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ISSUE 8
THE DIGITAL ISSUE
How are companies utilizing new digital strategies to achieve business success?
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Editor’s Letter
Letter From The Editor Welcome to this edition for Chief Strategy Officer. This edition is dedicated to digital strategies and the ways in which companies are utilizing digital products and online services to improve business output. Digital strategies today go into more than social media, they look at everything from website design to the devices used by employees and we look at some of these key issues in this issue. Michaela Jeffery-Morrison looks at how the way that companies are looking at online content strategies is changing, and the way they should be looking at it in the future. As the idea of Bring Your Own Device spreads to more and more companies, we take a look at the pros and cons surrounding this sometimes controversial practice.
Susan Varty, Managing Partner at HeadStart Social, talks to us about the importance of social media and buy in throughout the company to create future success. As always, if you like the magazine please share it. We are also looking for new contributors, if you feel that you have a new idea that you want to spread, please get in contact at
ghill@theiegroup.com
George Hill Managing Editor
With digital strategies offering us more breadth than ever to experiment and work in an agile way, we investigate how people are measuring their successes and how this should be impacting their future strategies. Claire Walmsley takes us through the ways in which companies are looking at their UX and UI for websites in more detail than ever before. With the increasing use of mobile and tablet, how is this changing?
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Managing Editor George Hill President Josie King Assistant Editor Simon Barton Art Director Gavin Bailey Advertising Hannah Sturgess Contributors Michaela JefferyMorrison Emma Flanagan Claire Walmsley Max Bowen General Enquiries
ghill@theiegroup.com
Advertising Enquiries If you are looking to put your products in front of key decision makers, Contact Hannah at hsturgess@theiegroup.com for more details.
hsturgess@theiegroup.com
Contents
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Contents
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Michaela Jeffery-Morrison looks at the growth of content strategy and how companies today need to take a new approach As Bring Your Own Device becomes a widely adopted technology strategy we look at the pros and cons of it Digital strategies give us the best opportunities for measurement and experimentation, Emma Flanagan looks at how this is being done Claire Walmsley takes us through the importance of having a clear UX and UI strategy in all digital offerings Simon Barton talks to Susan Varty, Managing Partner at HeadStart Social about the adoption of social media in small to medium sized companies
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Digital Strategy Innovation Summit #DigitalSF
Digital Intelligence
September 25 & 26 San Francisco, 2014
For more information contact Zain Yasin +1 415 992 53 52 zyasin@theiegroup.com theinnovationenterprise.com/summits
ie.
Content Strategy
Coherence in Content Strategy Michaela Jeffery-Morrison Strategy Leader
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Content Strategy
Content strategy is no longer Pebble was one of the most popular crowdsourced products the new kid on the block. Look at almost any forward of the last 3 years, with a level of thinking company today and investment that far outweighed they will be writing blogs, white- the initial number requested. The papers or creating Youtube vid- idea behind the product is simeos. In reality it is something ple, it is a way of viewing what is that is only going to increase happening on your smartphone and whether this is either a very from your wrist. It allows you to good or very bad thing depends control music, use custom apps and even create apps yourself. on a number of factors. This is all shown in a simple vidThe truth is that most companies eo with a voiceover on their Kickrealise that people no longer re- starter site. It includes several act to something because it has shots of the founders showing a good looking website or be- how they came up with the idea, cause there are several posts people using the smartwatch from a company promoting the and the ways that they are goproduct. With the rise in availa- ing to develop in the future. bility of information with wider access to the internet, people The initial investment requested can have thousands of pages on the Kickstarter site was of information in front of them $100,000 to begin production of within seconds, all exclaiming the smartwatch. The campaign the pro’s and con’s of any prod- had attracted over $1m within 28 hours and was stopped when uct. the campaign hit $10m. This Setting a product aside is is not just achieving what now more than simply mak- was expected, but due to ing the best product, it is about the level of connection demonstrating a knowledge of that people felt with everything around that area. the product and the This is where content strategies people behind it, have provided the key; compa- they achieved 100 nies have now become publish- times more than ers. they needed. would People no longer want to read This never have sales literature about a product, they want to be captivated by a been the story and a narrative around the case if product and this is what makes they had the product more than just an object to own or a service to use. Take crowdsourced products as a prime example of how content can be used to tell a story.
Content Strategy
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expressed the merits of the watch through technical specifications alone. Instead, by creating a narrative for the watch and a connection to their potential backers, they found unprecedented success.
longer the key to disseminating information that people will find interesting, it has almost gone full circle where it is necessary to have a marketing strategy for a content marketing strategy.
However, the secret is now out.
or the lowest c o m m o n
How is it possible to set your The narrative that a content work apart from others in the strategy creates is more than same area when there are tens simply telling a story, it is about of whitepapers attempting to creating a personality. Through discuss the same things as your the creation of a personality company? If there are 100 blogs it is possible for a company to on the same subject how do the become more transparent with general public know which one their customers, creating an in- to choose from? creased level of trust and help- We have now moved on from the ing people to identify with them simple ‘have a strategy’ and are on a level that would not have now in the ‘create an effective been possible through tradition- strategy’. Much how social al corporate communications media used to be the strategies. realm of the intern We are seeing an increasing amount of fluff created by companies who either do not understand the basics of content strategies or who choose to ignore it and instead revert to quantity over quality. The reality today is that having a content strategy is no
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Content Strategy
denominator in the company, content is moving in the same direction. Do not think that it is worth putting something out for the sake of putting something out. If people read a poor post from your company they will be annoyed, if they read two they will be disappointed in the company and if they read three the chances are they will be disappointed in themselves for falling for the same trick again.
number of hits that the closely controlled blogs had received. The blog itself made no sales pitches, had no additional links included and did not discuss the intricacies of the products we sold. Instead it told stories about some of the personalities in the company. It actually generated far more calls to the office than any of the previous blogs yet it was against the ‘content strategy’ that had been in place.
As a prime example of how it doesn’t work is one that I have personal experience in. After graduating from University I started working as a blog writer, I was tasked with writing one blog per day about a product that this company had several of throughout London. I was given a list with several key SEO terms that I had to put into every blog. In addition to this, every blog needed to discuss the same aspects of each ‘product’ to create as many links to them as possible from Google.
This case shows, it is not about churning out content and it is not about the importance of having content every day. Setting a quota may be good in some cases, but when this creates an inflexible machine allowing for nothing but repetition, it will act as a hindrance to success.
This kind of poor strategy also has a knock-on effect. Internally, with damaging results from the initial strategy, the chances of getting buy-in for another content strategy from senior colleagues is slim. Externally, by What we ended up with was pushing out fluff it dilutes the a series of beige articles that content of others, making good were nothing but sales pitches content harder to find as uswith no variety in content be- ers need to sift through to find cause for months each article something interesting. needed to discuss exactly the A poor strategy today can have same aspects. Towards the end knock-on effects far beyond of my time at the company, we your own reputation and as we received a coffee machine for see the success that this kind of the staff as a thank you from the work has, we need to avoid this management. After receiving at all costs. this I wrote a blog discussing this coffee machine and the impact that it had on the staff in the office. It had over 50 times the
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BYOD
Bring Your Own Device Strategy Max Bowen Strategy Leader
BYOD
If you were to take a snapshot of an office in London, chances are, BYOD would be present in the majority. BYOD, an acronym for Bring Your Own Device, reflects the ubiquity of personal owned handheld devices within the workplace and how those devices are being used to access company resources. At the peril of BYOD are servers and databases, and for strategists these represent a challenge, but a challenge that will reap significant benefits if embraced correctly. A mere four years after release, the tablet market is nearing maturity and similar to smartphones, profitability has been impressive in the short-term. Smartphone penetration in the 18-24 demographic is as high as 80% in developed countries and even with the slight generation gap seen in the over 55’s, the trend towards smartphone and tablet ownership is still on the up. In response to BYOD, Chief Strategy Officers have been under pressure to transform the initial risk management initiative into one that delivers a competitive advantage. Much of the coverage on BYOD has been centred on privacy and data security issues, but this is dismissive of the advantages BYOD can bring, although the potential returns can be difficult to quantify. Gains in productivity are the
most telling case for BYOD business cases. A study by Intel showed that BYOD increases an employees’ working day by one hour and increased their connectivity out of office significantly. Despite this, little has been done to prove whether this hour is spent productively and whether it adds any value to the company. Increased work hours, however, could precipitate an adverse work, life balance and in turn demotivation. This is a real caveat for the increased productivity argument but shouldn’t necessarily put off advocates. Workers are far more content to catch-up on emails and prepare for meetings and projects on the move
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BYOD
now, and for many, the commute is seen as an extension of their working day. This trend would not be possible if it weren’t for BYOD.
mentioned as an advantage of BYOD. On the surface this may be the case with initial outlays and continued maintenance.
Howver, this is an argument In times of urgency, the elimi- that is not clear-cut, with nation of boundaries between surveys indicating that 67% of home and work also act as insur- IT professionals felt that BYOD ance for companies. Increased would actually increase costs, connection through the use of because early use was likely these devices allows for com- to be either complementary or additive and the extra layer of munications to be maintained. Additionally, when working re- security needed may actually be motely, BYOD allows people more expensive in the long term. to carry a single gadget rather Savings are possible though. If than seperate devices for both an employee owns an iPad and is work and personal use. In es- willing to use it in a work context, sence, BYOD has the capacity to then it negates the need for a increase productivity, efficiency company to purchase a device for them. Although this and flexibility. is a promising IT savings development, have also there is a b e e n
BYOD
justifiable argument that employees should not need to buy their own devices for work. The basic premise being that working for a company is based on making money for them, so outlaying personal wealth for company gain should not be expected. Often if a device is owned by the employee rather than the company, usage may be less frequent. The perceived lack of ruggedness seen in new technology is often deemed as being too risky for use within a company. Why risk breaking an expensive piece of technology for work? These issues have led to companies offering an allowance each month for upkeep for self owned technology used for work. This means that although initial outlay may be less, ongoing upkeep costs will diminish savings significantly. There has also been a trend towards maintenance responsibilities being placed on the employee. This can increase cost savings even if an organization supplies its employees with a device. There is often a support contract put in place where the employee is required to pay a reduced yearly rate to protect their device. However, this has raised some issues with personal income being used for company gain and
is often deemed to be unenforceable. Attracting the very best graduates is also an area where BYOD can play a significant role. If BOYD is used as an added incentive it allows the brightest prospective employees to work in the environment in which they feel most comfortable. This not only creates an increased productivity, but it means that new employees are confident using platforms that
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BYOD
they are already competent with. The use of cloud based storage is also making the use of multiple devices, either personal or company owned, more viable. The ability to access files from anywhere at any time through online portals means that files are also more secure. If one device is destroyed, it has no bearing on the security of the file. However, the flip side of this is that if a personal device is lost or stolen, the security of everything that has been accessed through it and every account that it is attached to is compromised. Therefore a BYOD may have additional security issues beyond simple firewall integration. The overall impact that BYOD has had already is impressive, just from regular interactions with friends and colleagues, most have work emails attached to their smartphones at the least. Even when looking at the basic out of offices that we receive on a day-to-day basis, a common line is ‘I will be on holiday with no access to emails’. The fact that this line needs to be there shows that there is an infiltration of work needs into personal technology. How far this goes and how companies view this will be on a case-by-case basis, but the ultimate impact is yet to be seen.
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Experiment & Measure
Experiment and Measure Emma Flanagan Strategy Leader
Experiment & Measure
Digital strategies are different. They cannot conform to the definition of strategy: ‘a plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim’.
With static initiatives and directives in place, a long term strategy cannot be implemented effectively.
Setting out a digital strategy cannot work in this same way, regardless of how good the person who came up with the strategy was.
der to gain feedback, people are unlikely to want to fill in online surveys or tick boxes and if the feedback being worked on is simply based on this, then it will not be effective. The ideal feedback comes when people are unaware of giving it.
Staying on the path analogy for The idea behind planned strat- digital strategies, the best way egies are to direct a team, com- is to set a destination but work pany or individual towards a fi- through feedback to nal goal. This is achieved through actually get there. setting targets in order to arrive Core to this idea is at an eventual goal. measurability. In or-
There should be no such thing as a set pathway for digital strategies, having a set pathway damages the chances of eventual success. By limiting what can be done and how to react to certain situations, the breadth of what should be achieved can be narrowed. It can even put companies further back than where they initially started. Having the wrong digital strategy creates a view of a company that makes it look further behind the times than if they had done nothing. Look at Apple as a prime example of this, in terms of digital communications, little is said, there is little social media output, but it is successful. It is not necessarily about setting out a path of sending a certain number of tweets or Facebook posts, sometimes it can be about doing little to achieve a lot.
The use of analytics has been widely adopted
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Experiment & Measure
in business for years, but it is more than seeing the numbers of people visiting a site, it moves into the core values of why people are visiting your site and what they do whilst they are there. Seeing what content people are reacting to will allow you to create content to fulfil the same needs and branch into similar areas. It will also show you which areas it’s worth investing in, meaning that it has a wider context than a basic marketing role. Heatmapping allows for companies to see what people like or don’t like about the UX of a site, something that is vital today. Are your call to actions working? If so, are they worth changing or sticking to the same formula? Are people finding the navigation easy or difficult? These can all be explored a n d changed through this use of tracking. It allows not only for
an indication of what works, but also what can be done better. Analytics are now about more than simply websites, the majority of interactions online now take place through social media. The reality is that there are a vast array of analytics that can be used for social media monitoring. This goes from basic numbers of tweets being sent and mentions of a company through to complex sentiment analysis where you can see who is discussing you or a campaign in a positive or negative way. It allows you to adjust your voice, after all, the majority of people will now hear your company not through the voices of press releases, but through the people in charge of your social media accounts. The knowledge of this can allow you to change your voice and even your message to have maximum impact. The use of analytics alone is not going to make a great digital strategy, though. The need to have a team of creative people who are not only willing but actively encouraged to experiment will herald the best results. A prime example is one of Sainbury’s (a UK supermarket) twitter account users who had a conversation with a customer using fish puns. It received universal acclaim, and this simple exercise changed the perception that many had, as it being an old and traditional company.
Experiment & Measure
This kind of exercise would never have been implemented within a strictly controlled strategy and it is only through flexibility and the confidence to experiment that it occurred. That a culture existed to allow somebody to try this is what made it a success, if they had strict guidelines for the use of this then it may well have never happened.
away, but to make adjustments and have the confidence and flexibility to make these consistent in order to reach an end goal.
One of the important aspects of digital strategies is also counter-intuitive by nature. The end goal should be an organic and changing goal, one that can be met, but one that can always be improved. This Should this have gone the is due to the nature of a digiother way and not been suc- tal arena, it is fast paced and cessful, the company could if a company manages to suchave changed their tactics to ceed on Twitter it would not reflect that. The idea is not to be transferrable to the next get everything right straight social platform, a platform
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that probably does not even exist yet. Therefore, to be successful in the digital arena it is important to remember three key messages: Experiment, Measure and Adjust.
Strategic Initiative Management
Closing the gap between strategy development and implementation.
A recent EIU/PMI study found that only 17% of executives see strategy implementation as strategic1 — what else could it be? Maybe that’s why half of an organization’s strategic initiatives fail to meet their business goals, wasting $149 million for every $1 billion invested2. Smart executives are looking for ways to complete their programs more often and more successfully. Leading organizations are racing to formalize their project and program management practices — practices that are proven to save time, money and deliver a competitive advantage. Visit PMI in the exhibit hall to learn more about closing the gap between strategy development and implementation and improve your organization’s bottom line today.
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©2014 Project Management Institute. All rights reserved. “PMI” and the PMI logo are marks of Project Management Institute, Inc. 1 Economist Intelligence Unit. Why Good Strategies Fail: Lessons for the C-Suite. July 2013. 2 PMI. Pulse of the Profession® In-Depth Report: Enabling Organizational Change Through Strategic Initiatives. March 2014.
UX Strategy
UX Strategies Claire Walmsley Strategy Leader
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UX Strategy
UX is often a concept that people find fluffy and lacking definition, it is something that needs to be discussed but many who are involved in the final sign off on a website will pay little attention to it during construction. This is all despite UX now being one of the most important aspect of website use. The undeniable fact is that the infiltration of smartphones and tablets has been so thorough and quick, that those who are not looking at their UX across every platform are not just missing out, but are shooting themselves in the foot. For those not in the know, the official line on UX is that it represents user experience, the ways in which your customers or website users interact with your website or other digital offerings. It has been a concept that has been around for over a decade, but has only really managed to realise it’s importance in the last 5 years. When we look back at the history of internet adoption by companies, first the most important aspect was having a website, then it was having a pretty website, then it was having a pretty website where you could sell things and now we are at a stage where websites need to look good, have the ability to sell and also be functional in use. If a website is stunning, with backgrounds that could be dis-
played in galleries and buttons that look like they have been carved by masters, it won’t matter if another site can take people through their website journey more effectively. The idea is no longer that people go to a website for the sake of it, people go to a website for a task, be it to buy something or even to simply read a blog. The difference between the two doesn’t matter in UX, the idea is to make the journey through a site as simple and intuitive as possible for the end user.
UX Strategy
Ultimately, people today have become more impatient, the difference in waiting for 3 seconds and 15 seconds can be enough to cost a sale or sign up. If you haven’t got it right then somebody else will have done and they will ultimately get their attention. It goes for more than just looking at the functionality of a website from a computer screen where they will have been designed originally. The importance of these designs on mobile devices cannot be overstated. Many first interactions with your company will come from smartphones and tablets and if your product or service has sparked an interest then people will want to investigate, whether or not they are next to a computer. If your site doesn’t perform well on a smartphone, they will simply look elsewhere. The same goes for the multiple different operating systems and browsers on new devices. They are constantly evolving and even if they only make small changes to the usability of your site, this could have serious ramifications for sales and interactions. Ultimately, UX has become so important in digital strategy that it could be argued that the way a site looks should come second to the UX. Essentially the UX designers should create the foundation and basic building blocks of the website and
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the traditional designers should be looking at the colours on the walls. This would never happen however, as a website is more than a simple conversion funnel, it represents the personality of a company online. At the same time, this also echo’s the importance of a good UX strategy. A website that represents the personality of your company can’t be pretty but frustrating. It needs to represent thoughtfulness in addition to good aesthetics, one without the other is an exercise in customer frustration.
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Chief Innovation Officer Summit Inciting Discovery, Inspiring Change
June 18 & 19, 2014 San Francisco
Speakers Include:
#CINOSF For more information please contact Zain Yasin: +1 (415) 992 5352 zyasin@theiegroup.com theinnovationenterprise.com/summits
ie.
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Susan Varty
An Interview with Susan Varty, Managing Partner, Head Start Social Simon Barton Assistant Editor
Susan Varty
If you are reading this magazine, the chances are high that you have heard a lot about how to implement Social Media effectively. For most strategists, it is not a matter of implementation, but instead an issue of what to do once implemented and what content you need to successfully engage with your audience. Sadly, most marketers only scratch the surface when it comes to reaping the rewards of the social space, and even for the biggest companies, Social Media remains a considerable conundrum to crack. Increasingly, companies are looking externally for guidance. This has paved the way for a number of digital agencies whose aim is to allow their clients to move away from digital mediocrity. At the centre of this shift is HeadStart Social, an agency that has been working to help companies move forward into the digital world. Since 2006 Susan Varty has been an integral member of this team and recently I sat down with her to discuss her ideas and beliefs around Social Media. Through the emergence of the digital space, we have seen different metrics become the main indicator of how well a website is performing. Right now conversion rates are a hot topic and viewed as an essential KPI. Susan states; “Conversion rates are what bring in investments from clients.� This is a clear deviation from the old marker, which was
purely a sum of the visitors that a website had over the course of a period of time. This philosophy is out-dated. Today it’s about inspiring your visitors to respond to a call to action and return in the future. This challenge is one that Susan has risen to. She emphasises the presence of a learning curve between Digital Marketers and their clients.
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Susan Varty
She addresses the issue was a distinct vein of optimism, with a hope that the younger generation will play an important role in bridging this knowledge gap.
considerable for smaller companies. Fortunately, as Susan points out, companies who do this successfully do so by effectively using free social media networks. Free networks don’t just act as a new communication channel to promote interaction with consumers, but also as a form of improving SEO and brand awareness. Susan understands that this is all well and good if employees treat it as a priority and find the time to create engaging content, but often this is not the case.
Fortunately for big consumer brands this learning curve isn’t so pronounced, but for small to mid-size companies, issues can be rife. For them, a process of development has to ensue or they face an uphill battle to get to the same level as their larger counterparts. However, as marketers develop their skills, and soften the daunting learning curve in front of them, the crea- On top of this, she feels that tivity of their content should take companies are somewhat fearful to dedicate the time and centre stage. The challenges associ- money needed from employees ated with stand- to post effective content online i n g - o u t and maintain up-to-date profrom the files across social media chancrowd nels, “A lot of these things, they a r e take time and people don’t know where to start”. But venturing into the Social Media sphere is something that should take centre stage and be part of every employee’s daily tasks. For Susan it’s not about having a dedicated team of Social Media experts, but a culture of digital fluency where everyone from entrylevel workers to CEO’s have the confidence to express themselves and the companies values online. This means time must be dedicated early on to developing alluring personal accounts that are ready to entice the company’s next, new customer.
Susan Varty
Once deemed a sub-plot to an organization’s overarching strategy, the digital side of an organization’s operations is increasingly becoming a pillar of it. Once a tool for subsections of society, it is now one of the most powerful communication tools, that is if people know how to make the most of it. One site that the business world are making the most of is LinkedIn, for Susan this is a welcome development. She states, “CEO’s are on LinkedIn because they know potential clients are always looking at them.” This desire is born out of pride in their image and reputation, as well as that of their company, to be of the highest standing possible. Varty and her team at HeadStart Social clearly envisage LinkedIn being an important platform for thought leaders in the B2B space in the future. An advocate of search engines and word of mouth, Varty feels that, “I’m not just talking about potential new hires, it’s really about raising your profile so that you’re seen as a thought leader within your industry.” If you want to improve your brand image on the web and increase web traffic, then the bottom line is that you have to invest in your employees. Susan feels that this isn’t necessarily about getting the help of an agency and that internal staff have the ability to paint vivid pictures of the company. She states; “The stories that exist
about the business are always best coming from the business. It’s more authentic that way and generates more content”. This is why it is important that managers look to those with the correct skill-sets to lead by example so that operations don’t need to be outsourced. Much of what has been discussed here seems fairly straightforward, but these problems still persist for a number of prominent organizations. As an experienced marketer, Susan strongly believes in the power of digital and its capacity to improve brand image. With companies increasingly looking for varied ways to create awareness, the work of Susan and others in the same area will be vital now and in the coming years.
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Email dwatts@theiegroup.com for more information