Do you think online referral campaigns have any role in digital brand marketing? Yes, Of Course. According to the marketers, referral campaigns serve high in enlarging number of buyers and various marketing strategies can also done digitally(through Online) in order to promote brand as well as product. Conducting Online campaign is not a difficult task, just click to Webmarketing123.com refer the guidelines to get a basic idea of how to do digital brand marketing for online campaign referrals. Online Campaigns are carried out to create a center of attention on viewers mind about the existence of products, its brand image, how it is digitally promoted etc. To achieve this, most of the marketer selects referral programs as an important tool. Why is it so?
Because they believe in Buyers words and they know the power of it. The Words/feedbacks from the new buyer/ loyal buyers play a vital role in expanding the business. Once, the customers get satisfied with the particular product then they will act as brand ambassador in selling the products to the others. They will share information related to prices, after sales services, online payments etc, to others and Convert them to first time user then to repeat buyer then to prospect and finally to loyal customers. Try hard to get Good WOM (Word of Mouth) feedbacks in Online.
Importance of Digital Brand Marketing
Digital Brand Marketing is the marketing strategy of searching, investigating, encouraging, advertising, selling, and distributing a company’s brand. It encloses set of creating responsiveness on the subject of the brand, advertising, exposure, endorsement, pricing. As far as now, the people and Internet, both are in each other’s pocket. So, it is not a difficult task to advertise everything. The populaces have a fondness of goods or messages which ought to be pleasing to eyes and mind.
Referral Campaigns
Referral Marketing is one of the best marketing strategies to promote the products and increases the level of purchase among the customers. Almost, every sale will result in profit making, because it is done with buyers word of mouth. Referral Marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies which help in saving time, cost, energy of the marketer. At present, online referrals and services are considered to be the most useful and effective marketing strategies where the new start ups as well as well established business people can make use of it.
Framework for Online campaign Referrals
Based on the ideas of https://www.webmarketing123.com, there are few frameworks for digital brand marketing to be carried out for online campaign referrals (Word of Mouth). The word of mouth is always requiring less investment of money. It is one of the low-cost methods to market your product and helps to bring large number of customers. It is done effectively through Online Referral programs, campaigns etc. The objectives for accomplishing the campaigns repeatedly develop the brand image and draw many buyers.
They are
Identify the target and try to aim on it with proper referral campaigns. Automatically helps in increasing sales, profit, goodwill
Use simple language to describe about your product and brand. It should be appealing and convenience to the buyers. Encourage the existence buyers to give positive word of mouth to the others. This will be done very easily by providing discounts, gift coupons, credit points, if they give referrals to others. Frame attractive SEOs where the customers get attracted towards it at the first look. Make use of Google Analytics to have track on success rate. Make the product available for full time in all social media. In everywhere the viewer has to see the product/brand details say in messages, blogs, email etc. Just have hope on Social Media. Make Staffs as lawyers for your brand. Instruct staff members to have a friendly communication with their known members about the brands.
Through Online referral campaigns, proficient web portals, the entrepreneurs can publicize their brands to the customers in an effective way. The Digital Brand Marketing is emerging at a higher level due to emergence of Internet. It applies so many electronic means and platforms to market a company’s business. Every folks use online for diverse reasons say for starting and promoting the business.
Analytics translators perform some of the most essential functions for integrating analytics capabilities in a company. They define business problems that analytics can help solve, guide technical teams in the creation of analytics-driven solutions to these problems, and embed solutions into business operations. It’s specialized work, calling for strong business acumen, some technical knowledge, and project management and delivery chops.
Deploying translators is especially important during a company’s early efforts to use analytics, when much of its analytics know-how resides in a small cohort of data leaders and practitioners. We’ve seen companies hatch ambitious plans to apply analytics in dozens of situations—only to pull back because they employ too few people who can deliver solutions. That gap should shrink in the long term, as analytics pervades business and analytics training becomes a standard part of employee development. But in the face of competitive pressure, companies cannot wait to work with analytics on a large scale. Translators can help businesses climb the analytics learning curve quickly and roll out more use cases than they might otherwise.
While translators can acquire some of the requisite knowledge for the job through coursework, they make the most impact once they have developed practical skills through on-the-job experience. Yet it is all too common for executives to assume that employees can act as effective translators, capable of delivering analytics solutions, once they complete a class on the rudiments of modelling. In fact, employees who only receive classroom training are more like teenagers who sit through a driver’s-education course, then walk outside and try to drive away—with no behind-the-wheel training, supervised practice, or road sense.
Translators can only master their trade by observing seasoned colleagues at work and then working on actual problems with expert guidance. This progressive, real-world learning approach prepares translators to manage diverse teams of specialists, create replicable workflows, and apply business judgment while assessing trade-offs. None of these steps can be skipped if a company hopes to apply analytics widely and generate significant value.
Recruiting translators and positioning them for impact
Before launching a translator-training effort, executives should map out a company’s analytics strategy and priorities. Then they can determine how many translators are needed in each part of the business—and target recruiting and training programs accordingly.
Translators typically sit within business units, in proximity to day-to-day operations in stores, plants, mines, call centres, and other sites where employees make products or deal with customers. These vantage points let them spot uses for analytics and ensure that analytics solutions are embedded into the business for impact.
Ideally, translators will have spent time working in business operations before starting translator training. Existing business staff often make better translators than new hires because they have an important quality that is hard to teach: knowledge of a business domain where analytics will be applied. To put this another way, business operations are the typical translator’s “mother tongue.”
In addition to business acumen, other qualities companies should look for in internal translator candidates include comfort working with numbers, project management skill, and entrepreneurial spirit. Training curricula can then concentrate on the technical knowledge and practical methods that translators need.
This level of knowledge is readily attained from a week or so of classroom training covering:
The potential to use analytics broadly within their industry and, more specifically, across the business’s value chain.
General techniques for prioritizing analytics use cases and defining their scope.
An overview, and ideally a simulation, of the lifecycle of an analytics use case: defining a business problem, selecting target variables, brainstorming features of a potential solution, and interpreting results.
The roles that translators and other specialists (such as data scientists, data engineers, technical architects, and user-experience designers) play at each stage of an analytics use case.
The major types of analytical approaches (descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive), with deep dives into a few common algorithms (such as decision trees, neural nets, and random forests) and how they apply to business problems.
Methods for evaluating the performance of analytics models and understanding the trade-offs associated with particular models.
Agile ways of working—testing and learning from short development cycles, or “sprints”—that help multi-functional teams to deliver effective solutions swiftly.
Practices for embedding analytics solutions in the business and overcoming implementation difficulties, such as cultural barriers.
Translators also need the technical depth to hold their own when discussing problem-solving approaches with data scientists. Many take online tutorials to learn common programming languages, such as R or Python, and learn more complex algorithms. To lead delivery of use cases, though, translators must hone their skills through hands-on practice—much as language students reinforce their classroom learning when they are immersed among native speakers.
Developing the ability to deliver analytics use cases
An analytics use case follows an end-to-end process that is applicable to a wide range of business problems. The translator first helps define a business problem and “translates” it to data scientists in technical terms. She then confirms that the selected analytical technique solves the problem cleanly and efficiently, and she might collaborate with designers if the use case calls for a tool for front-line colleagues.
The process concludes with implementation of the analytics solution, which the translator facilitates by helping users incorporate it into their routines. This often includes explaining to end users what takes place inside the “black box” of a model, so they can be comfortable leveraging the insights it delivers.
Most translators learn the delivery process through classroom or online study and then master them during apprenticeships. They start by observing expert translators on the job and gradually assume more responsibility, culminating with responsibility for teaching others. The typical progression consists of the following stages:
Shadowing an experienced translator on one or more use cases.
Leading use cases under the supervision of an experienced translator.
Leading use cases independently, turning to experienced translators for help with specific difficulties.
Coaching apprentice translators on the pathway described above.
There’s no fixed number of use cases that translators must complete at each stage to progress their abilities. The right number is the number that prepares translators to advance to the next stage, and it can vary with the range and sophistication of the analytical techniques and business problems that a translator deals with, among other factors.
Our experience suggests that translators spend six to twelve months in training. Others may be ready sooner. One translator at McKinsey started training with a degree in engineering and several years of consulting experience, which had taught him to structure and solve business problems. After studying data science in a week-long executive-education course, he worked alongside an experienced translator and then began leading use cases. Now he’s not only a productive translator, but he also serves as a teaching assistant in analytics classes.
Since companies that are just beginning to implement use cases usually don’t have experienced translators, some rely on external translators to deliver their first wave of use cases and oversee their initial apprentices. Once three or four employees have learned to deliver use cases, they can train new apprentices.
Translator training is one of the most important analytics investments a company can make, because companies seldom capture the full value of analytics without capable translators. The key to training a translation workforce is a multi-tiered progression, in which employees study concepts in a classroom before mastering new skills through apprenticeships. Translators connect the theory and the practice of analytics; their training courses must do the same.
Feature Image Credit: Jonathan Knowles/Getty Images
Ninety-Eight Percent of Global Mobile Marketers Have Increased Their Focus and Investment on Data in the Last Five Years, with 97 Percent Citing Improvements as a Result
Industry analysts and market experts alike have predicted data would play a central role in mobile marketing during 2019. In an effort to better understand its impact, YouAppi, a leading growth marketing platform for premium mobile brands, reached out to more than 540 of the world’s top in-house and agency marketers to find out how critical data has become for the brands they represent. A full 98 percent of respondents said they have increased their organizational investment in data, spending that has been substantial from both brand and performance marketers alike. These investments are proving worthwhile, as 97 percent of all marketers have seen improvement, more than half of those calling improvements ‘significant.’
Areas of investment include reporting and dashboard technology (81 percent), in-house data analytics teams (64 percent), purchasing 3rd party performance data (47 percent), adding more data-centric roles on internal teams (46 percent) and hiring outside agencies for data analysis (24 percent).
The Impact of Data on Marketing Duties
In addition to increased spending, 96 percent of marketers say their job duties have also required a larger focus on data, with 57 percent categorizing that increase as significant. Though every level of the marketing team has been impacted by the role of data, executives have seen the largest change, with 62 percent citing a dramatic increase in their focus on data and metrics.
This increased reliance on data is also creating the need to develop new skills. Ninety-six percent of all respondents agreed that brand marketers would benefit from adopting the data expertise of performance marketers, and 91 percent said performance marketers need to adopt the positioning and creative expertise of brand marketers.
“It’s fantastic to see more organizations take advantage of the skills and expertise that performance and brand marketers bring to the table, and create an environment where these two disciplines can better complement one another” said Moshe Vaknin, founder and CEO of YouAppi. “As marketers continue to invest in more sophisticated data analytics, and find creative ways to make that data actionable, they will see measurable results that connect them in powerful ways to their end customers.”
A Rosy Outlook
The majority of marketers feel confident in their own job security, with 64 percent citing zero concerns about impact to their employment. Over the last two years, the bulk of hiring has happened at the performance marketer level (46 percent), while an additional 32 percent of respondents say their companies are hiring both brand and performance marketers at equal rates.
What’s more, marketers anticipate ongoing investment in marketing efforts throughout 2019, with 91 percent of performance marketing teams and 54 percent of brand marketing teams anticipating additional budgets and expenditures in their departments.
The survey included 543 mobile marketers from around the globe, all of whom had responsibility for brand and/or performance marketing either in-house, with an agency or at a marketing technology provider. For the purposes of the survey performance marketing was defined as marketing with clearly measurable goals or actions such as driving clicks, installs, or post-install events; brand marketing was defined as marketing focused on reaching audiences through relationship building, storytelling, and creative with actions that are less precise to measure.
How do you feel when you read a Disneyland social media post? Or an ad for the latest Apple product? Does a message from BMW or Audi evoke a particular response from you? These brands all excel at making emotional connections with their consumers that are designed to build ongoing relationships and trigger a purchase.
Think about what makes you choose one brand over the other. More often than not, it’s emotion. Through emotional branding, brands appeal directly to consumers’ needs, creating a connection that often results in long-term brand loyalty.
Understanding Which Emotions Drive Your Consumers
The products or services you sell can pique your buyers’ emotions, which is why many consumers often prefer brand name products to generic ones. You can capitalize and build on these emotions with a deeper understanding of why your customers do what they do.
For example, Disneyland taps into the following buyer emotions:
Excitement for new things
Fun
Family values
Disney’s television commercials, social media posts, articles, and other content center on these three emotions. The excitement of new rides, the discovery of a new park, and the pure joy that a Disney family vacation can offer.
What about Apple? With so many options for consumer electronics—phones, streaming services, tablets, computers—what makes buyers choose to spend more money on Apple products? Typically, it’s the desire for the best, and the desire to belong.
Apple has long focused on the emotions of those who want to own the latest and greatest technology. Those who own Apple products feel a part of a select group. Apple intensifies these feelings of belonging through marketing materials that focus on superior technology, and through the services they provide.
The ability to own a luxury car has long been a symbol of status. Car brands understand this and create imagery and content to cement and increase the feelings of self-achievement, the sense of power, and the desire to own the best.
What emotions do your products evoke in others? How can you sharpen and solidify those emotions into buyer loyalty? And do those emotions align with your brand mission and values?
Aligning Your Brand with Buyer Emotions
A deep dive into your brand should include a comprehensive understanding of your customers, inside and out. You can do that by creating buyer personas for your brand. What drives your buyers? What are their hopes, dreams, and desires? What do they do for fun? How can your brand help them achieve those hopes and dreams?
The emotion you want consumers to feel must be present during all aspects of their interaction with your brand, from first encounter to their most recent purchase. That includes service before and after the sale, each and every time. To create real, lasting connections, check in with your buyers—ask them pointed, thoughtful questions about their experiences with your products, and give them a chance to make suggestions.
Embrace Change
In most cases, a buyer’s motivation for making their first purchase is not the same motivation for future purchases. A buyer may purchase their first BMW out of a sense of self-achievement. They’ve reached the point in their careers where they can afford one of the best vehicles on the road, and they’re proud of that accomplishment.
But what prompts their next purchase? They’ve already satisfied that need for self-achievement, so the next purchase will be based on another emotion – perhaps the desire for a safe driving experience, or their trust in the quality of workmanship.
Apple understands this, too. Buyers often want to have the best that’s available, and they want the excitement of discovering new products and features they haven’t experienced before. And then there’s Disney, which brings 48 million people back through its gates each year by creating new rides and experiences for their consumers to enjoy.
Your brand can’t rely on the initial purchase motivation to keep customers coming back. Whether in-house or working with your outside PR/marketing firm, you must continue to identify the experiences and emotional connections that are important to your consumers and provide them throughout your relationship with them.
Linda Landers is the founder and CEO of Girlpower Marketing, a boutique public relations and marketing firm specializing in consumer lifestyle brands, with a special expertise in marketing to women. She is a senior communications strategist with proven success developing integrated, award-winning marketing and brand building campaigns.
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Some of the UK’s largest traditional advertising spenders greatly tightened their belts in 2018, with overall spend slumping across cinema, outdoor, press, radio and TV.
According to research from Nielsen, top spender Procter & Gamble reduced its traditional ad spend from £196m to £186m in the UK last year. Sky’s expenditure, meanwhile, slumped to second with a 30% decline from £177m to £124m. Unilever fell out of the top three advertisers for the first time in the last five years, coming in at number seven and down 29.2% to £82.8m from £116m.
McDonald’s Restaurants took third place with a 28% increase to £122m, while BT clocked in as the fourth biggest spender.
Overall, traditional marketing spend from the brands profiled was down slightly from £8.7bn to £8.5bn. Amid an uncertain political and economic climate, just handful of brands increased their budgets.
Among those on the up was Amazon’s, which rose by 18% (£74m to £87.5m). Compare the Market saw budget growth of 30% to £62.2m and Camelot Lottery’s spend rose 40% to £53.3m.
Supermarkets, in particular, expressed caution. Sainsbury’s dropped out of the top 100, while Morrisons, Aldi and Lidl also reduced their spend in 2018.
Barney Farmer, UK commercial director at Nielsen, said: “With traditional advertising spend down 1.41% from 2017, our latest data highlights the changing advertising strategies from the biggest brands and retailers.
“However, it’s interesting that the rise and fall of advertising spend doesn’t seem to be consistent within sectors. While most supermarket retailers have opted to reduce spend, Asda and Tesco increased their spend, and this is the same for finance, with HSBC and Natwest dropping spend but many others continuing to show increases in year-on-year spend.
“There are many factors influencing this, from hardening budgets due to Brexit, to competition within the sector. There are likely to be some interesting times ahead.”
The figures come amid ongoing indecision around the economic status of the UK as it prepares to leave the European Union. If a no-deal scenario is the outcome of Theresa May’s negotiations, Enders Analysis predicts there will be an adverse effect on brand budgets.
Jean-Christophe Coutures, chairman and chief executive at Chivas Brothers earlier this week said that while no-deal Brexit strategy would be “a short-term nightmare” for businesses that it would not have any long-term impact on marketing plans.
Check out the top ten UK ad spenders below. Digital ad spend wasn’t taken into account by Nielsen.
Moments now matter more than place or channel for brands trying to connect with consumers. To deliver the most engaging experience in the moments that matter, CMOs need the right strategy, technology, organizational structures, and metrics.
Today’s connected consumers expect instant information and experiences that “wow” them. If they have a question, they want to do a quick search on their phones and get an immediate answer. If they’re buying concert tickets, they want to see seating options, the view from their selected seats, and the best place to park—all before hitting the buy button. If they’re B2B customers, they want seamless contracting, procurement, and supply chain processes. In this instant-access economy, brands are challenged not only to deliver the right information over the appropriate channel but to give consumers relevant, personalized experiences in the make-or-break moments that matter.
Brands that can do this effectively have an opportunity to improve customer relationships, differentiate themselves from the competition, and drive brand value. Consider a retailer that has a loyal, high-revenue-generating customer who gives a one-star rating to a piece of clothing sold on the brand’s web site. Beyond just aggregating this review with all the other reviews to determine whether to keep this product in the lineup, the brand can go a step further. It can acknowledge this person as a high-value customer and take a personalized action such as sending the customer a replacement free of charge or giving her a gift card.
Or consider a sports venue that wants to create a more personalized fan experience to drive people off their couches and into the stadium. The venue could use a one-stop app for everything: If a customer shows a preference for a premium beverage, the app could trigger a notification asking whether he wants it delivered to his seat and, later, as the game comes to an end, give him access to nearby restaurant reservations reflecting his preferred cuisine. Throughout his visit to the stadium, the customer could be given personalized photos, the opportunity to engage in interactive gaming through augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR), and tips on the most efficient navigation for his journey home.
Delivering this type of one-to-one interaction and exceptional customer service in crucial moments can result in improved customer satisfaction, repeat business, and positive social media promotion, all of which lead to increased experience value for the customer and increased business value for the brand.
But how can brand leaders maximize business value without underinvesting or overinvesting in these experiences? As CMOs are increasingly charged with driving revenue and growth for their companies, they can rethink technologies, organizational structures, and metrics to help them find the perfect balance.
The “Three Ds”—Data, Decisioning, and Delivery
CMOs can consider the three Ds when designing and implementing technology platforms to support the offering of relevant, personalized content to consumers in the moments that matter:
Data. A customer data platform that contains relevant information about customers—who they are, how they have interacted with the brand before, where they browse, how they respond—is foundational to enabling this type of personalized engagement. It is also important for CMOs to make sure their companies are in compliance with applicable data privacy laws and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation and the California Consumer Privacy Act.
Decisioning. Once companies have compiled customer data, they can use software and analytics programs to make decisions about how to deliver the right content to customers in relevant moments and how to maximize value. It’s no longer a matter of creating awareness at the top of the funnel or driving purchase at the bottom of the funnel. With advanced analytics and decisioning software, brands can interact with consumers at precise moments throughout their journeys to create that wow factor and differentiate their brands.
Delivery. Finally, brands can orchestrate their responses and other interactions with consumers based on data and insights from analytics programs, whether that means sending a personalized email offer at just the right time or advising a support agent what to say when a particular customer phones the call center. Customer engagement orchestration software can help enable the automated, contextual delivery of one-to-one communications with customers. Emerging technologies such as AI, AR, VR, and connected devices give marketers more ways than ever to provide contextually relevant, immersive experiences to customers.
Organization and Talent
As they look at deploying new technologies to deliver relevant content and experiences to consumers, it’s important for companies to start with a well-thought-out strategy that’s supported by senior leaders.
It’s also essential for ownership of CX to be clear and consistent across the enterprise. At more than half of large organizations, the role of CMO has been expanded to include end-to-end CX. (Alternatively, CX may be elevated to a distinct function, led by a chief experience officer, complete with a dedicated budget, staffing, and governance of all CX capabilities enterprisewide.)
To support the technical enablement of CX, CMOs are partnering closely with their chief information officers, often bringing critical CX processes and skills back in-house and using cloud-based solutions, plus adding more tech-savvy professionals—data engineers, data scientists, business intelligence specialists, and the like—to their teams.
Proving ROI on CX
As the CMO role becomes more influential in the C-suite, marketing leaders are under increasing pressure to demonstrate a return on their investments, particularly when it comes to the value of CX to the organization. CMOs can start with a few initiatives and track select KPIs that support the case for investing in end-to-end CX technologies and capabilities.
Some CX-value metrics include:
Net promoter score
Customer satisfaction score
Usability score
Average revenue per visit
Brand engagement frequency
Campaign ROI
Repeat visits
Social sentiment (e.g., shares, likes)
Referrals
Average customer tenure/loyalty.
Steps CMOs Can Take Now
To help their organizations deliver the most engaging content and experiences to consumers in the moments that matter, CMOs can take the following steps:
Create a new mindset. Providing contextually relevant content and experiences to reach consumers in the right moment is not just a project—it requires a shift in mindset. CMOs can lead this charge by becoming CX champions at their organizations and having a plan in place to show the tangible value of investing in CX.
Start small. Begin with a pilot project focused on a single engagement channel (e.g., email or mobile app engagement) or single outcome (e.g., increased enrollments, increased satisfaction score), show some quick wins, demonstrate value, then create a road map to scale across the organization.
Reorganize for CX. Determine the organizational structure needed to operationalize change, for instance by creating a CX leadership council with clear accountabilities made up of marketing, sales, service, and other functions that interact with the customer.
“The doctor can bury his mistakes. An architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.” — Frank Lloyd Wright
As digital design people, we like to think we’re all fancy. We’re much more advanced than print designers. Our work looks great on desktop and mobile. We wear scarves, un-ironically, indoors.
But it’s good to recall, scarves aside, that we’re the new kids on the design block. Architecture, for example, has been around for quite some time. I thought I wanted to be an architect when i grew up, and took some classes in school. Instead I became an information architect, which, as it turns out, sounds decidedly less impressive when introducing oneself. But where was I.
Because architects have been designing human-spatial interactions for like, ever, there are a number of helpful principles they take for granted that can be useful for UX (User Experience) people in those moments when you’re grasping for a design compass. Here are just a few from architect and author Matthew Frederick.
1. “The more specific a design idea is, the greater its appeal is likely to be.”
Users will gravitate to products with a clear design focus. Image Credit: Mathew Fredrick
This will immediately resonate with anyone who’s ever had a design direction watered down in the interest (however well-intended) of “making the product appeal to more users.” This is honestly one of the most difficult balances to achieve in client work: wanting to be receptive to input, but also making sure the work accomplishes what it’s supposed to do in the first place. Matthew Frederick, AIA:
“Being nonspecific in an effort to appeal to everyone usually results in reaching no one. But drawing upon a specific observation, poignant statement, ironic point, witty reflection, intellectual connection, political argument, or idiosyncratic belief in a creative work can help you create environments others will identify with in their own way.”
It’s an interesting concept because it’s counter-intuitive. Why not add a specific link for all of our audiences? Why not include all of our business units on the homepage — won’t they feel left out? Well, you may be doing more harm than good. I really like the concept of design inviting the user to interact in his or her own way. It gets at the heart of what UX is about: not creating experiences per se, but creating an environment for experiences to take place. The user will always meet your work on his or her own terms.
2. “Any design decision should be justified in at least two ways.”
Entry way serving as congregation space. Image Credit: Matthew Frederick
I love this because it discourages lazy design thinking. Not to burst anyone’s bubble, but it’s not all that hard to build a website these days. Anyone with a bottle of wine and a Wix account can do it. But UX people make their money in taking highly complex information and making it appear dead-simple. That means you really have to get the most out of every design element. In architecture terms, this means thinking about both the form and the function of space:
“A stair’s primary purpose is to permit passage from floor to floor, but if well designed it can also serve as a congregation space, a sculptural element, and an orienting device in the building interior. A window can frame a view, bathe a wall with light, orient a building user to the exterior landscape, express the thickness of the wall, describe the structural system of the building, and acknowledge an axial relationship with another architectural element.”
In digital terms, if you’re struggling with the layout of a particular page, you might consider how you want the user to feel in addition to what you’d like him or her to do. If you’re not using techniques like CSS Shapes yet, this can be a great way to get your content to work harder by putting in something other than boxes. CSS3 animation in general offers a huge range of possibilities to have page elements work double-time: check out the subtle movements on French creative site waaark, for example, or the appropriately-unsettling site for feminist communal living experiment one shared house, where eyes literally follow you around the room.
Likewise, you can use this rule to weed out the interactions that are purely self-serving. For example, what about that auto-advancing hero carousel to ensure all 26 of our business priorities are displayed on the homepage? Do we really need that? (Spoiler: No).
3. “A parti is the central idea or concept of a building.”
Various concepts that capturing the feeling of a design project. Image Credit: Matthew Frederic
“A parti [par-TEE] can be expressed several ways but is most often expressed by a diagram depicting the general floor plan organization of a building and, by implication, it’s experiential and aesthetic sensibility. A parti diagram can describe massing, entrance, spatial hierarchy, site relationship, core location, interior circulation, public/ private zoning, solidity/transparency, and many other concerns. The proportion of attention given to each factor varies from project to project.”
For UX people, the idea of a unifying design concept is nothing new. Those I’ve worked with know I’m a big fan of the diagramed core content strategy statement, for example. I don’t burn a ton of time on it, but it is a great way to get the team aligned on the brand mission. Likewise, we’ve been using a lot of UX mood boards lately, or even simpler approaches like the 4×4 Mini-Design Brief.
But a parti can help you hone in on your desired experience even more. Architect-cum-experience-designer Steven Hien sums it up well with this example in his excellent piece How to Use Architectural Parti in Digital Design:
Parti in Architecture: “Experience a building like a diamond.”
Parti in Digital Design: “Experience a website like the California coast.”
What does a “website like the California coast” feel like? What does it sound like, or smell like? Now that’s a design challenge!
Of course apps and websites, unlike buildings, change rapidly overtime. The parti can provide the uniting force behind those changes (until you decide to bulldoze the whole creaky thing and start over, that is). Take Uber’s app redesign, for example, which evolved around the parti of “Where to?” leading to specific UI updates like re-working the product selection slider.
As a side note, we should point out that one shouldn’t take any of these concepts too far. I probably wouldn’t go up to my developer, for example, and complain that the latest code release “doesn’t align to the design parti.” (Unless you want to get punched directly in your parti).
4. “Any aesthetic quality is usually enhanced by the presence of a counterpoint.”
Points and counterpoint. Image credit: Matthew Frederick
Building on the previous idea, just because you have a unifying concept does not mean all of your design elements need to be uniform. By contrast, adding a stylistic counterpoint to your design will emphasize, rather than detract from, the central idea.
“If you want a room to feel tall and bright, try designing an approach through a low, dark space. If you want an atrium to feel like a geometrically pure, highly organized center of a building, surround it with spaces that are more organically or randomly organized.”
In digital design, this can be something as simple as alternating light and dark layers as a user scrolls down a page, or something even more jarring like this example from Vanguard Prague. I’m not sure I love it personally, but the “static buzz” does create an interesting counterpoint to the otherwise minimalist design to emphasize the unconventional feeling of the living space.
What’s more, counterpoints in digital spaces needn’t be visual. With the advance of artificial intelligence (AI), interfaces like chat-bots can now respond to humans in real time, and are beginning to take on their own personalities. How might the inherently probing nature of a bot prove a useful counterpoint to the aesthetic quality of your site? It’s an interesting question, whether you’re creating AI to help with taxes, take out a new insurance policy, or simply text back your mum.
5. “A good building reveals different things about itself when viewed from different distances.”
Appreciating design from afar and up close. Image Credit: Matthew Frederic
Finally, this is a good one to recall in terms of designing for the first-time user as well as the returning user. In any new project, it’s easy to design with only new visitors in mind — where will they look first? Will they be overwhelmed with choices and flee? Will they hate us and trash us on Twitter? These are reasonable questions, but in reality, anyone can only be a new visitor once. Just as a well-designed building reveals new information to the inhabitant, your interface should provide sufficient detail and refinement to support the user who is up-close and personal, day after day. I’ve talked before about content density, longitudinal studies and other techniques for keeping this person in mind.
But this principle is also interesting in light of recent backlash against superficial, template-driven sites that skimp on actual content and value. UX designer Kate Meyer draws some clever architectural parallels in her article linking this backlash to recent trends toward brutalism and anti-design:
Brutalism intentionally attempts to look raw, haphazard, or unadorned. A reaction to cookie-cutter, pre-made template sites that dominate the web today.
Anti-design is brutalism without the rigor. Intentionally creating ugly, disorienting, or complex interfaces, often with a complete lack of visual hierarchy.
Of course, anti-design can get you noticed and talked about, but it makes longevity difficult to achieve. Clinging to an intentionally unintuitive interface, for example, is now blamed, among other factors, for where Snapchat went wrong.
It’s important to remember that the principles of these reactionary movements are founded in legitimate concerns about the sameness of today’s digital world. Reacting on that ground alone, however, can lead to a lot of equally terrible designs (and even some great counter-reactions like the site Brutalist UX Deliverables, which includes such awesome user stories like: “As a User I want to Visit the website so that I can See it.”) So it’s simply a question of how far you take it.
Or, to put it in terms of the age-old architectural question: Less is more? Or less is a bore?
Colin A. Eagan, M.S., is Principal for User Experience at ICF in Washington D.C., where he directs content strategy and information design projects for Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and government clients. He is a frequent contributor to UX conferences and publications, including Confab, Convey UX, IA Summit, and The UX Booth. He credits any career success thus far to not going to law school. You can follow him @colineags
If you’re a photographer, or someone who simply loves taking photographs you probably get a real thrill from taking photographs.
For those of us that take images, there’s real excitement from seeing stunning light and interesting people and places that we want to capture with our cameras. Making time to take photographs can be challenging in the busy, modern world. So how can we find ways to be more creative every day?
1. Don’t be afraid to daydream
This might seem like an odd thing to suggest, but multiple studies confirm that daydreaming and napping can actually help with the creative process. Giving yourself time to think up plans is such an important part of creativity, and allows the brain time to switch off and think about things that actually interest us. (And an afternoon nap isn’t the end of the world either if it helps you recharge your batteries!)
2. Think before you shoot
The trouble with digital photography is that it’s easy to just ‘snap’ away every five minutes. In some ways, this takes away from the magic of photography. Photographs can become meaningless when there’s less care and attention taken with what we’re actually choosing to photograph.
A great way to be more creative in your day-to-day life with your camera is to imagine that you’re shooting on film. Limit the number of exposures you shoot and you’ll start to pay more attention to what you’re shooting.
3. Switch off from technology
There’s so much digital noise in the world today. Email, the internet, social media – all these things take up our time and distract us from the world around us. We can often be so busy with the online world that we don’t leave space in our heads to appreciate the world around us.
And how can we be creative if we don’t ‘see’ the beauty in the every day? Take time to switch off from technology and you’ll allow yourself more headspace to be creative.
4. Don’t be too much of a perfectionist
Nothing stifles creativity more than the pursuit of being a perfectionist. Even the most experienced photographers can have a tendency to think their work isn’t good enough. We can think that we don’t have anything new or interesting to say with a photo, or that our shots would be far better if we had new gear.
But actually, focusing on negatives can stop us from being creative. Instead of putting obstacles in your way, just get out and start creating!
5. Embrace your natural rhythms
Another issue with creativity is that we can try and force ourselves to be creative at times when we’re naturally not. For example, I am not a morning person. I’m naturally at my most creative in the afternoon and evening. So it’s at those times that I will write articles or go out and take photographs.I’m naturally at my most creative in the afternoon and evening. So it’s at those times that I will write articles or go out and take photographs. If you stick to the times that work naturally for you, you’ll find it far easier to embrace creativity.
6. Seek outside inspiration
There’s a world of inspiration out there to help you spark your own creativity. Read up on other photographers, or explore the theory of photography. View photographs and think about what you like and don’t like. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from others and use it to fire up your own creativity.
In conclusion
These are just some ideas to help you start being more creative each day. Once you start applying them, you may well come up with more of your own! But the key thing is to find your inspiration and embrace creativity.
Jo Plumridge is a UK based photographer, writer and lecturer. She specializes in portrait, corporate and travel photography, and writes photography, travel and comedy pieces for magazines, websites and books. You can see some of her work at her website, follow her on Twitter or Google+.
With increasing coverage and interest in startups, fundraising and venture capital, many terms have become more ambiguous than ever. That can leave entrepreneurs pretty foggy on how they should really be approaching raising money.
So, who is funding what? Why does it matter so much if you are launching or trying to scale a venture?
Startup Fundraising
Whether you are still juggling a startup idea or already have data and revenues and are ready to scale, it’s vital to understand who the investors are that will take you to the next level, and what your following milestone or exit is likely to be.
Fundraising and navigating potential exits can be incredibly time consuming and stressful. It can be confusing. The lines have certainly blurred. Far more so in the last couple of years. Different capital sources are playing a larger role in the startup ecosystem. Various players are stretching how and at what stage they will participate.
So, what are the differences between VCs and PE firms? Who else is providing capital to this space? Who are the leaders that startup founders should be focusing on?
Private Equity
This space has become a little cloudier, with private equity firms diving into all types of new channels like single family rental homes and mortgage lending through conduits. Yet, in their most traditional forms, private equity firms are consider those who buy or get involve with more mature companies.
This means they are looking for established companies that already have established revenues. In some cases these are companies that may have even peaked and need new management to be optimized. Think classical music, farms and assembly lines in contrast with the typical jazz, disruption, or street art style of fast growth startups. They prefer predictability and lower risk. Even if that means lower returns.
This space is also differentiated by leveraged buyouts, in which PE firms utilize debt to complement their equity to acquire more corporate ‘real estate’. These firms are best known for taking majority stakes, if not full buyouts.
Private equity is more likely to be your end game, or at least a large part of your exit as a startup founder, rather than an early investor. Though these firms may flow down debt that can be used for some ventures.
Venture Capital Firms
In contrast, venture capital firms are equity investors at an earlier stage in the lifecycle of a startup. Just not as early as most think.
For the most part VCs are funding startups at their latest stages in their businesses. This is changing some. More are participating in earlier funding rounds as they gain experience and competition grows for returns and opportunities. You may find them involved at Series A through D fundraising rounds. Or perhaps even at the seed stage.
VC firms will typically take much smaller portions of companies than their private equity counterparts. They are still investing at a much riskier stage and mostly try to spread their bets as wide as possible.
This demonstrates more crossover between traditional private equity and the VC world. Though before you go waltzing into one of these firms in your pajamas, know that they still expect a good amount of solid data and due diligence to make a decision on. They aren’t going to be your first investors on day one.
VCs are also typically looking for a shorter term exit. They have deadlines on their funds, and need to get results quickly. They are often going to push you hard to deliver on their promises to their own investors.
PE is more about numbers while VCs are more about people. However, with both PE and VCs everything starts with a solid pitch deck where the story of the company is told in 15 to 20 slides. For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400 million (see it here).
Angel Investors
Angel investors are a much more likely funding partner for most startup founders. Angels are getting better funded, are grouping together, and are making more investments.
Angels are willing to participate in the earliest rounds of fundraising. They are typically basing their investment as you the entrepreneur and the idea, versus any data or profits. Expect to be raising from angels for a round or two before you even approach any VCs. PEs are probably four or five rounds of financing away at this point.
Notable angels include:
Mark Cuban
Richard Branson
Barbara Corcoran
Ron Conway
Fabrice Grinda
Ashton Kutcher
Michael Jordan
Will Herman
Typically the best angels are those that were entrepreneurs before and fortunate enough to have an exit. I have the pleasure of interviewing some of the most successful entrepreneurs on the DealMakers Podcast where they share some of the patterns they are looking for when investing in other entrepreneurs.
Other Startup Investors
Startup accelerators and incubators are another rising form of early funding. They may invest anywhere from $10,000 to over $100,000 and offer an array of intensive programs, resources and training opportunities. These include names like The Founder Institute, Angel Pad, Y Combinator and 500 Startups. They can get you going if it is a good fit and you can get in. Then help you show off your startup to other investors.
Family offices are increasingly investing in startups as well. They don’t want to miss out on the game that VCs and big private equity firms are enjoying. Though they often like the advantage of investing directly, rather than losing returns to middlemen.
Family offices can be quite different when it comes to what they want and their future expectations though. They may be more likely to offer patient capital or to seek cashflow than other types of investors.
Corporate investors are playing a bigger role in the startup ecosystem today too. They are setting up their own accelerators and are making more strategic investments in startups that can propel their growth and extend their reach.
Summary
Despite the confusion and ambiguity out there, there can be distinct differences between private equity and venture capital when it comes to raising money and exiting a startup. There are many more options for fundraising and exiting than there used to be too.
I am a serial entrepreneur and the author of the The Art of Startup Fundraising. With a foreword by ‘Shark Tank‘ star Barbara Corcoran, and published by John Wiley & Sons, the book was named one of the best books for entrepreneurs. The book offers a step-by-step guide to today‘s way of raising money for entrepreneurs. Most recently, I built and exited CoFoundersLab which is one of the largest communities of founders online. Prior to CoFoundersLab, I worked as a lawyer at King & Spalding where I was involved in one of the biggest investment arbitration cases in history ($113 billion at stake). I am an active speaker and have given guest lectures at the Wharton School of Business, Columbia Business School, and at NYU Stern School of Business. I have been involved with the JOBS Act since inception and was invited to the White House and the US House of Representatives to provide my stands on the new regulatory changes concerning fundraising online.
If you want move beyond just dreaming, you need this one thing (and no, it’s not money).
Maybe it’s opening a bakery, writing a book, selling crafts on Etsy, or building a billion dollar software startup. But whatever forms it takes, survey after survey (not to mention anecdotal evidence) suggests that a majority of us dream of becoming entrepreneurs.
So what sets those who actually take the plunge from those who only dream? What pushes a keen hobbyist or excellent amateur into actually becoming a business owner? A recent study of more than 400,000 people out of MIT came to decisive answer, and it’s not the one you’re probably expecting.
Finances? Personality? Nope, the secret is friends.
The study was born when MIT PhD candidate Hyejun Kim stumbled on an unexpected data source: Ravelry.com, a popular hobby site that bills itself as “Facebook for knitting.”
From the perspective of the knitters who use the site, Ravelry offers an opportunity to share patterns and advice with fellow enthusiasts. For Kim, it was a goldmine of data on the path people take from hobbyist to entrepreneur. By crunching through data on more than 400,000 knitters and reviewing 99 interviews with users, Kim aimed to find out why some remained weekend warriors while others went on to start knitting-related businesses.
You might think the most important factor might be personality, or perhaps finances were the big secret and either desperate straights or a cushioning bank balance helped people make the transition. Both hypotheses make sense, but both turned out to be wrong.
What was the biggest factor in who went from hobbyist to professional? In short, supportive friends. When asked what helped them make the leap in interviews, knitters most commonly mentioned having loved ones who supported and encouraged their entrepreneurial ambitions. The data confirmed these comments.
“Kim’s analysis of data on 403,168 individual knitters from 2007 to 2014 backs this up. People who joined a so-called ‘stitch n’ bitch’ group to craft socially were 25 percent more likely than otherwise identical knitters to take the plunge into entrepreneurship. This is true even when correcting for geography, experience, skill level and productivity,” reports the Washington Post.
Why were real world social connections so important? Further analysis showed that it wasn’t that they helped knitters build technical skills. Those who moved on to become entrepreneurs often had ninja-level skills to start with. Instead, these personal ties seem to provide a big confidence boost, which helps turn dreams into reality.
Your social network is your secret weapon.
Of course this study only looks at knitters, but as the WaPo article notes other experts in entrepreneurship are heaping praise on Kim’s work, suggesting it’s not just of interest to crafty types. In fact, other research in the field of network science shows that a large and supportive social network is one of the greatest predictors of career success of any kind.
For friends and family of those dreaming of starting a business, the message is clear: don’t underestimate your impact as chief cheerleader. You can make all the difference in whether the people you love pursue their big, scary dreams.
Meanwhile, those secretly longing to ditch their job in favor of setting up on their own, shouldn’t just worry about a solid business plan and bank balance. Practicalities matter, but social support is equally essential. Lifting yourself up into a new life will require the help of a lot of strong arms, Make sure you surround yourself with people willing to boost and support you.
