is slow in coming just for reasons of inertia but for legitimate concerns about security and liability as well.

Mobile. On the consumer side, this tornado has been driving disruptive innovation for more than a decade, redefining the whole social contract around digital, reengineering relationships with consumers, employees, students, patients, and citizens, and reconfiguring the very boundaries of the Worldwide Web as the next 2 billion new users come on line. But the extent of these changes only underscores the vast chasm B2C enterprises still have to cross, namely, the reengineering of every digital business process to incorporate the presence and power of an actively digital end user.

On the B2B side, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) has been inside the tornado long enough to have become the new corporate norm. But once again we are leveraging a tiny fraction of the capability unleashed when a single device that fits in pocket or purse is a PC, a phone, and a video terminal, all in one. Collaboration, historically constructed around document sharing, needs to be re-architected around real-time face-to-face sessions (that are still document enhanced and enabled). And administrative daisy chains of approval that represent a staggering loss in cycle time and productivity can be drastically compressed through enterprise mobile apps—but only if and when they are actually deployed.

Analytics. On the consumer side, analytics applied to Big Data has transformed the balance of power first in media and now in retail, to such an extent that iconic brands in both industries have already gone under, and it is not clear even now how the remainder can sustainably compete.

In B2B enterprises, save for niche applications in credit scoring, fraud detection, and the like, we haven’t even got to the chasm. That’s because IT’s goal for so long was to reduce the amount of data we stored, not maximize it. But in the new digital landscape it is not about the data—it is about the metadata that can be derived from it—and to get at that, you have to keep the raw stuff at hand. Benchmarking is a great metadata application, for example, as is process improvement, and both are fundamental to virtually every B2B endeavor. So if your enterprise finds itself at the cross-roads of any high-volume data flow across your sector, you are sitting on some prime real estate—but only if you develop it.

Cloud. In B2B this is the force underpinning the universal digitization of all human culture. Like electricity before it, it is reshaping the fabric of virtually every social institution—except maybe the enterprise!

The trend toward more mobile applications going free continues, app analytics provider Flurry confirms this morning in a new report focused on app price changes over time...

The app universe, then, is starting to look more like TV, radio and online, the report concludes. That is, people may not like ads, but they’re willing to tolerate them in exchange for free content. What’s more, apps have a potential path to revenue not available on those traditional platforms: the in-app purchase. This can be incredibly lucrative for publishers who achieve a top title. For example, this summer’s runaway hit Candy Crush Saga is pulling in $633,000 per day, according to some reports.

The New Roles of Marketing

While there is no perfect structure for a marketing organization, it’s apparent that we are starting to see marketing departments transform themselves into publishing organizations. And with that transformation comes a shift in the key business roles that marketers must now fill. Don’t think of the list below as new job titles, per se, but rather as the core competencies that need to be accounted for across the enterprise.

Chief Content Officer

This is your content ambassador, also known as an organization’s chief storyteller. This person should be responsible for setting the overall editorial/content marketing mission statement and integrating that throughout the enterprise. As every silo (PR, email, social, search, etc.) starts to create and curate content, it is the CCO’s responsibility to make sure that the stories remain consistent and make sense to the audience(s).

Managing Editor

Half storyteller and half project manager, the managing editor executes the content plan on behalf of the CCO. Whereas the CCO focuses on strategy, the managing editor’s job is all execution, working with the roles below to make the stories come alive (including tone, style guides, and content scheduling).

Chief Listening Officer

The role of the CLO will be to function as “air-traffic control” for social media and your other content channels. This person should be there to listen to the groups, maintain the conversation, and to route (and/or notify) the appropriate team members who can engage in appropriate conversations (customer service, sales, marketing, etc.). This feedback is critical to our content actually making a difference with our customers.

Director of Audience

This person should be charged with monitoring your audience/buyer personas, making sure all content creators are intimately familiar with their characteristics, their passion triggers, and what actions you want them to take. The Director of Audience should also be responsible for building subscription assets (direct mail lists, email lists, social media subscriptions) that can grow and be segmented as your content mission matures and expands.

HR for Marketing

As every employee and stakeholder becomes a more integral part of the marketing process, it will be increasingly necessary for marketing to work closely with human resources to make sure that employees understand their roles in the marketing process and to help your organization leverage your employees’ audiences without creating conflicts or confusion.

Channel Master

Wherever your content is headed (social media, email, mobile, print, in-person, etc.), the channel master will be responsible for getting the most out of each channel. What works best on SlideShare? When should we send our emails, and how frequently? What’s the appropriate ratio of owned vs. curated content your business should distribute on Twitter? Who is keeping track of mobile strategy and execution?

Chief Technologist

As marketing and information technology continue to merge, there will be a need for at least one (maybe more) individual whose sole purpose is to leverage the proper use of these technologies into the content marketing process. The person in this role will be responsible for staying on top of these ever-increasing changes as they relate to the storytelling process — from calendaring and approvals to marketing automation, freelancer integration, and emerging technologies.

Influencer Relations

The role formerly known as media relations will evolve into that of a manager of influencers. This person’s responsibilities should include developing your “hit list” of influencers, maintaining direct relationships with them, and integrating them into your marketing process in the most impactful ways.

Freelancer and Agency Relations

As content demands continue to evolve (and increase), your organization’s reliance on freelance talent and other external content vendors will grow as well. Organizations will need to cultivate their own “expert” content teams and networks, and it will be this person’s job to negotiate rates and responsibilities so that all members of your team are united in their work on behalf of your marketing program.

ROO (Return-on-Objective) Chief

This person will be responsible for ensuring that there is an ongoing return on marketing objectives, and for communicating to all teams why your business is developing content assets in the first place. Do you have an analytics person in your organization? If so, give them a raise and make sure they understand the core objectives behind your content marketing.

The new Golden Rule in business is this:

Give your customers the ability to do what they can’t currently do but would want to if they only knew it was possible.

To survive and thrive, look into your customers’ visible future, look at their hard trends, at what you’re certain about regarding their future. See what problems they are going to have and solve them before they happen, so that by the time they’re just starting to experience the problem, you already have the solution.

And if you don’t? Then you will become increasingly irrelevant to your customers. Transformation will not wait, pause, or stand aside while you think about it. There are three critical truths about business in this new era that you cannot afford to ignore; we might call them corollaries to the Golden Rule:

1) Transformation will happen.

2) If it can be done, it will be done.

3) If you don’t do it, someone else will.

... Everything in the technology field is becoming real-time and on-demand. So much of the software that’s now going to the cloud becomes data that can then be analyzed to understand usage, see trends, or target marketing messages. The implications are immense. With the customer decision journey lens I usually use, this trend means more resources and emphasis will finally shift towards helping customers after purchase by finding opportunities through "product data analysis" to further build satisfaction and engagement with the brand. 

For example, if a company is able to track how customers are or are not using features of their software, they can immediately launch programs to help people make better use of their services, e.g. send a prompt to try a feature that someone has not used yet or offer a promotion to someone whose usage has slipped. Going further, an NFC tag on an item that activates an app on your mobile phone when tapped could change when the item is on a store shelf versus after it is purchased. Once home, tap the tag and it shifts from hyping the product to now providing a video on how to use it. Tap it a few months later, and your phone shows new ways to use the product that others have posted.

When done as a way to enhance the customer experience and build loyalty – ie. done in a way that isn’t spam or like creepy spying – then marketers can build real and helpful connections with customers. For software companies, this opens up massive opportunities for CRM programs that have just not been there before. For sales and service partners, this opportunity will create a lot of complexity as the ownership of the customer relationship becomes less clear. 

An important implication of this development is that marketers need to be involved in the software development process to highlight those “tags” that need to be added in order to generate the necessary data. And legal has an important role, of course, to balance the needs of privacy. As data keeps flowing after the sale, instead of stopping at the sale, there are new opportunities for touchpoints throughout the journey. 

How much are you investing in usage-based marketing? Is it paying off in higher satisfaction,loyalty, and advocacy?

Building Blocks for EngagementI see four elements within successful companies that engage consumers:A founder who is obsessed with customer experience
A successful startup needs a founder who wants to over-deliver on UX, no matter what. It needs a founder who is focused on consumer delight and product quality, and also cares about the details. Founders that fit this mold include Apple’s Steve Jobs, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey.A product that is highly habit-forming
Companies that build products that are engaging from the start and draw repeat visitors help to create a consumer mind-set that leads to habitual use. Making a business engaging means drawing users in. Tap into consumer desires and celebrate the aspirational aspect of a site. Online jewelry design site Gemvara allows consumers to design and create their own rings or necklaces using a template that generates a picture-perfect rendering; these activities fill in the habit-forming engagement in-between purchases. If the consumer isn’t ready to buy immediately, the item can be shared or added to a wish list.A focus on network effects or brands
Businesses that build a brand that stands for something specific or that have network effects tend to become much more durable. Skype, Lending Club and Airbnb are great examples of network-effect businesses; more demand brings supply, and more supply brings demand. Similarly, building a great brand will happen naturally if you build a great service or product that has a clear message and mission. Companies like Amazon and Zappos didn’t have a network effect, but they did something else — they delivered a great service, and they did it so well that they became reliable brands consumers could count on.Gamification and engagement mechanics
Ensuring traction for your site means getting consumers addicted in such a way that they return again and again. Real estate might not be an obvious habit-forming category, given that the purchase is by definition sporadic, but sites like Trulia and Zillow have transformed what might seem a staid industry into something dynamic and engaging. While most people may move very infrequently, and might not seek out a site as often with homes to rent or buy, these sites added a gamification effect so that it’s easy to track the potential value of a property and compare it to other properties. The data available and algorithms used draw people to these sites again and again out of consumers’ pure curiosity. This helps create engagement and reduce customer-acquisition costs.

3 trends in relationship interdependence

This means that relationships and our personal reputations are ever-more critical in shaping the opportunities that come our way, innovative idea generation, referrals, and promotion recommendations. He describes three major trends behind the rise in this interdependence:

Project-based work is on the rise. People are coming together as part of a project team for a short period of time to collaborate. Having strong interpersonal skills has a huge impact on the results the team is able to achieve.Shift to a knowledge and service economy. Having a “service mentality” to meet client/customer needs will make or break you. You have to understand and CARE about their needs.The rise of online social networks. You and your reputation is out there for the world to see. Anyone can easily check you out – potential employers, business partners, teammates. Identifying who you’re connected to on LinkedIn and tracking your behavior on social media happens without you even knowing about it.

Dr. Grant’s research has been focused on uncovering the factors that contribute most to an individual’s success, beyond the basic attributes of hard work, talent and a bit of luck. What he discovered is that those who put the interests of the team (others) first are the ones who will achieve long-term success.

3 ways to become more of a “giver”

In his book, Dr. Grant describes three types of people: Takers, Matchers, or Givers. “Takers” strive to get as much as possible from others and “Matchers” aim to trade evenly. “Givers” are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return.

So how can you begin to behave more like a Giver and add value? Dr. Grant’s research suggests these three things:

Be willing to give more than you receive. It could be something as simple as sharing an article, introducing two people who might be able help one another in some way or take time to share lessons learned/teach someone something.Find your “helping” speciality. What is your area of expertise? Use it to help others. Are you a great negotiator? Can you offer some advice or play part in rehearsing for a negotiation session? Are you a networking master? Invite people to join you at an event or make introductions.Figure out a way to make an unpopular task in your group or department more fun, interesting or meaningful. How about playing music while filing or putting together binders? It’s a small thing that doesn’t cost anything and can make the daily grind much more enjoyable and engaging.

Researchers studying the application of Positive Psychology to the workplace have carefully considered this idea - as a growing body of evidence demonstrates that a positive mindset can not only affect our attitudes toward work, but the outcomes which follow. Indeed, the "psychological capital" that we bring to the table, can have a significant impact upon work and career...

Psychological Capital is comprised of a number of key psychological resources that we bring to our work life experiences. In combination, we utilize these resources to meet the challenges of our daily work lives. (Referred to as "HERO".)

The HERO resources:

Hope. A belief in the ability to persevere toward goals and find the methods or paths to reach them.Efficacy. The confidence that one can put forth the effort to affect outcomes.Resilience. The ability to bounce back in the face of adversity or failure.Optimism. A generally positive view of work and the potential of success.

CIOs face an imperative to create a new vision for their organization—
one that includes both human and technology assets...

Ultimately, CEOs no longer want a CIO to simply drive a process. They want a CIO who can understand every aspect of the business and who has the will to use the latest technologies to place an organization ahead of its competition. CIOs are now seen as a valuable part of the business. That's a good place to be.

Many people believe that the future of mankind is bleak because the planet can’t sustain its growing population. They fear we are running out of resources and that ageing populations and

We live in an era of "digital Darwinism," a time when technology and society are evolving faster than the ability of many organizations to adapt. It is for this reason (along with a myriad

 Ted Driscoll: big data is facilitating the rise of personalized medicine:

We’re able to make better and more specific diagnoses. “Tumors aren’t just lumps, anymore,” he said. “they’re a specific type of cancer.” That is, no longer are providers relegated to diagnosing cancers in general terms. Given the ability to determine what’s actually going on at a molecular level, Driscoll said, diagnoses can be much more precise.We’re able to prescribe better targeted therapies. With better diagnoses come better treatments. “Now that we understand the recipe for life,” Driscoll said, “we can develop more precise rifle shots to address disease. We can determine which drug will work with each individual patient, and we don’t have to settle for trial and error medications.”We can make better early predictions and determine predispositions. A big part of an individual’s health data, Driscoll suggested, involves “understanding what you’re starting out life with.” That is, genetic data, which can be collected even prior to birth via non-invasive pre-natal testing, can be used to determine what diseases a person may be more susceptible to over the course of his or her life. Which, of course, leads to the potential to offer pre-emptive treatment so the disease never develops.We can expect better development of generalized therapies. “We’re not going to end up with individualized headache pills,” Driscoll cautioned, “but we will be able to develop better drugs for a broad class of people” by looking at actual genetics that form the foundation of predispositions. Moreover, citing the example of an anti-epileptic drug that has been found to work in treating colitis, Driscoll said mining data to understand the particular structure of each disease will lead to greater understanding of where diseases overlap, which will lead in turn to the more precise use of a broader range of medications.We can engineer genetics. The future, Driscoll said, will involve not just reading and understanding genetic structures, but actually modifying them. Of course, he noted, every disease is different. “There are certain diseases that you can identify with just a genetic snip you can tell, while other diseases are determined by thousand of genes. The fact is, we’ve only begun to read the recipes.” That said, Driscoll said mining ever deeper into the mountains of data that will continue to pile up will facilitate inevitably result in medical assessment and treatment tailored to the circumstances and needs of individuals.

When you finish the app, or start blogging, or begin answering questions, you have not reached the finish line; you have reached the starting line...

To get a better sense for how businesses can use content and social media together to be successful, I talked with my friend Jay Baer. Jay Baer is the author of the brand new New York Times bestseller Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype. I asked Jay to summarize the concepts of Youtility, and this is what he told me:

"Youtility" is marketing that is so useful, people would pay for it if asked. Because this is often an inexpensive proposition when considered in the context of the overall marketing programs of a company, these efforts are viewed as relatively minor and thus don't receive dedicated promotional support, even at launch. Instead, they are promoted alongside the regular flotsam and jetsam of the brand's communication: a link here, a mention there. This dramatically curtails exposure - counteracting the entire premise of the Youtility.

You have to market your marketing.

This concept of using marketing to promote your marketing is also the best possible case for using social media, which far too often devolves into self-referential inanities that career employees wouldn't even care about, much less casual customers. This frustrating scenario of brands talking, talking, talking in social media but never saying anything of value other than "we're great, you should give us more of your money" is the epitome of social media misuse.

On the whole, which is more inherently interesting and useful, and thus more likely to be an effective marketing message? That Columbia Sportswear sells a variety of outdoor gear, or that Columbia Sportswear has a mobile app that shows you how to tie knots called “What Knot to do in the Great Outdoors?”

Remember, companies of every size, shape and description are competing pixel-for-pixel for attention with real people whom we know and love. You break through that clutter by being useful, not by shouting louder.

Content is fire, and social media is the gasoline.

It's not about keeping it real; it's about keeping it relevant. If your social media informs more often than it promotes, you're on the right track. If it is deeply helpful rather than deeply promotional, you're probably on a roll! 

Your Most Important (and Most Often Overlooked) Audience.

Indeed, you can use online marketing to raise awareness of the truly helpful information you're providing to customers and prospective customers, and smart organizations like Columbia Sportswear and ExactTarget are successfully implementing those ideas. But there is another critically important audience for your Youtility that is consistently overlooked - your employees.

If you are truly, inherently useful, the manifestation of that approach will be just as valuable to your team members as it is to customers, maybe even more so. You know who is particularly interested in an application that shows you how to tie knots? People who work for Columbia Sportswear. Many are outdoors enthusiasts and are disproportionately likely to find themselves in a situation that calls for just the right knot.

In a world where personal relationships and social connectivity are the coin of the realm, your employees are your single greatest marketing engine. With the exception of huge, global consumer brands like Coca-Cola, the collected social connections of your employees exceed the social connections of your company, and those employees are perfectly situated to create awareness of your helpful Youtility marketing.

What is your content and gasoline?

The first Tweet is a yawn-inducing corporate message about a new version of the company's software, made even less relevant because it's only for people seeking a German or Brazilian Portuguese version of the software - likely a very small subset of the brand's followers on Twitter. Total waste.

But in the very next Tweet, ExactTarget gets it entirely right. Sent during the London Olympic Games, the message includes a link that, when clicked, accessed a very interesting infographic, showing which Olympic sports have the most Tweets about them, the most followers on Twitter, and several other statistical tidbits:

Your Most Important (and Most Often Overlooked) Audience.

Indeed, you can use online marketing to raise awareness of the truly helpful information you're providing to customers and prospective customers, and smart organizations like Columbia Sportswear and ExactTarget are successfully implementing those ideas. But there is another critically important audience for your Youtility that is consistently overlooked - your employees...

In a world where personal relationships and social connectivity are the coin of the realm, your employees are your single greatest marketing engine. With the exception of huge, global consumer brands like Coca-Cola, the collected social connections of your employees exceed the social connections of your company, and those employees are perfectly situated to create awareness of your helpful Youtility marketing.

What is your content and gasoline?

Delegate the problem, don’t solve it. The first sign of micromanaging is when delegating a project you also delegate the specifics of the solution. While that makes sense in some fields, in creative or information work, being told up front the steps to follow makes one feel like a vendor and not a partner in the work. This type of delegation doesn’t have the feeling that it enhances skills or career. If the steps are well-known then perhaps there is a different view of the problem or delegation that will better suit a creative member of the team.Share experiences, don’t instruct. As the work progresses there’s a chance that the manager will see a pattern or similar situation arise. There’s a good chance the way that experience is communicated can come across as either “sage sharing of experiences” or “more micromanaging”. If there are experiences to share then share the story and allow the learning to take place by allegory and not turn the learning into “just do these steps”.Listen to progress, don’t review it. Just as managers should be delegating the problem, not the steps to solving it, when it comes time for progress to be reported it is best to let folks report on the progress the way it works best. Micromanaging can also take the form of being specific about how progress should be reported or “summoning” people to review the progress. If folks have been asked to take on a project, make sure they have the freedom to define the mechanics of the project as well.Provide feedback, don’t course correct. Things might not be always going as well as everyone wants and when that happens managers can sometimes slip into “gotta get this fixed” mode. This type of course correction can remove many of the downstream benefits of delegation and turn into a big negative for folks. It not only disempowers, but demotivates. When things aren’t going well, the time is right for honest feedback and a two-way dialog.Communicate serendipitously, don’t impede progress. All projects have more work and less time than they need. One way to reduce the amount of time available to make forward progress is for management to call for reviews or updates in a formal manner (meetings, written reports). This type of communication can slow things down—the preparation, the review, the general stand-down while these work products are created. If management is concerned about how things are going, then make it a point of finding the balance between serendipitous contact with the team and bugging them too much.

Above all, treat folks as you would like to be treated and validate that approach.

Sharing. The impulse to share is as old as, well, the Garden of Eden.

And often, almost as tempting, even if it’s not in anyone’s best interest to do so.

If it is innately human to share, it is also true that technology has made it abundantly easy.

Facebook. Instagram. Tumblr. Pinterest. LinkedIn. Foursquare, Twitter; Google+; MySpace; Vine; Snapchat; Flickr; Orkut; StumbleUpon; Livestream; Wordpress; Reddit; YouTube; RenRen; Whatsapp; WeChat… the list goes on.

Sharing today, in fact, is so easy to do, that we often do it reflexively. And, astonishingly, we often give away the facts of our lives for a very small value exchange.

Caveat emptor. Not all sharing in the digital world is created equal.

First, there are some sites and apps with a big front gate. They won’t let you share and they won’t share with you, until you have relinquished any number of personal details, along with your control of how the data is used. A veritable dictatorship.

Then there are “communities,” run in a more open way. A member can share, but once you share, you no longer control what happens to it. Think of Facebook — the moment you post, people can spread your bon mots or your pictures all over the world. Access is ownership.

And the final way is more one size fits all, communal approach. Everyone agrees to a set of sharing principles and these are immutable, except if the entire group agrees.

So these are your current choices: A dictatorship. A democracy, which can get be messy and viral. Or life on a commune.

Oddly, the dictatorial model seems to be where we are today. People agree to conditions in the virtual world they would never concede to in the real world. What they don’t understand is there is no great divide, and consequences in the virtual can be all too real.

At the same time, it’s time for the writers of the small print that determines what we give away when we log on to take a long, ethical look at the price they exact and what that will mean for the long term. It’s also up to those who share to demand a bigger piece of the pie. Imagine if Google paid you for access to the information about you that they sell. What a concept…

We will always share because we are social. And as our choices to share proliferate, so will our understanding of what we get and what we lose. Time to make it a win/win proposition for everyone.

1) Inbound marketing is being taken seriously by the industry, and it’s gaining traction.

58% of companies plan to execute inbound marketing strategies in 2013, and 48% of marketers plan to increase their inbound marketing spend this year.  

2) Inbound delivers on ROI promises, providing more and cheaper leads.

41% of marketers confirmed that inbound marketing produces measurable ROI, and a staggering 82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI for their inbound marketing. Twice as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers below average cost per lead versus outbound strategies, and inbound marketing is estimated to deliver 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound methods.  

3) While inbound is on the rise, traditional marketing is fading.

17% of marketers say both traditional advertising and direct mail have become less important in the past six months.  

4) There’s opportunity to better define, measure, and track marketing activities.

While 15% of respondents were tying their inbound results directly to revenue or customers/wins generated, a surprising 34% of businesses cannot or do not calculate overall inbound ROI.  

5) Establishing an agreement with Sales is as important -- possibly more so -- as simply measuring the effectiveness of inbound.

Adopting a Marketing-Sales agreement saves companies (with more than 200 employees) an average of $195.84 per customer. So in addition to tracking how effective inbound marketing is with metrics like doubled website conversion rates, companies can benefit from endorsing closer alignment.  

6) Content is a critical, but not considered a standalone, inbound marketing component.

Anyone who has spent time with me lately knows that I am a big believer that content alone does not transform your marketing. The data agrees. Only 18% of marketers are purely focused on developing quality content in 2013. Finding and converting quality leads and identifying the right audience ranked more important than developing content in terms of marketers’ overall priorities, showing that a more holistic inbound strategy is the path to success.  

7) Inbound has shifted where marketers spend resources, and enables them to work smarter.

43% of marketers generated a customer via their blog this year, though the blog requires roughly 9% of marketers’ total full-time staff dedications and just 7% of their total budget.  

8) It’s a great time to be a customer.

50% of the 2013 survey respondents said that they consider their companies to be primarily customer-focused. As inbound marketing focuses on customer needs and behaviors, the approach clearly aligns with the customer-centric approach. Given consumers have more options than ever for engaging with your brand, it’s important not to focus on any single method of interaction but to think about the customer experience across all channels of customer engagement. This customer-centric strategy ensures integration across platforms, so the sum of marketing efforts is greater than its individual parts.  

9) It’s also a great time to be an inbound marketer -- if you are up for the challenge.

51% of all inbound marketing teams contain fewer than six people. This small team environment is pervasive at every level of the industry; even at the enterprise level, 31% of marketing teams contain five or fewer full-time employees.  

10) Overall, inbound marketing works when it is integrated with your strategy, not as a side project.

81% of companies reported some level of integration between their inbound marketing strategies and overall company goals. Marketers that succeed with inbound marketing dedicate a high level of time, commitment, and resources to getting it right. Inbound marketing is not a quick-fix, nor will your company succeed at inbound by hiring an “inbound expert” and sitting them next to your email, trade show, and website staff member. Successful inbound execution requires a strategic change in how you focus your end-to-end marketing practices, such as building and staying true to your core customer personas and relentlessly tracking your lead gen goals.  

Given this is our fifth year of producing the State of Inbound Marketing, we also thought it was time to experiment with how we share the data with all of you. In addition to producing the in-depth research report with a complete review of the data, we’ve captured the highlights on StateOfInboundMarketing.com. And over the next few weeks, we’ll continue to provide deeper dives into the data and what it means for the industry; Inc. got started yesterday with its advice on how marketers can attract customers that want to buy from your brand.

We’re honored to have the opportunity to conduct this research annually, to track the transformation of marketing as it occurs, and to contribute to this remarkable industry. We’d love to hear if what we found in the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing Report is useful to you and if you were surprised -- or not -- by what was uncovered.

For the love of marketing,
Mike Volpe

An Ounce of Prevention

Speak with humility. Present your argument in safe language, as I described here. Own your opinions. Present them in first person as the conclusion of your reasoning process. This gives others the chance to present a different opinion without clashing with yours. For example, when you say, “In light of the evidence from the focus groups, I believe that the marketing campaign is ready to launch.” you make room for your counterpart to say, “I disagree. The focus groups may have liked the ads, but our retailers are not convinced.”

Listen with respect. Pay attention to others’ arguments, as I described here, especially when you disagree with them. Reciprocity is the most powerful influence you can exert. If you genuinely try to understand their perspective, they are more likely to try to understand yours. For example, when you say, “It worries me that the retailers are not convinced, what do you suggest we do about it?” you neither discount his data nor yours. This allows both of you to examine all perspectives.

Choose your battle. If the disagreement is a matter of personal preferences, there is no need to agree. It is futile to argue whether chocolate “tastes” better than strawberry. It may taste better to you, and it may taste worse to him. Unless a joint decision is necessary, it is best to agree to disagree. The desire to “be right” fuels fights that serve no practical purpose.

Choose your battlefield. Culture can be defined as “the way we do things around here”. If you live in a culture where might makes right, your humility and respect will weaken you. Bullies will always win out in bully-land. Or at least until the group is eliminated by fitter competitors. Reason always beats force in the long term. If you don´t want to go the way of the dinosaurs, evolve to a more rational niche.

A Pound of Cure

When you challenger pushes you,

Yield. Acknowledge her statement, modifying it slightly to attribute her opinion to her. For example, you would receive “You are wrong!” saying, “You think I’m wrong.” “This won´t work,” saying, “You believe this won´t work…” Or “We must act now,” saying, “You feel we must act now.”

Blend. Join her in a positive intention. Stand by her, looking in the same direction to see what she sees. For example, you could declare, “I want to correct any errors I am making,” or “I want to find what would work,” or “I want to take advantage of the opportunity as well.”

Extend. Inquire about the reasoning that leads her to her conclusion. “I hear what you think,” you can reassure her as you summarize her view. Followed by, “I want to understand also why you think what you think. Can you explain it to me?” For example, you can ask, “Where do you think I am wrong? Am I using wrong data, incorrect assumptions, or illogical inferences?” or “What makes you think it won’t work? What negative consequences do you foresee if we try it? What do you suggest we do instead?”

We've found, in our work with executives at dozens of organizations, that it's possible to build any given skill or capacity in the same systematic way we do a muscle: push past your comfort zone, and then rest. Aristotle had it exactly right 2000 years ago: "We are what we repeatedly do." By relying on highly specific practices, we've seen our clients dramatically improve skills ranging from empathy, to focus, to creativity, to summoning positive emotions, to deeply relaxing.

Like everyone who studies performance, I'm indebted to the extraordinary Anders Ericsson, arguably the world's leading researcher into high performance. For more than two decades, Ericsson has been making the case that it's not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we're willing to work — something he calls "deliberate practice." Numerous researchers now agree that 10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain.

Pursue what you loveDo the hardest work firstPractice IntenselySeek expert feedback, in intermittent dosesTake regular renewal breaksRitualize practice

Long prognosticated, wearable computing is now poised for a computing boom. “This is the next big category,” said Tim Chang, managing director of venture capital firm Mayfield Fund.

A confluence of tech’s biggest leaps makes the timing right: ubiquitous Internet, display improvements, better batteries, advanced chips and sensors that track more than ever. And most people already pack a pocket computer companion to wearable devices: the smartphone. That’s expected to be the computer that helps shuttle wireless cellphone data via Bluetooth to devices such as Google Glass or an iWatch.

Researcher Gartner forecasts the wearable devices market will hit $10 billion by 2015.

Google isn’t the only one developing computing glasses. Motorola Solutions is aiming squarely at industrial applications with a big headset device that could help warehouse workers locate items, mechanics see instructions in the field and firefighters see building schematics in emergencies.

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Google’s Glass computers are surprisingly light frames with a small screen above one eye. Those wearing Glass can surf the Internet, take photos and videos, or send images or blast them online. The Glass units respond to voice, head gestures and a touch-pad on the side. They connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi or piggyback onto a smartphone’s cell connection from Bluetooth.

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Experts say a watch from Apple could disrupt that industry and ignite a new one, much as it did with smartphones and tablets. Worldwide watch sales are expected to exceed $60 billion in 2013, Citigroup said.

 

*Picture is of Google co-founder Sergey Brin wears Google Glass glasses at an event Feb. 20. / AP*

LinkedIn has managed to stay in Wall Street's good graces even as more consumer-focused sites like Facebook, Zynga and Groupon have flailed.