Successful martech leaders are data-driven technologists who embrace change-and-seek solutions that place the customer at the center of their business. They possess a clear go-to-market strategy and understand how new technologies support it. They can also successfully articulate their vision and facilitate end-user adoption.

After deciding on which technologies to adopt that will drive a marketing strategy, the next challenge for a martech leader is implementation. This requires internal process changes, which are often met with resistance and can result in painful experiences. If you’re charged with leading martech initiatives within your organization, you must understand how to overcome both obstacles.

Your implementation strategy should extend beyond the launch. How will it be introduced, so that people are motivated and supported after the initial launch or relaunch? The key is to serve as the human face of the system—someone who is accessible, rather than a cold systems administrator who does not understand how to drive end-user adoption.

CRM Rules

A solid CRM system sits at the center of the martech universe. It stores priceless prospect and customer data that delivers valuable customer insights, which is the lifeblood of all marketing activity. As a martech leader, it is your job to ensure your organization embraces this vital system where data is not only stored, but cleaned and updated on a regular basis. But take heed: Discussion about CRM often invokes a big yawn, or worse, resistance from end users, especially sales.

Often, the biggest hurdle to introducing a martech solution, such as CRM, is convincing sales, marketing and even customer support to use the technology. The ability to put yourself in their shoes is crucial. Understand their reluctance to change and explain how the technology will benefit them personally, in addition to the organization as a whole. You must be able to articulate the benefits, such as demand generation, prospect and customer insights, revenue generation and excellent service that creates happy, loyal customers.

Champion the Cause

As a martech leader, the onus is on you to demonstrate to the sales team how a particular software such as CRM will enable them to be more successful in meeting quotas. When introducing a new technology, find an internal champion who has influence in a group, someone who will go above and beyond to make sure the team has an open mind when incorporating the system into their routine. This “super user” needs to communicate the benefits of the CRM system in a clear, demonstrable manner so that others are involved, energized and motivated by their success.

Communication is key. Some of the most effective channels of communication may include email updates, lunch-and-learns and online discussion boards. Common challenges such as a lack of change management or executive leadership, insufficient data models and unclear strategies will result in inadequate user buy-in and rejection of your system. As a martech leader, you must be an ally and catalyst for overcoming these pitfalls.

A true martech leader goes the extra mile to be the key point of contact throughout the process, ensuring that each user is supported. This is essential to gaining maximum user buy-in. If a salesperson encounters any roadblocks when working their way around a new system, they will give up and go back to their old ways of conducting business. Interactive manuals and face-to-face “CRM clinics” are other vehicles to encourage adoption and reinforce training.

Integrate Martech and CRM

A lack of CRM integration with other marketing systems can be a death knell. This is where the martech leader can become a star. Ensure these three solutions are tightly integrated to maximize your tech investment:

• Marketing automation.
• Inside- and mobile-sales automation.
• Customer support and the call center.

Your goal is to weave these together so data is stored centrally as representing a single version of the customer. Once this mission is accomplished, you and your organization will have reached nirvana (from a customer insights perspective).

Be Compliant

Now that you’ve connected all systems, a final but critical success factor is providing 100% compliance and adhering to current privacy laws. Abiding by regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation makes it easy for your customers to opt in and establish a preference center that’s accessible via all channels. This enables the delivery of personalized information and services according to your customers’ unique preferences.

The ability to add a human touch when implementing new technologies is crucial to success. True martech leaders understand the impact these technologies will have on end users and help them manage the changes. Successful leaders embrace a big-picture perspective and enable their organizations to achieve a measurable return on their tech investments to maximize productivity and profits.

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A 1974 episode of “The Brady Bunch” offered what is collectively considered the golden piece of wisdom about public speaking. Mike Brady, concerned for his daughter Jan’s upcoming debate, suggests she . No one looks intimidating when they’re stripped to their skivvies, he says.

The tip has maybe worked for some, but Mike Brady’s advice hasn’t aged with the modern workplace. Many conferences and presentations happen digitally nowadays, so it’s impossible to catch a glimpse of any participant, let alone the collective audience.

Regardless of the medium, public speaking opportunities aren’t going anywhere. The BBC estimates that . Despite the high likelihood of giving a presentation, , according to The Washington Post. But the right amount of preparation can help you ease those fears.

Here’s more about what public speaking is and how you can improve and successfully execute an excellent presentation.

What Is It and Why Is It Important?

Public speaking means more than presenting to a boardroom of 20 or an arena of 20,000. The skills required to be an engaging public speaker come into play during client calls, internal discussions and team meetings.

“It could be 10 people, five people, three people,” says Carolyn Cohn, co-founder and chief editor at communications agency CompuKol. “At some point, and probably more frequently than infrequently as a marketer, you’re going to be standing in front of an audience.”

And when that time comes, excelling as a public speaker is paramount. A 2017 BBC piece reported that “oral communication” and “presentation skills” were the , respectively. Of those employees who did use public speaking at their job, 70% said they found the skill “critical to their success at work.” The consultancy how crucial public speaking can be. Its founder, Peter Khoury, writes, “Fear of public speaking has a 10% impairment on your wages and a 15% impairment on your promotion.”

The good news is that you may already possess many of the important skills necessary to be a great public speaker. Francine Lasky, a business leader consultant and seasoned public speaker, explains that the ideas behind storytelling are directly transferrable to public speaking. “Be able to break an idea down into pieces,” she says. “If you’re good at figuring out a strategy, you can apply that to communication. 
 Put your audience into the story by giving them details—it may be by [introducing] a situation that would be familiar.”

How Do You Hone This Skill?

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

“Practice in front of a mirror and in front of your friends,” Lasky says—in both cases, you’ll be presenting to a forgiving audience. “Videotaping yourself is hugely painful [to watch] but has been amazingly helpful. You will never learn as much as you do after you watch yourself in videos. You will stop doing the things you don’t like. You’ll start doing things you do like.”

Cohn prefers that you train in front of people who may not already know you. She recommends seeking out organizations such as Toastmasters—a supportive group in which members practice giving speeches and receive feedback on their performance.

When you’re feeling somewhat prepared, it’s time to begin presenting in low-stakes work environments. Take the initiative by explaining to your manager that public speaking is a skill you are determined to develop, Cohn says. That way they’ll be excited to see you present and offer feedback and more opportunities.

Lasky offers some specific suggestions. “Present a new idea internally; go to HR and [ask to] do the presentation on the next 401(k),” Lasky says. “Give them a demonstration of how you speak, how you can engage an audience. You probably already know the message.”

Of course, nobody emerges as a brilliant orator on their first few tries. Otherwise, we’d all be at Carnegie Hall right now. Once your crowd grows large enough to include folks you didn’t know beforehand, Lasky recommends bringing along evaluation forms. Not all conferences distribute them, she says, but they’re a great way to receive nuanced feedback and make new contacts. “Lead people to say what they got out of [your talk]—not just that you were a great speaker,” she says.

While studies show that great speakers can engage audiences regardless of the message, don’t neglect focusing on the work itself. “PowerPoint is the best way to turn your written materials into a presentation,” Cohn says—but she recommends practicing restraint. “You don’t want to pack those slides with a million things. They’re launching-off points—a couple of bullets on a slide and some graphics.”

Set the proper tone by easing the crowd into your presentation with something light and interactive. “Inject some sort of humor into the very beginning because then people will start to pay attention right away,” Cohn says. “[Or] ask an engaging question. Everybody in the universe wants to know that they count and that their opinion matters. And if you ask a question 
 you’re opening the door for them to actually tell you what they think.”

Consider tweaking your message to connect with as many audience members as possible. “One of the major mistakes people make is they assume their audience, whether it’s small or big, all have the same communication styles they do,” Lasky says. Vary your presentation to include bullet points, sure, but also charts, graphs, audio snippets, short videos and interactive bits with the audience.

Think about the nonverbal elements of your presentation as well. Each contributes to the amount of confidence you’ll project. “You want to dress appropriately,” Cohn says. “You may have really individual taste, but there are certain times and places where that’s just not well-received. 
 You’re not going to be standing still, just by a podium holding onto something; you’re going to be walking around addressing the people in that audience. Always look them in the eye.” Cohn adds that eye contact is the first thing she notices when a new speaker takes the stage.

How Can You Demonstrate Your Mastery?

The best way to secure more speaking opportunities is to capture video of your presentation and share it with conferences or on social media like LinkedIn. Viewers will be able to observe your tone, mannerisms and engagement with participants. They’ll also develop a sense of how your audience reacts. Your phone or other device should suffice; you can even ask one of the conference staff in the front row to tape for you.

Don’t forget to pass out those evaluation forms when you’re done. The feedback you receive not only helps you improve but makes for a great rĂ©sumĂ©-booster. Keep tabs on each talk you’ve given and list them either directly in your rĂ©sumĂ© or in a cover letter, along with select testimonials, when submitting job applications or applying for more speaking engagements. You can include links to your videos in an introductory email.

And, most importantly, celebrate your accomplishment by purging all thoughts of underwear from your head.

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The techlash has hit.

As marketers barrel toward a brave new world of marketing technology, many are heading straight at an unexpected obstacle: the consumer.

According to a new report published by ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű New York, titled “,” Americans will ease off of social media use and online gaming in the next three years, even as advertisers plan to up their stakes in these arenas. Moreover, American consumers are worried about smart speakers, the internet of things and other marketing innovations. They’re also fearful about privacy, falsehoods and psychological harm. But many marketers overrate how positively consumers view marketing change and underrate their concerns.

“Techlash is here,” says Karen McFarlane, president of ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű New York. “Despite their fast adoption, consumers have profound concerns about their personal data and how it will be used or compromised. When it comes to the growing intersection of IoT, ad tech and artificial intelligence, marketers must amplify brand trust and become unmatched champions of consumer privacy.”

So what is the techlash? Last year, defined it as “a strong and widespread negative reaction to the growing power and influence of large technology companies, particularly those based in Silicon Valley.” (They rated it a “word of the year.”) For marketers, techlash means consumer hostility or unease about new marketing technologies or approaches—and whomever deploys them. It takes many forms, including shunning products, quitting platforms, reducing usage or reputational damage.

Signs of Techlash

Signs of the techlash are visible in media use trends revealed by the study, such as the expected leveling off of social media use and online gaming in the U.S. Overall, net audience change (i.e., proportion expecting to spend more time minus proportion expecting less) expected for social media use is a predicted 6% decrease and a 4% decrease for online games. This is consistent with other recent studies by and .

It’s true that consumers are moving from older media to online alternatives, but the big gainers are likely to be websites, email and streaming media rather than social media or gaming, despite their hype. In particular, Facebook and Instagram use is forecast to level off through 2022, while consumers expect net declines in their use of Twitter, Snapchat and LinkedIn. Growth is forecast only for YouTube, similar to streaming media in general.

Facebook’s spectacular stumbles and the resultant damage to its image have drawn widespread publicity, but social media anxiety has spread further. found that in general to protect their data.

The consequences of consumer mistrust are real. An of trust in 100 tech companies revealed Facebook plunged from 51st place in 2018 to 94th this year, while Google dropped from No. 28 to No. 41. Polls show Facebook’s worsening image has hurt usage and engagement.

But even as techlash has hit America, the ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű New York research shows that some marketers haven’t noticed. Marketers report over-indexing on many social media platforms already. Despite the projected slippage in social media and gaming audiences, 68% and 25% of marketers anticipate increased marketing spend in these respective categories.

The Digital Disconnect

Beyond shifting their media use, the Future of Marketing study shows Americans are ambivalent and divided about martech and the IoT—which may surprise many marketers. None of the nine marketing innovations tested with descriptions in the study are favored by a majority of consumers, though pluralities preferred four of the innovations and noteworthy proportions say they “don’t know.”

The innovations most consumers are skeptical about include many popular with marketers, including personalized ads (just 35% of consumers found favorable), IoT-connected home devices (37%), micro-influencers (29%), employee influencers (32%) and augmented reality (36%). At present, the only innovations with plurality consumer support are ones that can be voluntarily used, such as virtual reality (45% favorable), smart speakers (44%), AI assistants (46%) and omnichannel (41%).

These findings are not outliers and are consistent with other recent research by the , .

But of all the new martech tested, substantial proportions of consumer respondents—from 10% to 24%—are uncertain about what they think of the changes. This suggests a big chunk of consumers may be convinced by the merits of martech.

American consumers are relatively open to the benefits of new marketing technology, but they have a lot of anxiety about the potential drawbacks.

When we tested positives for the martech innovations described above, Americans agreed with most of the claimed benefits (except those for IoT). Percent majorities from the low 50s to low 60s say that new technology will make shopping easier, quicker and better-informed, and improve access to brands’ understanding of their needs. Almost half of consumers also say shopping will be more fun. But favorability is not consistent: Despite moderate numbers for each claimed benefit, only one in four Americans agree with seven or eight of them.

On the other hand, majorities or pluralities of consumers worry about all six negatives we tested. The most widespread concern was that four in five consumers fear fake accounts, falsehoods, hackers and bots will mislead them. Nearly as many fear that they will lose their privacy and be under constant surveillance. Two-thirds say that martech will take the human touch out of shopping or that it will spread isolation and depression. Almost half believe it will make ads less creative.

The digital disconnect is sharp: American marketers overrate the perceived positives of marketing innovations, while not taking consumer concerns seriously enough. Most expect U.S. consumers to consistently welcome them, but the perception gap between marketers and consumers averages 27 points. Marketers are more aware of the possible problems, but still underrate them. Although majorities recognize customer concerns regarding five of the six negatives (all but loss of creativity), the proportion expecting consumers to be bothered by each consistently runs below that of consumers who are—by as much as 22%.

Toward Digital Dialogue

Consumers and marketers agree: In a decade, marketing will live mostly online, while buying will remain omnichannel. Yet to close the digital disconnect, marketers must recognize the trends and dangers, educate consumers and lead changes to improve marketing practices and privacy.

This will mean:

• Putting ad dollars where consumers are actually going, even if the marketing herds are stampeding toward social media and online games.
• Educating consumers about the benefits and value of new martech.
• Accepting the continuing differences between online marketing and omnichannel sales.
• Giving consumers control and transparency regarding use of their data, as well as incentives.
• Emphasizing consumer choice regarding technology and introducing changes that consumers can choose to use (virtual reality, for example).
• Establishing standards of online conduct and data protection through company codes, industry action and negotiations with regulators.

For a future of online marketing to win consumer trust, marketers need to listen and respond to related consumer concerns—and the time to start is now.

The ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍű New York’s Future of Marketing study surveyed consumers and marketers and looked at industry trends for the coming three to 10 years. The study consisted of an online poll of approximately 500 consumers and marketers in the U.S. fielded in January by YouGov, along with similar numbers in China by Kadence in March, and questionnaire and analysis by Charney Research. The U.S. sample was nationally representative, the Chinese sample mostly urban and middle-class. The full report is available at .

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When John Keenan worked in database marketing at Leo Burnett in the early 1990s, data collection took great effort. Keenan and his colleagues would send coupons to consumers through snail mail, waiting for weeks to get a vague sense of how a campaign was performing. Response from mailers lacked precision; Keenan and his team wouldn’t know where or when the coupons were redeemed. Their hard work yielded a vague understanding of why the coupons were used and they could only approximate whether the campaign had paid off.

Now, Keenan works as executive vice president of marketing analytics at creative agency and can track consumer data down to a precise moment. Granular data—where a customer bought a product, at what time and even what the weather was that day—is available and easily accessible within a closed loop to any marketer with the right technology. In closed-loop reporting, an incredible amount of data is available to both marketing and sales teams. Rather than the vague approximations Keenan had to surmise from mailers, he and many other marketers now receive consumer data from apps, websites, third-party data vendors and CRM platforms—and new methods of data collection keep coming. With more consumers online and more ways to collect information than ever, data has exploded: A 2017 report from IBM found that 90% of data in the world today was created in the previous two years, a number that has surely risen since.

Although data collection has become easier, marketers still struggle to make sense of their data. Kantar’s 2019 “Getting Media Right” report finds that fewer than 10% of marketers say that they have all the data they need—the rest can only collect a fraction, or they notice gaps in the data they have.

“To me, it’s really kind of astounding, especially [with] North America being such a mature market,” says Aaron Peterson, senior director of marketing of Kantar’s insights division and author of the report. “We hear from [clients] that they have so much data at their fingertips, but it’s not the right set of data that they need to actually make a decision. They just have all these data points and they’re still kind of struggling with what to do with all that data that’s in front of them.”

The Kantar report found that marketers have a hard time translating their data into actionable insights. Kantar surveyed advertisers, agencies and media companies on their confidence in being able to integrate multiple data sources to discover insights—47% of advertisers said they were “not very/not at all confident,” compared to 26% of agencies and 31% of media companies.

And with inconsistent data and insights comes inconsistent measurement. In the report, 76% agreed that it was difficult to assess how well the brand was performing across multiple channels. While the majority of marketers responded that they track reach and frequency, Kantar found that other methods of measurement vary greatly across the industry, disrupting the performance of data. Kantar’s report says that measuring brand effectiveness can harmonize cross-channel currency, but it’s only being used by half of all marketers. And marketers are inconsistent in their cross-channel measurement of sales and ROI—while more than half of advertisers and agencies track these measurements, only 35% of media companies do so.

Inconsistent measurement has likely led to a foggy understanding of ROI. A third of advertisers and agencies and 22% of media companies say that they measure ROI once a year or less, while about a third of all groups say that they measure ROI continuously. In the age of instantly available data, why do as many marketers measure yearly as those who measure moment by moment?

The promise of marketing data has always been about understanding business, taking better actions and getting better results. It’s great to know how people shop, but marketers are in the business of selling, not measuring. And thus far, the data revolution hasn’t allowed for action nor consistent results. Kantar reports that more than half of the advertisers and media companies they surveyed believed they were not successful at acting on data in real time.

The heart of the problem lies in the fact that such a small percentage of marketers have all the data they require. How can the more than 90% of marketers who are struggling with data find what they need?

What’s Your Business Objective?

The same mistake keeps popping up, Keenan says: A company will dive into data that already exists without first figuring out its business objectives.

Recently, a potential client of Keenan’s expressed interest in digging into some data for something they wanted to measure. Keenan sought to understand the purpose of this exercise and what need it filled for client or internal development, but the potential client didn’t have an answer yet. This is how many data inquiries start, Keenan says, which is backwards.

Keenan says that marketers should start with a requirements analysis to define the expectations of the search for data and then use the analysis to find the right data. Even 25 years ago with mailers, Keenan says that his teams would always start by finding the objective and asking, “Why?”

And it’s not enough to simply know the questions and start analyzing the data—there’s an art to data science, Keenan says. Marketers must consider the exact business contexts that matter, those that will truly affect their objectives. The art must precede the science. “If we’re thinking about something with our analysts, they shouldn’t go back to their desks and start coding right away,” he says. “[If they do], they haven’t been thinking about what they should be doing first.”

The process of data analysis and insight discovery is often overwhelming for overly eager clients, but Keenan says it can be made easier with patience—stating objectives, asking questions and planning thoroughly. Although diving in to available data right away may seem more appealing, Keenan says that it usually leads to greater challenges—and it’s likely a big reason why many marketers find holes in their data.

“In order [to] not be overwhelmed, you have to know how [the data] plays into what you’re trying to achieve,” he says. “You have to start with context. Then, everything else becomes easier.”

Whittling Down the Metrics

Nichole Urigashvili, senior data scientist of research science at food-ordering service Grubhub, determined the business objectives and asked all the requisite questions, but she was left with about 150 different metrics in her data model. “I talked to my manager the next day and they were like, ‘You know what? We just need to take some out,’” she says.

Nailing down business objectives and the contexts in which they exist are essential steps in gathering data, but narrowing the metrics to be followed may be just as important. Both steps consolidate an overwhelming mountain of data into a climbable hill.

If you’re following too many different metrics, Urigashvili says that you can work logically to cut them down. For example, if two metrics are similar, remove one. Or thin the herd by analyzing the data further and focusing only on the metrics that most affect business objectives.

It’s important to remember that even when you know the direction you’re taking, the amount of consumer data can be cumbersome. Often, data can become too granular. For example, it wouldn’t likely be fruitful for Grubhub to attempt to change the actions of 10 people who live on a single block, but the company could find benefits in analyzing consumer trends at a neighborhood level.

When data gets too granular, analysis becomes too much about reaching a few people rather than large swaths of consumers. Keenan recalls a job where he mined grocery store data and had 5,000 shopping indicators on individual shoppers before he could even attach the data to their digital footprint. He had information as specific as whether shoppers bought paste or gel toothpaste, carbonated or non-carbonated water, Coca-Cola or Pepsi. Analyzing data this granular often casts too small a net. “There’s a lot of data out there, so it’s about deciding what’s relevant and actionable in service of the objective,” Keenan says.

Urigashvili says narrowing your data is sometimes about digging deeper and asking more precise questions. For example, if Grubhub is researching churn rate, they’d first need to ask if there’s something they can do about the lapse in support. Who’s leaving? Is it drivers, restaurants or customers? From there, they gather potential metrics to follow and analyze to determine which metrics have the closest relationship to business results. If there’s little or no relationship, that metric can be put aside.

The metrics that marketers follow must serve the business objective—just because something is measurable doesn’t mean that it matters to the organization.

Translate Data for the Innumerate

During a day-long meeting at , a data and marketing technology platform, CMO Aaron Goldman asked Ashley Tomzik, his team’s new marketing data scientist, to help ground the session in data. Goldman had just hired Tomzik away from 4C’s engineering team a few months prior and was blown away by her work in that short time.

“She pulled up a few dashboards,” Goldman says. “There were all the charts we were used to looking at. But then at the top, she had written actual words—imagine that—telling the story or the key insight of what we should take away from each of those [charts]. It was the first time in as long as I can remember at 4C where we didn’t just immediately dive into dissecting a chart. We actually started with some context and a story, a key insight that was drawn out.”

Tomzik says that she knows not everyone easily understands numbers—while it’s her job as a data scientist to make them palatable, she acknowledges that they can make people confused, sleepy, frustrated or bored. When people looked at the charts she presented, she wanted them to see numbers in the proper business context and understand what they meant.

“The numbers aren’t going to be obvious at first,” she says. “You need to understand the whole picture to be able to understand why something might be happening and how things are relating to each other to draw insights from your data.”

There’s a demand for data scientists like Tomzik. LinkedIn co-founder Allen Blue told attendees of a Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Knowledge@Wharton town hall that demand for data scientists has seen . But Tomzik says that data scientists in marketing must be able to translate the numbers into words or stories for the rest of the company—if the data scientist understands the numbers but the executive doesn’t, the marketing team won’t likely benefit.

Kantar’s Peterson says that a problem for many marketing departments is that their numbers are crunched by those outside of marketing. “For a lot of companies, there’s somebody within their IT department that’s actually collecting and organizing all of the data and then pushing it back to the marketing team,” he says. “A lot of businesses 
 are still creating a bit of a silo situation. Marketers need to be able to talk more directly with those folks that are managing the data to really get them to understand what is going to be useful for them versus just pushing the data out.”

It’s important to have someone on the team who understands the business contexts. Goldman says that Tomzik’s ability to translate the data is much better than crunching the numbers themselves or having someone else do it. With Tomzik’s help, Goldman says that the marketing team has narrowed the number of metrics it follows, become more confident in its ability to track data that matters and gotten quicker to act—this year, 4C started working toward unique quarterly goals rather than annual benchmarks.

Follow the Numbers

As data analysts, Keenan says that it’s important to know what people are looking for to understand how data can best support their goals. An organization can be successful with differing views of the same problem, but marketing data analysts must understand what these contrasting views mean.

Urigashvili says that data could be more consistent if everyone better understood what’s being measured. For example, if Grubhub was analyzing the cancellation rate for orders, some in the company may view it purely as a user issue, but that disregards the potential that a cancellation may have come from the business or issues with the delivery driver. Getting more specific on the matter of cancellations can get everyone on the same page, a good step toward solving the problem.

As Tomzik says, it takes good communication to clearly explain these analytic differences to others in the company. But data analysts must serve the business by delivering actionable insights.

Finding Insights and Taking Action

If data is a rainbow, insights are the mythical pot of gold at the end—which most marketers fail to find. Keenan says that the process of finding actionable insights should originate with your objective and the context of the data you search for, as insights are the interpretation of the data you’ve found. These insights will be used to determine what steps the business takes next.

For example, if Keenan’s team was performing a campaign analysis, he says that they’d need to understand the objective of the campaign and how they reached out to consumers to find insights. The team’s analysts would be armed with the contexts of the campaign, such as the kind of offer and style of communication. Then, instead of reporting back the response rate within certain subjections, the analysts would know the context of the interaction and interpret it themselves. Finding insights is concluding why consumers responded the way they did and what that means going forward. Was the response rate lower or higher than usual? Why? How should this affect the next campaign?

Once a business starts gathering insights, acting on them and seeing success, Grubhub’s Urigashvili says that they’ll have an easier time defining and solving future problems, gaining even better observations in the process.

How to Start

If Urigashvili was starting a data team from scratch, she says that she’d first look to understand the business at a high level. For example, how could data potentially be used to help the business?

By knowing how data can be leveraged to reach business goals, Urigashvili says that marketers should be able to score some quick wins, which can prove that being data-driven works. These quick wins will be essential for the most important part of becoming driven by data: getting the entire organization, especially leadership, on board. Hiring smart, creative people who ask the right questions and know the business objectives is great, but change requires a senior leadership team that’s willing to listen and see that data can have a positive effect on the company.

“Companies that aren’t data-driven, especially if their leadership isn’t data-driven, make it hard for a data team to start pushing and advocating for analytics,” she says. “It’s really going to be this organizational culture change. We can use data; this is how we can use it. If we have this type of problem, don’t just go with your gut, let’s utilize data to be able to help with that.”

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The data and insights industry can seem almost invisible. It’s tucked behind marketing and business decisions, providing proof points for new products and services, for governments and businesses alike. But this behind-the-scenes industry—valued at $80 billion globally—would be the 67th richest country by global domestic product and is worth almost twice as much as the film industry’s global box office value.

In many ways, it’s unsurprising that an industry built on consumers—their perceptions and behaviors—reflects the characteristics and influences of the consumer world. The same innovations transforming the way organizations provide better and more efficient services to the public are also driving change within the insights industry—and the shift has been rapid.

For the first time, in this year’s ESOMAR Global Market Research report, those innovative methodologies (big data analytics, automation, artificial intelligence, do-it-yourself services, text and advanced analytics, etc.) are valued at the same amount as the originally defined market research sector (online and offline qualitative and quantitative, brand trackers, focus groups, etc.). In fact, 2019 is forecast to be the first year that these new methodologies will exceed the value of the traditional market research sector.

This certainly feels like a watershed moment for the data and insights industry. Heightened trade sensitivity, commercial tariff brinkmanship, currency volatility and unpredictable geopolitical conditions have slowed global growth in many sectors, including conventional market research. An initially healthy-seeming 2.1% growth in the sector reveals a more stagnant picture once inflation is factored in, reversing the trend to a slightly negative 0.3% decline. However, the maturing data analytics and new methodology counterpart bucked these trends with a remarkable increase of 10% based on the previous year.

It’s astonishing to witness the hardships of one half of the industry in contrast with the buoyancy of the other. Yet both are devoted to the same basic activity: analyzing data in order to provide contextualized insights and facilitate better decision-making. If the goal is comparable, then what are the reasons for the conventional sector reporting a net decrease of 0.3%, while the data analytics and insights counterpart reports an increase of more than 10%?

There are numerous reasons for this; the growth of tech-enabled systems, automation and differing definitions of what is and isn’t included in those sectors are but a few contributing factors. What is clear is that the industry is evolving and transforming, and that investment in market and consumer intelligence is on the rise.

Implications for the U.S.

The U.S. is the largest market of data and insights in the world. For the conventionally defined market research sector, North America accounts for 45% of turnover, followed by all of Europe at 35%. We also suspect that the U.S. holds a larger share of the research performed in data and analytics. Throughout the years, the U.S. has been one of the most dynamic and resilient global markets. When looking at the expanded top 10 global companies (both traditional market research firms and newer data and analytics companies) in terms of revenue, five of the 10 are headquartered in the U.S.

But there is an underlying story to the top 10 traditional market research organizations. Four out of the top 10 companies signaled a reverse in growth between 2017 and 2018. There can be many reasons for that, but it does fit with the growing industry trend of specialization. As brands bring more insight functions in-house, there is a greater demand for specialization in insight and analytics companies, whether in methodology, vertical sectors or data sets (think big data sets or passive measurement). These companies are often smaller and more agile than their larger counterparts. Smaller boutique agencies, and those exploding out of the tech sector, are driving innovation in data and insight.

For marketers and insights teams in the U.S., it can be beneficial to explore the new perspectives these companies provide to solve business problems, while balancing the new with the reliability and tried-and-tested work of the larger generalist agencies. Although North America is a vital hub for innovation in data and insight, incredible tech-driven transformations in data are happening all over the world. Insight is being disrupted by companies across Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. Because we exist in an always-on, tech-enabled global economy, it’s as easy for a New York-based brand to work with an agency in Portugal as it is with one in Chicago.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

With the traditional market research sector facing a decline for the first time in some years, and with an ascending tech-driven data and insights sector, does that mean we’re looking at the start of the slow death of traditional market research? We don’t think so.

A huge part of this new sector has been created by our ever-increasing digital fingerprint. Our behaviors—what we think, feel, say and do—are being recorded digitally. From this, a hosepipe of data companies emerged to analyze the increasing volumes of data to reveal key patterns, trends and associations. This has undoubtedly been key to the expansion of the industry and the delivery of new actionable insights at scale over the past few years. But there’s still a vital role for traditional market research to play.

Big data, social media measurement and other forms of passive analytics only tell one side of the story. Just because something is measurable doesn’t mean that it can be applied to key business questions. The value of insight is getting behind the data and looking at perceptions and motivations. Big data can sometimes seem adrift, floating all around us, untethered by context. The problem is that while big data is sizeable, it can also be thin. It hasn’t been the silver bullet that some commentators expected. When combined with other methods, qualitative research in particular—or “thick” data, if you will—then you can really start building valuable and strategic insights and informing better decisions. Providing context is where the traditional market research sector excels.

That’s not to say that newer methodologies are all based on the analysis of big data. Technological advancements such as automation and AI are providing opportunities to revolutionize how we conduct and structure traditional market research methodologies, but they’re based in the theory and practice of decades of statistical and modeling work—the very epitome of conventional research.

Another consideration is around data ethics and transparency. In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation has been introduced, while in the U.S. we see the introduction of the California Consumer Privacy Act and the beginning of a lengthy discussion around a federal privacy bill. With the growing uncertainty of third-party cookies, it’s become increasingly apparent that success is not defined by the amount of data gathered, but what organizations can do around compliance. In the traditional research sphere, a core pillar in the collection and treatment of data has been data ethics and transparency. This pillar has created a set of checks and balances that’s allowed us to stay self-regulated and offers protection to both consumers and companies. Whatever happens with passive data collection, the traditional research industry will be asking questions and providing insights for better business decisions.

For marketers, the expanded research universe is a dynamic and valuable sector. Insights can be generated with speed and efficiency never seen before, and the U.S. is a vital part of that ecosystem. The Global Market Research report shows an industry that progresses, transforms and impacts businesses across sectors like no other. Whatever the future holds, data and insight will continue to be the keystone for marketing decisions.

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After thousands of conversations with hundreds of brands, I’ve noticed something strange: Small brands are always trying to look big, while big brands are often trying to look small. I understand where each is coming from, but my advice is the same: It’s more important to make your brand seem human.

The more personal your marketing, the more likely the audience is to feel a connection to the brand, to care and to know what matters to you. Big or small, the brand that feels most human is likely to win the business.

There are so many areas to add a personal touch to your marketing, yet so many brands miss these opportunities.

1. Social Media Content

Social is a good place to start making personal connections. As a data-rich environment, the impact of engaging users is also easy to measure.

The LinkedIn marketing team does a lot of testing. Whenever you see a post by the LinkedIn team, you’re looking at either A or B in a test. They test everything and are generous about sharing results.

They tested the effects of images on social engagement and found that images with people had a 160% higher click-through rate than images with objects. People and faces make a huge difference in the ability of a social post to drive traffic to content.

Image source:

2. Email Marketing

As you read this sentence, your target audience is receiving email. If you sent something today, your message is in the mix. But whether the recipients open it depends on three factors: the sender name, subject line and preheader text.

The sender name is another chance to be human, yet a lot of brands choose to use a company name instead of a person’s name. It takes only a minute and costs nothing to update the sender name in your email service provider. Doing so can have a big impact on your open rates.

It’s easy to delete email from a brand. It’s psychologically a bit harder to delete a message from a person. Deciding whom to name as the sender might be a challenge, but it’s worth considering. Our clients have seen an immediate 20% increase in open rates just from making this one simple change.

3. Sales Pages

Websites can feel like the empty shop in that mall that no one goes to anymore. Some sites have no faces anywhere, or—almost as bad—they’re filled with stock photos of people who don’t seem real, like mannequins in a department store.

Sales pages are some of the most important places to be human because they’re where your audience is making decisions about working with you. Here, personal connection is more important and more powerful.

Testimonials with faces of clients will guide visitors’ eyes to that part of the page. Those faces add color, emotion and visual prominence. The testimonial itself adds supportive evidence to the nearby content. A sales page without evidence is a pile of unsupported marketing claims. And a separate testimonials page is simply evidence without context.

4. The ‘ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt Us’ Page

I have access to hundreds of Google Analytics accounts, giving me a glimpse into the behavior of a wide range of visitors. Almost all websites have one thing in common: The “ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt Us” page is one of the most visited pages. Why? Because visitors want to make a personal connection.

The “ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt Us” page helps to tell a brand’s story, beginning with the characters. It’s the most personal part of the site, but it’s not just a “we love us” page that’s focused only on the positive. It’s not a bland mission statement, like a plaque on a wall.

Use the “ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt Us” page as an opportunity to showcase your organization’s personality:

• Tell the story of how the business began, including challenges and failures. Why does this business exist?
• Explain what the founders and employees believe, and what their deepest passions are.
• Show the faces and interests of key team members, going beyond what they’ve posted on LinkedIn.

Upgrading the format—from text to video, perhaps—makes the personal touch here (and anywhere) more compelling.

5. Articles and Blog Content

There are two kinds of articles: collaborative and single point of view. Unless the content is a strong opinion, original research or true thought leadership, single POV content has a natural disadvantage.

Content that features experts tends to be higher quality. Content that features influencers tends to have greater social reach. So, collaborative content that features both—also known as organic influencer marketing—is more likely to attract and engage with readers.

The difference is as simple as a contributor quote with input from an expert. To make it human and personal, add an image of the subject’s face along with a few of their credentials. This makes the content more visual and personal, two elements that help build connections with readers.

A journalist wouldn’t write an article without a source. Why should a content marketer write an article without a contributor quote?

You Are Your Difference

The other thing that all brands have in common, regardless of size, is the drive to differentiate. It’s common to complain about standing out, but one of your differences is in plain sight: It’s you and your people.

You are the only company that has your team. Proving that you’re different is a matter of showcasing who you are.

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Marketing is a cross-discipline profession. We must do more than represent the customer to the business—we need to understand the “three C’s”: customer, competition and company. Too often, we view our internal company and C-suite colleagues as adversaries rather than business partners.

At a recent CMO dinner in Chicago, a group of marketing leaders were lambasting their CFOs and CIOs for underfunding marketing and overinvesting in technology. I disagreed. We marketers need to make the CFO, CIO and—increasingly—the chief information security officer (CISO) our teammates and best friends.

The folks around the table became uncomfortable. They argued that business leaders should reinvest in creativity. I agreed that marketing creativity is a key differentiator, but technology investments are going to continue. As technology evolves, we marketers must be alert to both the advantages and risks of digital disruption, including the threats of data breaches.

Data breaches may not be on marketing’s radar, but they should be. There can be enormous reputational risk, which marketing will need to address in the event of a breach. And, cybercrime can be costly to the enterprise.

In a disruptive digital world guided by social media, mobile solutions, analytics and cloud platforms (the SMAC technologies), had these leaders met with their CISOs? Do they discuss enterprise risk management, social media and digital marketing programs with their CFOs? Are they prepared to respond to the reputational risk of a data breach, data exfiltration and ransomware? Had they read The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake?

A class on cybersecurity may not be high on the agenda for marketers at the top university programs in the country, but it should be. As Clarke and Knake point out in The Fifth Domain, cyberattacks have cost pharmaceutical giant Merck approximately $900 million and shipping leader A.P. Moller-Maersk about $300 million. Other cyberattack victims include Mondelez International, Marriott International, Equifax and Target, to name just a few. Even entities such as the city of Baltimore are facing cyber-based ransomware attacks.

Every marketer needs to read a primer on cyber defense, and The Fifth Domain is the perfect resource. It’s written without technical jargon and is an excellent longitudinal overview of the cybersecurity threat, from emergence to present-day risks and potential solutions. The book is comprehensive without being weighty. It describes the threat actors, policy problems and solutions, and the actions that enterprise executives should consider.

Clarke and Knake have been policy and technical leaders on the issue of cybersecurity for many years. Clarke served at the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of State, and Knake served at the Department of Homeland Security. Both have held leading roles on the National Security Council—Clarke under Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and Knake under President Barack Obama.

Their 2010 book, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt It, was intended to “raise the alarm” about cyberthreats. The authors write that The Fifth Domain is “about how the balance between offense and defense is changing and how the rate of change can be increased to set us on a path of stability.”

They argue that, up until now, the cybercriminals and rogue cyberattacking nation-states have had the advantage and are winning. The authors explain what can be done via government policy, enterprise actions and collaboration to achieve “cyber resilience”: in which attacks, when they occur, are manageable and the “advantage will shift from the attacker to the defender.”

There are parts of The Fifth Domain that read like a classic spy novel and will keep you riveted. The authors describe the origins and impacts of the Petya, WannaCry and NotPetya attack tools.

They write, “NotPetya was an operation run by a military unit, specifically the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Federation’s military, often called the GRU or Russian military intelligence.

“The Russian military did not, we suspect, intend to indiscriminately attack global corporations,” the authors write. “What it had intended was a crippling attack on Ukraine on the eve of its national holiday, Constitution Day. The GRU had figured out a truly creative attack vector, a channel that could be used to spread an attack.”

Clarke and Knake go on to share how Fancy Bear penetrated the servers of Ukrainian government and commercial enterprises. “The GRU attack worked almost flawlessly, destroying almost 10% of all devices in Ukraine. 
 What the GRU had apparently not recognized (or maybe they did) was that global companies operating in Ukraine would also be hit (and would spread the attack around the world).”

An equally chilling segment of The Fifth Domain describes a fake scenario in which an international ally of the U.S. is physically attacked, but American war ships and resupply depots are disabled through cyberattacks that diminish the ability to respond in real time. The scenario is frightening—and it has the potential to become reality.

The Fifth Domain is a provocative and thoughtful read for anyone who aspires to lead in business today. It is especially relevant for marketers and communications executives.

Cyber risk equates to brand and reputational risk, so marketers need to participate in risk management. We also must be certain our marketing programs don’t generate cyber risk for the company. And, if marketing truly seeks a seat at the table of enterprise leadership, we should be attuned to such potential business threats. If we are to be effective “three C’s” marketers, we should extend our purview beyond customer and competition. We should be attuned to our company and its capabilities, as well as serious threats and risks such as cyberdefense.

Marketing, communications, legal, technology, risk management, HR, the CEO and the board must all be prepared and ready to act when a data breach occurs.

Marketers should understand the nature and evolution of the cyberthreat. We should be advocates for better cyberdefense in our enterprises and circumspect about the cyber risks engendered by our marketing programs. We should be participating in tabletop exercises to prepare for any cyberattack.

Primarily, we should be educating ourselves about cyber risk and cybersolutions—and that’s why we should read The Fifth Domain.

Photo by Tim KĂ€bel on .

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By Yubo Chen, Mrinal Ghosh, Yong Liu and Liang Zhao

“Media Coverage of Climate Change and Sustainable Product Consumption: Evidence from Hybrid Vehicle Market,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (December 2019).

In a nutshell: The authors show that mass-media coverage of climate change or global warming can increase adoption of hybrid vehicles, even when that coverage is general and does not pertain specifically to vehicle emissions. Such coverage can create and shape the norm that sustainable consumption is socially desirable. One caveat: Media coverage that either denies climate change or holds a neutral position on the issue has little impact on hybrid vehicle adoption.

Practitioner takeaways: An effective, long-run marketing strategy for firms selling sustainable products is to proactively work with the media on sustainability issues rather than simply focusing on marketing their own products.

By Seigyoung Auh, Bulent Menguc, Constantine S. Katsikeas and Yeon Sung Jung

“When Does Customer Participation Matter? An Empirical Investigation of the Role of Customer Empowerment in the Customer Participation-Performance Link,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (December 2019).

In a nutshell: Is it worth allowing customers to participate in shaping product offerings? This research shows that the return on customer participation (CP) is tangible and benefits the organization. In the context of the banking industry, the authors show that customer satisfaction and empowerment influences bank branch performance in terms of profitability, sales growth and customer retention.

Practitioner takeaways: The authors caution against formalizing CP, as customers desire discretion, control and autonomy in how they participate. They suggest that offering feedback on customers’ input empowers them and lets them know their participation is valued.

By Yi Zhang, Ronald T. Wilcox and Amar Cheema

“The Effect of Student Loan Debt on Spending: The Role of Repayment Format,” Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 40 (January 2020).

In a nutshell: Student loan borrowers are often not aware of the cost of higher education until much later. Seeing these large debts can overwhelm inexperienced student borrowers, so much so that the feeling of difficulty associated with paying off student loan debt decreases the motivation to control spending. A motivated and committed borrower will likely make every effort to control spending. Unmotivated and indifferent borrowers, on the other hand, are more likely to overspend.

Practitioner takeaways: The authors find that presenting student loan debt in an attainable monthly repayment format helps borrowers stay motivated and control their spending.

By Moon-Yong Kim, Sangkil Moon and Dawn Iacobucci

“The Influence of Global Brand Distribution on Brand Popularity on Social Media,” Journal of International Marketing, 27 (December 2019).

In a nutshell: Gauging the success of a global brand’s social media strategy can be tricky; traditional sales-based measures may not provide clear guidance. The authors find that country brand popularity is influenced by brand (brand globalness, brand home country and social signaling industry), culture (power distance, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation and indulgence), social media accessibility (English speakers, internet penetration and cell phone penetration) and economics (per capita GDP, trade importance, Gini index).

Practitioner takeaways: Think beyond traditional sales-based measures to understand the global reach of your brand on social media.

By Duncan I. Simester, Catherine E. Tucker and Clair Yang

“The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (December 2019).

In a nutshell: Previous research has identified “harbinger customers” as people who systematically purchase new products that fail and are discontinued by retailers. These harbingers have preferences that are not representative of other customers in the market, and they show a pattern of adopting niche products. This article finds that these harbingers tend to live close to one another, in “harbinger ZIP codes.” If households in these ZIP codes adopt a new product, this is a signal that the new product is likely to fail. Furthermore, households in harbinger ZIP codes tend to make other decisions that differ from most households, such as contributing funds to a political candidate who is ultimately not elected.

Practitioner takeaways: “Know your customer” has never been more relevant. Determining if they live in a harbinger ZIP code can provide a wealth of information.

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Soon after Jeff Jarvis created Entertainment Weekly in 1990, he recalls an odd ad coming across his desk. It looked like any other page of the magazine—same font, same layout—but had one big difference: the image of a hand holding a bag of Frito-Lay chips bursting through the print. The ad department said they wouldn’t run it because its similarity to the rest of the magazine would be too confusing for readers.

The Frito-Lay ad was the first time Jarvis recalls seeing a company mimic the look of a publication. Jarvis says that advertisers have always tried to fit seamlessly into the journalistic integrity of their respective publications, despite resistance from news organizations. But 30 years after the Frito-Lay ad, publications have given in to native ads. It’s rare to peruse a magazine, newspaper or online outlet without finding branded content that mirrors the publication. Often, the lone differentiator is a small, two-word “sponsored content” label somewhere on the page—sometimes, even that label is absent.

Many journalists fear that running sponsored print ads will confuse readers, diminishing trust in news and bringing journalistic integrity into question. “The problem with native [advertising] is that it does try to confuse the reader,” Jarvis says. “And as [the journalism] industry got more desperate, we finally got ready to sell our seed corn. That is our reputation, our editorial space.”

Native advertising does seem to be embraced by the audience. A 2018 report from Reuters found that . And as native ads have proven effective, advertisers have invested. EMarketer predicted that , nearly $9 billion more than they did the year before.

While social media platforms receive the largest chunk of that money, the revenue will mean far more to news organizations, which have suffered financially in the transition from print to online. In 2017, a study from WAN-IFRA and the Native Advertising Institute found that native ads brought in . By 2021, this figure is expected to rise to 36%.

But native ads are inherently confusing. They mimic their surroundings and try to avoid being an interruption. Although Reuters’ study finds that 86% of readers can tell the difference between editorial and branded content, 14% can’t—a non-negligible number in journalism, an industry that relies on reader confidence.

In a 2016 paper titled “,” researchers asked journalists, advertisers and public relations professionals about their perceptions of native advertising. Each group raised ethical concerns, primarily worrying that native advertising is deceptive and lacks transparency. But advertising and public relations professionals said these ads are a necessary evil, one that’s effective and could be done ethically. One of the study’s authors—Erin Schauster, assistant professor of advertising, public relations and media design at the University of Colorado Boulder and a former advertising account executive—finds it troubling that any readers would be unable to tell the difference between a reported piece and a branded one. She’s unsure if native ads can ever truly be ethical. Not only is journalism’s reputation based in accuracy, but advertising’s reputation is built on trust and the best interests of customers. “You’re not representing the best interests of your client if that’s the approach you take,” Schauster says.

Perhaps the best example of readers feeling tricked by a native ad came in 2013, when sponsored content from the Church of Scientology was posted on The Atlantic’s website. Readers expected a piece of reported journalism about the religion and instead got a laudatory piece of content marketing. Readers were upset, causing the magazine to . Since then, The Atlantic’s branded content has seemingly improved—in 2016, the company’s senior vice president and publisher Hayley Romer said sponsored content comprised .

Jarvis, now director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at The City University of New York, says he now finds branded content acceptable, so long as it’s clear that the ad is actually an ad. But he believes that publications should follow the advice an editor gave him decades ago: “The reader must never be confused about the source of content.”

Here are six ways advertisers, publishers and journalists can ensure that the native advertisements they create are clear and ethical.

1. Follow FTC Guidelines

Schauster says that the baseline for any piece of branded content must be the . Even these rules are often broken, she says.

The FTC’s policy boils down to these tenets:

• Be transparent.
• Disclosures are necessary where content could be deceiving.
• The disclosure, when needed, must be unambiguous and prominent.

2. Clear Labeling

The FTC’s “when needed” caveat grants wiggle room to advertisers and publications. Some try to weasel out of clear labeling by changing the ad’s font as a differentiator, Jarvis says. But the average reader won’t know or care what a different font means.

Even true labels can be opaque. Jarvis says that the Forbes’ “—denoting Forbes’ content marketing arm—is an example of bad labeling. Forbes used to have a “What’s this?” link next to the Brandvoice label, Jarvis says, but a label isn’t clear if a reader sees it and immediately asks, “What’s this?”

To be ethical, sponsored content labels must be obvious. No trickery, font changes or off-kilter paragraph alignments.

3. Research More

Jarvis believes that publications, advertisers and researchers should study how the audience sees labeling as they read.

Jarvis says that he recently spoke with a researcher who told him that publications should avoid putting the label in the top quarter of the page—readers have been conditioned to know that this part of the page has no new content, so a “sponsored content” label is likely to get lost. But he believes that more research could help all sides of the native advertising debate.

4. Make the Brand Part of the Byline

Schauster makes the case for brand names appearing in the byline, making it more obvious when a piece is sponsored content. This would also give the brand ownership of the content.

“Brands are all about building reputations with their consumers,” she says. “One way [to do that] is through editorial content that we publish. We’re sponsoring that content to be written, published and brought to an audience. Let’s make that known that we’re aligning with that content.”

5. Never Hard-Sell

Schauster says that brands writing native advertising pieces should leave out the sales pitch.

“It can’t have a slant. That’s not what it is,” she says. “[Native advertising is] aligning your brand with content and the stories that you think are of interest and value to the reader.”

Schauster says that The New York Times’ piece on female prison inmates is a great example of sponsored content that didn’t try to hard-sell readers. ,” placing logos of the show throughout the piece.

“Obviously Netflix was promoting a show, but there was no hard promotion,” she says. “That’s the advertising nature—the financial support. But it’s not a hard-sell. It’s information. It’s content that’s of value to your reader.”

6. Stay Out of the News

The Netflix-sponsored piece was written by Melanie Deziel, who was the Times’ editor of digital branded content. Jarvis says that if news organizations run sponsored content, they should leave the writing to those outside of editorial, as the Times did. Journalists can’t serve both the brand and the public, he says.

From the advertiser’s side, Schauster says that sponsored content works much the same as public relations—call the media’s attention to an issue, then stay out of the process. Many newspapers and magazines now have their own advertising arms to create sponsored content—Buzzfeed, The New York Times and The Atlantic are some of the most prominent examples.

Leaving the writing to publications is more than just ethical; it’s a benefit to advertisers, too. While advertising agencies know about audiences, analytics, developing creative and media placement, Schauster says that they don’t know about writing engaging news content. Maybe one day ad agencies will hire journalists to write sponsored content, she says, but until then: “You leave it to the publishers to do that.”

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Just as some customers walk directly to the back of a store, knowing this is where the retailer displays sale items, many shoppers quickly scroll down a web page to seek product reviews. Checking reviews has become second nature to consumers. Looking for a new taco joint? See what’s rated well on Yelp. Torn between two vacuum cleaners? See which has the better star rating.

The age of ratings and reviews was arguably ushered in by Amazon. The company has perfected the art, implementing a standard five-star rating system that allows customers to post photos and videos of products, and even making reviews searchable for those with a specific question or concern. But they’ve also opened themselves up to abuse, spawning fake reviews and manipulated ratings.

Customers still rely on these systems to guide their purchasing decisions. Ethical brands shouldn’t directly guide or censor customer feedback, but they can help build robust, trustworthy review systems that can help answer shopper questions.

Why Ratings and Reviews Matter

According to Pew Research Center, 82% of U.S. adults say they at least sometimes read online ratings or reviews before buying items for the first time, including 40% who say they always or almost always look at ratings or reviews. According to , the typical next step after reading a positive review is for the consumer to visit the company website (50%) or search for more reviews to validate their choice (19%). This marked a notable shift from 2017, when visiting the website as a next step was chosen by 37% of survey respondents and 26% said they searched elsewhere for validation.

The robots are also looking at reviews: Moz’s 2018 research found that review signals—defined as review quality, velocity and diversity—in local search-ranking factors.

Cheryl Sullivan, president of price and promotion at DemandTec and previously CMO of PowerReviews, says that customer reviews—also referred to as user-generated content (UGC)—went from “nice to have” to “need to have.”

“Shoppers have lost a lot of faith and trust in retailers and brands today, and they’re really starting to turn more toward other shoppers,” Sullivan says. “Brands and retailers are starting to realize that [UGC] has to be part of their overall marketing strategy.”

How to Get Customers to Post (Helpful) Reviews

Sullivan says that encouraging shoppers to review a product can be difficult, so it’s incumbent upon marketers to guide them to take action and provide robust content. For example, she recommends directing post-purchase consumers to a display they can fill out with their review, one that asks questions that are customized to their buy.

“We’ll try to get images, we’ll try to get video, things like that up front because that’s more compelling content,” she says.

Many companies compel customers to review their products or services by offering something in return. Perhaps you’ve been to a dentist that offers a free tube of lip balm if you review them on Yelp, or maybe you’ve received email offers to be entered to win a gift card if you review a clothing purchase online. Incentivizing reviews is absolutely a strategy, but it should be done cautiously.

“There is a debate in the industry right now specifically on that question [of ethical incentivizing],” says Jared Watson, assistant professor of marketing at New York University. “There are some who suggest that it creates a biased account of the product when you incentivize reviews. And therefore, when companies choose to incentivize reviews, they’re actually sort of misleading their potential customers. My personal take on it is that [it’s acceptable] as long as you’re forthright about, ‘You’re entered into this contest, regardless of what kind of review you write for the product.’ But anything that helps encourage more reviews is better for the ecosystem.”

If you do plan to use a specific review in marketing collateral, be sure to make that clear to the reviewer. Either explicitly mention that their reviews may be used in advertising upon submission, or contact the reviewer before using it in an ad.

Highlighting Your Reviews

The best reviews go beyond a simple, “Product xyz was good,” and provide details—especially as it relates to use.

“Anything that helps the consumer visualize usage helps,” Watson says. “Obviously, pictures and videos help consumers visualize how it might be used, where it might be placed, how it might fit with other things. You can also do the same thing with text: Descriptive text describing the flavors and the contrast of everything at that restaurant might be more impactful than simply, say, ‘This was good’ or ‘It had a fair price.’ Take some of those descriptive words that might be sort of emotionally laden—beyond ‘I was satisfied with things,’ use ‘I was thrilled, I was exuberant, etc.’ Everything that can evoke emotion and invoke the ability to visualize the experience or the usage of that product helps.”

Watson says consumers often place more weight on the actual text of the review, relative to aggregate metrics. Think of the ability to search reviews for keywords on Amazon, or the way some clothing retailers allow review filters by item size.

“Advertising specific lines or sentiment that comes from other people could help you overcome some of those deficits that you might have in the aggregate categories of ratings or the number of reviews,” Watson says.

Highlighting specific use cases via UGC can help potential buyers imagine themselves using the product or service as well. It’s similar to brands migrating to microinfluencers: It’s easier for a consumer to relate.

“What shoppers really want to see is people like them, that they know—not a Kim Kardashian that’s going to have a makeup crew behind them to make the product work,” Sullivan says. “They want to know what somebody like me, like you [thinks] and how their experience was around this product.”

Be Honest ÂÜÀòÉçčÙÍűt Ratings

Consumers want to trust other consumers, but brands need to do some work to make the whole process more honest and transparent.

Because of the issues surrounding fake and paid reviews on Amazon, some other review companies have instituted systems to check the validity of reviews. For example, Sullivan says PowerReviews combines artificial intelligence and human moderators to ensure content is authentic.

The reviewers aren’t the only ones who need to be honest: Brands need to let all reviews live, not just the best ones. Killing a one-star or angry review won’t win you any new fans—and it can even hurt a brand’s authenticity. It would be akin to saying you don’t have any shortcomings in a job interview. “A lot of people try to prevent the bad ones from going through,” Sullivan says. “There is a misnomer that five stars is good. In reality, what’s good is 4.5 and 4.6. People don’t even trust five stars anymore.”

Brands also have to work against a simple reality: Research by Watson and his co-authors shows that consumers are more willing to trust a product that has more reviews with a lower average rating than a product with fewer reviews and a higher average rating. But the product with more reviews may simply have been on the market longer—it isn’t necessarily the superior item. Watson suggests pointing this out to consumers, or running a promotion seeking reviews and explaining why.

Watson also suggests promoting velocity metrics over absolute numbers of ratings in volume. “[This is] being able to say that over the last week the number of reviews has increased by 10% or the change in ratings has changed by 10% up or 10% down,” he says. “That gives consumers some insight into that time dimension. 
 Knowing how many people are buying it today or this past week or this past month might be better than knowing how many people bought it over the lifecycle of the product. That’s something that I think managers and retailers from the brand and the retail perspective aren’t emphasizing enough, the philosophy when it comes to word of mouth, because that would be a more accurate picture to the consumers.”

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