How a Knowledge Discovery Program Elevates Your Content Curation

Marketers need to keep their pipeline full of the most relevant and cutting-edge content that will effectively speak to their audience and convert them into qualified leads. The problem; however, is that curating that content takes a lot of time - and if you're manually searching the web for new ideas, it's likely that you're missing some impactful gems.

Content curation tools can help speed up your searching by serving you relevant articles based on pre-selected keywords; however, these tools are missing one vital component of a sound content curation program: internal content.

A strong marketer is equipped with the content ammo they need to excel. Ideally, they'll leverage the collective intelligence of their organization (Sharepoint, databases, etc.), and integrate that with relevant content from external sources (web, blogs, social, etc.) and premium subscriptions.

The key reason that knowledge discovery promotes this notion is that it naturally allows for an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. Knowledge discovery is the ability to find the right information and deliver it to the right people at the right time, reinventing how organizations discover, collaborate, and share knowledge. By using a knowledge discovery tool, marketers can pull the most relevant content from three primary sources:

• The web - Blogs, social media, etc.


• Premium subscriptions - Paid access to premium content (Forrester and Gartner)


• Internal content - Sharepoints, databases, wikis, etc.

With all of this awesome knowledge at your disposal, not only will you keep your pipeline full, but you'll be able to ramp up onboarding, training, and continued learning.

Knowing that you need to curate relevant content from a number of sources is one thing, but identifying the most relevant content on an ongoing basis is a whole other beast. Knowledge management is a long-time need, but marketers need to do more than simply "manage" knowledge. Being able to discover and use the knowledge in context is the key.

So, how can you pull the right information at the right time without spending hours upon hours digging through data? Using a knowledge discovery platform is the best way to understand novel topics deeply and quickly. Not only will this help you keep up with current trends, but it will help you gain a competitive advantage. With capabilities like competitive monitoring and faster contextual discovery of knowledge, getting a leg up on your competitors is inevitable.

There are a number of tools in the KM marketplace. Software like SmartSupport and Confluence help organizations find, share, and collaborate on information, connecting people with the answers they need. Brainspace for Enterprise is the only knowledge discovery tool that allows business users to discover the latest and most relevant content from any internal or external sources, spearheading innovation.

Marketers that leverage these tools will continuously receive internal and external content relevant to their industry, roles, and competitors - which will help them elevate their skillsets and capitalize on strategic marketing opportunities for their organization. Teams will then be able to:

• Understand novel topics deeply and fast


• Keep up on current trends


• Continuously learn and develop


• Gain competitive advantage

Knowledge discovery increases the level of connectedness between people in organizations, thus accelerating innovation. If your company is striving to innovate, they'll be onboard with implementing KM tools.

If marketers striving to unlock the knowledge trapped within their organizations leverage knowledge discovery, they'll have all the best content they need, in real time. Knowledge for onboarding, content curation, continued education, competitive monitoring, and other “everyday” marketing tasks will be right in the palm of their hands, saving countless hours of inefficient searching. So, if you think it's about time to reinvent yourself as a content curator, start discovering!

If you're interested in a more in-depth review of how knowledge management and discovery can be leveraged for marketing success, continue learning now with this eBook, 4 Ways to Leverage Knowledge Management for Marketing Success.

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post. 

Ads that make people share and buy can usually be summed up in one word: emotional.

That should be no surprise. Studies show that people rely on emotions, rather than information, to make brand decisions -- and that emotional responses to ads are more influential on a person's intent to buy than the content of an ad.

As Douglas Van Praet, author of Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing, wrote in Fast Company, “The most startling truth is we don't even think our way to logical solutions. We feel our way to reason. Emotions are the substrate, the base layer of neural circuitry underpinning even rational deliberation. Emotions don't hinder decisions. They constitute the foundation on which they're made!”

Unruly, which ranks the most viral ads each year, found that the most-shared ads of 2015 relied heavily on emotional content, specifically friendship, inspiration, warmth, and happiness. Examples include Android's Friends Furever and Kleenex's Unlikely Best Friends.

This emotional awareness from brands hasn't always been the case, though. In the 1990s and early 2000s, advertisers were more concerned with humor and sarcasm. 

Pereira & O'Dell's chief creative officer PJ Pereira said: "I think what's happened is that the ad industry has spent the last decade celebrating bitterness and cynicism and being mean to people. For a while it was great because it was different from everyone else, and then it became a trend and people got sick of it. It wasn't funny or interesting anymore. So when things started to pop with a totally opposite voice, the customers totally reacted."

How Emotion Is Used in Advertising

Historically, people have recognized six core emotions: happy, surprised, afraid, disgusted, angry, and sad.

However, in 2014, the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology published research stating that the distinction between four of these emotions were based on social interactions and constructs. Instead, human emotion is based on four basic emotions: happy, sad, afraid/surprised, and angry/disgusted.

Based on these four categories, let's look at how brands are using emotions to drive connection and awareness:

1) Happy

Brands want to be associated with smiling, laughing, happy customers, and positivity has been shown to increase sharing and engagement. A study in 2010 of the most-emailed New York Times articles found that emotional articles were shared more often, and positive posts were shared more than negative ones. 

The most-shared ad of last year -- and of all time -- was Android's Friends Furever, showing clips of unlikely and undeniably cute animal friends.

When Coca-Cola recently changed its tagline from “Open Happiness” to “Taste the Feeling,” it maintained its focus on happy images of people connecting and engaging one another, such as the below ad showing the bond between siblings.

2) Sad

I watch a lot of ads. (Hey, it's a requirement for the job.) I've noticed that, increasingly, those ads have turn me into a blubbering, emotional wreck. There's nothing like a good cry at work on a regular basis to make your desk neighbors question your stability.

In the past few years, as brands have recognized the popularity of emotional content, more and more companies have focused on creating inspirational and moving ads.

MetLife Hong Kong produced this heartbreaking ad featuring a daughter who describes all the things she loves about her dad, yet the story breaks down when she also describes all the ways he lies to her.

For the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014, P&G continued its theme of recognizing mothers and their unwavering support.

3) Afraid/Surprised

Fear is a natural instinct -- one that helps us to react appropriately to threats to increase our chance of survival.

Fear creates urgency and prompts us to take action; to change or more importantly for this story, buy something that will prevent terrible things from happening. As Don Draper said in a Mad Men episode, “Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.”

A lot of scare-vertising tactics can be seen in commercials to prevent drunk driving and cigarette smoking. The World Wildlife Fund is one brand known for its controversial and fear-inducing imagery.

Image Credit: Trend Hunter Eco

However, this approach is risky. In 2015, Nationwide released an ad during the Super Bowl to promote conversations about child safety and preventable injuries in the home. The ad was disturbing to many viewers. The video features a young boy who talks about all the things he'll never do, and ends with the line "I couldn't grow up because I died from an accident." While attention-grabbing, the ad was called depressing and insensitive by viewers and the CMO of Nationwide resigned from his position just a few months later.

Surprise can also take a positive form as can be seen in one of the best ads of 2015.

4) Angry/Disgusted

Most people think that it is best to avoid anger -- it's a negative emotion that will cause negative associations. But in some cases, anger can wake people up and spur action. We become angry when we see another person hurt or an injustice. Disgust and frustration can cause us to reconsider our perspective and ask important questions.

A study of the most popular images on imgur.com found that while negative emotions were less common in viral content than in positive, viral success happened when the negative images had an element of anticipation and surprise.

Always' Like a Girl campaign, which won an Emmy, a Cannes Grand Prix award, and the Grand Clio award, uses a famous insult to grab your attention. 

Save the Children's ad reminding people of the effect of the Syrian crisis on children provokes both sadness and anger.

Which emotions do you associate with specific brands? How have you used emotion in your client's advertising? Let us know in the comments below.

How Emotional Targeting Converts More Leads

A study found “that websites with a stronger emotional impact produced a greater intent to buy.”

Appealing to your audience's emotions creates a connection. Whether you're designing product descriptions or landing pages, your team must aim to evoke emotion into your messaging.

That's why storytelling works so well. It's a powerful way to engage your customers.

Research by Pringle & Field found that “emotional campaigns outperform on almost every metric,” including revenue, profit, and share gain.

Emotional targeting produces authentic content that speaks the consumer's language. It's those irresistible stories that touch people's hearts and propels them to purchase your products.

Ready for a challenge? Learn how to convert more leads with high-impact emotional messages.

1. Psychological Triggers

Emotions determine our everyday decision-making. We buy when we're sad. We buy when we're happy.

However, most brands miss the opportunity to develop an emotional link with shoppers. They focus on product features, rather than understanding the feelings behind the purchase.

In 2014, Facebook “revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw.”

This controversial psychological study found that people mimic the emotions expressed in online content. So, if people read a positive post, they are more likely to respond positively.

With that in mind, prepare your SaaS to develop digital marketing campaigns ingrained with psychological triggers. For instance, happiness induces people to share.

Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel says, “When your content drives people to a state of happiness or joy, they will automatically respond to your offers, feel obliged to share your content, and will stop at nothing to tell others about you.”

Here's an example from Moz. Their Whiteboard Friday videos express excitement as experts teach SEO and online marketing skills, and they receive thousands of YouTube views.

Also, A/B test your campaigns based on behavioral and emotional marketing, not tactical elements.

Talia Wolf, the Founder and CEO of Conversioner, states, “Great marketing campaigns look at the entire product as an ecosystem. Rather than just changing the headline, or the colors of individual elements, they approach the product as a whole.”

There is real value in tapping into people's emotions. Work with your team to develop digital content that connects to your shoppers' sentiments. It will help maximize your lead conversions.

2. Memorable Experiences

Memories are precious moments in our lives.

We remember graduating from high school, breaking up with our first romantic partner, or even that embarrassing moment when we flopped a presentation. These experiences evoke us to think about how we felt at that particular time.

To harness the power of memorable experiences, associate your brand's shopping experience with your customer's life events. For example, transfer the same emotions customers felt when they got married or bought their first home.

For instance, chocolate is usually associated with joy. Hershey's is keeping that alive with its #HelloHappy campaign.

Stacie Stauffer, senior brand manager at Hershey's, told AdFreak the following:

“The second you say 'Hershey,' the most amazing thing happens. This giant flood of emotions and memories happens-when I made s'mores camping, or stirred up chocolate milk with my mom. That solidified that we should be speaking more as [one] brand, and from a much more emotional place.”

This type of emotional targeting makes consumers feel subconsciously connected to your brand. They are compelled to read more, click on your offer, and even purchase your services.

Chris Dalton recommends offering value without expectations.

He said, “Sometimes, the best sales pitch is no pitch at all. Consumers have become savvy to ignoring direct sales tactics or sleazy methods. If you offer information relating to your products with honesty and transparency, your customers will notice.”

Buffer does an effective job by giving its customers an inside peek at their operations. Check out their BufferOpen blog about their “journey to greater productivity, more transparency and a happier work culture.”

Map out a path to connect your customers' memories with your brand. And sometimes that means not selling, just providing value.

3. Visual Storytelling

DemandGen Reports noted that video content for B2B marketing increased by 8% to 54%, and infographics jumped 9% to 52% in 2014. It's becoming a necessity to use visuals as part of your marketing strategy.

A good visual stimulates people's senses. It can create fear, elicit pity, or showcase friendship. Font styles make a difference, too. People consider clear, readable font as trustworthy.

But you can't just plop any picture on your website or Instagram account. Freelance writer Dawn Papandrea agrees:

“To make visual storytelling work, however, you can't simply slap a few stock photos onto your blog or social media posts. Just as headlines and calls to action must be crafted carefully, your visual content deserves more than a second thought.”

From screenshots to actual photographs, think about how to convey emotion to your audience. Do you need a wide-angle shot? Will a big red arrow show more impact for the viewer?

In the above picture, Nike displays the endless possibilities customers can experience with their apparel. It's all about the adventure and the limitless options the brand offers its consumers.

In addition, be aware of diversity in your visuals. Cultural shifts happen within our society.

Not everyone will be on board with your company's inclusiveness. But don't let that stop your eCommerce store's progression.

General Mills faced negative backlash for featuring an interracial couple in their 2014 Cheerios Super Bowl commercial ad. Despite some disapproval, there was also an overwhelming positive response applauding their diversity efforts.

Use visual storytelling to communicate emotion to your customers. From infographics to videos, give your shoppers a better understanding of your brand's culture.

4. Social Proof

We're humans. We want to belong.

Social proof in marketing activates those desires to be affiliated with a specific group of people or worthwhile cause.

Social media strategist Michael Sherman, says, “For many, a proven testimonial or example is the emotional trigger a person needs to say yes on buying your products and using your services.”

Old Navy appeals to shoppers' sense of belonging. They focus on offering trendy clothes at affordable prices.

In the tweet below, the retailer implies that if you want to get ready for spring and be happy with your friends, purchase from their wide-selection of clothes.

Here comes spring…
Nab thousands of items from $5: https://t.co/nGQ9Pji1pN pic.twitter.com/XX7nIsfyXs

- Old Navy Official (@OldNavy) March 5, 2016

For social proof to work well, your brand must truly understand your consumers' motivations and intentions.

For example, expert social proof may emotionally influence your consumers to take action. This happens when an industry influencer or well-known blogger publicly approves a product. Those endorsements look like a basic quote or a video testimonial.

Rent the Runway experienced a 200% higher conversion rate from mentions by a fashion magazine or blogger than paid search.

Learn what riles up your consumers. Identify experts that appeal to your audience and coincide with your brand's values. Give people the social proof they need to buy your products.

Target Emotions

Strive to build an emotional connection with your buyers. As a result, customers will feel connected with your brand and purchase more.

Strategize on how to add psychological triggers. Ditch transactional relationships for memorable experiences. And invest in visual storytelling to express your brand better.

Target people's emotions to convert more leads.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

How Emotional Targeting Converts More Leads

A study found “that websites with a stronger emotional impact produced a greater intent to buy.”

Appealing to your audience's emotions creates a connection. Whether you're designing product descriptions or landing pages, your team must aim to evoke emotion into your messaging.

That's why storytelling works so well. It's a powerful way to engage your customers.

Research by Pringle & Field found that “emotional campaigns outperform on almost every metric,” including revenue, profit, and share gain.

Emotional targeting produces authentic content that speaks the consumer's language. It's those irresistible stories that touch people's hearts and propels them to purchase your products.

Ready for a challenge? Learn how to convert more leads with high-impact emotional messages.

1. Psychological Triggers

Emotions determine our everyday decision-making. We buy when we're sad. We buy when we're happy.

However, most brands miss the opportunity to develop an emotional link with shoppers. They focus on product features, rather than understanding the feelings behind the purchase.

In 2014, Facebook “revealed that it had manipulated the news feeds of over half a million randomly selected users to change the number of positive and negative posts they saw.”

This controversial psychological study found that people mimic the emotions expressed in online content. So, if people read a positive post, they are more likely to respond positively.

With that in mind, prepare your SaaS to develop digital marketing campaigns ingrained with psychological triggers. For instance, happiness induces people to share.

Serial entrepreneur Neil Patel says, “When your content drives people to a state of happiness or joy, they will automatically respond to your offers, feel obliged to share your content, and will stop at nothing to tell others about you.”

Here's an example from Moz. Their Whiteboard Friday videos express excitement as experts teach SEO and online marketing skills, and they receive thousands of YouTube views.

Also, A/B test your campaigns based on behavioral and emotional marketing, not tactical elements.

Talia Wolf, the Founder and CEO of Conversioner, states, “Great marketing campaigns look at the entire product as an ecosystem. Rather than just changing the headline, or the colors of individual elements, they approach the product as a whole.”

There is real value in tapping into people's emotions. Work with your team to develop digital content that connects to your shoppers' sentiments. It will help maximize your lead conversions.

2. Memorable Experiences

Memories are precious moments in our lives.

We remember graduating from high school, breaking up with our first romantic partner, or even that embarrassing moment when we flopped a presentation. These experiences evoke us to think about how we felt at that particular time.

To harness the power of memorable experiences, associate your brand's shopping experience with your customer's life events. For example, transfer the same emotions customers felt when they got married or bought their first home.

For instance, chocolate is usually associated with joy. Hershey's is keeping that alive with its #HelloHappy campaign.

Stacie Stauffer, senior brand manager at Hershey's, told AdFreak the following:

“The second you say 'Hershey,' the most amazing thing happens. This giant flood of emotions and memories happens-when I made s'mores camping, or stirred up chocolate milk with my mom. That solidified that we should be speaking more as [one] brand, and from a much more emotional place.”

This type of emotional targeting makes consumers feel subconsciously connected to your brand. They are compelled to read more, click on your offer, and even purchase your services.

Chris Dalton recommends offering value without expectations.

He said, “Sometimes, the best sales pitch is no pitch at all. Consumers have become savvy to ignoring direct sales tactics or sleazy methods. If you offer information relating to your products with honesty and transparency, your customers will notice.”

Buffer does an effective job by giving its customers an inside peek at their operations. Check out their BufferOpen blog about their “journey to greater productivity, more transparency and a happier work culture.”

Map out a path to connect your customers' memories with your brand. And sometimes that means not selling, just providing value.

3. Visual Storytelling

DemandGen Reports noted that video content for B2B marketing increased by 8% to 54%, and infographics jumped 9% to 52% in 2014. It's becoming a necessity to use visuals as part of your marketing strategy.

A good visual stimulates people's senses. It can create fear, elicit pity, or showcase friendship. Font styles make a difference, too. People consider clear, readable font as trustworthy.

But you can't just plop any picture on your website or Instagram account. Freelance writer Dawn Papandrea agrees:

“To make visual storytelling work, however, you can't simply slap a few stock photos onto your blog or social media posts. Just as headlines and calls to action must be crafted carefully, your visual content deserves more than a second thought.”

From screenshots to actual photographs, think about how to convey emotion to your audience. Do you need a wide-angle shot? Will a big red arrow show more impact for the viewer?

In the above picture, Nike displays the endless possibilities customers can experience with their apparel. It's all about the adventure and the limitless options the brand offers its consumers.

In addition, be aware of diversity in your visuals. Cultural shifts happen within our society.

Not everyone will be on board with your company's inclusiveness. But don't let that stop your eCommerce store's progression.

General Mills faced negative backlash for featuring an interracial couple in their 2014 Cheerios Super Bowl commercial ad. Despite some disapproval, there was also an overwhelming positive response applauding their diversity efforts.

Use visual storytelling to communicate emotion to your customers. From infographics to videos, give your shoppers a better understanding of your brand's culture.

4. Social Proof

We're humans. We want to belong.

Social proof in marketing activates those desires to be affiliated with a specific group of people or worthwhile cause.

Social media strategist Michael Sherman, says, “For many, a proven testimonial or example is the emotional trigger a person needs to say yes on buying your products and using your services.”

Old Navy appeals to shoppers' sense of belonging. They focus on offering trendy clothes at affordable prices.

In the tweet below, the retailer implies that if you want to get ready for spring and be happy with your friends, purchase from their wide-selection of clothes.

Here comes spring…
Nab thousands of items from $5: https://t.co/nGQ9Pji1pN pic.twitter.com/XX7nIsfyXs

- Old Navy Official (@OldNavy) March 5, 2016

For social proof to work well, your brand must truly understand your consumers' motivations and intentions.

For example, expert social proof may emotionally influence your consumers to take action. This happens when an industry influencer or well-known blogger publicly approves a product. Those endorsements look like a basic quote or a video testimonial.

Rent the Runway experienced a 200% higher conversion rate from mentions by a fashion magazine or blogger than paid search.

Learn what riles up your consumers. Identify experts that appeal to your audience and coincide with your brand's values. Give people the social proof they need to buy your products.

Target Emotions

Strive to build an emotional connection with your buyers. As a result, customers will feel connected with your brand and purchase more.

Strategize on how to add psychological triggers. Ditch transactional relationships for memorable experiences. And invest in visual storytelling to express your brand better.

Target people's emotions to convert more leads.

About the Author: Shayla Price lives at the intersection of digital marketing, technology and social responsibility. Connect with her on Twitter @shaylaprice.

Google Eliminates Sidebar Ads: Here's What it Means for Ecommerce

If you’ve searched Google recently, then you may have notice something different. In the past, searches for products pulled up two or three paid ads in the search results, and then along the right side of the screen, more paid ads were displayed. Those right-side ads? They’re gone now. In their place is an opportunity for ecommerce companies.

Hello Product Placement

The words “product placement” bring to mind characters drinking from a can of Coca-Cola during the most exciting scene in the movie. Well, okay, we can run with that. Only, instead of characters, it’s Google search results. And instead of Coca-Cola, it could be your product. 

The paid ads in the results list haven’t changed, but there on the right side, we now see a grid with products that are relevant to the search. Anyone planning to do a bit of shopping just passed a window with everything they ever wanted on display, right?

Proper Placement Protocol

If you look closely at the screenshot above, you’ll see that one of these things is not like the others. This is an issue that ecommerce companies will have to address if they hope to make the most of this new product placement. To understand what went wrong, you have to understand how these products appear in the first place. 

We’ve covered the best practices for product ads before, but some things bear repeating. The keywords you bid on for your paid product ads are important. They tell Google what you’re actually selling. If you use the keyword “navy cardigan” when, in fact, you are selling a red one, then you’ll waste money on every click you receive. How many people will buy a red one when navy is what they're searching for?

How You Can Benefit

You can take advantage of this change by double checking your current ad practices. Strategy for these ads is imperative if you want your products to appear during searches. The example above is just one way you could fail at promoting your products. Consider the many ways your users might search for the items you’re selling. What words might they use to find those products? 

Let’s say you have a pair of shoes you want to sell. What color are they? If they’re red, make sure that’s one of the search terms you use. A quick search of red shoes provides the following:

This is a good start, right? But if you’re actually selling a pair of red heels, there’s a good chance your product ad won’t appear. There are too many other types of red shoes competing for space. So, we need to specify red heels, right?

This is a little closer. At least images of red high heels are showing up in this search. The styles are still vastly different, so unless you’ve bid quite a bit on your keywords, you might still be fighting for some real estate in the product ad grid. You could make things easier on yourself by adding more keywords to further narrow the search.

This final search for red patent heels drills right down to the very type of shoe a buyer may be seeking. Sure, if they just need red heels, they won’t bother adding the material. Those who do want a particular shoe, however, are much more likely to find yours. 

The ad space is growing ever smaller, which means companies need to pay more to secure their spot. Whether you’re trying to find space in the new product display grid or with text ads in search results, don’t be surprised if ad prices blow sky high. For paid ads, your only defense (outside of reaching deep into your pockets) is a strong strategy that weeds out the competition. You need to be thinking smarter about PPC and more about diversifying your acquisition strategy. 

How to Create a Sensible Social Media Strategy for Your Business [Infographic]

Many businesses find social media overwhelming - there are so many networks available, and they're always adding new features for you to learn and integrate into your plan. If you don't have a full-time team of social media experts at your disposal, your success depends on creating a simple and sensible strategy that fits your resources and goals.

Here are a few steps you can take to focus your energy:

1) Define your target audience

If you haven't already identified and documented your buyer personas, start by defining the key demographics of the audience you're trying to reach - age, gender, occupation, income, hobbies and interests, etc. Think about the challenges they're faced with, and what problems they're trying to solve on daily basis. Try to focus on the 3-4 types of people that represent the majority of your buyers - don't get hung up on all the exceptions, or you'll never get started!

2) Start blogging

Fresh content is the linchpin of a successful social strategy, so you'll need to commit to creating fresh, quality content on a consistent basis. Brainstorm a list of the most common questions you hear from your prospects, and commit to writing at least one new blog post a week focused on addressing these questions.

3) Create educational content

Consider creating downloadable content like ebooks, checklists, videos, and infographics that address your buyer's pains. If the content is truly helpful and educational, people will be more likely to share it on social media and extend your reach.

4) Focus on a few key social channels

Most small businesses don't have the bandwidth to establish and sustain a great social media presence on more than a handful of channels. It can also be overwhelming to learn the rules of engagement on a bunch of different networks at one time. Start small. Research key networks to learn where your target audience is most likely to spend time, and focus your effort on building, nurturing, and sustaining a community there before moving on to another channel.

5) Develop a recipe card to guide you

Social media isn't an exact science, so you need to establish a consistent posting and engagement schedule to start seeing results. Start by developing a reasonable recipe card you feel comfortable sticking to. Set goals for how frequently you'll post content and engage your followers, and hold yourself accountable to following your recipe.

6) Measure your results

There are a million things you can track related to social media, so start by looking at how much traffic is being driven to your website or blog from social media. Watch your posts to see what people are responding to, and look for trends related to particular topics or keywords that generate more interest than others. Once you have a sense of what's possible, set goals for key metrics and start keeping a scorecard to measure your progress. Be sure to chose metrics that are easy to gather - if it's too time-consuming to track, you'll fall off the wagon!

• Net new fans and followers


• # of interactions


• Visits to your site from social

7) Adjust your tactics

Unless you're a celebrity, social media doesn't start working overnight. It takes time to build a following, establish yourself as an influencer, and start seeing results. You'll need to experiment a bit to find the right combination of channels, content, and messaging that works for your audience. Over time, you'll be able to adjust your recipe card, content, and personas based on the information you're gathering - which will help you fine tune your strategy and generate more consistent results!

Still overwhelmed? Try using the Whole Brain Group's handy Sensible Social Media Checklist for Businesses - newly updated for 2016 - to get yourself organized.

Source: http://www.thewholebraingroup.com/

More Trial Users Is Not The Answer For Your Startup's Growth

As a startup, you're not just tight on budget.

You have to get users as fast as possible.

Marketers are often under a lot of pressure to get as many trial users as quickly as possible.

The CEO, investors and your teammates are counting on you to generate demand, regardless of product-market fit.

I'm here to explain why you don't need more trial subscribers.

The 40% Rule

Rule of thumb for reaching product-market fit is when 40% of surveyed customers would be significantly disappointed if all of a sudden they could no longer access that product.

If you already have several hundred or a thousand users, you don't need more until your startup has achieved product-market fit. Product-market fit can be defined as the point at which your target market finds your product attractive enough that you can scale up.

"The 40% Rule" suggests you've reached product-market fit once at least 40% of surveyed customers confirm that they would feel disappointed if they could no longer use your product.

Product-market fit and engagement go hand-in-hand. People are more likely to pay for your product or service if they're engaging with it frequently and it's crucial to their daily workflow.

Customer retention is a function of their satisfaction.

Retention = ?(Customer Satisfaction)

If trial users aren't excited or happy about your product or don't get enough benefits out of using it, they won't return. As simple as this sounds, countless startups fail to address this issue.

Instead, many startups do this:

Image Source

The product development model as presented in Steve Blank's book, The Four Steps To The Epiphany, shows the backwards push marketing steps after building a product.

I'm sure you can see the pitfalls of this approach.

Eliminate Or Reduce Free Trials

What if one day, your team just decided to shut down your free trial accounts that were past 14 days since their sign up date? Would you suddenly go out of business?

No, you'd save money from server costs and force people to make a decision.

It's only when your free trials run out that you know whether the end user found your product worth paying for.

You need to figure out how to improve the engagement of your existing trial users to convert them to paid users.

ConvertKit and Edgar, which today generate millions of ARR, never offered free trials.

I often come across startups that give away free trials for 30 to 60 days. I just don't get it.

Two Exceptions To The Rule

One case where a free trial might make sense is if your startup's B2B software costs $200+/month. In this instance, a 14-day free trial is reasonable. Any longer than that is, more often than not, a fruitless giveaway.

One instance where an extended free trial makes sense is for a startup where personal data storage grows fast as the user engages with the product. Three startups come to mind: Slack, Evernote and Dropbox.

As each user uploads more personal data, the chance that that person will switch providers decreases. Moreover, frequent access to that personal information in the cloud is a necessity for the end user. Users engage frequently with these apps on a daily recurring basis and often need to upgrade to a premium subscription, in order to continue using the service as team headcount or storage needs grow.

Stop Aiming To Be A Unicorn

The venture capital funnel from CB Insights shows the average failure rates of venture-backed startups by financing round. Less than 2% of venture-backed startups ever reach unicorn status.

Neither exception suggests that your startup needs more trial subscribers. We all have a natural tendency to look at unicorns and glom on to their stories as validation for why we can do that.

According to CBInsights, your startup has a 1.28% chance of becoming a unicorn.

The one thing people forget when they hang their hat on the stories of unicorns is that these companies found product-market fit, had high levels of user engagement and most established clear sales funnels before they went off acquiring more free trial users.

Again, improve the product, the onboarding experience, and the sales funnel to convert more of your existing users.

If your customers love your product and rely on it to improve their daily workflow, they will serve as your fan club. Your engagement will skyrocket. You won't need to fudge community building or finding loyal users as word of mouth referrals come pouring in.

You can't force user engagement that doesn't exist.

Adopt The Customer Development Model

No marketer-no matter how good they are-can fix a broken product, such as one that few customers find valuable to their daily workflow.

Startups build a product or feature for the sake of building it, not on the basis of identifying their audience's thorny problems.

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A second version of the product development model focuses on building the sales organization without ensuring that the product reaches product-market fit, which can lead to premature scaling.

If you've read Steve Blank's The Four Steps to the Epiphany, then you may remember reading about one of the following:

• Premature scaling


• The use of a product development methodology to measure sales and marketing activities


• The pitfalls of getting the product launch wrong

Startups often go out of business because they rely on the product development methodology to measure all their sales and marketing efforts.

The product development methodology starts with building a product first and later engaging a sales and marketing team to push the product into the hands of the target customer, as opposed to building and iterating a product solution based on your target audience's needs.

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The customer development model requires iteration through the customer discovery and customer validation stages until product-market fit has been achieved before acquiring more customers and scaling up.

In reality, they should use the customer development model and complement it with the product development model.

The customer development model involves iterating through the first two stages of customer discovery and customer validation until you reach product-market fit. Once you've reached product-market fit, then you can scale up, drawing more customers and building company infrastructure.

The customer development model helps ensure you don't scale up prematurely ahead of reaching product-market fit. As a result, your initial set of customers find your product so valuable that they can't help but recommend it to other companies.

Even in 2016, many startups still apply the archaic model of build first, validate last, or "build it and they will come."

Rather than apply the lean startup process, they develop a product no one cares enough to pay for. Worse, it doesn't even solve their target customer's pain points.

The Hubstaff Free Plan Mistake

Hubstaff, a startup for time tracking for remote teams, explained in its post SaaS Pricing: Our Big Free Plan Mistake why startups shouldn't feel implicit pressure to offer free trials to users and that user acquisition shouldn't be seen as a "money making arms race." They gave an insight glimpse into the reasons why free trials hurt most startups and why startups often rationalize them.

From their experience offering a free plan, they found that people take advantage of free accounts and that free users often skirt around the free account limits by signing up for multiple free accounts with different email addresses.

Even IP blocks can't solve this problem because customers have easy access to VPN software, like ExpressVPN.

Hubstaff also found that if someone values a product, they would pay for it.

If existing users aren't engaging with your product on a frequent recurring basis, then your product doesn't solve a hairy enough problem for the end user.

Two other takeaways:

1. Free users tend to invite more free users


2. Paid products carry more value in the consumer's eyes

I came across a blog post from ConversionXL that explains how not requiring credit card info during the free trial signup processes resulted in a lift to paid subscriber conversion rates.

It's important to take the company's business model in context relative to yours and assess whether that product is 10x better than a substitute.

If your product is easily replaceable or doesn't solve a big enough customer pain point, people will be less willing to pay for it.

Avoid acquiring more trial customers until your existing customers love engaging with your product every day and find it invaluable for their use case.

Get The CEO To Acquiesce

If your startup is struggling to break even, convince the CEO to stop acquiring trial subscribers. Refocus your team's efforts on optimizing customer happiness with the right product feature set.

What are some factors that drive marketers to seek more trial subscribers?

• Investors include a subscriber performance milestone with a liquidation preference in the equity agreement.


• The C-Suite wants hockey stick growth so the company can raise additional capital at a higher valuation.

Even if marketers question the CEO or investor's judgment about trial user acquisition, it often doesn't change their minds. I've experienced it before. Founder CEOs can be pretty stubborn. Not because they don't mean well but it's often difficult for them to admit when their product isn't great.

As a result, the marketing team is forced to find more trial subscribers. It doesn't matter whether people actually find the product useful.

The venture-backed company CEO isn't worried about monetization in the short-run because "more trial subscribers" is the resolve for faster growth. This couldn't be further from the truth.

The truth is, you don't need more trial users...

... You need a product that solves a big need for your customer, not one that results from C-Suite groupthink.

If you care about your company and team, avoid letting your CEO put the company out of business. Sooner or later, your team will have to face the music and recognize that any underlying product engagement issues must be resolved first, or your team won't exist.

Customer Acquisition Cost and User Engagement are Inversely Proportional

The chart illustrates the inversely proportional relationship between Customer Acquisition Cost and user engagement shown as recurring site visits.

Customer acquisition cost, or the price you pay to attract a new customer, increases as user engagement decreases. To keep things simple, let's define user engagement as the number of recurring visits per unique user.

The cost of acquiring new customers goes down as word of mouth referrals increase.

Word of mouth customers tend to be much stickier than customers from other referral sources. So not only is it more expensive to acquire customers with fewer word of mouth referrals, non-word-of-mouth referral customers exhibit higher churn rates.

To confirm this, professors at three business schools teamed up to research the word-of-mouth effects in estimating customer lifetime value.

In short, they found that word-of-mouth referrals are more valuable than other types of referrals; their lifetime value is higher because customer churn is lower. Furthermore, customer acquisition costs are lower with higher word-of-mouth referrals.

Without high word-of-mouth referrals resulting from high user engagement and customer happiness, it becomes impossible to reach escape velocity, like Slack or Stripe.

On Virality

Virality can mask poor customer development.

Embedded viral loops are a misguided cure-all for chronically low word of mouth referrals.

Startups attempt to force trial subscriber acquisition with viral loops and other gimmicks. They hide any user engagement problems, providing an excuse for a product that doesn't solve its target customer's pain points.

One of my favorite quotes about virality comes from Laura Roeder's Observer article, Why I Don't Want My Startup to 'Go Viral':

"Word-of-mouth is like the stable, grown-up big brother of virality. Steady job, less impulsive, takes showers."

Weak User Engagement Is Killing Your Startup

With a few hundred or thousand existing trial subscribers, acquiring more trial subscribers is not the answer to unlock growth.

Your team's energy should be spent on customer discovery.

Install Kissmetrics and Hotjar. Collect as much data as possible about your trial users' in-app engagement. Setup custom reports in Google Analytics. Get serious about visitor and user segmentation.

Understand your users like never before. Let Kissmetrics show you where you're losing customers, who your best customers are, how they're using your product, and where to find more of them. Request a personal demo to learn more.

Figure out why your users are not revisiting your site on a regular basis.

Here are some possible reasons why they aren't engaging with your application:

• Is there a missing feature or capability that better addresses their daily workflow needs?


• Are users getting stuck at a particular stage of the conversion funnel or onboarding process?


• Do your transactional emails turn off subscribers, leading them to filter them out from their inbox with an email rule?


• Is your site speed or data reporting causing subscribers to leave and never return?


• Do users struggle to understand how your application works or what the benefits of using it are? Maybe they need better onboarding education or how-to help tutorials to learn how to use the interface as it applies to their specific use case.


• Does the user interface cause visitors to flee the second they're inside the app?

Where To Go From Here

Diagnose poor user engagement with cohort analyses.

Segment cohorts by demography, geography, traffic source, landing page, exit page, cohort size (day, month, year), date range, device and more.

Make a short list, call up your trial users and ask them what their day-to-day struggles are.

Revisit your customer personas. Email them surveys. Do everything you can to understand what the fundamental challenges are in their daily workflow.

Incorporate this into your "user engagement benchmarking toolkit."

A couple ways marketers try to get trial users to engage with their platform:

• Email users asking them to return but if the product doesn't provide much value, they'll struggle to convert them.


• Incentivize customers to leave their trial early or try a myriad of other tactics to get them to convert.

At the end of the day, if they convert to paid customers for the wrong reasons, you will see high churn and refund rates. Conversion rates won't matter.

Conclusion

Most trial subscribers are tire kickers, never to return to your website.

If your startup has a few 100 or 1,000 unconverted trial subscribers, your team should spend less time finding new ones. Focus on improving user engagement. Develop the right product feature set that solves your users' biggest workflow challenges.

That's what Edgar did off the bat. With their queue feature, small businesses and bloggers no longer waste social media updates. Their auto-refilling queue frees up their customers' time that was otherwise wasted.

Build one invaluable product feature that solves a big problem for your existing customers. Avoid wasting time and capital acquiring trial users to mask weak organic growth.

Address user engagement issues before going on a shopping spree for more trial users.

About the Author: Cody Lister is the founder of MarketDoc, a blog and digital marketing agency that optimizes pay per click advertising campaigns for high return on ad spend from search and social media. Grab his free user engagement checklist and get step-by-step marketing formulas, case studies and insights for explosive startup growth. Follow him on Twitter.