Plan Ahead 

From us to you: Going into interviews blind is bad news. Before interviewing your audience, consider what you want to talk to them about. What questions do you want to ask? What knowledge gaps do you have? What would be the most valuable information to have about them? What do you need to build your brand and develop a robust content strategy?  

Spend a brainstorming sesh with your team, hashing out a blueprint for your interview. There are a few buckets you can place audience questions into that lead to meaningful insights. Here’s how to look at it (in case it helps you get the juices flowing): 

• Industry perception—to what extent do they engage with your industry and what walls do they run into.
• Brand perception—ask them for feedback, including what you’re doing well and what they wish you would do instead.
• Content engagement—what have they read, listened to, or watched lately, and what stood out to them about the content.
• Behaviors—explore their actions in the context of your products or services.
• Emotions—ask about their emotional reactions to your offerings.
• Defining characteristics—to understand your audience, you must know what makes them tick. Ask them about their hopes, dreams, priorities, and challenges.

Your blueprint for your interview can evolve (more on that below), but if you go in with a plan, you’ll be more likely to get what you need out of the interview, which ultimately saves you time and money. 

Set the Stage

Yes, how high you have the heat set or whether you schedule a Zoom interview can all impact your audience interview results. Before you have your heart to heart with your audience, make the setting conducive to an insightful interview. 

1. Eliminate distractions—have somebody babysit the children, put the dog in another room, and reschedule that team ping-pong tournament for another day. 
2. Adjust stimuli—check your lighting, ambient noise, and even your artwork on the walls. 
3. Let your interviewee call the shots—if they’re more comfortable being interviewed in their home, try to oblige.
4. Be a tour guide—explain the purpose of the interview, what the interviewee can expect during the interview, and how long you anticipate the interview will last. 
5. Provide space—address any concerns or questions from the interviewee before starting. 
6. Ease them into the interview—pretend you’re on a date; break the ice before jumping right in. 

Once the infrastructure is there, everybody’s sole focus can be on the interview itself. 

Record, Sleep On It, Revisit 

Always ask your interviewee if it’s okay if you record them. Even though it’s technically legal to record without consent if you are a participating party in the conversation, it’s good manners to let your interviewee know what’s going on. Recording your conversation comes with multiple benefits. 

When you’re in the middle of interviewing somebody, your focus is on guiding the conversation, not on the insights. You will need to return to the conversation in a different mindset to gather your insights. 

The interview contents may help you pull quotations or come up with content ideas. You can share the recording with relevant team members, who can offer their interpretation of the interview. That can lead to additional or refined insights. Either way, once you conclude the interview, set it aside for at least a few hours to let the experience digest. Then, revisit it to discover what you learned.

Yes, you can take notes but we recommend you put your full attention on the interviewee. 

Ask High-Quality Questions

One of the biggest mistakes interviewers make is to ask the wrong questions, such as leading or close-ended questions. Or both. The issue with leading questions is that you’re apt to fall victim to confirmation bias, encouraging the interviewee to answer how you want them to respond, not how they think or feel. And close-ended questions leave little room for exploration. Insights can exist on the surface but are much more likely to be found after peeling back the layers. 

So the secret to compelling audience interviews is to ask open-ended questions. What’s the difference between open-ended and closed-ended questions? We’re glad you asked. Look at these two questions. 

Was your last experience purchasing our product positive? 

Vs. 

What was your experience like the last time you purchased a product from our company? 

The first question elicits a yes or no response. Functionally, it tells you nothing. If your audience says yes, great, but you need to know why it was positive. Maybe they loved your expanded shipping options, or they spoke with a rep that provided fantastic customer service, but you’ll never know because of the verbal door slam. The second question asks them to share a description of the experience, which allows you to mine for gold (insights). 

Let’s try another one but this time with a leading question. 

Lots of women find it challenging to balance work and family. So how do you balance work and family? 

Vs. 

We’re interested in your experience with balancing work and family. How would you describe how you balance work and family? 

With the first question, you’re planting a seed that introduces bias. The word “challenging” is that seed. So instead, the second question maintains neutral phrasing and provides space for the interviewee to tell you about their experience using their own words.

Here are bonus pointers to keep your questions effective. 

• Avoid using adjectives; they’re often leading (see above). 
• Keep your phrasing neutral, direct, and concise. 
• Don’t reference other audience interviews; just ask them.  
• Ask one question at a time, and then let them answer. 
• Use the fewest words possible to avoid confusion. 
• Avoid asking “why,” as it can put interviewees on the defensive. 
• Ease into the more personal questions. 
• Ask about the present first, followed by the future and the past. 
• Remove your opinions/perspectives from the questions. 

Listen Actively and Reflectively 

Your interviewee will be more likely to open up to you if you are an engaged participant in the process. No robots here. Your go-to technique is active listening, and in certain circumstances (interviewing a long-time customer), you can take it up a notch by being a reflective listener. 

Active listening is an art form. It’s founded on holding space and creating the circumstances for somebody to feel heard. Most people just want to be heard, and when people feel heard, it’s amazing what they’re willing to disclose. 

You achieve active listening through a combination of verbal and non-verbal communication. 

Non-verbal communication:

• Eye contact
• Open body language (turned towards the interviewee, relaxed posture, sitting still)
• Refraining from interruptions; let them finish what they’re saying before you make a peep.
• Using silence to encourage further sharing 
• Nodding
• Gesturing 

Verbal communication 

• Encouraging more sharing, i.e., “Tell me more about that.” 
• Acknowledgment responses “Yes,” “Go on,” or “Right,” for example. 
• Open-ended questions (see above)
• Restating to ensure understanding, i.e., “You weren’t happy with your recent purchase.” 

Bottom line: it’s not about you. Your non-verbal and verbal communication centers the interviewee and demonstrates that you’re paying attention to their non-verbal and verbal communication in tangible ways. 

Be a Reflective Listener

Reflective listening is like active listening 2.0. Everything above plus a deeper level of emotional engagement with the interviewee. As stated above, it’s appropriate when you’re talking to an audience member you’ve interviewed before, that has a long history with the company, or has some higher level of familiarity with you, your team, or the company in general. 

Whereas active listening is more, “I’m here, holding space for you to share,” reflective listening is more, “I see you. I really see you.” You’re not just listening; you’re digesting, analyzing, and in many ways, collaborating. 

You summarize what they’re saying.

You reflect to them what you’re understanding in their words and expressions.

You help them clarify and refine what they’re saying.  

You identify the root of what they’re saying. 

Let’s pull out that last one. The interviewee says, “The last time I bought your products, it took foreverrrrr to get to my house. I had to decide whether it was worth it to hold out for you or find another company to buy from. And I thought about it! I’ve used your products for years, and all I wanted was for my order to arrive on time.” 

You might respond, “Your order didn’t arrive on time. You felt frustrated and conflicted. You needed to know you could rely on us to deliver your products when we said we would.” 

You’re not only validating what the interviewee said; you’re pulling out what’s important, even if they didn’t explicitly state it. You identify and name the meaning behind what they said and the emotions they’re expressing. 

In the above example, your interviewee just gave you incredibly valuable information. They considered absconding from your brand because they worried they couldn’t rely on you. You can then troubleshoot your shipping and logistics process, provide better shipping updates, and offer discounts when delays happen to stay in your audience’s good graces. 

Let the Story Lead You

Our final interview technique might just be the most important. When conducting audience interviews, always, always let the story lead you. It’s important to check yourself because audience interviews are exciting, and you’ll probably go into them with all kinds of thoughts, questions, and ideas. So have a plan but step back and get out of the way when necessary. That means you may not get to all of your questions. You may have to come up with new questions in the moment. And you may go down a questionception—asking follow-up question after follow-up question to explore an area of interest. 

Your marketing strategy will be more compelling when you base it on your audience’s story.

Ultimately, when conducted well, your audience interviews will reveal insights that form the chapters of your audience’s success story with your brand. With a storybook of your audience’s journey, you have all the pieces you need to inform your marketing strategy, content strategy, and sales process. It’s a pathway forward based on real data points rather than guesswork. 

Doesn’t that sound like a relief? To get started, all you have to do is have a conversation with your audience. 

Go Deeper Into Audience Insights

One-on-one time allows you to truly see and hear a member of your audience, putting a name and face to the customer journey. Yet, there are limitations to one-on-one interviews. To understand whether the insights you gain from interviews are relevant to your big picture, conducting audience research is the way. It validates your interviews and provides insights that you can directly apply to your content strategy and sales pipeline. Ready to talk next steps? We’re waiting by our email inboxes to talk about your audience. Email us at info@brainchildstudios.com. 

The post 7 Techniques for Conducting Insightful Audience Interviews appeared first on Aajogo.

Show your appreciation this Mother’s Day by treating the moms in your life like the queens they are! Support both moms and Milwaukee small businesses this year and check out our digest of locally-sourced gift ideas and promotions.

P.S. – when we say "mom" this includes all the sheroes in your life! 

Flowers & Plants

Belle Fiori– Spoil your mom with fresh flowers! Belle Flori has flowers for Mother’s Day that will suit any style! They offer Mother’s Day flower delivery to Milwaukee, WI or nationwide. 

Clover- Plant moms?? We’ve got the place for you. Located in Bayview, this plant shop offers a variety of gorgeous plants while having a sustainability initiative. They aim to reduce waste by repurposing materials -whether that’s ceramic, wood, clay or glass- to put a plant in it! They also offer a plant care guide on their website to help you along your plant journey. Gift your mom a beautiful Adansonii  

Gifts

Nourish Natural Products – Pamper your mom this Mother’s Day! These Mother's Day Gift Sets include rose water toner and facial mist with rose quartz crystals for $30. Or check out their New Mom gift set for $50. She’ll love their Organic Rose Water Toner & Facial Mist, Sleep Roller Blend, Intensive Healing Balm, and Lip Balm

The Waxwing- Get your mom the cutest mug this mothers day! They have the best mama bear mug! Plus many more gift ideas, they have it all!

High Brow- Treat your mom to a spa day! Get her a gift card to get pampered at High Brow, they offer everything from facials to microderm treatments to light therapy to help mom look and feel her best. 

Book Worms

Executive Motherhood- Moms can do it all. Executive Motherhood: The Art of Having It All Without Doing It All by Ashley Quinto Powell provides a one-of-a-kind toolkit for women who want to upgrade both their professional ambitions and their family lives. Give your mom a little alone time to sit back and relax while reading this book. 

ReCulturing: Design Your Company Culture to Connect with Strategy and Purpose for Lasting Success- Is your mom an entrepreneur? Then this is a great book to help her be her and her company is her best. ReCulturing is the playbook for building a business in which employees are clear on the why, what, and how they are working.

Eats & Sweets

Honeypie- Don’t miss out on ordering one of the best pies in town! Honeypie is now taking Mother’s Day Pie orders! They have specialty pies such as salted caramel, coconut key lime, as well as cream pies such as banana cream and cookies and cream, and fruit pies which include blueberry and mixed berry. You’ll be sure to find something your mom will love!

Charcuter-me- Treat your mom to a workshop at charcuter-me, where she will learn how to create her very own charcuterie boards. The workshops include both virtual and in-person options. She’ll get familiar with delicious meats and cheeses and can even make a fun event of it with her friends. 

The Real Good Life- Give your mom a break and treat her to a delicious meal(s) delivered to your doorstep. Each week The Real Good Life offers a nutritious menu of creative entrees and healthy side dishes focusing on family favorites and seasonal ingredients. They always promise to always have a gooey dessert on the menu too! Allow mom to try new recipes and enjoy herself by getting her a gift card for these delicious meals. 

Outwoken Tea- Calling all tea drinkers!  Outwoken tea helps the environment, the economy, the social well being of people, and our earth’s future. All of the orders are compostable, from the box to the bags to the ink printed on the labels. Learn more about their impact on their website. Gift your mom some of their tea and make an impact. Check out their bold blue, it is a refreshing tea that will surprise you and your friends when it changes colors (Minty and sweet). 

We Drink Bubbles- Cheers to moms all around! Help your mom celebrate life by gifting her the bubbles club. She will receive a curated shipment that highlights clean-farmed, estate-grown champagne & sparkling wines. Every month there is a new selection! 

Stone Creek Coffee- Get mom fuel here! Treat your mom to three of Stone Creek’s proprietary #FarmtoCup coffees. The Coffee Sampler Box Set includes 3 half-pounds, postcards, and a package of Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans. 

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Set It and Forget It

What’s an email automation campaign? There are many ways to slice and dice it, but as Mailchimp says, it “is a way to create emails that reach the right people with the right message at the right moment. It’s a way to implement a robust email strategy through intentional and structured actions. Also, it’s automated, meaning it does its job without you lifting a finger.  

Save Your Team Time

Automation means your team saves a ton of time. Email automation campaign creation involves:

1. Choosing email software and understanding how it works. 
2. Establishing goals for your email automation campaign. 
3. Designing a strategy to meet those goals. 
4. Mapping out a workflow for the emails, i.e., what’s the order of the content, how frequently should they go out to your audience, etc. 
5. Segmenting your email list so that the right people receive the right messaging. 
6. Launching your email automation campaign. 
7. Tracking your metrics and tweaking your campaign when necessary. 

Once you’ve done steps 1-7, kick back, bust open a kombucha, and watch those emails send, send, send. 

Build Brand Awareness

Have you ever subscribed to an email list, received one email, and never heard from the company again? It happens, and it’s not great. With an email automation campaign, you’re sending consistent, regular, branded communication to your audience. It’s kind of like sending an email to a friend:

• Hey
• Thinking of you
• Here’s what’s new with me 
• Let’s talk sometime soon

When you’re building your brand, you’re cultivating relationships with your ideal customers, and email automation campaigns are a great way to start and continue conversations. Conversations spur awareness. Awareness leads to motivation. Motivation leads to action.  

Gain Access to Data 

You can track data with any email you send, but the benefit of email automation campaigns is you have control—the campaign itself—and you gain access to data over time. You can track how your email automation campaign performs during specific sales cycles, seasons, or in reaction to current events. Because your data is more robust, your insights can be more meaningful. Additionally, you can draw direct throughlines from your email automation campaigns to your sales data through click-through rates. You can see how many emails it takes before your audience feels compelled to act. Finally, you can compare copy and design elements across emails to discern which ones get the highest engagement from your audience, which tells you what they’re resonating with. You can learn a lot through email automation campaigns.

Prevent Errors

 Since email automation campaigns are built, scheduled, and repeatedly sent over time, there’s a higher level of control over quality. In addition, quality assurance is built into the email automation campaign process, with multiple hands usually involved, practice runs, and various moments during the development process to catch errors. As a result, you can send one-off emails quickly, pass them through fewer hands, and ultimately, send error-filled emails to your recipients. 

When you send emails with errors—misspelled names, incorrect information, formatting snafus—it can erode your audience’s perception of your business and put their interest in engaging with you at risk.  

Increase Engagement Through Personalization

Email automation campaign workflows can include many options for personalization, such as autofill recipient first and last names. These are the facts: Personalized emails have higher click-through rates. Additionally, email automation campaigns often include segmentation. Check this out: 

You want to engage your audience further after signing up for a membership on your website. 

You can segment your audience into those who signed up for the membership and have utilized some or all of the benefits and who signed up and are not yet active users. 

You create two email automation campaigns to engage your audience further; one catered to those already invested and the other to those who need a little encouragement to engage.

Your messaging matches the segment and thus carries a higher likelihood of further engagement when done right.  

Reduce Cost

Let your email marketing do the work for you. Once you’ve set up your email automation campaign, you have a digital sales representative contacting your audience regularly. That means if you can pare down sales activities, streamline your sales teams’ time, and save money on tasks that can be eliminated or reduced by email automation campaigns. 

Link Strategy to Execution

When strategy and execution are seamlessly aligned, that’s where the magic happens. One of the ways your marketing can fall flat on its face is by having faulty connections between strategy and execution. You need to be strategic to set up an email automation campaign, and the process itself links strategy to execution without extra effort. 

You have to consider your audience’s characteristics and behaviors to define segments. 

You have to consider how much communication they want and how frequently they want it. 

You have to consider your messaging and how you want to vary it across emails to be effective. 

Automating your email campaigns is a great way to see what strategy and execution can look like when they dance the tango together. Let’s just say it’s top-notch stuff. 

Take Your Audience On A Journey 

People engage with brands that make them feel something positive about themselves. 

Beautiful.

Successful. 

Interesting. 

Desirable. 

Connected. 

Initiating, maintaining, and growing relationships with your audience is a process. Over time, you have to nurture your audience, woo them a little bit (or a lot, depending on your brand), and build trust. Investing in your audience is ultimately investing in your business, and one of the best ways to go about that process is to take your audience on a journey. Center them in your brand story. Show them what value you provide. And guide them along the pathway to self-actualization. 

Email automation campaigns are an opportunity to do just that. First, adjust your tone, cadence, and formatting as they experience the progression of your campaign. Next, create rising action through your creative execution. Finally, lead them to the only conclusion that makes sense: engage.

You can create a story in a single email, but with automated campaigns, you’re laying the groundwork for an epic where your audience is the hero. And if they feel like a hero, they’ll be more likely to come back for more. 

Increase Conversions 

Have you ever had somebody tell you they want to marry you on the first date? Soul mates aside, throwing out all the stops over your first glass of wine is a bit offputting. Leading your audience to conversions requires nurturing, just like dating does. The structure of email automation campaigns lends itself to the nurturing process. It gives your business the opportunity and the time to create a solid base with your audience. You get to know them. They get to know you. And eventually, when all the ducks line up, your audience converts. 

The sales tactics of the 20th century fall short with today’s audiences. With enough exposure, people have developed built-in radars for snake oil. Many people find pushy tactics repulsive. Especially younger audiences will unsubscribe if you’re too aggressive, too frequent, or too obtuse in your efforts. The elevator pitch needed to evolve. 

Use email automation campaigns as a tool, a structure to support your communication efforts with your audience, and create an intentional strategy that meets their needs, preferences, and values. As a result, you’ll be more likely to yield conversions.

Know your audience, and let your audience appreciate your emails. 

Raise Revenue 

Strategy, time savings, money savings, data, quality assurance, and more—email automation campaigns are beneficial. And all of these benefits can culminate in a massive benefit for your business: increased revenue. 

When you build your email automation campaigns on smart strategy, you let it do the heavy lifting for you, and you cater it to your audience, the result can 100% be increased revenue for you.

Augment Your Email Marketing

Automated email campaigns are a must-have part of your marketing strategy. Your sales team will see the benefits of your marketing. Your marketing team gains time savings, efficiency, and a tried-and-true solution for nurturing your audience. And your audience? They get to learn more about you in an intentional, engaging way. If taking on email automation solo sounds like a bit much for your business right now, consider outsourcing it to a marketing agency that is well-versed in the art. We’re on standby. Email us at info@brainchildstudios.com to start planning your next email automation! 

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What is a productized service?

Let’s start at the beginning. What is a productized service? Here are the deets: 

A productized service is work you do for somebody else packaged like a product. 

A productized service has a fixed price, and a straightforward purchasing experience, and it’s packaged the same every time.   

Why productize your services? 

Productizing your services comes with benefits for you and your audience. 

For you, the B2B business, you get to sell your services in a standardized, consistent way, and with or without your involvement. Yep. You can opt for set-it-and-forget-it productized services. 

For your audience, they receive an easy-to-buy, easy-to-use product that provides value at a set price with a focus on an accessible experience. 

So here’s how you do it. 

Assess Your Core Offering

Step one is to clarify what you do. Bear with us. Even if you’ve been in business for decades, the switch to productizing your services goes more smoothly if you are 100% clear about what you offer. It’s essential to revisit your core offering to assess whether it’s still airtight or could use an update. 

• How would you describe what you do to somebody outside of your industry?
• What would you say if you had to limit your explanation to 1-2 sentences?
• What is valuable about your core offering?
• What problem does it solve for your audience? 

Better yet, ask your audience what they think about your services. We recommend conducting customer research regularly to take the temperature of your audience. You can guess all day long, but the insights you need come from them directly. 

Bottom line: what is it that you do better than anybody else? 

Determine What You Do Different

Depending on your industry, your market may be overrun with productized services. Life coaching. Content creation. Graphic design. It’s a party, and everybody’s invited. So for your productized service to be successful, you must understand what sets you apart from the crowd. 

A wise woman and bedazzled attire connoisseur extraordinaire Dolly Parton once said, “You gotta keep trying to find your niche and trying to fit into whatever slot is left for you or to make one of your own.”

There’s no need to be preoccupied with saturated markets; figure out what makes your service unique. 

At BCS, we focus on audience research. It infuses our work and the work we do for clients. We also focus on people. We research to understand people better. We offer research to serve our people (clients) better. 

What makes your services unique? 

Consider the following angles that might illuminate your differentiators:

• Geographical location
• Price point
• Values
• Network
• Resources
• Expertise
• Experience
• Customer service 

And more. Say you sell software that makes people’s lives easier. So do a lot of companies. So why should somebody purchase your software over somebody else’s? Your extensive training and onboarding program ensures your audience feels comfortable and confident as they learn how to use your software and creates a positive experience. There’s always somebody there to answer questions and provide guidance. Find out what makes your “software” more than just software. 

Solve Your Audience’s Problem

Your audience will not buy into your productized service if it doesn’t do something for them. In marketing terms, your core offering should solve your audience’s problem. Forget stabs in the dark; there are viable ways to understand your audience’s pain points and how your service-based B2B business is uniquely qualified to solve their problems. 

Ask your audience.

Reach out to your audience for feedback via emailed surveys, social media polls, or direct phone calls. Inquire about their perspective before and after engaging with your services. Specifically, you want to understand how your service changed their life. For example, if your product helped them feel a sense of community, perhaps your service solved for loneliness. 

Dig into data. 

Look through your analytics and pinpoint common threads between lost leads, why your customers unsubscribe from email, and what website pages have a high bounce rate. Be curious and willing to see your blind spots. 

Check out your competition.

Who are your competitors? What do their testimonials and reviews say? What kind of overlap is there between your audience and theirs? What are they doing well, and where’s their room for improvement?  

Productize Your Service, and They Will Come

Once you’ve determined what you do, who you serve, and what solution you provide, you’re ready to productize your service. While you’ll need to expend some resources (time, energy, and money, unless you outsource), you won’t have to lift many fingers going forward once you've successfully productized your service. 

These are the must-considers for productizing your service. 

Select a format to productize your services. 

Choose from video, webinar, eCourse, audio, or an alternative. One of the best ways to guide that decision is to research your audience to find out what content types engage them the most, how they learn, and to what extent they want to interact with your B2B business. 

Choose a platform to productize your services.

Depending on how you choose to deliver your service, you may need to look into what platforms make the most sense for your service-based business. Again, let’s use the SaaS example from above. If you’re known for your seamless onboarding, and your audience loves video, you’ll need to look into which video hosting platform works best for your business. 

Create valuable productized services. 

Always provide value with your productized services. For example, say you’ve decided to productize your services by packaging and selling videos of webinars you’ve hosted. Are those webinars timely or timeless? (Aim for the latter.) Is there value for the audience in the videos beyond simple education or information? Do the videos provoke further action, and are they directly applicable to your audience’s life? Do the webinars solve your audience’s problems? 

Ensure a great user experience. 

You need to consider an outsider's perspective even if you believe your productized service is the creme de la creme. Have friends, family, or neighbors interact with your productized service and give you feedback on its efficacy and usability. 

Streamline the purchase experience. 

In the development phase, you’ll need to consider how you want your audience to purchase your productized service. Find an eCommerce platform that works for a productized service. Your productized service. Reduce any sources of friction. Avoid asking for multiple pieces of information from your audience (an email address and credit card info is fine). When they purchase your productized service, keep the purchase experience to three screens maximum. The more hoops you make them jump through just to access their, for example, eCourse, the more irritated they will get.    

Name Your Price

Once your service is packaged and ready to meet your audience for the first time, you need to decide on its price. While this blog cannot tell you exactly how to price your productized service, here’s what you need to consider.

What return on investment makes sense for your budget and business goals?

What monetary value can you justifiably assign to the productized service? 

What are similar productized services going for? 

How frequently do you anticipate updating or revamping your productized service? What might it cost to do so?  

What costs do you incur over time (hosting fees, maintenance fees, labor costs, etc.)? How might you account for these costs over time? 

Then consider what pricing models make sense for your capabilities and your audience’s wants and needs. Here are a few options to consider: 

• One-time purchase
• Lifetime access
• Subscription 
• Membership 
• Limited-time access
• Retainer model 
• Unlimited access for a monthly fee

Your final decision should fit your budget, take you closer to achieving your business goals, and make sense for your audience. 

Market Your Productized Services 

Phew. We made it to the end. Once you’ve successfully productized your services, the marketing begins! (We’re biased, but this is our favorite part.)

Audience insights + content strategy + content execution = increase brand awareness and engagement

So, if you’re not in the marketing game, here’s a high-level blueprint for launching your productized services. 

1. Find your audience (where do they work, eat, and play).
2. Create a timeline for sharing your productized service with the world (decide when you want to start notifying them, how frequently you want to touch base, and when to taper off to business as usual).
3. Create your core content (start with a landing page to market your service).
4. Create supporting content for that piece of core content (blogs, emails, social media posts). 
5. Choose your channels (at least 2-3).
6. Plan your content (schedule ahead of time, put post dates on a task management system, etc.).
7. Launch your marketing campaign.
8. Track your results (watch analytics, observe what people are saying, monitor sales data).

And if marketing isn’t your jam, you’re in luck; we do it all day, every day. If you want to save time and money while entrusting your productization process to somebody that’s been around the block a few times, email us at info@brainchildstudios.com. We’d love to hear from you! 

The post How to Productize Services for Service-Based B2B Businesses appeared first on Aajogo.

People buy in the service of their emotions. Thems the facts. Underneath every conversion is the pursuit of alleviating pain, embracing joy, acquiring a salve for sadness, achieving a sense of belonging, and more. As the quote from Mr. Chesky gets at, people need to love what you put out into the world, not just like it because love is a far more compelling emotion than, “I’ll buy that I guess.” And in order to connect with your audience, you need to get to the heart of the matter. Here’s how you evoke emotion in your content marketing.   

Understand Your Audience 

Before you start weaving emotion into your content marketing, you need to understand what emotions your audience experiences. 

You need to be curious. You need to be empathetic. You need to get a little fluffy. And you need to research your audience—gut instinct won’t give you a clear picture. 

Your mileage may vary depending on what type of research you opt for—public databases, social media analytics, one-on-one sales calls, surveys—but bar none, the best way to understand your audience’s dreams, goals, pain points, challenges, and concerns is to ask to discover, not confirm. Yes, we’re talking about an audience survey.

Audience surveys yield customizable, targeted insights for YOUR audience, nobody else’s. A survey removes the guesswork and gives you facts, actionable facts, to make your content marketing resonate. If that sounds like a hefty project, outsource it. We’re happy to do research and strategy for you so you can focus on sales, biz dev, and all that other good stuff.    

Connect On A Human-to-Human Level

You need to be in touch with emotions to convey emotions. If you don’t understand what sadness feels like, how can you effectively convey it to somebody else? Say your audience fears whether they’re a good parent or not. If you don’t know what fear feels like, how can you describe it? Let’s do a quick exercise. 

• Let’s talk about joy.
• What does joy feel like?
• Is it bright? Is it muted?
• What magnitude of energy does it carry?
• What color represents joy?
• What scent reminds you of joy?
• How would you describe the joy, without using the word “joy”?
• Do you know the differences between joy, happiness, and elation?
• What do you do when you feel joyful?
• What do you say when you’re experiencing joy?

In order to connect with your audience, you have to empathize with them. You just can’t do that if you don’t know what emotions feel like, what thoughts come with them, what actions they provoke, and what approach resonates with somebody experiencing them. When you use psychology in your marketing, you’re doing it right.     

Tell A Story 

Every good story follows a story arc, and your audience’s story should too (more on that below). Let’s use The Princess Bride as an example. 

Wesley + Buttercup = Love

Buttercup thinks Wesley is dead and decides to marry Prince Humperdink (he sucks). 

Wesley finds out about his love’s plight and begins a (hero’s) journey to rescue her. 

He faces challenges along the way. There are creatures of unusual size. Dead father revenge side arcs. Medieval-style torture devices. Fire Swamp. Pit of Despair. It’s a journey, y’all.  

No spoilers, but you eagerly follow along to find out whether these two lovebirds get back together or not. 

And along the way we feel shock, awe, disgust, happiness, and everything in-between. It moves you. 

Infusing a story arc into your content marketing needn’t be as in-your-face as The Princess Bride, but here’s what you need to do:

1. Center your audience.
2. Weave emotions into your content marketing.
3. Take them on a journey through your marketing materials. 

That’s it. That’s the story. Sit down and literally plot out a story arc for your audience. Then, plot your pieces of content marketing along that story arc. When they’re facing a challenge, your downloadable PDF is a guiding light. Etc. Etc. Let’s talk about what techniques you can use to bolster the story.
 

Be Descriptive and Evocative

Which one of these is more appealing to you?

Sign up for our webinar. 

OR 

Ready to buy your first house? Our webinar is a one-stop shop for successful budgeting that makes homeownership happen. Spots are limited—get your seat today!  

The second version gets at the emotional value the webinar provides. The dream is homeownership. Budgeting is a challenge to homeownership. It plays on FOMO which evokes urgency—if you want this information, you need to sign up now. It uses more words, descriptive words, evocative words to get at the emotions underneath home ownership. 

That’s how you do it. 
 

Use Analogies

Sometimes a straightforward explanation just isn’t enough. One of the best ways to evoke emotion in your content marketing is to use analogies. Pull people into the story by making the content relatable and grant them the gift of visualization; it brings your content marketing alive. Here’s an example.

Our new apple cider vinegar soda is like a fresh sea breeze, a dip underneath a waterfall, and the cool side of the pillow—all in one can. 

Instead of just saying, “Here, drink this” you can evoke emotion in your content marketing by describing the setting, the sensory input, the actions that then naturally lead to feeling things. What do you feel when you read the description above? Relaxed? Refreshed? Excited? Intrigued?

Paint a picture to evoke emotion. 

Speak to the Primary Emotions

If you’re looking for a place to start, focus on infusing the primary emotions into your content marketing. 

• Fear
• Anger
• Joy
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Surprise

There are actually many, many emotions that humans are capable of feeling, but speaking in the language of core emotions lays a solid foundation for connecting through your content marketing. Everybody knows what it feels like to be angry. To be afraid. Utilize these first. They’re accessible, they’re universal, and they can be readily woven into your content.

If you want to take it a step further, you can explore the nuances in emotional expression for pinpoint content marketing. 

Love = Joy + Trust

Optimism = Anticipation + Joy

Disappointment = Sadness + Surprise

There’s a lot of emotional ground you can cover in your content marketing. So how do you actually tap into core emotions and their offshoots? 

• Word choice
• Show don’t tell 
• Authenticity

Let’s break that down a bit more. If you’re evoking sadness, use words that relate to or describe the emotion. Bleak. Dismal. Tired. Are you tired of dismal interest rates? If you do anything today, abolish words from your content that say nothing at all. Good. Bad. Very. Very good interest rates. Not very compelling, is it?  

Your copy will be far more compelling when you demonstrate, educate, and inspire. There’s a huge difference between saying, “Buy our product. It’s the best” and showing your audience your product is the best through a podcast interview with a current customer whose life your product changed. Find the story. Share the story.  

When you're creating your content, the consumer of 2022 can see through your lies. They want experiences, relationships with companies that are positive actors in their lives. Create content marketing that’s authentic and you’ll be sure to reach your audience emotionally. Don’t manipulate. Don’t lie. Don’t pretend you understand them when you don’t. People can see right through it.  

Use Rhythm and Cadence to Convey Energy 

Before we wrap up this blog, one final pointer. We’ve talked about understanding your audience and yourself, building a story through your content marketing, and how to use words to convey emotion. You can also evoke emotion through your sentence structure, length, and variance. Check this out. 

She decided to skip work and visit the sea. She smelled vanilla cream in the air. She saw an ice cream shop and purchased a treat. The ice cream was lemon flavored. A seagull grabbed her ice cream before she could finish. 

OR 

One afternoon, she decided to play hooky at work and visit the sea instead. As she walked, she could smell vanilla-scented cream wafting out of a storefront. An ice cream shop! She purchased a lemon ice cream, her favorite. And as she walked closer to the waves, she felt a puff of wind near her hair, and before she could realize what had happened a seagull swooped down, beak open, and took off with the remainder of her cone—a cruel reminder that she wasn’t the only one who loved lemon ice cream. 

Which do you prefer?  

Vary your sentence length. Use punctuation to create pauses so your audience can digest the information. Leverage variance to create energy, motion, and, ultimately, emotion. 

Start Connecting With Your Audience

In order to connect with your audience on an emotional level, you have to understand your audience first. Who are they? What makes them tick? What scares them? What brings them joy? Sure, you can take notes during sales meetings with customers (valuable), observe likes, comments, and shares on your content (also valuable), or ask for direct feedback (invaluable), but nothing will give you more bang for your buck than conducting audience research. 

With a survey designed to understand your audience’s preferences, beliefs, values, challenges, and dreams, you’ll receive high-impact insights that directly feed into high-quality content. Fortunately for you, we’re in the business of audience research. Email us at brainchildstudios.com to learn more. 

The post How to Evoke Emotion in Your Content Marketing appeared first on Aajogo.

No Longer Part of the Crowd: Your Brand Shines 

Throw a stone, and you’ll find a brand that’s doing the most to be hip, flashy, and trendy. While they may capture attention right now, it’s not the most sustainable approach for the long term. And just because customers are doing a “moth to the flame” thing with you doesn’t mean you’re connecting with them and establishing a relationship. Many people like to stare at pictures of Chris Hemsworth, but they’re not spending their time building a relationship with him (even if they wish they could).  

• When you conduct audience research, you learn what your audience wants.
• You learn your audience’s why.
• You learn what problems your audience faces and your brand's solutions.
• You learn what your audience needs to connect.
• You learn what circumstances need to happen for your audience to convert.

You get the pieces you need to build a brand that impacts the long haul. You’ll have a competitive advantage because your relationship with your audience will have more depth, trust, and consistency. When your audience needs a product or service that gives them the life they want to lead, they’ll turn to you, and Chris Hemsworth will be left on read.

Create Long-Lasting, Lucrative Relationships With Your Audience 

When you create sustainable relationships with your audience, relationships that last over the years, economic shifts, life changes, job changes, and more, you build something extraordinary: brand loyalty. And brand loyalty is 100% a competitive advantage. If your audience is loyal to you, they’re going to choose your products or services over somebody else’s.  

People are more likely to be loyal to brands they feel really get them. They want to be heard, understood, to belong, and be successful. The best way to understand your audience’s core needs is to listen to them. We suggest conducting a customer survey to stop the guesswork and gather insights that lead to brand loyalty.

Tell A Compelling Brand Story  

When your marketing initiatives are infused with data-backed audience insights, it’s much easier to tell a brand story. People LOVE a good story, and not every brand tells a good story. 

Stories engage people. Stories speak to people on a deeper level. Stories compel people to action. 

Your objective is to understand your audience (wants, needs, challenges, goals, and dreams) so that you can center them in your brand story and tell that story over and over again throughout your content marketing.

Think of the stories that have engaged you in recent years. It’s a Saturday. You wake up, eat breakfast, let the dogs out, and then 12 hours later you realize you’ve been on the couch, elbows deep in Netflix, and that you really need to pee. Tiger King. Squid Game. Anything Shonda Rhimes produces. Humanize your marketing. Make it about the people (your audience), and use data gathered from audience research to gain a competitive advantage.

• When you tell a compelling story, people listen.
• When you tell a compelling story, people follow your brand.
• When you tell a compelling story, people tell other people about your brand.
• Outpace the competition by telling a much better story than they do.

Pull-Ahead: Develop Thought Leadership 

If you really want to take your brand to the next level, shoot for the stars. Leverage audience research to develop thought leadership. You can be both an authority on your audience and an industry authority, which will set you apart from your competition. 

Every bit of engagement, whether it’s from your audience, PR networks, or industry peers plays a vital role in supporting your brand and your business. Because not everybody does audience research, you stand to learn fascinating and valuable insights into your audience, information that gives you a competitive advantage. Use your expertise and experience to share your take on the data. 

Thought leadership inspires. And inspiration is a powerful drug. If people look to you for the next great idea, a novel perspective, guidance to take their next step in life or business you add oomph to your business structure. Oomph your competitors don’t have. 

To be clear, when we say “oomph” we mean more attention, more opportunities, more conversions, and better audience relationships. All thanks to audience research.    

Win the Research Game, Starting Today

Bar none, conducting audience research is the gold standard for achieving a competitive advantage. Not everybody is doing it. Not everybody can. That’s where agencies (ahem) that specialize in audience research come in. If you implement outsourced audience research into your budget, it will not only save you money in the long run but also provide you with insights you need to breach the gap between sales and marketing, build a brand made to last, differentiate yourself from your competition in meaningful ways, and reach your business goals sooner.  

Are you ready to stand out from the crowd? Let’s talk. Email us at info@brainchildstudios.com. 

The post The Competitive Advantage: How Audience Research Sets You Apart appeared first on Aajogo.

Increased Engagement 

According to the American Marketing Association (AMA), marketing is: 

The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

People. It’s all about the people. So one way to measure your marketing ROI is to measure engagement. Depending on your company’s market, you may be seeking engagement on any number of channels. 

1. Social media
2. Email
3. Blog 
4. Website
5. In-person events
6. Virtual events
7. Fill in the blank here

Always go where your audience goes. If you haven’t researched your audience to find out what digital landscape locales they visit, now’s the time. Then, meet them there. Leverage your outsourced partner to help you craft a high-connection content strategy and execute stellar content to match. Then, track your metrics to assess your ROI.

The metrics you measure depend on the channel. Are you focusing heavily on Facebook engagement? You can look at reactions, comments, shares, link clicks, etc. Ah yes, but don’t stop there. Raw numbers are great, but you have to look at them in context. Use this formula: 

Number of engaged users ÷ total page reach x 100 = engagement rate 

Let’s go one step further. Say your engagement rate is 1%. Most companies aim for 2-3% on Facebook, so there’s room for growth. 

It all depends on the channel. Emails are a beast unto themselves, and in that case, you may want to look at unsubscribes, sign-ups, click-through rate, and more. Bottom line: utilize your outsourced marketing partner to help you establish engagement goals and track your analytics.

You’re getting an ROI if there’s growth that matches your goals and reaches levels above what you’re spending on your marketing.  

Marketing Guru Tip: assess your engagement baseline before you outsource your marketing. Then, set KPIs (where you want to go) before every project so you can measure progress and make sure you’re getting a solid ROI. 

Website Traffic

If you’ve outsourced your website creation and development, you’ll want to make sure you’re getting a good ROI when it’s all said and done. Yep. We’re talking about a shiny, brand new website that engages users, bolsters up your brand, and serves as an entry point to the customer journey infinity loop. Your website holds a lot of power, and it’s important the money you’ve spent on it helps you meet your business goals.  

Let’s take a moment to bow down to the all-knowing Google. When it comes to measuring your ROI, turn to Google Analytics to check the health of your website. Like the section above, you can get down into the nitty-gritty of website interactions. Checking the numbers is a great way to ensure you’re getting a solid ROI. It works like this.

You want more people to visit your website. 

You want people to stay awhile on your website. 

You want people to come back to your website. 

And if none of the above is true after you’ve outsourced, you’re not getting a good ROI. 

Marketing Guru Tip: hire a website team that understands search engine optimization (SEO) so your website is more likely to reach the people it needs to. 

Increased Sales

Marketing and sales have an interesting relationship. Like two siblings who bicker, but love each other deep down inside. Salespeople interact with real live customers and can thus provide marketing with crucial insights into your company’s audience. Marketing can provide sales with the tools and resources to do their jobs better, specifically with customized content like checklists, how-tos, free downloads, and more that nurture relationships by providing value. And marketing and sales can put their heads together to analyze data to improve campaigns and nurture leads, respectively. So if you’ve outsourced your marketing, your return on investment can be reflected in your sales numbers. 

If your marketing is effective, you’ll drive more people to your website, and more people to buy your products and services. Bam. More sales. 

If your marketing is effective, your social media ad campaigns will lead to increased conversions. Hello sales. 

If your marketing is effective, your customers are more likely to identify your company as the solution to their problems and, yep, buy your stuff. 

A simple way to calculate the ROI is like this: 

ROI = (sale - marketing cost)/marketing cost

Take some time to assess the cost of outsourcing your marketing against your sales data, and you’ll be better positioned to understand your ROI. 

Marketing Guru Tip: avoid siloes. Both your marketing and sales departments will be more successful if there’s goals alignment between the two. 

Brand Loyalty 

Ever heard of customer lifetime value (CVL)? It’s the measure of the total worth of your customer’s business during the course of their relationship with your company. Basically, your business needs loyal customers, people who keep coming back time and time again. The investment you will have to make—both timewise and monetarily—is less than acquiring a new customer. New customers need to be wooed, wined, and dined. That takes effort and resources. 

You can get super granular when calculating both CLV and CAC (customer acquisition cost). Add in Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and you’re going to need one hell of a calculator. But for your purposes, you’re getting a solid ROI on your outsourced marketing if it increases brand loyalty.

What does brand loyalty look like in the real world? Simply, it’s a customer who purchases more than once. That customer continues a relationship with you over time, they may follow you on social media, they may receive your newsletters, and most importantly, they may tell their friends all about you. People that are loyal to brands leave reviews, share your content, and spread the love, digitally, by making referrals. 

If your marketing doesn’t convince your customers you’re The One, you may not be getting the best ROI. An outsourced marketing partner knows to focus on sustainability and growth over time, rather than a one-time purchase. 

There are so many options out there for potential customers, and effective marketing makes you stand out in the crowd.  

Marketing Guru Tip: find user-generated content on your social channels and repurpose it to show potential customers what they stand to gain if they start a relationship with you. 

Email Sign Ups 

We saved the best for last and while you definitely saw the email listed in our first section about engagement, it deserved its own section. Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing out there with an average open rate of 22.86% vs. social media’s 0.58% engagement rate. Thems the facts. Even though social media marketing is huge (rightly so), people tend to be more open and receptive to email marketing from businesses. It’s a “right place, right time” sort of thing. 

So, if you’ve hired an outsourced marketing partner to take your email up a notch, tracking your email metrics is essential for assessing your ROI. An outsourced marketing partner can help you reduce unsubscribes, segment your lists, increase subscribers, facilitate conversions, and improve your open and click-through rates by crafting engagement-driving content.

Same rule applies here as above; check your baseline against the work your outsourced partner does. There should be improvement and improvement that matches the cost to hire.  

Marketing Guru Tip: Periodically clean your email list. Your emails will do better if they’re landing in the inboxes of people who want to engage.  

Outsource Your Marketing for A Better ROI

If any part of this blog made your head spin—data, analytics, metrics, oh my!—you’re not alone. Fortunately, a trusted outsourced marketing partner can show you the ropes or do the heavy lifting for you. 

Marketing for marketing’s sake isn’t great marketing. 

Choose an outsourced partner that tracks data, gives you status updates, and makes adjustments to help you connect with your audience. Beyond the numbers, the ultimate ROI is forming meaningful, long-lasting relationships with your audience. At Brainchild Studios, we serve as outsourced marketing partners, and our specialty is using data to inform relationships. If you’re ready to make it happen, email us at info@brainchildstudios.com. 

The post What Is a Good ROI When You Outsource Your Marketing appeared first on Aajogo.

We couldn’t agree more with Ms. Veale. You tell a better brand story when you see, really see, your audience. To meet your audience and foster a relationship with them, you need information—who, what, when, where, and why. You need data. Here’s how to tell a brand story with your data. 

Research Your Audience 

The key to telling a brand story is to understand your audience. Yep, just ask them instead of wondering or guessing what makes your audience tick. There are many options for conducting customer research, but we have our favorite. Enter: the customer survey.  

You’ll get the answers you need, the information that will form the story arc of your brand story when you ask good questions. There are many different approaches to customer surveys, including demographics, psychographics, behavioral, user experience, and brand perception lines of inquiry. If you can pick just one, explore psychographics, as this information is a natural parallel to storytelling. 

Psychographics explore perceptions, beliefs, challenges, pain points, values, desires, and interests. People typically buy with their hearts, not their minds (though there are exceptions), so it’s in your interest to speak to your audience’s hearts. Ultimately, your brand story will be far more compelling if you understand your audience on a deeper level. 

Say you know the demographics of your audience. Great! But does knowing they’re middle class, Gen X, and male help you tell a brand story that connects with them on a deeper level? No, it does not. For that, you need to know that they’re worried about the bottom line because they’re trying to send their kids to university. Knowing they care about what their friends think and value honesty above all else helps infuse meaning into your brand story. Meaning breeds connection. And beyond that, if your audience feels like you get them, they’re more likely to pursue a relationship with your business. 

Even if you don’t conduct a customer survey, you likely have access to all kinds of data—social media, Google Analytics, sales numbers, etc., that can inform your brand story. But you need to know how to draw insights from that data.   

Translate Numbers Into Insights 

So you have a bunch of data. Now, what do you do with it? First, you analyze it. Data analysis isn’t for everybody, and that’s okay. It’s always an option to outsource your audience research and data analysis. In the meantime, you can gather insights from your data by following a defined process for data analysis. 

1. Gather your data in one place, whether that’s one file, one folder, one report. 
2. Organize your data by areas of interest, such as all sales numbers from quarter one or survey questions related to demographics. 
3. Ask what each piece of data says about your audience and what it doesn’t say. Again, unspoken words can provide just as much insight.
4. Cross-reference each piece of data with the data set as a whole. Are there themes? Are there contradictions?
5. Ask whether your data confirms or contradicts your predictions. Take note of all instances. 
6. Get somebody else’s eyes on it. They may see something you didn’t. 
7. Check your biases. What might you be looking to confirm in the data? Conversely, what data are you ignoring because it disproves your assumptions or doesn’t fit the narrative? 
8. Make sure you’re not just jumping on the first juicy insight. There’s usually more to the story, and the whole story matters. 
9. Poke holes in the data. Why might this piece of data be wrong? What might you be failing to consider about the data? Yes, your sales numbers jumped last month, but was it really because of your new product launch or because you tweaked your social media ad strategy? Maybe the new product launch needs some additional attention.
10. Let the data speak for itself. 

Once you have a holistic view of your data, find your key takeaways and weave them into your brand story. 

Connect, Connect, Connect

It’s easy to look at brand building as a hero’s journey, but that warrants a clarification. Your brand is more of the Merlin to King Arthur, Rafiki to Simba, the mittens to Bernie. Your target audience is the hero, the nucleus of your brand story. It all starts and ends with them. Because, hey, without them, your company wouldn’t be able to survive. 

Sure, you can make your social media posts or blogs read like your favorite high fantasy novel if it fits your brand. But, whatever your brand identity, communication with your audience centers your audience; it’s an undercurrent woven throughout every logo you display on a website, every piece of copy you post, every phone call your sales reps have with a prospect. 

Craft your brand story through interactions with your audience. 

Who are the key players? What problem needs a solution? What conflicts do you encounter along the way? What does success look like? Let’s break that down. 

Map Your Brand Story 

Once you have a map for your brand story, you can start building your branding ecosystem, namely, all the pieces of information that reflect that story to your audience. What follows is a brand story exercise we like to utilize here at Brainchild Studios using a fun millennial favorite: avocado toast. Everything’s made up, and the points don’t matter (credit: Drew Carey). 

Once upon a time, there was avocado toast.

Avocado toast could provide millennials with a satisfying, heart-healthy brunch or weekday breakfast to start the morning right.

Some people doubted it because it’s expensive and a major contributing factor to millennials’ inability to buy houses (this is a joke).

But then, one day, Big Avocado realized that creamy, mashed avocado toast was a salve for many of the issues millennials face and fueled them to take actionable steps to improve the world for themselves and future generations.

This means they needed to increase their production of avocados to meet the demand for avocado-based breakfast dishes.

And that matters because millennials deserve to have a spot of joy in a sea of reduced upward mobility, the burden of student loans, and stagnant wages. 

Ultimately, avocado toast allows millennials to have the brunch of their dreams while fueling their bodies with healthy fats they need to change the world. 

When you fill in the blanks and put the pieces together, you’ll have your story. Now you’re ready to tell it. 

Check Your Biases

Sometimes you craft an incredible brand story, but it’s just not hitting the mark. In that case, it’s worth looking into sources of the disconnect. Allow us to recommend checking your and your audience’s biases. The data support the influence of cognitive biases in the world of brand building, which can detract from your story or, if you’re savvy, prove an opportunity to enhance your audience interactions. 

Your audience is human, which means they’re subject to doing human things, such as focusing too much on the positive, being Negative Nancies, fixating on the most recent information, looking (subconsciously) for information that confirms their viewpoints, or buying products because it’s hip to do so. All of this can cause missed connections with your audience. 

You can let it bum you out, or you can use it to your advantage. For example, if you know your audience is prone to the bandwagon effect, as we found during our Millennial Moms Research Survey, make reviews from people like them part of the story (and front and center on your website).  

Build Your Brand With Data  

While you can craft a perfectly compelling brand story without data, a truly engaging brand story comes from audience insights. Know your people, build your brand. From start to finish, audience research can direct your sales team, make your brand stand out, and expand and refine your customer base so that the work you do connects with the right people. 

Investing in research can save your business money and time and give you the competitive edge you’re looking for. We’re in the business of audience research. Ready to talk? We’re just an email away: info@brainchildstudios.com.  

The post How to Tell A Brand Story With Your Data appeared first on Aajogo.

We were humbled and inspired by hearing these six women tell their stories, which made it extra special for us to be able to award surprise $1,000 grants to each of our participants! Thank you to all of our participants for sharing your stories and for continuing to inspire us to follow our dreams, and thanks to everyone who has supported the Brainchild Fund!

via GIPHY

For the third year in a row, the support of the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corporation (WWBIC), our nonprofit fiscal sponsor, was essential. We want to extend a huge thank you again to Wendy Baumann, WWBIC’s President & CVO, and the rest of her team—Thalia Mendez, Jon Gaines, Kamaljit Jackson, Lisa Sullivan, Maddie Ostrander—for all the amazing support.

We cannot thank our sponsors enough for believing in our vision of supporting women in business and entrepreneurship to assist in providing resources and opportunities for women to build the futures they dream for themselves and their families. A big thank you to: Ixonia Bank and Athena Legal Solutions.

But of course, the stars of the show were the amazing businesswomen that brought our showcase to life. Without their commitment, energy, support, and passion, this event would not have been possible. Our panelist’s dedication to their craft was inspiring to behold! Even if you couldn’t join us for the showcase, check out the links below to go support these amazing ladies!

If you want to support the amazing featured small business owners,
you can reach them below:

Aureal Ojeda // Outwoken Tea
Facebook // Instagram

Theresa Nemetz // Milwaukee Food & City Tours
Facebook // Instagram

Jennifer Hensley // Playmaker Coaching and Consulting
Facebook // YouTube

Amber Thomas // BrushBox
Facebook // Instagram

Maggie Skarich Joos // The Real Good Life
Facebook // Instagram

Alexandra Tepp-Marwitz // Alexandra Art+Design
Facebook // Instagram // YouTube

We want to say thank you once more to everyone involved. We are so excited and encouraged about the future of the Brainchild Fund.

The post 2022 Brainchild Fund Galentine's Showcase appeared first on Aajogo.

Let’s talk through four of the most salient cognitive biases and what you can do about them to ensure your marketing lands.  

Cognitive Bias #1: Availability Heuristic 

Humans can be strikingly irrational. And our brains are wired to follow the path of least resistance—conservation of energy and all that. So, when presented with information, our big, beautiful brains tend to focus on what comes to mind first. In other words: people prioritize recalling information based on recency and memorability instead of accuracy.

Here’s what that looks like in a real-world context:

A fast-casual restaurant was in the news for a spate of food poisoning cases. The interviews with affected customers lamenting their afternoon spent praying to the porcelain god hit your disgust button hard. It later comes out that the source of the poisoning was contaminated produce that the supplier should have caught before shipping; it wasn’t the restaurant’s fault, and it’s all resolved now after tossing out the tainted vegetables. At the same time, you can’t pass one of their locations without your stomach-turning. It doesn’t matter that there’s no food poisoning to be had today; your brain can’t forget the food poisoning snafu of six months prior because it was so memorable.  

This incident would impact the restaurant’s brand perception, but there are other ways this can come into play on a smaller, less vomitous scale. 

Say you own a supplement company. You’ve been digitally courting a potential customer through paid social ads. They’re intrigued. They’ve clicked. You’ve nurtured them to the cusp of conversion. Then, they read a blog about a new supplement that promises anti-aging effects based on faulty, misrepresented research (happens all the time). Vanity wins out because the blog information was juicy and more recent than your social ads from last week. It doesn’t matter that the supplement will do nil to prevent them from getting older; their brain already said, “That. That anti-aging thing I read about. Let’s order that.” 

So, how do you overcome the availability heuristic? A combination of compelling marketing and consistent contact with your audience. 

Market Like A Boss 

Listen. There’s a lot that’s out of your control when it comes to marketing. You can’t possibly know everything your customers read or expose themselves to. But you can control your output. You’ll have a better chance of staying fresh in the memories of your audience if you focus on quality, high-impact content marketing that intrigues, inspires, and entertains. Avoid content for content’s sake; provide value. 

And while you’re creating content that lands, make sure you’re posting, emailing, and interacting consistently. That way, there’s less chance of other information sneaking through and becoming the most memorable or recent in the grand scheme of information consumption.

Cognitive Bias #2: Confirmation Bias

You can see confirmation bias play out all over social media and especially in the realm of politics. Essentially, people believe what they want to believe. Or, to be more specific: people are more likely to seek information that confirms their existing beliefs, values, and perceptions, dismissing contradictory information even if it disproves what they’ve held dear. 

Here’s your real-world example: 

You’ve probably heard the term “echo chamber.” It’s a fancy way of referring to the infrastructure in place in our digital worlds that facilitate confirmation bias. For example, Facebook filters content so that people with distinct beliefs often see content from other users with similar beliefs, reinforcing their sense of rightness.

Additionally, people often have preconceived notions about products or brands. For example, there’s been a surge in CBD-based products in recent years. However, many of these products include “dosages” far too small to have any measurable impact on the user. But people purchase them in droves because 

CBD = Good 

So, if a CBD brand markets itself as an effective supplement for stress and anxiety management, a customer who already perceives the product as effective starts taking it despite the dosage being 5 mg per lozenge. Of course, then, we’re getting into the placebo effect, but that’s a story for another blog.  

Market Like A Boss

The answer to confirmation bias is understanding what your audience is looking to confirm within themselves. The way to know that is to conduct psychographic-based audience research and use the data to inform your content strategy. 

If you can understand your audience’s values, priorities, and perceptions of themselves and others, you’ll have insights into what information they’re likely to seek out and focus on. Moreover, they’ll be more likely to pay attention if you confirm what they’re looking to validate within themselves. 

Of course, never at the risk of your own brand identity or what’s relevant to your company’s product or service offerings.

Cognitive Bias #3: Bandwagon Effect

The people around us very much influence us. And when the inertia of opinion takes hold, it can lead to viral sensations and coveted brands. The bandwagon effect parallels our need for belonging; we may participate in, sign up for, or purchase something because people we know told us it’s worth it, without regard to whether it’s worth it for us. And on a large scale, brands can become cult favorites, acquiring exponential growth in their customer base because of the allure of belonging. 

Let’s talk about a real-world example.

A new functional beverage company launches. They have a team of scientists to develop their formulations. And a high-profile celebrity endorsement. Word spreads quickly, and soon everybody and anybody are purchasing their drinks at the grocery store. Everybody, and we mean everybody and their mother, swears by their “energy” beverage. You’re no exception, stocking up on the stuff and sipping on a can every morning while you go from Zoom meeting to Zoom meeting.

In terms of marketing, the bandwagon effect can work in your favor. For example, during our annual Millennial Moms Research Survey, we found that the factor that most influenced a Millennial Mom’s decision to purchase was online reviews from people like them.  

So, it doesn’t have to be a big celebrity endorsement; we can see the Bandwagon Effect in the power of testimonials.

“If other people like it, and it has over 4,000 five-star reviews, it must be good.”  

People influence people. 

Market Like A Boss

If you’re a small fish in a big pond, it’s not realistic to become a big fish overnight, and maybe becoming a big fish isn’t in alignment with your company mission, vision, and values. So, how do you stand out and connect with your audience if Brand A out there is pulling epic sales? The answer isn’t to try to be cool; it’s to be you. 

Take some time to evaluate the current state of your marketing. Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Do we have a clear sense of who our audience is?
• Do we offer something valuable to the people we serve?
• Do we have a clear brand identity?
• Do we have a documented content strategy?

Before you leap, make sure you tighten up your marketing.    

Cognitive Bias #4: The Barnum Effect

What if I told you in 2022, you will face a great challenge and make a much-needed change? By the end of the year, I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find anybody that statement didn’t apply to. We all want to feel special. And from fortune tellers to horoscopes to personality quizzes, it’s easy for us to read into the words without considering whether they’re generalizable and we’re not that special after all. The Barnum Effect is an error of specificity. We tend to believe personality descriptions apply to us, more so than other people who might meet the same criteria (Libra, ENTJ, enneagram 6, DISC Si, etc.). 

We’ve already touched on one of the best examples of the Barnum Effect. It goes like this:

“I’m such a pisces.”  

Let’s break that down. Pisces are supposedly compassionate, spiritual, sensitive, and self-sacrificial. The issue is astrological descriptions don’t specify the breadth or depth of the characteristics, nor how they manifest in everyday life. They’re general by design. How many people do you know that are spiritual? Are they all pisces? Isn’t compassion a natural human emotion that nearly everybody experiences from time to time? Yet, if you’re a Pisces, it may be easy for you to read those descriptors and think how much they describe the essence of who you are. The Barnum Effect in action. 

The Barnum Effect exists in marketing copy across the internet and beyond. Good copy is generalizable and speaks to a broad audience, but individuals should read it as personal and relatable. It’s inherent in the art of copywriting. Think of a marketing email you received recently. Did it seem like it spoke to you? Here’s an example: a famous meditation teacher sent an email recently to market a masterclass around the topic of feeling lost. Is there anybody out there who doesn’t feel a little bit lost in January 2022, nearly three years into the COVID-19 pandemic? Yet, it’s easy to identify with the email and say, “Yes, I do feel lost. This is totally the masterclass for me.” That’s the Barnum Effect.     

Market Like A Boss

While we don’t recommend you manipulate people (ethics are essential, people), there’s no harm in making your customers feel special. Whether they all want to improve their time management, for example, is relevant in so far as understanding your audience’s goals. But what’s important is that each person who reads your marketing messages feels seen. 

So, focus your copywriting on speaking directly to people. Speak to your audience’s values, beliefs, priorities, pain points, motivations, and challenges. If they feel valued, they’ll be more likely to engage in a relationship with your brand. If they feel special, they’ll be more likely to connect.  

Overcome Cognitive Biases and Connect With Your Audience

If you’re looking to understand your audience and navigate your relationship with them in a connected, consistent, and impactful way, consider partnering with a marketing expert. Marketing is a beast and can be overwhelming to manage on top of your already busy schedule. But, you don’t have to do it all; from audience research to content strategy, we’re here to help. Email us at info@brainchildstudios.com to learn how we can augment your marketing for the better and provide effective strategies for counteracting or leveraging cognitive biases.   

The post How to Spot These 4 Cognitive Biases In Your Audience—And What to Do About It appeared first on Aajogo.