Give Influencer Content Programs a Promotional Edge with Digital Advertising

It happens almost every single time. I’m finally settling in to stream a few episodes before I go to bed for the day. I fire up the old Netflix machine and there it is… options… lots of them.

There are shows I’ve seen before that I might want to watch again. Genres that I’m interested in. Highly rated shows. Maybe I watch one of those trending shows that everyone is talking about? I mean I’ve never seen that Making a Murderer show… did I miss out on that one? My mind continues to jump around with the unlimited options in front of me.

When you have virtually unlimited options in front of you it’s almost impossible to make a choice. This is probably why I’ve watched the American version of the Office about one million times (either that or it’s a really good show).

As marketers we consistently run into situations like this. We are asked to promote a product or a service or a piece of content and when we sit down at our desk we are hit with so many options. We have to choose the right channel, the right audience, the right messaging, the right offer, the right image, the right… Anyone else getting cold sweats just thinking about this?

I want to help you with this problem. Specifically as it relates to influencer content (because that presents a whole new set of challenges that need to be addressed).

Promoting Influencer Content With Digital Advertising

Why focus on influencer marketing? In my opinion influencer marketing is one of the most challenging thing to promote with paid digital advertising. Many people look at influencer marketing and content marketing in general as some magical piece of content that, when published, turns prospects into customers in a completely organic way.

In reality, simply creating great influencer content is not enough. Right now, as I write this, there are over one billion websites (in fact the number grew by about 500 in the time it took me to finish that sentence).

So what does that mean? In very broad and simple terms you aren’t the only one that has to make a lot of choices. So when it comes to influencer content you have to help your audience find it and help them choose it.

5 Steps to Promoting Influence Content with Digital Advertising

The 5 steps below will help you successfully promote your influencer content with digital advertising in a way that attracts and entices your target audience.

Step 1. Change How You Think About Influencer Content

Often marketers don’t change their approach to promotion when deploying an influencer driven content campaign. Instead of thinking of your influencer content as a part of your standard marketing mix think of it as a product.

This is really important. You are not promoting content, you’re not boosting a post, you are selling influencer content. That is your job.

Step 2. Know Your Audience

It seems simple, but is often overlooked. But did you know that now you can really know your audience. For example, if you are using Twitter you can gather awesome insights with Twitter Analytics.

I mean… take a look at this.

The top lifestyle type in my organic audience is “Online Buyers.” I can make assumptions from this. For example, one thing that is often debated is how much info do I ask a prospect to give in exchange for a gated asset? Well an online buyer is comfortable giving over name, phone number, address, credit card info, and more in exchange for goods.

This information can help you determine what to “charge” or how much information you should ask for in exchange for content.

You can gather similar information using tools such as  Google Analytics Demographics and Interests and the Facebook Audience Insights tool.

Step 3. Segment Your Audience

Knowing your audience is important. Segmenting your audience is even more essential.

Don’t make the mistake of lumping everyone together into one audience when promoting your influencer driven content. While this tactic may be necessary if you are working with a really small audience, a larger audience that you can segment will allow you to tailor your message to a smaller, specific group of people.

For example, let’s say that you have created influencer content to target HR professionals. It’s possible that you could segment that audience by tenure in the HR industry.

With an audience like this you could tailor your call to action like so.

• Tenure of 0-5 years – Jumpstart your HR career with….
• Tenure of 5-15 years – Bring your HR career to the next level with…
• Tenure of 15+ years – Learn from the top HR professionals…

Segmenting your audience can help you tailor your sales pitch. Remember, you are selling your content not promoting it.

Step 4. Challenge Your Assumptions

What’s the one thing I have heard more than anything else when it comes to promoting B2B influencer content with digital media? Give up? It’s this, “we are a B2B company so we only want to promote this on LinkedIn.

Well first of all, we are selling the content not promoting it. Second of all, you don’t think those same professionals have a Facebook account?

Facebook is on pace to hit 2 billion users. I’m willing to guess that some of those 2 billion users are in the market for B2B goods and services.

Challenging your assumptions has it’s rewards. Currently I am running a campaign for a B2B company and the results look like this…

Challenging assumptions and running a campaign on Twitter was a great bet!

Step 5. Don’t Fall in Love With Your Bets

It’s bound to happen. You’ll do all of the tips above. You’ll create a segmented audience on a social network that sits outside of your assumptions. You’ll create tailored calls to action and you’ll fall in love.

Then it happens… nothing happens… it fails.

When it fails, one of two things normally happen.

1. Marketers ignore the failure in disbelief
2. Marketers say, “just give it more time. One more conversion will make this look better.”

Neither of these are going to change anything. In this situation only one thing will work.

Make some changes.

Change your ad copy. Broaden your audience. Change your bids. Try to identify why it isn’t working and fix it.

The Keys to Promoting Influencer Content With Paid Digital Advertising

So there you have it, 5 keys to promoting content with digital advertising. Below is a quick recap that you can use of a checklist of sorts to begin guiding your influencer content and digital advertising journey:

1. Remember you’re selling your content not promoting it.
2. Know your audience. Use tools to understand their online behavior.
3. Segment your audience. Tailor your message in a way that speaks to the individuals in your audience.
4. Challenge your assumptions. Try something new. Run tests.
5. Don’t fall in love. Make changes quickly and don’t wait for a campaign to turn into what you want it to be.

I know you have over a billion options to choose from when it comes to internet content. Thanks for choosing this piece. I’d love to hear about any time you challenged an assumption and won or when you fell in love with a campaign. Feel free to share your insights in the comments below.

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How to Build a Social-First Thought Leadership Program

Thought leadership is a strategy that can lead directly to brand equity enhancement and offers an incredible return for the time and effort that you put into developing this program. While you would like to think that you could pour some water on your thought leadership tactics and they instantly bloom, that's not how this works.

My own thought leadership program has grown over time, which is what you should expect yours to do if you build it strategically and continually manage its development. In implementing it over social media platforms, it's gained additional momentum thanks to influencers who share the content I've produced. Once your program is launched and getting traction, you will need to continue overseeing it, but it will pay you big dividends for doing so.

Here's a framework to build your own social-first thought leadership program, which delivers relevant, valuable, and insightful content that answers the questions that your audience is pondering as well as provides actionable solutions for issues that they are facing.

Study Your Audience

This tactic takes considerable time because you want to ensure that you know who they are, what they are asking and seeking, and how they want to engage with brands to get that assistance. Learn when and where they are having online conversations and study those to see how they respond and share with their social circles in a public environment. Also, pay attention to their values to see where you can align yourself based on your own belief system.

By arming yourself with this audience intelligence, you can figure out how to deliver the best answers as well as approach them with that information at just the right time. How do you find out the right time? Note when they are holding these conversations, including the day and time they frequent specific social platforms.

Identify the Social Platforms for Conversations

Go where your audience is spending their time. However, if you are not sure about all of these social platforms and how they work, start with just those where they are located and that you can already navigate.

Save the new social platforms for research before you announce your presence there. You want to make sure you do it right because there aren't any "do-overs" when it comes to social media. And, you don't want to blow it when it comes to trying to win their trust.

Craft Your Unique Thought Leadership Story

To stand out within your industry and even business segment, there has to be something memorable about you that people will be drawn to. Think about your strengths and what makes you the entrepreneur that you've become. How can what has shaped your evolution help your audience?

Or, what is it about your personality can you leverage to engage with others? For some, it's being completely transparent about their past and current startup experiences. Others may feel comfortable using their sense of humor to enhance what they are sharing to connect with the audience. Charisma, passion, and excitement on your part are definite musts when it comes to audience engagement.

As part of your leadership story development, research what topics related to your brand appear in your online search results. These topics will then shape the story you create on these social platforms.

Understand and Address Your Limitations

Just because you know a lot about a particular subject doesn't mean you know everything about it or other topics. Define the areas that you know and, if you want to know more, add talent to the team who can be your eyes and ears to extend that thought leadership library of subject matter.

You may also be limited in terms of the amount of time you can invest in creating the content. It's okay to bring in ghostwriters who can craft the best content that matches your voice from existing content so that they can "take over" to continue regularly publishing similar content that keeps the conversations going with your audience.

Uncover Unique and Relevant Content Types

When studying your audience, you most likely determine how various segments use the social platforms to get to content types they are interested in. If that's a silly video, live stream format, listicle or a combination, focus on delivering the content in their preferred way. This can simultaneously speed and deepen the engagement level.

Always use facts, statistics, and quotes to add leadership credibility to the content you are supplying. You can also consider curating content from other sources to further the belief that you are an expert in this subject area. The ability to know what everyone else is saying and apply your own perspective is one strategy that has really worked for me in boosting thought leadership.

Leverage Offline Opportunities to Enhance Online Awareness

You might be wondering what offline presence has to do with your social-first thought leadership strategy, but it is an important tactic that builds momentum for you. By looking for speaking engagements at conferences, trade shows, seminars and networking events, you are adding to the persona you are building online.

These offline opportunities can also be shared across your social platforms to illustrate your focus on developing personal relationships with your audience by also meeting with them, face-to-face. When you do have these meet and greets, you also get more insights into what your audience needs, which continue to feed you with the content themes to pursue.

Don't Sell

Whatever you do, steer clear of sounding like a salesman. Thought leadership doesn't involve a hard or a soft sell. Instead, it's just about providing education and specific information. It's through this assistance that you establish trust and credibility that can motivate your audience to delve deeper into what you offer and decide for themselves if they want to buy your product or service.

You know what mobile testing is and why it’s important. But do you do it well? Download the Mobile Testing Guide for Modern Marketers for the best advice from thought leaders and experienced mobile marketers.

Image credit: Pexels

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How to Leverage Behavioral Analytics In Your Growth Strategy

If you’re obsessed with growth, you know how important it is to have a super detailed growth strategy. You and data are BFFs, right? Great, but you also need to understand the context that surrounds that data.

I know that sounds a little dense, but bear with me. What I mean is that information alone isn’t enough. Yes, in data we trust. Sure, lots of metrics are all well and good, but if you can’t leverage that data, there’s no point to it. Think about it. Who makes the growth happen? You might think it’s you, but in the end, it’s actually your audience.

How your users respond to your tactics will decide how successful your growth strategy is. So take a step back and look at your audience. Do you really understand them? Be honest with yourself. Most growth hackers think they understand their customer base, but they only know raw data. Knowing demographics doesn’t mean you understand your audience.

This is where I drop my bomb of a topic. Behavioral analytics, folks.

Understanding and applying behavioral analytics can be incredibly useful for growth strategies. In fact, it could be the energy and edge that your brand has been missing.

Want viral growth? Say hello to behavioral analytics. These analytics give you a look into the minds of your users so you can put yourself in their shoes. You’ll be able to build targeted campaigns that better suit your audience, create messages that reach the right users at the right time, and attract entirely new user bases.

I realize that “behavioral analytics” doesn’t sound all that sexy, but you’re going to discover just how powerful it is. Let’s take a look at some fundamental concepts of behavioral analytics that you absolutely need to know and then explore some actionable strategies you can use.

If you’ve been sleeping on behavioral analytics, it’s not too late. Read this article. Do what it says, and your brand will grow.

What Psychographics Are (and how you get them)

When it comes to behavioral analytics, psychographics are vital.

Psychographics provide a foundational understanding of why your customers behave the way they do.

Demographics are the who. Psychographics are the why.

Each psychographic is a data point that tells you something about your users’ behavior.

Here’s a more comprehensive list of psychographics:

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These go way above and beyond demographics to give you a fuller picture of your audience.

Psychographics clue you in to your users’ behaviors. For example, if you know that most of your audience is composed of parents of 5-11 year olds, you’ll understand why those kid-sized T-shirts are flying off the shelves.

Although you can’t get any super specific data like number of clicks, you still need psychographics to get a general idea of how your audience acts and why they do what they do.

Psychographics will often reveal what’s important to your users.

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Do you understand now why psychographics are so important? They help you see your customers as people and not just information from your analytics software.

Speaking of analytics software, you can find some basic psychographic information in GA by heading over to Audience > Interests > Overview.

You’ll see three categories: Affinity Category, In-Market Segment, and Other Category.

The Affinity Category shows you different lifestyle categories. Google compares these groups to TV audiences.

This category points to specific interests that your users have. Even if you just look at this section of GA, you can get a pretty good understanding of what your audience likes.

The In-Market Segment shows you what types of products your users have shown interest in.

Basically, your customers are looking to buy products or services within these categories.

The Other Category offers a narrower view of your audience.

If you want to go even deeper, Google has a handy guide on using this psychographic info in conjunction with other analytics.

There are many other ways to grab psychographics, from surveys to focus groups. Use as many of these methods as you want. Too much psychographic data is never a bad thing.

Still, psychographics are just that––data. You need to use them in a creative way.

With that in mind, let’s look at some growth techniques that depend on psychographics and other behavioral data.

Data-Driven Customer Personas

Creating an imaginary friend might sound a little childish to you, but that’s essentially what you need to do with psychographics.

Right, I know, it’s not exactly an “imaginary friend.”

I’m talking about creating a fictional person who is a representative of your audience base and not just some creature you made up. These representatives are otherwise known as customer personas.

You’re probably familiar with the idea of the customer persona, but if you’re not, don’t worry. Here’s a brief rundown.

A customer persona (also called user or buyer persona) takes aggregate data and uses it to create a fake person. This person is your average customer.

His or her demographic and psychographic information is representative or your audience (or a segment of your audience).

Here’s what an example customer persona might look like:

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As you can see, you can get really detailed with personas. The more detailed they are, the better you’ll understand your users.

By definition, a customer persona is chock full of behavioral analytics. They help you describe the persona in detail.

Once you have all of your behavioral analytics together, you can take a couple of different approaches to creating a persona.

The approach you take will depend on what you want to accomplish with your personas.

Do you want to create better email sequences? Do you want to improve your Facebook ads? Think about your objectives as you create your personas.

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Specifically, you can use certain analytics based on the results you’re after. Let’s look at some examples of this idea in action.

Let’s say you want to redesign your CRM software to attract more leads. In terms of analytics, you’d want to look for business-related psychographics.

These might include the user’s role at work, how much time they spend at their job, or even the search terms they use to get to your site.

So an example persona for that would look like this one (the one on the right side):

This persona is great for SaaS because it uses analytics that relate to work. There’s little personal information here, but there’s enough to give you an idea of who the persona is.

But that type of persona isn’t ideal for every sort of situation.

Another example: Say you’re the head of growth at an ecommerce apparel startup.

You’d be more concerned with personal behavioral analytics and not so many work-related data. So a persona for you might look something like this:

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The types of analytics you use should all depend on your goals and the kind of product or service you’re selling.

It doesn’t hurt to get as many data points as possible, but you’ll want to refine them to zoom in on your average customer.

Creating a persona doesn’t take much time, but it can change how you see growth. That said, you have to make sure your personas are as accurate as possible.

If you get the wrong analytics, well, your entire customer journey might just go down the drain.

But if you get it right, your customers will feel like you really know them.

This is a perfect example of how behavioral analytics can make all the difference in your growth strategy.

Remember, you’re not simply looking at a bunch of random numbers. This information has real uses that you can take advantage of starting today.

Let’s take a look at another one of those advantages.

Customer Segmentation

You’re segmenting your users…right?

Okay, maybe you’re not. That’s okay. But you totally need to be.

Some marketers and growth hackers see their audience as one big mass, so every campaign gets sent out to everyone.

But not everyone has the same needs and wants. Your customers are all different.

So if you group people into similar segments, you can deliver more accurate, targeted messages and have better results.

That’s why segmentation is part of every good marketer’s (and growth hacker’s) playbook.

And––you guessed it––behavioral analytics can help you segment better.

The basic idea is to create segments using one or more behavioral attributes.

If you group generally according to behavior, you’ll get an inside look into what different types of customers are looking for.

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Just this basic behavioral segmentation already gives you a much better understanding of the different kinds of users you have.

All you need to do is a little behavioral research to get started with this. In GA, you can go to Behavior > Behavior Flow to see an overview of the average user path on your site.

While this isn’t incredibly comprehensive, it can prep you for actual segmentation later on. Odds are the trends you see on Behavior Flow will reflect your audience as a whole.

This type of segmentation is flexible and can be used in a variety of ways.

Take email marketing. You can see what emails people open, which people almost never open your emails, and maybe even how long a user spends reading your email.

You probably look at data like this all the time:

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But have you considered that you can use this information to tap into your subscribers’ brains?

All of those are behavioral analytics in their own right, and they’re great for segmentation.

There’s a lot you can do with these analytics. You can send a special discount email to the loyal subscribers who regularly open your emails, or you can send more targeted emails to people who tend to open one type of email.

And your results are almost guaranteed to improve.

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The possibilities are endless.

And if you’re using Kissmetrics, you don’t have to worry about any of this because the behavior-based delivery feature does it for you.

 

Still in doubt? I know it sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn’t, and it can pay off big time.

MailChimp found that segmenting subscribers by interest made every metric soar:

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If you’re willing to get even more crazy with segmentation, get ready.

You can also use behavioral analytics to group your customers by their place in the customer journey.

This concept is a little more advanced than the techniques we’ve gone over, but it packs a serious punch.

The typical customer journey is more or less like this:

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By using behavioral analytics, you can find out what stage of the customer journey a user is going through.

Behavior Flow can often show this. If someone has checked out lots of your product pages but hasn’t made it to the checkout, he or she is in the consideration stage.

Once you’ve found out where someone is in the customer journey, you can place them into an appropriate segment.

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This approach is a growth hacker’s dream. Not only can you segment your customers, but you can also get a better grip on the customer lifecycle.

It’s awesome, isn’t it?

If you’re serious about converting and growth, you should strongly consider this advanced tactic. It’s one of the best ways to hyper-focus your messages, and you’ll reach the right users at the right time.

Conclusion

Growth is all about people.

And by people, I mean your users.

A good growth strategy has to be centered around your customers. Otherwise, your strategy will fall flat on its face.

If you’re focused on sheer volume and ignore your customers in the process, you’re going to get nowhere fast.

Analyzing and leveraging your users’ behavior is one way to enhance your current strategy.

If you understand your users’ behavior, you can more easily determine what kind of content they want and what kind of messages are best to send to them.

Like I said, it’s all about people. We want to be understood, and we want our needs to be taken care of.

As a growth nut, it’s your job to make sure that happens.

So if you need to step up your game, behavioral analytics can give you a fresh perspective and boost your results.

About the Author: Daniel Threlfall is an Internet entrepreneur and content marketing strategist. As a writer and marketing strategist, Daniel has helped brands including Merck, Fiji Water, Little Tikes, and MGA Entertainment. Daniel is co-founding Your Success Rocket, a resource for Internet entrepreneurs. He and his wife Keren have four children, and occasionally enjoy adventures in remote corners of the globe (kids included). You can follow Daniel on Twitter or see pictures of his adventures on Instagram.

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The Role of the CMO: Obsolete or Reinvented?

For more than a decade, the CMO role has been in a state of flux. McKinsey talked about the evolving role of the CMO as far back as 2007. Since that time, there’s been no shortage of experts opining on the changing phenomenon of marketing and, more specifically, the impact these changes have on the C-suite marketing role. Is the role of the CMO on its way out the door for good, or is it simply undergoing a major transformation?

The Last Decade: Shifting Priorities and Opinions

Some have gone as far as to say the CMO, or any number of newer iterations of the role, such as the digital CMO (which arose from the digital transformation), is obsolete. In 2013, for instance, Rikita Puri argued in this post at Hubspot that the digital CMO, a relatively new concept at the time, was already obsolete, pointing out that the success rates of traditional digital technologies (yes, it’s true — we’ve already reached the tipping point at which “traditional” is an appropriate adjective in discussing certain digital trends) are rapidly dwindling. Why? The rise of ad blockers is one likely cause, as well as consumers’ increasing ability to ignore — essentially blocking mentally — the same forms of advertising.

Puri makes the case for digital CMOs to become more inbound-focused, leveraging compelling pull mechanisms that make brands irresistible to consumers. The added bonus is that when fully leveraging the power of inbound marketing, it’s no longer a matter of competing for buyer’s attention in an over-crowded climate; it’s about earning that attention using a philosophy (inbound) that’s grounded in psychology.

In 2015, AdWeek ran an article outlining four trends that will make the CMO obsolete, including:

• The end of single-channel marketing
• The growth of the experience economy
• The rise of the personal narrative
• The ascent of advocacy

Author Tim Dunn explains that the challenge, at the time, was that many brands were poorly equipped to deliver consistent cross-channel experiences, noting that the many facets of modern businesses existed in silos: brand, e-commerce, retail, product, etc. Dunn proposes a solution: a centralized Chief Experience Officer, tasked with unifying these distinct business units to create a functional, cross-channel experience capable of wowing consumers and fostering brand advocacy.

Less than a year ago, in September 2016, Mike Edwards argued in a LinkedIn post that both the traditional CIO and CMO roles are becoming extinct in the omni-channel world. Edwards talks about the frustrations he experienced conducting a search for a Chief Marketing Officer for eBags, most notably, his inability to find candidates with the right balance of skills and experience to lead growth for modern retailers.

The biggest obstacle, Edwards says, is that traditional CMOs tend to struggle with the speed of change in today’s retail industry — where business can change substantially within an hour’s time. Edwards’ solution was to split the traditional CMO role into two roles, each reporting to the CEO: one focused on traditional marketing, and the other focused on content and brand management.

Likewise, the CIO role struggles with many of the aforementioned issues, namely, an inability to partner effectively with the Chief Digital Officer or Chief Marketing Officer to drive innovation within an enterprise, as well as too much emphasis on backend systems and not enough focus on the customer experience. Edwards points out that at eBags, IT priorities are driven by customer trends, and the future of the CIO role, like the CMO, will have a greater emphasis on digital, likely being reimagined as the Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO).

It’s Just Semantics. Or Is It?

Is it merely a matter of semantics? Possibly, but the underlying transformation goes much deeper. You could certainly label a modern, transformational marketing professional — one with a strong grasp of customer experience and advocacy and a deep understanding of the omni-channel world — as a CMO and not suffer any ill effects. It’s just a title, after all.

But that’s not the point. The point is that the marketing needs of today’s enterprises have transformed dramatically and continue to undergo rapid change. It’s about relevance today and the ability to stay relevant by keeping pace with the speed of change in the industry.

What today’s enterprises really need, then, are visionaries: marketing professionals with up-to-date skillsets, a growth mindset, and an ability to identify trends, inspire organizational change, and envision the way the company will engage and interact with consumers in the future. To put it simply, they’re innovators. It’s these professionals who have staying power in the modern enterprise, as they have the capacity to grow with and adapt to changing marketing technologies, tactics, and consumer trends. These are the marketing leaders who aren’t discarded after two years when the company recognizes the need for change; instead, they’re spearheading it.

What About Those Skillsets?

Of course, today’s CMOs (or Chief Digital Officers, Chief Experience Officers, Chief Customer Officers, or whatever nomenclature a company opts to utilize) come from myriad backgrounds with varying skillsets. There is no one-size-fits-all CMO. One may have a deep understanding of the target audience in a specific industry vertical, while another may have a strong mastery of data analysis and the ability to adapt to emerging marketing technologies with ease.

Experience still matters, but what matters more is a marketing professional’s relevance to the brand and how well their skills and expertise fit the needs of the enterprise. Above all, CMOs and other C-suite marketers must be adaptable — willing and ready to ride the inevitable waves of change.

The truth is that today’s C-suite marketing execs can’t possibly be masters of every marketing skill; the marketing landscape is simply too vast and varied, relying on a multitude of technologies, leveraging a wide swath of tactics, and reaching consumers across channels in the omni-channel world (while, of course, ensuring that the customer experience is consistent and above-the-bar at every touchpoint).

That’s why modern CMOs, CDOs, and the like must be strong leaders with acute self-awareness, giving them the ability to identify skills gaps within their team and hire the right marketing minds to fill those gaps and create a cohesive, all-encompassing team of marketing rockstars who are exponentially more powerful together than they are alone.

In this way, the modern CMO is more similar to the CEO, taking the over-arching leadership role that drives innovation and ensures that all the moving parts, skillsets, and talents are in line with broader company goals and objectives while also working together like a well-oiled machine.

If you want to think about it as a matter of semantics, the CMO is most certainly on its way out, giving way to the new-fangled C-suite title du jour, whether it’s Chief Digital Officer, Chief Customer Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Commerce Officer, Chief Experience Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, or another flavor of the week. There are no hard and fast rules; brands are free to define whatever roles as they see fit.

At its core, however, the need for a marketing leader in the C-suite is more crucial than ever, and these executives are serving in more powerful roles with a greater prominence and relevance throughout the organization, as well as increasing overlap with other business units and executives (the ever-growing need for a strong relationship between the CMO and CIO is well-documented, for instance). In a time in which breaking down silos is a top priority, CMOs are often just the leader today’s enterprises need to drive innovation and lead the charge.

As we try to define or redefine the role of the CMO in business, we also have to examine what role the CMO should play in in the customer experience. Download this free report to see how your CMO could have a direct and positive impact on your customers. 

Image Credit: Burst.Shopify.com

This article originally appeared on Digital Examiner.

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Be More Productive By Working Simply

Be More Productive By Working Simply written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Carson Tate

Routine, process, to-do and task lists – that’s how we get stuff done right?

Turns out the most productive individuals all have one thing in common and that’s a system.

In search for that one, perfect system people use GTD, Franklin-Covey, Note pad, Evernote and a variety of hybrid tricks and tools.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Carson Tate, author of Work Simply: Embracing the Power of Your Personal Productivity Style and founder of a productivity consulting practice Working Simply.

My favorite part of Tate’s work is the recognition that everyone has their own personal productivity style and that because of that one person’s system won’t necessarily work for everyone. So, if you’ve tried to use GTD or Evernote and couldn’t wrap your brain around why others swear by them when you just can’t get the knack of them, turns out they just don’t fit your style.

It’s a lot like learning – some people love words, some pictures, some math, some history. The trick to unlocking your productivity is to embrace this fact.

Tate has even created a personal productivity assessment to help you determine your style – take the test here.

Getting more done each day, managing the demands of a growing company and juggling all the new things that come at me each day consumes a great deal of my thinking so I invest a great deal of energy in ways that allow me to do more, but with less stress.

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