Digital Marketing: What Direct Selling Companies Can Learn from Top Tech
I had the opportunity to speak at the Fragmob Tech Convention (#fragmobtechcon) for Direct Selling Companies last week, and I promised I would share some of the key points from the discussion, share resources I mentioned in my talk and hopefully, encourage us to continue the dialogue around improving the marketing strategies and technologies we employ to help our Consultants and customers. Many thanks to Fragmob and sponsors for putting together this first event of its kind! For the talk, I was asked to share some of my experiences working at larger tech companies, like Microsoft, Amazon and HP, and what lessons companies in the direct selling industry could learn from those companies. I actually think there are so many innovative things in our industry happening, that I don’t think it’s a matter of what we are not doing, its more a matter of how we are doing it that might be a bit different from the "big guys." All of the tech companies I’ve worked at are unique in 3 D's: discipline, drive, and data, and in Amazon’s case, their obsession with customers. With so many entrepreneurial visionaries in our industry, we have no shortage of ideas. What I think becomes harder for smaller, entrepreneurial companies in ANY industry to manage is to execute well and consistently on all the little things that matter, keep the lights on in our current programs and products, and at the same time try to lead out on the Big New Things we must do to lead and create new opportunity. LinkedIn Post on the Data Topic for more info: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-direct-selling-can-learn-from-top-tech-topic-1-3-julie-cabinaw
Digital Marketing: What Direct Selling Companies Can Learn from Top Tech
- 1. Digital Marketing Imperatives: Lessons Learned from Top Tech Julie Cabinaw VP, Marketing Technology and Innovation Scentsy, Inc. Twitter: @JulieCabinaw jcabinaw@scentsy.com
- 2. Session Topics • Improve relationships through data • Measure, improve. Rinse, repeat. • Reducing friction for reps and customers • Live Test!
- 3. Improve Relationships through Data • Creating a segment of “one” • Data should drive decisions
- 4. A Tale of Two Consultants New Rep at Company A • Good experience as a customer. • Explores opportunity with her rep • Signs up online • Gets a welcome call from a company concierge • Gets amazing sales kit • Gets good but generic content for things to try as a new consultant New Rep at Company B • Good experience as a customer. • Explores opportunity with her rep • Signs up online • Gets a welcome call from a company concierge who asks her some questions about where she feels confident and where she does not in starting her new business. • Gets amazing sales kit with personalized quick start kit geared to her responses • Gets personalized interactive content geared to capitalizing on her strengths right away to gain confidence, to which her upline has added some personal notes
- 5. A Tale of Two Consultants New Rep at Company A • Good experience as a customer. • Explores opportunity with her rep • Signs up online • May or may not get good coaching from upline • Gets amazing sales kit • Gets new rep guide • Gets generic content for things to try as a new consultant New Rep at Company B • Good experience as a customer. • Explores opportunity with her rep • Signs up, answers questions in signup about where she feels confident and where she does not in starting her new business. • May or may not get good coaching from upline • Gets amazing sales kit with personalized quick start kit geared to her responses • Gets personalized interactive content geared to capitalizing on her strengths right away to gain confidence Who might have a better start with the company?
- 6. A Tale of Two Consultants New Rep at Company B What do we know about her? • Sign up Date • Personal Data – Name, Address • Upline Sponsor • We know her history as a customer • We understand preferences and behaviors through Facebook auth • We understand notes her upline collected in her lead profile score • We know the results of her confidence quiz Profile Data E-Commerce Data Social Media Data Call Data CRM Data
- 7. Using data to drive decisions • Using data doesn’t mean becoming slow • Partnership between business, IT and finance • Build your strawman first –focus on lead measures first • Track all the things! NOT. • Create a data curious culture
- 8. Perspectives from Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella
- 9. Improve Relationships through Data • Discussion Questions: – Are your data strategies today supporting your digital future? – Could you reach a segment of one? – Do you have strong lead measures in place (as well as lag)? – Do you build programs that assume personalization and ask the solution to follow? – Are you making data accessible to all employees? Are you asking for it in business reviews, even with junior team members?
- 10. Measure, Improve. Rinse, Repeat. • Sometimes, your opinion doesn’t matter • Your reps may not be a good proxy for customers, or even newer reps • Don’t change strategy based on a focus group • Behavior, not stated preferences, is king • Minimize risk through multivariate testing • Make small mistakes often and fix quickly
- 11. Data!
- 12. Case Study: Amazon A/B Testing
- 13. Tools To Consider • Wireframing Tools • Virtual User Testing Tools • A/B Testing Tools • Card Sorting Tools • Navigation Testing Tools • Survey Tools (in context)
- 14. Measure, Improve. Rinse, Repeat. • Discussion Questions: – Are you fearlessly looking at customer and rep behavior with curiosity? – Have you moved away from big bang redesigns or launches? – Are you letting experiments end arguments? – What tools are you using to help you measure behavior? – Are you measuring for decision areas, not just ‘everything’?
- 15. Reducing Friction: What is your virtuous cycle? Amazon Flywheel, Jeff Bezos Napkin Sketch
- 16. Common Sources of Friction • Business Rules • E-Commerce Hurdles • Mobile Readiness • Social Shopping & Customer Service
- 17. Rule of Thumb: Doing what’s right for customers will in turn support your representatives. • Review your compliance rules supporting digital social selling • Consider friction between consultant and customer objectives Business Rules
- 18. Rule of Thumb – Be curious and egoless in eliminating inefficiencies in your e-commerce sites. • Latency --“Those extra 900 ms just cost me 2 million dollars.” • Optimize the funnel between your brand and replicated websites • Understand millennial expectations E-Commerce
- 19. Rule of Thumb: Assume that your sites must work for all devices, but design for size and task. • Fully retool for mobile • Think Small/Medium/Large, not iPhone or Android. • We currently see >50% of our traffic from mobile devices Mobile
- 20. Social Shopping and Customer Service Rule of Thumb: Meet customers and reps where they live digitally. • Respond to social conversations within 24 hours of posts • Analyze sentiment: capitalize on positive, reduce impact of negative • Brainstorm new methods of social selling through social platforms or around them
- 21. Reducing Friction • Discussion Questions: – Do you know what your virtuous cycle is? – Are there any internal barriers in your company to reducing friction? – What barriers discussed, business rules, ecommerce, mobile, social resonate most for you?
- 22. Summary • Visit a summary post on this topic on LinkedIn with links to resources, references and these slides • Challenge yourself to look at one discussion question more closely next week – tweet @juliecabinaw to tell me what challenge you plan to take on • Take a “peek” at one of your websites in the next week!
Editor's Notes
- Amazon latency story Expectation of ecommerce – many in direct selling ahead of us, but many in same or similar position – customers come to our brand website and we lose them between brand website and replicated sites