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85+ Video Marketing Statistics to Keep In Mind For 2020

April 24, 2020 No Comments

By Cristian Stanciu.

Video marketing statistics are super important when planning your marketing strategy.

There is a ton of data available online, but not all of it is up to date. And being “up to date” is very important in the fast-changing world of digital marketing.

We gathered the most recent data we could find about video content and you can find it all below.

We’re almost halfway through the year. It hasn’t panned out the way we thought. But, we can still make it work.

Facing a lockdown, many of us have realized the importance of video content. Its power not only to entertain but also to unite and educate has shown that video content in its various forms is the future of online marketing.

Luckily for us, I did not see any decrease in the demand for our video editing services, so that’s one thing to be happy about.

If you haven’t done before, now is the right time to invest in video marketing. For those who are already using video content; it’s time to redouble your efforts.

Are you in two minds? Unsure whether to invest in video marketing?

Today, we share important video marketing statistics that’ll show investing in video content will prove to be the best decision you’ll make in 2020, or, the second-best after social distancing.

We’ll highlight the popularity of video content among marketers and consumers. Moreover, we’ll look at the predictions and plans that the brands, businesses, and video marketers have for this type of content. Finally, draw attention to social media and video channels that are doing well and those that have huge potential going forward.

This is the only resource you need to stay up-to-date and stay on top of the video marketing game.

Why is Video Marketing Important?

People are leaning towards online video content more than ever before. The numbers are there for everyone to see:

According to Cisco, soon 82% of all web traffic will move towards video content.
In 2021, an average person will spend as much as 100 minutes of his/her everyday life watching videos online.
Users are twice as likely to share videos compared to other content types.
54% of people want to see more video content in 2020.
In the United States, 56% of the young ones (8 to 12-year-olds) and 66% of the teens (13 to 19-year-olds) view videos online every day.

Bottom Line: In 2019, people spent 84 minutes a day watching online videos. The data shows, we can expect a 19% increase in time spent on videos in just 2 years.

The Head of Forecasting at Zenith, Jonathan Barnard, agrees that online video consumption has rapidly increased. Users now spend on online videos more than half of the time that they normally devote to regular television programs.

According to him, the boost in viewership has increased the demand for video marketers.

The demand for advertisers and the increase in expenditure shows that at present video marketing is the fast-growing digital channel.

Video Marketing and Return of Interest (ROI)

Video marketers seem to be real gung-ho about including video in their marketing plan for 2020.

But, is it really worth spending time, money, and effort? The following statistics seem to suggest that it is.

89% of marketers say using video content increases their ROI.
87% of all marketers say using video content has helped drive traffic to their website.
83% of all marketers feel using videos improves lead generation.
80% of marketers feel video content has increased their sales.

Bottom Line: The majority of video marketers are obsessed with videos for a reason.

No one can deny the benefits of video content in promoting and marketing brands and businesses.

For example, SAP received millions of impressions after their video marketing campaign.

Further, a marketing campaign with heavy video content helped Tiger Fitness achieve a 60% repeat customer rate, which is 3x times the industry average.

Video Marketing: Who Is Using It?

Let’s not assume anything. It’s best to start from scratch. How widespread is video marketing? Who is using it and their plans for the future?

As high as 92% of all marketers agree that video content is a vital part of their marketing strategy.
66% of B2C marketers have used video content in their marketing strategy.
71% of B2B marketers have used video content in their marketing strategy.
99% of marketers that are already using video marketing will continue to do so in 2020.
59% of marketers who did not use video marketing in 2019, said they’ll make it part of their marketing strategy in 2020.
95% of marketers say they will maintain or even increase the spending on video marketing.

Bottom Line: In 2020 and beyond, two-thirds of marketers are planning to use video marketing.

You don’t want to miss out on this opportunity. But, bear in mind, the competition for user attention is going to be fierce.

To beat the competition, make sure you learn your customer behavior and their decision-making process.

How Does Video Content Help Brands and Businesses?

Video Marketing Promotes Brand Awareness

Compared to other marketing channels, video content is more popular, engaging, and memorable, which is why it’s the right tool to promote brand awareness.

Here are the numbers to back that up.

People will spend 88% more time on a website with video content.
72% of consumers prefer video to text content while researching a product or service.
53% of people engage with a brand after watching one of their videos on social media.
68% of consumers prefer to engage with brands that use video.
96% of people view explainer video to understand a product or service.

Bottom Line: The first and perhaps the most important influencer that drives the sales process is none other than Brand Awareness.

It isn’t enough that the customers know your name. Customers also want to know the values you stand for.

No other content type, except videos, give businesses the opportunity and freedom to get creative and develop quality content that best explains their vision and mission to the customers.

Video Marketing Helps Generate Leads

From the above statistics, we know that video marketing promotes brand awareness. Does it also generate leads? Yes, here are the key numbers you should know:

81% of video marketers state videos help generate leads.
84% of video marketers state videos boost traffic to their website.
80% of video marketers say that videos increased the time visitors spend on the website.
41% of video marketers say the use of videos has led to lesser support calls.

Bottom Line: Videos, even the short ones, give you the opening needed to move the customers along the sales funnel. For example, a short 30-second introduction video from Campaign Monitor explains the benefits of signing up with them.

How do marketers use such videos for lead generation?

Marketers encourage customers to use the link provided in the video description to visit an e-mail opt-in landing page.

Marketers send a thank you message to viewers who have shared, reacted, or commented on the video. Along with the ‘Thank You’ message, they encourage viewers to subscribe to their newsletter.

Video Marketing Boosts Sales

All the effort a marketer makes is directly or indirectly aimed at driving sales. And, as the stats show, video marketing helps generate sales.

84% of consumers have made up their mind to purchase a product or service after viewing a brand’s video.
74% of consumers have made up their mind to download or buy an app or software after viewing a video.
At least 55% of people engaged in shopping watch videos while in the store.

Bottom Line: Brands believe that interacting and connecting with their customers will boost trust and pave way for more sales.

A good example, Adobe found that people who watch demo videos of their products are 1.8x times more likely to buy, than those who don’t.

What Does the Video Marketing Statistics Say about Customer Behavior and Preferences?

Only good, creative, and personalized content resonates with the customers.

Millions of videos and billions of hours of content are added to the online pool every day. You need to stand out from the crowd.

For that, video marketers need to provide content that’s personalized and tailored to their individual tastes, needs, and preferences.

Why Personalized Video Is the New Mantra in Video Marketing?

60% of all marketers say the personalization of video content will improve the quality of the leads.
48% of people want videos to reflect the products or services they are interested in.
72% of people say they will only show interest in personalized video content.
43% of consumers want to decide what videos they want to watch and when to watch.

Bottom Line: Tailored content seems to be on-trend for 2020.

Personalized content allows video marketers to provide highly targeted solutions to the user’s needs.

It also helps develop a customer-brand relationship and allows customers to arrive at buying decisions faster.

By giving personalized content, brands become more memorable and trustworthy.

90% of customers prefer to purchase from brands and businesses that are memorable and trustworthy.

What Does that the Statistics Say about Video Length?

Longer videos, those that are more than 15 minutes garner 50% of all video engagements.
Only 8% of all marketing videos are 15 minutes or longer.
In the case of business videos, 68% of people will watch the whole video if its length is 1 minute or less.
Nearly 80% of all marketing videos produced are under 5 minutes.

Bottom Line: The old belief that the attention span of people is shrinking will be put to test in the coming years.

The statistics show that marketers prefer to use shorter videos. There are different theories on this subject.

Some feel that shorter videos fail to create emotional connections with customers.

In contrast, there are many who root for shorter videos because they are easily digestible and more suitable for social media.

So, video marketers need to consider several factors like the nature of the business, type of content, marketing platform, etc. before deciding the length of the video.

What Type of Video Content do Customers Want to See?

86% of consumers would want brands to use more videos in 2020, and out of these, 36% prefer explainer videos and 14% want more product demonstrations.
39% of consumers want explainer videos on products or services from brands.

Bottom Line: Why is explainer video so effective? Interestingly, there is a scientific explanation for their success.

Explainer videos use the visual and audio stimulus to explain a product, service, or concept in a simple and easily comprehensible way.

The use of both communication mediums boosts message retention in the customers.

The first and foremost requirement to make an excellent explainer video is the script.

A well-written script will greatly increase the chances of the explainer video going viral.

Plus, apart from brand awareness, an explainer video is a great way to generate leads and increase sales.

What Do the Statistics Say about Video Orientation and Features?

39% of the marketers now go for square or vertical videos as compared to horizontal videos.
82% of consumers are put off by videos that are not optimized to their preferred orientation.
75% of consumers say they didn’t purchase a product due to annoying video voiceover.
83% of consumers prefer chatty and informal tone in the videos.
92% of people want to view video content with the sound off.
50% of people say that captions for videos are a must because they watch without sound.
According to Verizon, 55% of consumers want captions for tips videos, 53% want captions for food and 52% want captions for news videos.

Bottom Line: Most social media platforms have adopted square or vertical video orientation.

The reason is simple, 94% of the users hold their mobile vertically and 57% of all video views are on a hand-held device.

Next to the script and quality of the video, the tone and voice style are the most important factors that determine the success of a video. This is clearly reflected in the video marketing statistics.

Even if you have a great video in your hands, with an excellent script and casual, informal, and friendly tone, there is always a way to make it better.

One of the best video tips for marketers is to add captions. Customers like captions because it improves accessibility, boost SEO, and help the audience better understand the content.

What Other Video Marketing Tactics have Gained Traction among Customers and Marketers?

According to Magnifyre, the viewership of 360-degree video was 29% higher than regular video.
The Click-through Rate (CTR) of a 360-degree video was 4.51%, whereas the CTR of the regular video was only 0.56%.
15% of all marketers plan to use 360-degree videos for marketing in 2020.
57% of all marketers are using live videos; of which, nearly 34% of marketers use Facebook Live and 13% use Instagram Live feature.
79% of consumers feel live videos make the content more authentic and 63% feel live videos add a human touch to marketing.
21% of marketers say they’ll use interactive video in 2020.
12% of marketers say they’ll use Virtual Reality (VR) for video marketing in 2020.

Bottom Line: Use of 360-degree, Virtual Reality, and Live videos are a great way to increase viewer count, engage with customers and make them stay longer, retain their attention, develop a relationship, and, most importantly, offer them a unique experience.

These new marketing techniques also help the brand stand out from the crowd.

The Importance of Having Videos on Social Media Platforms

Most social media networks, except YouTube, started out as text-rich networks.

Lately, video content has gate-crashed their party. There has been an explosion of video content on almost all social networks.

As you’ll find out soon, after reading the statistics which are to follow, the numbers are huge.

Social Media is indispensable for video marketing because that’s where a large percentage of the online population spends their time every day.

Besides, videos and social media are good examples of a mutualistic relationship.

Social media is important for video marketing. Equally, video content is also important for the success of the social media campaign.

58% of people visit the social media page of a brand before accessing the brand’s website.
60% of users who bought a product learn about the brand from social media.
Compared to last year, 24% of users are buying a product or service because of ads on social media platforms.
YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram are the top three purchase-driving social media platforms.

Why should you Use YouTube for Video Marketing?

Each day, 1.5 billion people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube
65% of senior executives access the website after watching a related YouTube video.
85% of all marketers have used YouTube in 2019 for video marketing.
83% of marketers feel YouTube has boosted their marketing efforts.
On YouTube, there has been a 70% increase in users who search for ‘How-to’ videos.
In the past two years alone, the number of people viewing shopping-related video content on YouTube has increased 5 times.
In a week, compared to all cable TV networks, YouTube reaches more people in the 18 to 49-year-old age group.

Bottom Line: YouTube is still the best platform for video marketing. In addition, YouTube also helps brands improve SEO, gain authority, and build trust. Although YouTube is the natural home of the video content, there are many ways to market videos without YouTube. Here are other social media platforms for videos.

Why Use Videos on Facebook?

On average, nearly 8 billion videos are viewed on Facebook every day.
79% of marketers say they use Facebook for video marketing and 85% of them feel the move has been successful.
75 million people use the Facebook Video platform on a daily bases.
60% of the users don’t go beyond the two-minute mark to watch a video.
65% of people say they skip the video if the first ten seconds doesn’t interest them.
81% of businesses say they like to use the social media platform (Facebook) for their video marketing.

Bottom Line: Let’s start with the obvious reason. At any given time, millions of people around the world use Facebook. If you want your brand to be right under the noses of your target audience, then Facebook is the platform to use. Plus, having your videos on Facebook increases their chance of going viral.

What Do the Statistics Say about Using Videos on Instagram?

Instagram has nearly 800 million active monthly users.
72% of people buy a product after viewing a video on Instagram.
75% of people take action after watching a brand video on Instagram.
65% of ad impressions on the platform come from video content.

Bottom Line: Research shows that customers have expressed interest in knowing a brand after watching a video on Instagram Stories. On top, many brands have seen a spike in sales thanks to the video content on the platform.

Why Use LinkedIn for Video Marketing?

51% of all marketers said they use LinkedIn for video marketing.
87% of video marketers who used LinkedIn say the platform proved to be a successful channel for video marketing in 2019.
Videos on the company page produce 5 times more engagement in comparison to other content types.

Bottom Line: LinkedIn is a platform for professionals, entrepreneurs, and businesses. The platform was created for building relationships between these three categories of people. As you see in the stats, LinkedIn is a great place to connect with others, present your brand, tell your story, and spread awareness about your product, service, or brand. Moreover, brands can boost their popularity and trustworthiness by displaying customer testimonials on their LinkedIn business page.

How Does Twitter Help in Video Marketing?

Although Twitter is a text-based platform, 82% of people say they mainly view videos on the platform.
72% of marketers use Twitter for video marketing and 84% say this strategy is working for them.
90% of all videos on Twitter are watched using hand-held devices.
45% of people using Twitter want more celebrity videos.

Bottom Line: Twitter can be used to share small snippets or teasers of larger videos. Twitter videos are ideal for generating hype and interest in a product or business.

Should You Be Using Snapchat for Video Marketing?

In 2019, only 11% of the video marketers have used Snapchat and less than 50% of them have benefited from using the platform.
10 billion videos are watched on Snapchat every day.
On average, 25 minutes of video content is consumed daily on Snapchat.

Bottom Line: Video marketers haven’t really gravitated towards this platform because Snapchat accepts videos that are only 10 seconds long. Hence, regular videos won’t fit in this platform.

What Do the Statistics Say About Other Platforms?

TikTok remains underused with only 10% of all video marketers using the platform and 66% of them tasting success.
15% of all marketers say they’ll use TikTok for video marketing in 2020.
79% of all marketers that have used video channels say they have benefited from the move.

Final Thoughts

Dice and slice, and analyze these video marketing statistics in every possible way. All the hard facts and figures needed to frame a video marketing strategy for 2020 and beyond is here.

If you want to reach the top of the marketing game or stay up there, it isn’t enough to simply create videos. You need to know ‘what type of videos to create?’, ‘when to create?’, ‘whom to target?’, ‘where to use?’, ‘when to use?’ Etc. The answers to all your queries are in these statistics.

Resources used in this article:

https://www.lemonlight.com/blog/67-video-marketing-stats-you-need-to-know-for-2020

https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/new-video-marketing-statistics

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/video-marketing/video-marketing-statistics-to-know

https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/video-marketing/video-marketing-trends-2020

https://www.magnifyre.com/360-degree-video-case-study

https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics-2020

https://financesonline.com/video-marketing-trends

https://optinmonster.com/video-marketing-statistics-what-you-must-know

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/state-of-video-marketing-new-data

By Cristian Stanciu.

Cristian Stanciu is a freelance video editor, owner and post-production coordinator of Veedyou Media – a company offering video
editing services to videographers, marketing agencies, video production
studios or brands all over the globe. I can catch up with him on his blog or on LinkedIn.

Sourced from VEEDYOU MEDIA

In News

Top 5 project portfolio management tools

April 23, 2020 No Comments

By Moira Alexander .

These first-rate project portfolio management tools can help your organization excel.

A portfolio manager’s job is stressful–you have to monitor changing strategic goals and oversee and manage an entire project portfolio. Success hinges on sound leadership, a dedicated team, and a robust project portfolio management (PPM) solution. These top-rated cloud-based PPM tools can help you make smart decisions, achieve ROI, and boost your team’s performance.

These cloud PPM solutions appear in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Project and Portfolio Management, and each one offers customizable portfolio dashboards and reporting capabilities, and is accessible from mobile devices.

Changepoint

Changepoint is a user-focused suite of solutions that helps perfectly align company-wide initiatives with your high-level strategy. It helps your leadership team make informed and innovative business decisions that maximize resource utilization, improve financial control, and align outcomes and revenue to corporate goals. Contact Changepoint for pricing.

Key features of Changepoint include:

Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and PPM that visually align strategy with initiatives
360-degree resource management, offering end-to-end resource planning and balancing
Project intake tools to help prioritize and roadmap new projects, based on strategic goals
Powerful analytics that provide clear insight to keep strategic initiatives on track

Check out Changepoint

Clarizen

Clarizen is a PPM solution that helps accelerate your team’s performance by ensuring your workforce is connected and engaged, regardless of where they are across the enterprise. It focuses on establishing a clear line of sight across your organization’s entire portfolio. Clarizen offers an Enterprise and Unlimited edition; for pricing details, contact Clarizen.

Key features of Clarizen include:

An in-context collaboration tool that helps centralize all communication and resources
Configurable workflows that are built around your business needs
A flexible user interface that accommodates each user’s unique needs
Real-time visibility tools to help your leadership team make reliable data-based decisions

Check out Clarizen

KeyedIn Projects

KeyedIn Projects is focused on transforming portfolio visibility and alignment to maximize the return on your investment. Based on your resource capability and financial constraints, KeyedIn helps you to easily select and prioritize projects across the entire organization. Contact KeyedIn Projects for pricing.

Key features of KeyedIn Projects include:

IT portfolio management to ensure your PMO is working on the right projects
A work management tool to help teams collaborate and gain real-time project visibility
IT governance tools to meet your specific compliance standards
Budget tracking to help you monitor project budget performance

Check out KeyedIn Projects

Planview

Planview helps you focus on the strategic outcomes that have meaning and empower your teams to perform at their best. It connects strategy to delivery, with an end-to-end enterprise portfolio management and work management solution. Planview offers a professional and enterprise pricing model; for pricing details, contact Planview.

Key features of Planview include:

Demand management and portfolio planning to gauge project demand and handle requests
Program management and road mapping to define top-down timeframes
Resource management and capacity planning to define and balance capacity and demand
Financial management to connect financial to strategy

Check out Planview

WorkOtter

WorkOtter is a PPM solution focused on helping you expediently configure and adjust your project workflows to meet your entire portfolio needs. It was created for development and IT organizations interested in maximizing their potential by removing chaos and gridlock. WorkOtter offers three plans that start at $10 per month, Time/Status, Team, and Manager.

Key features of WorkOtter include:

A consolidated roadmap to help you better understand resource constraints
Resource management tools to help you closely monitor and balance resource workloads
Agile project management to plan and deliver clearly defined and understood projects

Check out WorkOtter

By Moira Alexander

Sourced from TechRepublic

In News

How your data is helping to fatten up big tech firms like Amazon

April 23, 2020 No Comments

By George Storr

How many times have you been asked to fill in an online survey? Or answer ‘a quick question’ after buying something online? It’s a lot right? That’s because customer experience data is more crucial than ever, in the eyes of growing businesses.

Companies that have seen their revenues grow over the last year collected far more customer experience (CX) data than non-growth companies, according to a new survey conducted by Gartner.

The results of the survey showed that almost 80% of growth businesses use customer surveys to collect CX data, while only 58% of non-growth organisations do the same.

“There is a clear trend among growing companies to actively collect CX data using a wide variety of tools such as surveys, usability testing, focus groups and real-time analytics,” said Jessica Ekholm, research vice president at Gartner.

“This is what we call the outside-in approach — the idea that customer value creation, customer orientation and CX will drive long-term business success.”

Data has been a hot topic in the world of tech for some time, with increasing pressure on giants like Facebook and Amazon to be responsible with users’ data. CX data is slightly different, being sourced mainly via surveys, rather than given to a company when you sign up for their service.

However, both sorts of data are contributing to the huge amounts of information that ‘big tech’ collects from users.

A Guardian report shone more light on this as long ago as 2017. A reporter requested all the data that dating app, Tinder, had collected on her and received 800 pages in response. It’s a figure that puts the importance of data – and the popularity of collecting it – into sharp perspective.

Gartner’s latest findings reinforce the fact that businesses believe your data is crucial to growth. In this case, CX data can offer real insight into what customers want from products and services. However, as Gartner notes – and as internet users well know – the sheer amount of ‘quick questions’ thrown at us online can easily lead to survey fatigue, which reduces the accuracy and quality of responses.

“Despite their widespread use, customer surveys have some flaws that limit their ability to collect quality CX data,” said Ekholm. “Recognizing this, growth companies are beginning to use near- or real-time analytics, to complement or build upon the data collected from surveys.”

“Companies that leverage AI and near- and real-time analytics applications to collect customer data will stand out as CX leaders in the next five to 10 years.”

Between survey fatigue, data breach stories and the slightly scary amount of data that companies hold on their customers, it’s easy to see why consumers aren’t always excited about the subject. However, companies are more enthusiastic than ever to collect consumer data and we shouldn’t expect that to change any time soon.

Feature Image Credit: (Photo by Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images)

By George Storr

George recently joined the Trusted Reviews team after graduating with an MA in Magazine Journalism from The University of Sheffield. He was previously Tech Editor for The National Student and won ‘BBC…

Sourced from Trusted Reviews

In News

Do you know how Zoom is using your data? Here’s why you should

April 23, 2020 No Comments

By Arwa Mahdawi.

The video-call provider has apologised for sending data to Facebook without users’ permission, showing that we must be vigilant about the tech we use.

A couple of months ago, Zoom was a dull, if successful, videoconferencing app that not many people knew about. Now, it is a household name and an integral part of many of our quarantined lives. We conduct business meetings on it; we chat to our mates on it; some people even have sex parties on it.

Yet there are growing concerns over what it does with users’ data. You may think you are working from the privacy of your own home, but the software is probably sharing a lot more information about you than you realise. Zoom has an attention-tracking feature, for example, which notifies the host of some video calls if participants click away to look at something else. The company has actively promoted this feature to educators, explaining it’s a good way to monitor which of your students is slacking off.

In any article about privacy violations, it is pretty much a given that Facebook will be mentioned. This is no exception. Recent analysis by Vice found that Zoom’s iOS app was sending analytics data to Facebook, even when the user did not have a Facebook account and even though this was not addressed in Zoom’s privacy policy. This data included things such as the user’s location and the device’s advertiser identifier information, a unique ID that lets companies send you targeted ads. On Friday, Zoom issued a statement saying “whoops!’” and announcing it had updated its software to stop sending iOS data to Facebook.

I am not saying that you should boycott Zoom and communicate via carrier pigeon. However, as we are forced to live even more of our lives online, let’s not stop holding tech companies to account. Let’s not stop trying to safeguard our right to privacy. Our civil liberties are most fragile during times of crisis. Governments around the world are already using this pandemic to bolster the surveillance state. If we don’t stay vigilant, our privacy will be lost before you can say “Zoom”.

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We have upheld our editorial independence in the face of the disintegration of traditional media – with social platforms giving rise to misinformation, the seemingly unstoppable rise of big tech and independent voices being squashed by commercial ownership. The Guardian’s independence means we can set our own agenda and voice our own opinions. Our journalism is free from commercial and political bias – never influenced by billionaire owners or shareholders. This makes us different. It means we can challenge the powerful without fear and give a voice to those less heard.

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Feature Image Credit: ‘Let’s not stop holding tech companies such as Zoom to account.’ Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

By Arwa Mahdawi

Sourced from The Guardian

In News

How I Earn a Living as a Blogger from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School

April 22, 2020 No Comments

By Darren Rowse

One of our main aims here at ProBlogger is to help people make money (if not a living) from their blogs. And we’ve certainly talked about it a lot over the years. We even have a portal dedicated to this very topic.

But this week I’d like to give you some concrete examples by telling you how I earn a living from ProBlogger and Digital Photography School.

Now before I get into the details, I need to tell you a few things.

Firstly, this information is based on ProBlogger and Digital Photography School (dPS) combined. Of course, seeing as dPS is about eight times the size of ProBlogger that’s where the bulk of the profit comes from. But these figures (or rather percentages) are for the entire business.

Secondly, I’ll be talking about profit, not revenue. They are two very different things, and talking about revenue without mentioning expenses isn’t very useful. Spending a thousand dollars to make a thousand dollars won’t get you very far.

Finally, I’ll be talking about percentages rather than actual amounts because talking about what I earn makes me feel a little uncomfortable. And depending on what stage you’re at on your blogging journey, the percentages will be far easier to relate to.

So, with that out of the way let me tell you how I earn a living as a blogger.

1. Affiliate commissions

Nearly half of my income (46%) comes from affiliate commissions. Around 10% of those commissions are from Amazon, with the rest distributed among eBooks, courses, software and online services.

The great thing about commissions is there are no expenses (other than the time it takes to set them up), and so you can keep whatever you earn.

2. Product sales

My second-largest income earner is product sales at 31%.

Remember how I said it was important to look at profits rather than revenue? I earn pretty much the same revenue from product sales as I do from affiliate commissions. But the eBooks, Lightroom presets, courses and printables I sell don’t just appear out of thin air. People put time and effort into creating them. And we pay them for their time and effort, which reduces our profits.

3. AdSense revenue

My third-highest income stream (8%) comes via Google’s AdSense program.

This was the first income stream I ever tried (somewhere around 2003–2004), and it still works for me. I don’t have to split the money with anyone, and because AdSense has already taken its cut there aren’t too many direct expenses.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it will work for every blogger and every type of blog. Digital Photography School gets four to five million visitors a month, which really helps with banner ads. AdSense seems to like our site as well.

And I should also point out that our AdSense income isn’t what it used to be. Some of that has to do with the direct sponsorship we’ve managed to secure. But even if we ignore that fact for a moment, AdSense’s earnings have been slowly declining over the past few years.

And it’s not just us. Most people who use AdSense or other ad networks have seen similar declines in income. And a lot of the ad networks are now developing different products because their revenue is slipping.

AdSense makes up about 8% of our total income. That sounds small but it’s fairly significant. It’s certainly a nice direct deposit to get in my bank account every month. It doesn’t go up and down a lot. It just really depends on traffic. As I said, slowly declining as well.

4. Sponsorships

Next at 6% is sponsorships (i.e. working directly with brands).

I started doing this around 2004–2005. I can still remember ringing a camera store for the first time and saying, “Hey, would you like to reach people looking to buy cameras? Because I’ve got a photography blog”.

Of course, I then had to explain what a blog actually was. But I eventually convinced a camera store to pay me $20 a month to advertise on my blog. And as my traffic increased I’d would raise the monthly amount accordingly.

On Digital Photography School we offer sponsorship options to advertisers, and replace AdSense with their ads. But we’ll only do it if we’d earn more from the sponsorship deal than we would from AdSense. (We know how much an AdSense slot will earn us, and so we try to at least double the amount from a direct sponsorship ad campaign.

So far we’ve had sponsorship from:

Canon and Tamron
other photography education sites
centers such as the New York Institute of Photography.

We also offer:

placements in our newsletter (which goes out to about 700,000 readers every month)
opportunities to run competitions on the site
social media advertising (which we always disclose).

We haven’t used banner advertising or AdSense much on ProBlogger. But we have done a few sponsorships campaigns on the podcast and at events. In fact, the profit we make at events comes mostly from the sponsors.

(I’ve put the money we make from events in a separate category that I’ll get to shortly.)

5. The ProBlogger job board

Following closely at 5% is the ProBlogger job board, which we started back in 2006.

People pay US$50 to have their ad put on the job board for 30 days, which we then tell our audience about on Twitter.

The jobs barely trickled in at first, and weeks would go by with only one ad on the board. But it’s been growing ever since, and while I probably spent several thousand dollars getting it up and running, it now provides us with 5% of our income.

6. ProBlogger events

Around 3% of my income comes from the ProBlogger events we run.

For the first three or four years we just broke even. But then the event grew to around 300–400 bloggers, and the expenses also grew. (I once received a hotel bill for more than $100,000.) I started thinking, If this doesn’t work, people don’t show up, or something goes wrong it’s going to hurt a lot of people.

And so I started building in a profit margin to cover those potential risks.

But we still try to keep it as affordable as possible. And we must be doing a pretty good job because we always get comments from our attendees saying, “This is just so cheap”.

We charge our attendees around 80% of what it costs to put the event on. The profit comes from our sponsors, and varies from year to year as different sponsors come and go.

We’ve had some amazing sponsors over the last few years. Olympus is an ongoing sponsor for us, Olympus Australia, the camera maker. We’ve had a variety of different sponsors over the years.

7. Miscellaneous

The final 1% comes from things such as:

speaking fees
book royalties
copyright fees (when Australian schools use Digital Photography School material).

Over to you

And there you have it: my income stream broken up into the various categories it comes from.

If you’re earning money from your blog, how do you earn it? Are you using affiliate links or AdSense? Are you selling products or services? Or are you doing something else? Let us know in the comments.

Feature Image Credit: Volodymyr Hryshchenko

By Darren Rowse

Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

Sourced from PROBLOGGER

In News

Brand Marketing Through the Coronavirus Crisis

April 22, 2020 No Comments

By Janet Balis

In times of crisis, it may be hard for marketers to know where to begin. In just a few short weeks, people have shifted into protection mode, focused on themselves, their families, their employees, their customers, and their communities. Social media reflects this, with pleas for fellow citizens to follow government safety guidelines. People have crossed partisan lines to build bridges within their neighborhoods and communities and unify against an invisible force.

With social distancing keeping many people at home, we’re also seeing major shifts in behavioral trends. Consumers have returned to broadcast and cable television and other premium media sources for credible information. They are also seeking more in the way of escapism and entertainment — downloading gaming apps, spending even more time on social media, and streaming more movies and scripted programming. And between remote working arrangements and live-streamed workout classes, college lectures, and social engagements, we are testing the bandwidth of our homes in a largely pre-5G world.

Meanwhile, the need for physical goods is placing pressure on new channels, with demand for e-commerce rising to new levels. For those who do venture out, grocery and convenience stores are the source for essentials, but supply is inconsistent. Health and safety concerns are driving more customers toward frictionless payment systems, such as using mobile phones to pay at check-out without touching a surface or stylus.

Some of these behavior changes may be temporary, but many may be more permanent. As people move beyond the current mode of survival, the momentum behind digital-experience adoption is unlikely to reverse as people are forced by circumstances to try new things. With so much changing so fast during this difficult time, what actions can brands take to serve and grow their customer base, mitigate risk, and take care of their people ?

1. Present with empathy and transparency

People feel vulnerable right now. Empathy is critical. Many banks, for example, have moved to waive overdraft fees, recognizing the hardship on their customers. SAP has made its Qualtrics Remote Work Pulse platform free to companies who might be rapidly transitioning to new ways of working. Such instances show humility in the face of a force larger than all of us.

The nuances of brand voice are more delicate than ever. Brands that use this time to be commercially exploitative will not fare well. Better to do as Guinness did in the period surrounding St. Patrick’s Day, when the company shifted its focus away from celebrations and pub gatherings and instead leaned into a message of longevity and wellbeing. In these moments, we don’t have all the answers, and we need to acknowledge that. If you make pledges, even during uncertain times, you have to be able to deliver on what you say.

2. Use media in more agile ways

To quickly pivot creative messages as circumstances change, marketers will want to build more rapid-response operating models internally and with agencies. Access to remote production and creative capacity will become particularly important as the crisis evolves. Nike, for example, immediately moved to adopt a new message: “Play inside, play for the world.” And in order to promote social distancing and show a commitment to public safety, Chiquita Brands removed Miss Chiquita from their logo. “I’m already home. Please do the same and protect yourself,” its Instagram caption read.

Beyond creative, as the mix of actual media platforms used by consumers changes quickly, marketers should consider modifying their media mix. For example, with digital entertainment spiking, marketers may want to amplify their use of ad-supported premium video streaming and mobile gaming. Similarly, as news consumption peaks while consumers jostle to stay informed, brands should not fear that adjacency, given the level of engagement and relevance. News may simply be an environment that requires more careful monitoring of how frequently ads appear to avoid creative being over-exposed, which can damage brand equity.

3. Associate your brand with good

People will remember brands for their acts of good in a time of crisis, particularly if done with true heart and generosity. This could take the form of donating to food banks, providing free products for medical personnel, or continuing to pay employees while the company’s doors are closed. Adobe, for example, immediately made Creative Cloud available to K-12 institutions, knowing this was a moment to give rather than be purely commercial. Consumers will likely remember how Ford, GE, and 3M partnered to repurpose manufacturing capacity and put people back to work to make respirators and ventilators to fight coronavirus. And people appreciate that many adult beverage companies, from Diageo to AB InBev, repurposed their alcohol-manufacturing capabilities to make hand sanitizer, alleviating short supplies with their “It’s in our hands to make a difference” message.

Feel-good content that alleviates anxiety and promotes positive messaging will go a long way to enhancing the brand. However, companies need to show that their contributions are material and not solely for commercial benefit. Consumers recognize authenticity and true purpose.

4. Track trends and build scenarios

Frequent tracking of human behavioral trends will help marketers gain better insights in real time. Marketers will want to measure sentiment and consumption trends on a regular basis to better adapt messaging, closely observing the conversation across social-media platforms, community sites, and e-commerce product pages to look for opportunities and identify looming crises more quickly. Companies should consider quickly building dashboards with this kind of data to fuel the right decisions.

Marketers will also want to consider building deeper connections with their C-suite colleagues to provide insights to executives who, increasingly, will be involved with marketing choices. The marketing team should work closely with finance and operations to forecast different scenarios and potential outcomes, depending on how long the crisis lasts.

5. Adapt to new ways of working to keep delivering

It’s encouraging how quickly many companies were able to transition to remote working arrangements. Deploying collaboration technologies can seamlessly provide chat, file sharing, meeting and call capabilities, enabling teams to stay connected and remain productive. Already, virtual happy hours are emerging as the new normal to build team morale. Partners are “pitching” remotely, recognizing that an in-face sales call is unlikely to transpire for weeks to come. Leaders have to do their best to transition each element of the operating model—from marketing, to sales, to service—to this new normal. New sources of innovation and even margin improvement will emerge out of our current discomfort.

How we can plan for the next and the beyond

We are in the acknowledge-and-adapt phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. But we also have to plan for life beyond the crisis. As we navigate what we know, marketing leaders must work externally to keep their brands and customer journeys as whole as possible, while working internally to do three things:

Understand the impact of business interruption and continue to triage the unexpected.
Lean into digital ways of working and connecting with customers, knowing that this will likely have lasting effects.
Mitigate risks to the customer experience by thinking realistically from the outside-in.

Unquestionably, there is a forced acceleration of the digital transformation agenda as we recognize how quickly customers and employees have embraced digitally enabled journeys and experiences.

Brands are all having to think, operate, and lead in new ways during these uncertain and unprecedented circumstances, and we will all have to learn together with both confidence and humility.

The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and don’t necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organization or its member firms.

Feature Image Credit: zakokor/Getty Images

By Janet Balis

Janet Balis is a principal with Ernst & Young LLP, where she serves as Global Advisory Leader for Media & Entertainment and Americas Marketing Consulting Leader. She has also served as a partner at Betaworks, publisher of The Huffington Post, and EVP Media Sales and Marketing at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Balis is on the global board of the Mobile Marketing Association and the International Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is also an advisor to the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. You can follow her on Twitter: @digitalstrategy.

Sourced from Harvard Business School

In News

Earth Day Marketing May Be More Important Than Ever

April 22, 2020 No Comments

By Kaley Roshitsh.

“I can’t think of a better time to have an answer to a very difficult question. Why is my brand essential? That’s the lens upon which all your communications should shine.”

Like two peas in a pod, disease outbreaks and natural disasters occur as a consequence of a changing climate. One could even say the upcoming 50th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22 against the backdrop of a pandemic is perfect illustrative timing.

Mother Nature is clashing her cymbals as a lot of commercial activity in the U.S. and Europe falls silent. Even Earth Day, the world’s largest environmental movement based in Washington, D.C., is being forced to go digital with its conference, called “24 Hours of Action.”

But the noise of green-washing, or the usual sustainable product launches, capsule collections and so on, won’t cease on Earth Day regardless of the pandemic.

But there is a change in tune.

“While these uncertain times have put some of our adventures on hold, our fans still count on us to inspire and uplift them,” Erika Gabrielli, senior director of marketing at Teva, told WWD.

Teva, which this spring converted all of its “iconic” webbings to recycled content, is leaning into custom content and a sustainability sweepstakes to re-educate consumers on how they can help to decrease their impact on the planet.

At the same time, it’s providing a reminder of why they matter to their customers, which for the brand is most palpable in the sales uptick in its sandals, hiking styles and — naturally — house slippers.

Ryan Jordan, executive creative director at marketing and communications firm Imre, who has worked on projects for brands such as Under Armour, L’Oréal and Target, among others, believes the messaging stakes are even higher this Earth Day.

“Listen harder and better than you ever have,” he said. “It’s actually the same advice I would have given to brands three months ago, but it’s now more important than ever.”

Listening right now may be as simple as a company showing its compassion, reminding customers that they stand by their employees and aim to help them weather the hardships of the crisis to the best of their abilities.

While he doesn’t believe brands should outright cancel initiatives, especially if they’re really an “awesome game-changer” (although every brand may be biased to think so), he still calls for a rethink.

“I challenge you to do this; ask your target audience what they think. Get them involved in the execution,” said Jordan, adding “actual proof of empathy is not only the right thing to do, it’s good business.”

For some companies, it may just be that marketing campaigns that focus on the upbeat, humorous and self-aware hit the bull’s-eye with younger generations, especially in matters of sustainability and environmentalism, as opposed to the opposite: doom and gloom.

“Find something that works for you and make sure to have fun with it,” said Topper Luciani, chief executive officer and founder of online thrift start-up Goodfair.

Although luxury consignment, rental and resale businesses are dealing with their own set of challenges amid the coronavirus pandemic, Goodfair is seeing booming sales among its predominantly Millennial and Gen Z audience.

The company pulled in $300,000 in sales on Easter Sunday, according to Luciani. What he attributes it to is not simply a shift in consumer behavior but speaking Internet.

What do you meme?

At least for his company, “meme culture is what wins,” said Luciani, who credits the steep sales day to a viral TikTok from the company’s account. “If a brand is not on TikTok, they’re sleeping,” he added. With more than 1 billion users, TikTok has already seen the entry of heritage brands like Ralph Lauren and the christening of Fenty Beauty’s TikTok creative house in March.

Bundles offered by Goodfair, with a largely Millennial and Gen Z customer base. Courtesy

Start-ups like Goodfair may be more willing to front the risk and wrestle with the Internet. It offers various thrift bundles on its web site like the “cure corona bundle” retailing for $48 or the “tree hugger bundle” for $65 compiled of entire outfits including sweatpants and Henley shirts in the former and flannels in the case of the latter.

“But it can’t feel forced,” Luciani reiterated.

Speaking of forced, will sustainable capsule collections — often just a piecemeal sustainability effort and exercise in marketing — continue to pass by consumers’ eyes without them evaluating into the respective supply chains?

It depends, but they’re not always too good to be true in the case that brand values actually match up, according to Brendan Synnott, chief executive officer of organic essentials brand Pact.

Calling on a simple recipe of a few star ingredients, a successful capsule collection should mean: sharing the same long-term values and “working with partners that are 100 percent committed to sustainability in everything that they do. It can’t be just 5 percent of your product line,” Synnott said.

That also means shying away from greenwashing or “fakers,” as Synnott puts it.

Pact is pairing with Brooklyn-based label Zero Waste Daniel to release 100-percent organic Fair Trade-certified hoodies and sweat shorts for spring adorned with handmade, upcycled patches by designer Daniel Silverstein.

As with others, the company is broadening its approach, extending Earth Day festivities into a monthlong celebration and more importantly shifting the focus from product to engaging content — showcasing the brand alongside others in the sustainability space.

Doing so virtually is as simple as inviting like-minded sustainability thought-leaders to a joint Instagram Live broadcast, to the detriment of those with their notifications on. Virtual sustainability forums are another trending pursuit among brands small and large.

“As we are in a time of crisis, it’s important to show some of the more positive moments that we can all cling to for a smile,” reiterated Synnott.

Upbeat messaging is important in any case. U.S. unemployment benefits are sought by some 17 million workers who filed for it over the last few weeks, according to the Labor Department, and Coresight Research’s latest weekly U.S. consumer survey published last Wednesday showed a bleak outlook in discretionary shopping.

So this Earth Day, as they sit in lockdown wondering whether anything will ever be the same and spend time evaluating what is essential in their lives, will consumers be looking at the messaging around the 50th anniversary — or the core values of the brands themselves?

Jordan put it bluntly: “I can’t think of a better time to have an answer to a very difficult question. Why is my brand essential? That’s the lens upon which all your communications should shine.”

Feature Image Credit: Many wonder how Earth Day marketing messages will pivot during the pandemic. Courtesy

By Kaley Roshitsh

Sourced from WWD

In News

A new Google policy threatens to further squeeze the location-data ad market

April 21, 2020 No Comments

By Lara O’Reilly

Google plans to roll out a policy change later this year that will require developers to go through an approval process before their apps can collect user location data when the app isn’t visible to the user.

The idea, the company said in a blog post, is to clamp down on apps collecting such information unnecessarily and to protect user privacy. It should further squeeze an already rattled location-based ad market, which has been forced — through consumer awareness, regulation and the actions of operating systems — to reduce its reliance on GPS signals to target consumers.

From Aug. 3, all new apps in the Google Play store will need to pass a review process before collecting location data in the background, Google said last week in a blog post. The policy will expand to existing apps by Nov. 3. Google is asking developers to consider factors such as whether users would have an expectation that the app would be collecting their data while it wasn’t open and in use, and whether the app can deliver the same experience without such data. The precise dates could change, Google said.

Location-data vendors tend to work by paying developers to embed their software development kits into their apps. For some apps, location-sharing makes sense to the user — a running tracker or a weather app, for example. But it’s less logical to give over such permission when the app in question is a flashlight or a calculator. Location-data vendors say that they seek consent before collecting location information, but that doesn’t always mean users are fully aware about the types of companies that are consuming their data and what they are doing with it.

New versions of the Android mobile operating system (from Android 10 and beyond) now include a prompt whenever an app is collecting a user’s location information. The user is then given the option to only grant the app permission to access their location when they are using the app. “Over half” of Android 10 users have selected the “while app is in use,” option Google said in the blog post. Android 11 gives users more controls over how their location data is shared.

The changes bring Google more in line with Apple’s stance on location data. Apple has included similar prompts and controls since its iOS 13 update last September. Location Sciences, a location verification company, said it has seen a 68% drop in background location data being shared since the iOS 13 update, according to CEO Mark Slade. The forthcoming Play Store policy change will likely stifle available GPS data signals further.

“There wasn’t so many checks and balances in the Google Play Store, so you could get away with more if you were an app developer than you would on iOS,” Slade said. The data stifling “will probably apply to the longtail of apps, which contribute a lot of the amount of GPS signals.”

Still, Slade added, despite the reduction in GPS data supply, owing to the recent Android and iOS changes, prices for location data haven’t budged over the last six months. “The market is not behaving like a free market,” he said.

While some media buyers find value in serving ads to people when they are in the vicinity of a physical store, “there’s always been a skepticism about location data and the scale” of it, said Doug Chisholm, CEO of data firm Rippll. “I think some [location] ad networks figured out clever ways of explaining they can get reach and hyper-targeting — which is an oxymoron — but they figured out how to sell that story.”

Ultimately, many advertisers don’t verify the accuracy of the location data they get back from their vendors, said Shailin Dhar, CEO of marketing analytics business Method Media Intelligence. For example, already when there is no ad ID present, some attribution and targeting providers look to other signals such as IP addresses (which often include multiple users and devices,) or the type of device or browser being used to pad out their datasets.

“Location data isn’t like some magic pill for making your campaign effective,” said Dhar. Yet, marketers aren’t always incentivized to check the data they’re being offered their location-data vendors, not least as it comes with an added cost. “Nobody feels a financial pinch by not verifying — there’s no penalty,” at least not one that is immediately clear, Dhar added.

From a targeting perspective, city-level data is usually sufficient for most campaigns, according to Raman Sidhu, vp of business development at analytics company Beemray, who added that location data tends to be more useful for insights versus targeting.

Coupled with the recent Apple and Google changes, new global privacy regulations have already put some location-data vendors in a tight spot. In 2018, some location-based ad companies, such as GroundTruth and Verve, closed their European operations, citing concerns related to the General Data Protection Regulation. (Verve was sold last month to German investment group MGI, after significantly reducing its overall headcount.)

Also in 2018, French data protection authority CNIL issued warnings to location ad tech vendors Fidzup, Teemo and Vectaury. The CNIL has now closed those investigations, and the companies avoided fines.

“The supply of [location] data in the market was already diminished, was already to some degree questionable in its authenticity, now [advertisers] will be looking elsewhere,” said Beemray’s Sidhu.

By Lara O’Reilly

Sourced from DIGIDAY

In News

Actioning Individual Customer Context With Artificial Intelligence

April 21, 2020 No Comments

By Pradeep Aradhya

Today’s customers interact with products or brands at various stages, from brand awareness to comparison to purchase to product support and loyalty. Most marketers are focused on awareness and maybe a little on experience during comparison and loyalty. They rarely get deeper, either because they do not have access to the full customer experience cycle, because there has not been a way to handle all of it, or because they are not incentivized to do so,

In recent years, marketing has started to delve into customer support to standardize customer experience. However, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) have started to provide tools that can offer much deeper insight and actions. So, what are the true and far-reaching opportunities for marketers with AI?

Imagine being able to serve every customer or potential customer at any touch point in the cycle as if there were a live salesperson there who instantly knew that person’s history with the brand — the summary of clickstream, purchase history, loyalty, support encounters and sentiment. Imagine that salesperson’s efficiency if they could instantly have at their disposal a best offer or reward, or information to nudge the customer to engage or repeat engage with the brand.

So far, we have seen data analytics and maybe some ML used to analyze clickstreams and some digital visitor behaviour to make recommendations for cross-selling and up-selling. Much more recently, we have seen chatbots used to scale customer support, as well as do voice-based sentiment analysis with tools based in some form of ML, AI, natural language processing and speech recognition. While these have been steps in the right direction, they are very narrow. They are point solutions based on isolated data pools. They take no steps toward either determining broader context or finding the best opportunities for marketers and sales folks to increase acquisition and retention. Catering to customer segment is old-fashioned. With AI, we can cater to individuals based on extended or immediate history with the brand.

The current capabilities of ML and AI allow not only the complete context of the customer to be gathered instantly, but also to serve the experience most likely to drive customers further down the funnel. The following key elements are required to exploit this phenomenal opportunity that is now available to marketing and sales.

To enable capture of complete customer context: Data from the following different pools needs to be joined and integrated into a single customer 360 view or hub: store and online purchase data, website and mobile clickstream, social behavior, support encounters, sentiment analysis, demographics and loyalty data. Joining data across anonymous and authenticated customer sessions is still not easy, but there are workarounds. Data so integrated provides a complete immediate and extended history of any customer.
To create the right experience for each context: Whether created manually or generated via automated methods, content and experiences that cater to customer intent and context at various points in the customer life cycle have to be developed. Everything from appropriately keyworded variations of product or service descriptions and videos to granular reward schemes for loyalty or for support scenarios to different purchase experiences that surprise and delight must be generated and kept at the ready.
To serve the best experience each time: Previously, data analysis and even ML was used to determine hidden customer segmentation and to predict product or service demand. Marketing and sales then manually arranged experiences to be served, after some A/B and even multivariate testing. Now AI can be used to run acquisition and retention maximization models. AI can run multivariate testing using the data and the experiences developed in the previous steps. Based on training gained from such testing (at scale or in smaller focus areas), AI can instantly determine the most likely experience that would cause new customer acquisition or repeat sale and retention.

All of the above should only be done in stages. Companies have spent years attempting to pull together customer 360 databases. Start by integrating online clickstreams with demographics and purchase and support data. Bring in-store purchase, sentiment analysis and social data at a later stage. With the same objective of leveraging online first, create content and experiences in digital formats before taking on in-store experiences or field sales agent empowerment. Retention models to achieve or increase customer lifetime value are much more lucrative and less infested with stakeholders. Honing and running retention models before new customer acquisition models is a great way to prove out AI capabilities with the fewest unnecessary concerns and the least amount of interference.

Relinquishing manual or even rules-based recommendation is not an easy cultural shift, but already, results with ML and AI outperform anything marketing and sales have otherwise done.

Best Western used AI-based tips and tricks for various destinations to help travelers plan and realized a 48% increase in traffic to Best Western Locations.
The Humane Society used ML messaging and realized an 86% lift in shelter pet adoption by reaching friends and cohabitants in the relationship graphs of those who had been identified visiting a shelter and showing any intentions to adopt.

Marketers reacting in retrospect to segmentation analysis is old-school and far too late. The new tech-savvy marketer wants to wield individual customer context and experiences nimbly, in real time, to catch the most new customers and achieve the greatest customer lifetime value. The race is on. Brands that win this race will set themselves so far ahead of the rest that they will not be caught for years.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Pradeep Aradhya

CEO of Novus Laurus. Business and transformation strategist. Digital technology, film, and food investor. Read Pradeep Aradhya’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

4 Ways HR Analytics Help Small Businesses Make Data-Driven Decisions

April 21, 2020 No Comments

By Rhiân Davies

HR Analytics help businesses generate insights and make data-driven decisions. The Blueprint explains the benefits of using HR Analytics, and the different ways small businesses can use them.

Data has changed the HR department as we knew it.

Far from being known as the ‘personnel’ department, with its physical folders and paper employee records, technology has turned the modern HR department into one of the most data-reliant departments in the modern workplace. Data analytics, however, has taken longer to catch on.

HR analytics is often perceived as too advanced or complex for small businesses, while the assumed cost of HR analytics has also been a barrier in uptake.

Yet, HR analytics has become an integral part of successful human resource planning, by helping businesses gain a better understanding of their workforce and helping them make more impactful strategic decisions.

If you’re struggling to understand HR analytics, stick with us as we go through four ways it could make an impact on your small business and its strategic business objectives.

Overview: What is HR analytics?

Businesses use human resources analytics (HR analytics) to interpret and analyze HR data to aid decision-making, drive business value, and inform human resource management strategies.

While HR metrics track activity, such as employee turnover and time to hire, metrics alone don’t analyze this data to make meaningful deductions and identify any causal relationships.

For example, your average time to hire may be 45 days, but this figure alone doesn’t tell you how this length of time to hire is impacting the business.

HR analytics uses the results of HR metrics to determine what impact they are making on the business, and what’s causing them. So, when you consider your time to hire, instead of looking at the data in a silo, HR analytics looks at what’s causing the hiring process to take 45 days instead of 30.

Many HR software tools come packaged with HR analytics functionality, but the market has recently seen an increase in vendors offering dedicated and specialized analytics software.

Benefits of tracking your HR analytics

Tracking HR metrics is all but a worthless exercise if businesses don’t know what to do with the data. Every business should be tracking their key HR metrics, but HR analytics takes that data and transforms it into actionable, data-driven business insights.

Let’s take a look at a few of the ways that HR data analytics benefits businesses and decision-makers.

1. Optimization of people costs

Labor is by far your biggest cost, and HR analytics give you the ability to break your workforce costs down into granular detail so that you can better understand how your expenses can be optimized.

For example, HR analytics can help you ascertain if certain employee training activities are providing ROI or how overtime is affecting profit margins.

2. Provides a basis for business agility

A business’s success depends on its ability to adapt its people and processes during periods of uncertainty or change. Many HR software vendors offer predictive HR analytics tools, which allows decision-makers to access real-time data and insights.

Rather than trawling through historical records and data in order to make quick judgments and decisions, HR analytics can provide insight into “what if” scenarios, ensuring that businesses can deftly realign resources when necessary.

3. Future proofs the business

Wouldn’t it be great if you could forecast your staffing needs and budgets while protecting your business’s future? Many HR analytics tools can help you predict trends such as employee attrition, while others can predict what skills you’ll need based on trends and growth.

Using HR analytics means less guesswork, fewer surprises, and more forward planning.

How can HR Analytics help your small business?

These days, HR departments have more access to data than ever before, but many are still challenged by where to start or how to draw meaningful conclusions from it.

Let’s take a look at some of the areas where HR analytics can make a difference to your strategic business objectives.

1. Talent acquisition

Hiring and recruiting is a costly business: one bad hire could set you back $240,000 in expenses. Employee retention is also a challenge for businesses during periods of almost full employment.

Your business needs an informed talent acquisition and recruitment strategy in order to avoid bad hires and to save your business time and money.

During the recruitment and hiring process, several software systems are typically used, all of which gather candidate and eventual employee data. However, when it comes to using all of that data, many businesses struggle with how to link it all together.

HR and talent analytics help you get to the heart of how all of this data can help you strategize when it comes to hiring, recruiting, and retaining top talent.

How to use HR analytics to improve talent acquisition:

Before you get started, you’ll need to know what data you have and what kind of insights you want to glean from it.

Know what questions you want answered: When you’re just getting started with HR analytics, knowing where you want to begin is crucial. Whether you’re looking to find out what’s causing a high turnover rate, or find out what’s causing long hiring times, make sure you’re not overwhelming yourself with answers you don’t need.
Review your sources of data: Along with your Applicant Tracking System and information from employee satisfaction surveys, where else are you drawing essential people data from? Knowing this beforehand will help you select the right HR analytics solution for your business.

2. Performance management

Annual performance management reviews don’t reveal the whole picture about an employee’s overall performance. Often there are performance peaks and troughs, and almost always a reason behind them.

Traditional performance measures and performance improvement plans have been based on these annual reviews, without much extra context surrounding them.

HR analytics can help align the results of performance metrics with other patterns that might not be glaringly obvious. For example, a decline in a usually high-performing department may be due to the effects of a particular member of staff leaving the organization.

HR analytics can also show where there are dips in productivity over certain periods of the employee life cycle, which can help to surface inadequacies in training or development programs, and issues within employee management processes.

How to use HR analytics to improve performance management:

Performance management processes play a key role in ensuring that employees are producing quality work that helps to achieve business goals. Using the following tips, businesses can use HR analytics to help them improve their performance management processes.

Review your existing sources of employees: Check what data you have on your employees, and what systems you’re storing it in. This will range from performance data such as reviews, to absence records, and feedback records.
Always double check your data against your own knowledge: HR analytics can provide “red-flag warnings” on certain low-performance indicators like absence rates and lateness, but make sure this adds up with what you know about your employees as individuals. For example, an employee who has recently been sick might have a high absence rate, but you know their performance is in check.

3. Workforce planning

Many studies have shown that inadequate workforce planning leads to unmet business goals.

Using HR analytics in workforce planning, organizations can calculate how many employees will retire in one year, what kind of candidates would be needed to replace them, or whether at-will employment contracts are impacting turnover.

HR workforce analytics can help businesses analyze talent and skills gaps, solve persistent workforce planning issues, and uncover trends. It can also take into account potential future scenarios to deliver multiple potential planning solutions.

How to use HR analytics to improve workforce planning:

HR analytics can help organizations to address challenges or opportunities in workforce planning. Here are a few points to consider before you get started.

Decide on a time frame: How far back do you want to analyze your workforce data, and how far do you want to plan ahead? Consider any events that occurred that could skew the analysis.
Map your current workforce formation: This includes taking a good look at your current high performing employees and those with potential to be high performers to see how current individuals could be matched to future needs.

4. Employee engagement

Collecting employee engagement data is just as important as collecting customer data. Without it, you’re unable to use HR analytics to make links between engagement, productivity, wellbeing, and importantly, employee retention.

HR analytics combines people data with employee feedback and helps to determine how, what, and why people are doing what they do and how it’s affecting their performance and engagement.

How to use HR analytics to improve employee engagement:

Employee engagement data has a huge impact on being able to attain strategic business objectives. Here’s how to get started with employee engagement and HR analytics.

Start collecting information from employee pulse surveys: Pulse surveys are a great way of collecting real-time, actionable data that can really have an impact on business decisions. The results can also help decision-makers in helping to develop employee engagement techniques to boost and sustain morale.
Determine your key engagement KPIs: What KPIs are most important to measure and help you achieve your business goals? These could range from tenure, retention rates, to sickness rates.

HR analytics drive better business results

Many HR software tools have built in HR analytics functionality, so it’s time for businesses to get familiar with them. Leaders need to encourage HR departments to be making the most of the reams of data they’re sitting on, and drive home the importance of human capital analytics in making strategic business decisions.

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By Rhiân Davies

Sourced from the blueprint