7 Essential Metrics Healthcare Marketers Need to Focus On

December 04, 2015 at 07:00PM

When we talk about data analytics and measuring ROI, there are several standards that we use to categorize success—website visits, number of new contacts and revenue gains or losses. These are all helpful metrics and should be taken into consideration in any marketing report. However, there are loads of different ways to measure success in digital marketing, and success looks different from industry to industry—particularly in the healthcare industry.

If you’re in healthcare, the majority of your marketing efforts are likely focused on gaining and keeping new patients. In order to effectively evolve your digital marketing strategy over time, your data analysis should also focus on customer (patient) acquisition and retention.

Here’s a breakdown of the top 7 metrics you should be analyzing on a regular basis.

1) Patient Acquisition Cost

This is probably the most relevant metric, as your whole marketing budget will be based around this number. How much does it cost to acquire a new patient? Take into account that different sources – referrals, paid search, social media, etc. – may have different costs per lead, but that all are valuable ways of generating new patients. Don’t forget to factor in the lifetime value of a patient, in order to see the full view. It may seem like a lot to spend $500 per acquisition, but if the patient’s lifetime value is over $10,000, then the initial investment is worth it.

How to calculate: 

Traditional marketing would have you divide all the costs for marketing within a certain period of time by the number of new patients acquired. This method, though, only gives you a surface-level look and it doesn't allow for a deep analysis into which activities are most effective at bringing in new patients. However, with digital marketing, you can actually track a lead from a PPC ad to a landing page conversion to becoming a patient. Or, from a social post to a “Contact Us” form submission to becoming a patient. Each of these activities will have different costs-per-customer and will allow you to see where you need to allocate your budget based on what’s most effective in your market.

2) Patient Retention

It’s not enough to gain a lot of new patients—you need to keep them coming back. One loyal patient will do more good for your bottom line than 10 new patients. Loyal patients not only spend more over their lifetime, they also are great brand evangelists and will likely recommend you to their friends and family if you continue to delight them with your treatment and services. In your analytics, be sure to highlight returning patients.

How to calculate: 

To calculate patient retention rates, you'll need to know how many existing patients you have and how many you gained or lost over a set period of time. If math isn't your thing, Inc.com has a great formula to easily calculate your retention rate.

3) Customer Service Response Time

This is a metric that often trips healthcare organizations up. Customer service is for shopping, right? Wrong. Great customer service is the best way to make your healthcare organization stand out from the crowd. It’s especially important in today’s digital age as it becomes easier for complaints and bad reviews to be spread far and wide online.

Patients care about how they’re treated and their experiences at each of their appointments, but it doesn’t end there – they also care about how they’re treated outside of your office, through appointment reminders, follow-ups and response time to their questions and concerns. The level of service and treatment they receive can make or break your relationship with them. Give your staff goals and don’t simply think about email and phone call response times, make sure you’re taking social media response times into account, as well. And remember, social media users expect responses within an hour.

How to calculate: 

Facebook is now starting to track customer service response time for brand pages. You can also have your digital team log the time of each incoming inquiry and the time of each response.

4) Engagement

Engagement metrics are often considered "soft metrics," meaning they don’t show a definitive ROI. Yet, engagement metrics can be incredibly helpful in evaluating your overall brand awareness and message penetration into the market. Plus, with marketing automation platforms, you can attribute patients to certain sources and gain insight into how they originated in your database.

With HubSpot, for example, you can use the “Sources” report to show which social media leads became customers. You can also set up custom lead scoring to assign a certain number of points to each contact for certain actions they take – such as downloading a checklist or clicking on an email. This is another great way to measure engagement, as you can quickly see which leads are interacting with your content the most based on their score.

How to calculate: 

Set up Lead Scoring in HubSpot, track leads and analyze their scores over time to see if there is an optimal score which signifies someone will soon become a patient or customer.

5) Effectiveness of Premium Content

Speaking of content, be sure to do ongoing analysis into your most effective pieces of premium content. Which ones are downloaded the most? Which ones have a higher lead-to-customer conversion rate? Knowing this will help guide your future content strategy. It can also help you pinpoint which resources should be reworked or retired.

If your checklist, “Things to Know Before Surgery,” brings you the most leads on social media, it might also be a good resource to test in PPC (pay per click) ads. If your infographic, “Top Tips for a Healthy Heart,” brought in hundreds of leads two years ago but has dropped off lately, it may be time to redesign it with fresh graphics.

How to calculate: 

Track the submission rate for each landing page (percentage of views which resulted in a form submission). If you're getting a ton of views but have a low submission rate, rethink the design of your landing page or analyze whether your copy aligns with what the resource actually offers.

New content is great, and you should always be thinking about creating new premium content pieces, but don't forget to continue to optimize and refresh your existing pieces. To go even deeper, track the customer rate (the percentage of views that became customers) and run campaigns around your strongest performing content.

6) Search Engine Rankings

This is an important metric in any industry, but is especially important in healthcare, where local search ranking is key to attracting new patients. Monitor your ranking for branded and non-branded keywords relevant to your organization.

Additionally, keep your eye on each keyword’s difficulty and the number of monthly searches it collects. In some cases, there might be a keyword we like to call the “low hanging fruit” – one that has a low difficulty score and high number of monthly searches – that you can easily rank for. Then, adjust your website keyword optimization strategy as needed. 

How to calculate: 

There are several great tools out there which will allow you to see how you rank for keywords and how you stack up against your competition. Try HubSpot's Keyword Tool or Moz Local.

7) Overall Campaign Evaluation

Think of this as almost a mini report unto itself. At the end of each campaign, do a recap to evaluate how successful it was. Different campaigns will have different goals. Some, such as an April “Heart Health” campaign, may be more about raising awareness around an issue, so metrics to track should be engagement-based.

Others, such as a “Schedule Your Annual Check-up” campaign, may be about raising awareness and about increasing the number of scheduled appointments, so the metrics you track should be both engagement- and revenue-based. Evaluating your campaign based on your original goals will help you to determine its success, as well as make suggestions for and strategize future campaigns.

Digital marketing has opened up a vast influx of data and the trick is making sense of it all. What metrics have you used in the past and how are you adapting your analysis?

To learn more about how to reach and engage with different audiences, download our Next Generation Healthcare Marketing white paper.

http://bit.ly/1YNWSEL

How to Design Graphics That'll Boost Your Conversions [Free Ebook]

December 04, 2015 at 06:00PM

Gone are the days where "I'm not creative enough" or "I don't have any design experience" serve as sound excuses for avoiding design entirely. Thanks to new technology, it's possible for pretty much anyone to create optimized graphics to support their campaigns and lead generation efforts. 

With photos in tweets averaging a 35% boost in retweets and captions under graphics being viewed 300X more than body copy on average, compelling graphics have become an increasingly important part of the marketing plan.

Need help getting started? We teamed up with the folks at Canva to create an awesome, free design guide, How to Design Graphics That Convert. We cover how to design graphics to promote your content on social media, landing pages, email marketing, CTAs, and paid ads. Designed to increase conversion rates, these graphics will help your content perform better, generate more leads, and reach a bigger audience.

In this guide, you'll discover:

• How to create stunning graphics for promoting your content 
• The science of CTA optimization
• How to boost conversions by tweaking your landing pages
• How to create high-performing paid graphics

Ready to start designing? Click here to download How to Design Graphics That Convert.

Want to spread the love? Share this resource with your network:

"How to increase leads from your graphics: design with conversion in mind http://bit.ly/1N1cIqp Awesome guide from @Canva @HubSpot." [Click to Tweet]

"The experts @Canva & @HubSpot put together this visual guide on how to create graphics that convert! http://bit.ly/1HLcJQh" [Click to Tweet]

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16 Captivating Data Visualization Examples

December 04, 2015 at 02:00PM

Data can be very powerful. If you can actually understand what it's telling you, that is.

It's not easy to get clear takeaways by looking at a slew of numbers and stats. You've got to have the data presented in a logical, easy-to-understand way.

Enter data visualization. The human brain processes visual information better than it processes text -- so using charts, graphs, and design elements, data visualization can help you explain trends and stats much more easily.

But not all data visualization is created equal. (Just check out “Why Most People’s Charts and Graphs Look Like Crap” to see what I mean.)

So, how do organize data in a way that's both compelling and easy to digest? Get inspired by the following 16 examples of data visualization that communicate interesting information with both style and substance.

Click here to download our free guide to data visualization for more data visualization examples and tips. 

What is Data Visualization?

Data visualization refers to representing data in a visual context, like a chart or a map, to help people understand the significance of that data.

Whereas data in text form can be really confusing (not to mention bland), data represented in a visual format helps people extract meaning from that data much more quickly and easily. You can expose patterns, trends, and correlations that may otherwise go undetected.

Data visualization can be static or interactive. For centuries, people have been using static data visualization like charts and maps. Interactive data visualization is a little bit newer: It lets people drill down into the dirty details of these charts and graphs using their computers and mobile devices, and then interactively change which data they see and how it's processed.

Ready to feel inspired? Let's take a look at some great examples of interactive and static data visualization.

Examples of Interactive Data Visualization 

1) Why Buses Bunch

Here's a wonderful example of a complex data set boiled down into what that looks and feels like a game. In this visualization, the folks at Setosa are showing how "bus bunching" happens, i.e. when a bus gets delayed and later causes multiple buses to arrive at a single stop at the same time.

Telling this story in numbers alone would be pretty difficult, but instead, they turn it into an interactive game. While the buses rotate along a route, we can click and hold a button to delay a bus. Then, all we have to do is watch to see how even a short delay causes the buses to bunch together after a time.

2) Languages in the World

This interactive by DensityDesign does an impressive job of introducing the non-linguist (aka most of us) to the many world languages. All 2,678 of them.

This piece allows you to explore common languages families, see which languages are most spoken, and view where languages are spoken around the world. This is great visual storytelling: taking an in-depth subject and breaking it down in an easy-to-understand way. 

3) Percent of U.S. Population by Age Group

This is a strong example of how to present a single data set in a compelling way. Pew Research created this animated GIF composite to show shifts in population demographics over time. It’s a great way to tell a larger story in a neat package.

Plus, this type of micro-content is easy to share on social or embed in blogs, extending the content’s reach. If you want to make a GIF of your own using Photoshop, here's a step-by-step tutorial.

4) The Complete History of the NFL

The world of sports is rich with data, but that data isn't always presented effectively (or accurately, for that matter). The folks over at FiveThirtyEight do it particularly well, though. In this interactive visualization below, they calculated what's called an "Elo rating" -- a simple measure of strength based on game-by-game results -- for every game in the history of the National Football League. That's over 30,000 ratings in total. Viewers can compare each team's Elo to see how each team performed across decades of play.

5) U.S. Thanksgiving on Google Flights 

Here's a great way to visualize things moving around in space over a given time. This one is powered by Google Trends, which tracked flights as they few to, from, and across the United States on the day before Thanksgiving. The visualization starts at the very beginning of the day and plays like a movie as time goes on, showing flights moving around the country. Without showing any numbers beside the time, viewers can see which times of day are more popular for international flights, for domestic flights, and for flights to and from different hubs around the country.

6) What's Really Warming the World?

Ever heard a version of the advice, "Don't simply show the data; tell a story with it"? That's exactly what this visualization from Bloomberg Business does -- and it's the interactive part that makes the story move along from beginning to end.

The point of the visualization is to disprove theories that claim that natural causes explain global warming. The first thing you'll see is the observed temperature as it's risen from 1880 to present day. As you scroll down, the visualization takes you through exactly how much different factors contribute to global warming in comparison to what's been observed, adding a richer layer of storytelling. The conclusion the authors want viewers to draw is made very clear.

7) A Guide to Who is Fighting Whom in Syria

Relationships among many different groups can be difficult to understand -- especially when there are 11 of them, many of which are on the same side as groups they're normally at odds with, and vice versa. Now that's confusing. But using a table format and familiar visuals and colors, the folks at Slate did a great job simplifying this data into a simple, digestible, and interactive format.

Viewers can click on any of the faces for a succinct description of the relationship.

8) Most Valuable Sports Franchises

Here is an example of telling a deeper story by adding data. This interactive, created by Column Five, was inspired by Forbes’ "Top 50 Most Valuable Sports Franchises 2014" list. But instead of just visualizing the list, the interactive also lets users see the number of years each team has competed, as well as number of championships won. This offers a more comprehensive view of the each team’s history and success as a franchise.

9) U.S. Wind Map

Here's a visualization similar to the Thanksgiving flights one, except this time, it shows all present wind speeds and directions in the U.S. in real time. It's a great example of intuitive design: Speed is represented by lines moving slowly or quickly, and direction is represented by which way the lines are moving. It's immediately clear what the general trends are without any need for numbers unless you click into the map itself. Plus, capping the number of variables at two makes it even easier to follow.

Examples of Static Data Visualization

10) Where News Audiences Fit on the Political Spectrum

Usually, when a designer has a lot of text that can't be left out, they'll usually organize that information into a data table in order to make it more compact, according to the folks at Pew Research Center. But they went for a distribution plot instead. Why? Because a distribution plot lets viewers see where each media outlet lies on a spectrum. On a spectrum, the distance between each media outlet is significant. If these outlets were just listed one after the other in a table, viewers wouldn't be able to see where each one stood in context. 

11) The Daily Routines of Famous Creative People

This data visualization is a simple concept executed fantastically. Using information from the book Daily Rituals by Mason Currey, the site showcases the daily schedules of famous creatives broken down by time and activity. Not only is this an example of engaging data (as you can explore the schedules by individual activity), it's also a fantastic editorial piece for a brand.

12) The Year in News

The best data visualizations communicate information and do so in an intuitive and beautiful way. Echelon Insights nailed it with this piece, which visualizes the most talked-about news stories of 2014 on Twitter. What do 184.5 million tweets look like? Rad spin art. 

13) The Depth of the Problem

When you want to illustrate scale, static data visualization can be a great way to make your point. The infographic below from The Washington Post is incredibly long ... and that's on purpose. In this case, they're showing how crazy far a deep-sea signal from an airplane can be detected by comparing that depth to tall buildings, the maximum depth of known mammals, the depth of the Titanic wreck, and so on. It's a great use of simple visuals and color gradients. Finally, adding data to a news story (in this case, the missing Malaysian airliner) is a great way to provide context.

(For the full size visualization, click here)

14) Funding the Final Frontier

While the infographic above is pretty simple, there are ways to create well-designed infographics that deliver a large amount of data. The secret? A simple and clean format that makes it easy for readers to understand the data. This infographic, created by GOOD Magazine and Column Five, breaks down NASA’s five-year budget to show how and where the money will be spent. Plus, it has an on-theme design -- an all-around win.  

15) Caritas Kontakladen Annual Report

Not all data visualizations need to be animated. When real-world data is visualized with real-life examples, the results can be stunning. Designer Marion Luttenberger took a unique approach to the data contained in Caritas Kontakladen’s annual report. The organization provides support to drug addicts in Austria, so Luttenberger focused on communicating the mission through real-life visuals. For example, this shopping cart visualization represents how much of life’s necessities a welfare recipient can afford each day.

16) Austria Solar Annual Report

While there are many ways to visualize data, using the information subject to actually create the data visualization (follow me here) can be pretty profound. This annual report from Austria Solar uses actual solar power to bring the company’s data to life through solar-activated inks on the page. In a word: Genius.

What are you favorite examples of data visualization? Share them with us in the comments.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in March 2015 and has been updated for freshness, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

 

http://bit.ly/1XFu8B6

How to Market Matching Gifts in the Donation Process

December 04, 2015 at 01:00PM

If you haven’t experienced the pure joy of a buy one, get one free sale, you’re missing out. You go into a store looking for the perfect pair of jeans, and you come out with twice as much denim as you paid for!

Matching gifts are almost exactly like those sales. While matching gifts won’t bring your organization twice as many designer denim pants, you can double the amount of donations that you’re already receiving by effectively marketing matching gifts to your donors during the giving process. 

What Are Matching Gifts?

Matching gifts are contributions that employers, or other parent companies, make to eligible nonprofits after an employee has made a donation on their own accord. They can be a great way to give your nonprofit’s fundraising a boost with little effort on you or the donor’s part.

While there are many ways to market matching gifts to your donors, one of the best ways is to capture their attention with matching gift information during the donation process or in tangent to other donation promotions. Donors who are already giving to your organization (or at least considering it) obviously care about your cause. Use that opportunity to convey how matching gifts can help donors maximize their impact.

Here are four of the top ways to market matching gifts in the donation process

1) Market Matching Gifts in Solicitation Emails

Solicitation emails are one of the most common ways to encourage donors to give to your organization, and can also play a crucial role in your matching gift marketing strategy.

When you let donors know about matching gifts upfront in your solicitation emails, you are giving them an even more exciting reason to donate to your organization, because their impact will be much greater than an individual contribution alone.

However, you shouldn’t send out the same solicitation email to every single donor. Personalization can go a long ways to make email recipients feel valued, which in turn can even further increase the likelihood of a donation.

You can use prospect research to determine which of your donors should be getting which message. Prospect research can help you identify regular givers as well as relatively new contributors. With this information, you can better tailor your solicitation emails to different donors.

You can use the following tools for prospect research:

• Information gleaned from form submissions during previous conversions on your websites (for example, a webinar or content offer)
• The Foundation Center (they have nearly 1,000 filings for nonprofits)
• The Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Guidestar
• And many more resources

This research can help guide you when it comes to donor communications as they relate to matching gifts for different donor groups. To begin with, the message should be different for regular donors versus first-time givers. For matching gifts in particular, you may be able to use more complex messaging for donors who have given in the past, and are already familiar with your cause.

Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania offers a great example of an email that is tailored to a regular donor. The second paragraph states, “As a valued donor of Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania, you know that your gift supports more than 50 programs and services … We encourage you to take advantage of the matching gift program.” The email also incorporates an eye-catching CTA and useful links that lead donors to more information.

By sending out this type of email to regular donors, your nonprofit can reap the benefits of matching gift programs and receive twice as many donations from your donors and their employers.

2) Market Matching Gifts on Donation Forms 

Just like you need to provide different donors with unique solicitation emails, you’ll want to make sure that your donors are receiving distinct donation experiences on your forms as well.

If you know that a donor has submitted a matching gift request before, then you’ll want to reflect that on your website. Additionally, if a donor is either donating to your organization for the first-time, or if they’ve donated before but have never submitted a matching gift request, you’ll need to treat their donation experience differently than a regular donor who has their gifts matched.

For instance, when a regular donor makes another donation, remind them of their past matched contribution on the thank you page. The reminder can help encourage donors to have their donations matched again without discounting their past efforts.

Provide first-time donors or givers who haven’t had their donations matched in the past with information on the donation form so they can immediately look into having their contribution matched.

The Girl Scouts of Greater Atlanta provide donors with a way to check if their donation to the annual fund can be doubled right on the donation page. The space above the donation levels section is used for matching gift information, while the link helps donors find out if their company will even match their donation.

By providing donors with different experiences during the donation process, you can more efficiently inform or remind donors about the power of matching gifts.

3) Market Matching Gifts With Smart Content

When donors visit your website, they want to feel welcomed. One of the ways to ensure that users stay on your site and eventually come back, donate, and submit matching gift requests is to personalize the experience that they receive through the use of smart content.

When donors read blog posts and other articles on your website, add calls-to-action that are suited for each user—based on their previous online actions.

Instead of offering the same promotion to everyone, customize your donors’ experience depending on:

• The type of device they’re using
• The geographic area they are visiting your site from
• How they reached your website (social, search, email)
• Their previous donations or downloads
• Their company or parent organization

Additionally, customize users’ experiences depending on where they are in the lifecycle stage. For instance, the message that first-time visitors to your site receive should be different from the content that regular users encounter.

When it comes to matching gifts, this step is crucial. You don’t want to beat regular donors over the head when they have already had several of their donations matched. However, if a first-time donor or a contributor who has never had their donation matched visits your site, you’ll want to make sure that you’re covering your bases. 

4) Market matching gifts in acknowledgement emails 

You should always be thanking donors after they make a donation. But acknowledgement emails can also be a great way to let donors know about making their donations go a little further. 

Most companies have deadlines for submitting matching gift paperwork. While some deadlines are at the end of a calendar year, some are as short as 3 months from when the donation is made. Sending an email to a donor shortly after they make a contribution can help you capture more matching gift requests.

However, you shouldn’t be sending the same thank-you email to all of your donors. Customizing and segmenting donors according to the size of their contribution, the frequency at which they donate, and whether they’ve previously submitted matching gifts is crucial to achieving matching gift success.

The Hereditary Neuropathy Foundation’s thank-you email highlights the importance of matching gift programs while letting donors know that they appreciate their contributions. They even thank donors in advance for checking to see if their employers offer a matching gift program!

While the HNF’s thank-you email could be used for first-time donors who have never submitted a matching gift request before, it wouldn’t be the best fit for donors who regularly submit matching gifts. For those donors, consider sending a thank-you email once their employers submit the matching donation.

NC State lets donors know when their employers’ matching gift donations are received and thanks them for taking the extra time to submit a matching gift request. An email like this can be a great way to continually remind donors that their donations can be matched throughout the year.

Getting Started With Matching Gifts

Marketing matching gifts to donors should take place across your website and communications, but it should also occur within the donation process. Whether a donor is a first-time contributor or has regularly donated and had their gifts matched, you can tailor the steps of the donation process to fit each donor’s needs.

And then based on the responses from your donors and website visitors to your different content and communications you can tailor your messaging to everything from additional contributions to skills-based volunteering opportunites, to additional ways to get involved with your nonprofit. Just like the matcheddonations, you're sure to see your marketing efforts compound on themselves over time.

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How to Have More Productive Group Brainstorms: 10 Tips to Get Everyone Involved

December 04, 2015 at 12:00PM

How many times have you uttered the phrase, "I wish I'd thought of that"?

It often seems that certain people have the power to formulate creative, inspired ideas, but the truth is, you and I are just as capable as the next person. 

Sure, unleashing your creativity isn't always easy -- especially when you're brainstorming in a group setting.

In order to keep your business competitive and have more productive brainstorms, you need to account for different personality types, points of view, and preferred ways of learning.

To help you hold more meaningful group brainstorms, embrace the following tips and tricks. From icebreakers to games to free tools, you're sure to find an approach that gets the wheels turning for your team.

How to Have More Productive Group Brainstorms

1) Allow people to submit ideas anonymously.

It's a paranoia shared by all human species: What will other people think? 

When it comes to brainstorming, sometimes our wildest, craziest, most unrealistic ideas happen to be our best ones. Unfortunately, many of them never see the light of day, as we are often plagued by our unproductive obsession with what might happen if we speak up. 

Best defined by the concept of evaluation apprehension, this all-too-common anxiety can suck the innovation right out of your group brainstorm. To combat it, consider asking members of the group to submit ideas anonymously before the meeting.

If you're looking for a handy tool to help simplify collecting anonymous suggestions, check out Free Suggestion Box. This easy-to-use website lets you set up a suggestion box, share the box's unique URL with your teammates, and collect their honest feedback without revealing their identities. Check it out:

2) Ask people to come prepared.

While it may seem obvious, often times people come to brainstorms without having put much thought into the topic at hand. This can lead to a lot of awkward silences and a lot less creative thinking. 

The solution?

"What the most creative companies do is tell the members of the group to come up with lists of ideas before they come to the brainstorming session. What the group is really powerful for is exchanging ideas and then having ideas bump up against one another and merge in surprising new ways that any one person might not have thought of on their own," notes creativity expert Keith Sawyer.

In other words, by asking group members to bring a few ideas to the table, you create a launching point for more ideas to surface. To enforce this, you might want to pass around a spreadsheet for collecting ideas prior to the meeting. 

3) Gamify it.

Move over brainstorming, there's a new technique in town: Gamestorming. 

This new way of looking at brainstorming opens up an opportunity for people to have fun while surfacing results. It's visual, messy, loud, and innovative ... just like brainstorming should be. 

Interested in trying it out in your next group brainstorm? Here are a few exercises:

• Squiggle Birds: Want to stretch your visual thinking muscles? This activity will help you do just that. [Learn How to Play]
• Draw Toast: Need a fun way to get people warmed up and thinking systematically? Ask them how to make toast. [Learn How to Play]
• Carousel: If you're looking to come up with a fresh solution to a problem, this quick exercise will help you gather and share insight from all points of view. [Learn How to Play]

4) Start with an icebreaker.

When you're jumping from meeting to meeting, getting in the right frame of mind to think creatively can be challenging. You're thinking about your social media engagement, budgeting issues, and unanswered emails, all while also trying to bring something constructive to the table.

Depending on the focus of your brainstorm, there are a ton of interesting icebreakers you can kick off your meeting with. For example, if you're brainstorming idea for a particular demographic, PR Daily suggests that you ask the group to pretend that they are planning a party for the audience you're looking to reach. They should determine specific details -- venue, playlist, menu, theme, etc. -- in order to get in the mindset of the group you're targeting.

Another option? Word association. Help your group start thinking about the bigger picture by creating a word web of terms that relate to your challenge or promotion. From here, you can identify patterns and trends that will prove useful when developing ideas.

5) Invite an outsider.

There are a ton of cognitive biases that influence the decisions we make, and failing to recognize your own biases is a bias in itself -- it's called blind spot bias.  

Considering it's much easier for people to recognize cognitive and motivational biases in others than it is to identify them in oneself, it's a good idea to brainstorm and come to decisions with the help of a group. But not just any old group will do ...

In an effort to take a step back from the situation, try inviting someone from a different team, department, or level of the organization to join your brainstorm. By having an outsider in the room, it'll be easier to minimize biases, as this person can serve as a devil's advocate for your ideas. 

6) Host the brainstorm online. 

Whether some of your team members work remotely or you sit side-by-side, choosing to hold an online brainstorm could be the solution you've been looking for. 

A study on electronic brainstorming and group size found that larger groups were able to come up with more unique, high-quality ideas when they used electronic brainstorming versus verbal. Not to mention, members expressed more satisfaction when participating in this format. 

Why? The research concluded that electronic brainstorming has the ability to reduce production blocking, in which waiting your turn interferes with the cognitive process of generating ideas. 

7) Set a fleeting deadline.

As many of us know all too well, sometimes all it takes is the looming threat of a deadline to ignite action. 

Much like leveraging the Pomodoro Technique -- in which you work in brief, 25-minute stints with breaks -- limiting the time you spend on a group brainstorm could serve as a helpful kick in the pants for all involved. 

Rather than giving yourself too much time and space to come up with ideas, creative Nicole Steinbok suggests you hold a 22-minute meeting. The way Steinbok sees it, this limited deadline typically provides just enough time to accomplish an intended goal -- without having to deal with all the banter. Here's a look at how the ideal 22-minute meeting should play out:

8) Opt for a change of scenery.

Are you holding your brainstorms in the same meeting room every time? Switch it up. 

 

According to an article on study habits from The New York Times, our brains make subtle associations between what we're focusing on and the background sensations at the time. For example, a 1978 experiment found that students who studied 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms performed better than students who studied the words twice in the same room.

 

"What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” psychologist Robert A. Bjork suggests.

 

The lesson? Go outside, try a new room, stand in the hallway, go out for lunch ... just get out.

9) Avoid letting the leader start. 

Having a brainstorm with a mix of executives, upper management, and their reports? It's often best to ask management to save their suggestions until others have had a chance to toss around some ideas. 

"Participants who are easily intimidated will hitch their wagons to the boss’s ideas, probably at the expense of their own creativity. And more rebellious participants won’t come near the boss’s ideas, even though those ideas might indeed have merit," explains Sam Harrison, author to several books on creative ideas. 

It's also important to note that anchoring bias -- our tendency to rely heavily on the first piece of information offered -- also plays a role in this type of scenario. If you allow the leader to speak first, it can become difficult for other group members to look beyond their initial judgment, and ultimately hold them back from offering new ideas. 

10) Provide visual tools. 

Considering approximately 65% of the population are visual learners, it'd be limiting to reserve brainstorms for just verbal communication. 

Some ideas require a diagram or a doodle. Others require an elaborate map that stretches from one side of the white board to the other. In order for everyone in the group to truly understand one another's ideas, it's important that you provide the means to explain things visually. 

Don't have access to a room with a white board? Create a kit that can be used whenever someone at your company holds a brainstorm. This can be a box filled with paper, markers, scissors, clay, string, wire, Legos, tape, etc. 

Sure, it sounds a lot like arts and crafts, but these types of tools allow for hands-on brainstorming -- which could be the key to unlocking your team's creativity. 

How does your team approach brainstorming? Share your favorite tips and tricks in the comments.

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How Homebuilders Can Leverage Houzz, Pinterest and Instagram to Generate More Business

December 03, 2015 at 09:00PM

The odds are you or someone you know has searched for a home recently. Something magical happens when you find the right one. Your heart starts racing, your palms get clammy. Are you about to buy a house?

You may not realize it from the consumer side of this deal, but there is an enormous amount of heavy-lifting that comes from the homebuilder side, especially with the availability of social media at consumers’ fingertips.

Imagine the complexity behind drawing in people from all walks of life who are about to make one of the largest purchase decisions of their lives. Maybe they’re newlyweds, looking for their first home purchase ever. Maybe they found out their family is growing and they need a bigger home, but they’re conscious of the energy efficiency and want to be near particular landmarks. Maybe they’re retiring and are looking to downsize or buy a vacation home in another state. 

How can homebuilders speak to all of these people at once effectively? Social media done right. 

Houzz is an increasingly effective tool to speak to home buyers 

There are several aspects of Houzz that allow a homebuilder to communicate directly with interested home buyers. For example, homebuilders can post pictures and statistics of projects they are working on or have completed. This gives the home buyer a taste for what a project could look like when the idea of building a new home seems very daunting.

Homebuilders can also use what Houzz refers to as Ideabooks, allowing them to collaborate with home buyers online. They can post images of their own designs, décor, or floor plans allowing a potential client to transition from collecting their own ideas to actually seeing what options could be viable.

Houzz also allows  the home builder to accumulate comments and reviews, encouraging past customers to engage with potential clients who are in the process of looking. According to a Zendesk survey, 90% of customers say buying decisions are influenced by online reviews, making this aspect of Houzz undeniably critical.

Pinterest can be used in innovative ways to aid homebuilders in selling

At conception, Pinterest seemed to be the land of fitspiration, recipes, crafting, DIY ideas, and other visually motivating ideas. Now, Pinterest is accessible to anyone, including people like me who end up with dyed skin or glitter stained clothes just by looking at a crafty project. For homebuilders, Pinterest is an avenue to reach those who are searching for specific keywords related to their industry and then engaging this audience with related boards.

Pinterest allows for users to invite other users to share a board and “pin” ideas to it together. While similar to the Houzz Ideabook function, Pinterest takes this interaction to the next level by allowing “pinners” to add their own information, including images and blogs from their website.

Pinterest also creates the opportunity to build boards and pin trending topics, catching any viewers who may be interested in related topics but are currently searching trends. For example, plenty of home-makers could be interested in remodeling their kitchens, but as the holidays are approaching they are more interested in searching for “creative table settings for Christmas.” By building a board around “decorating for the holidays,” a homebuilder could catch the eye of anyone who is looking for ideas on how to decorate their own homes for the holidays.

While building SEO through social media and gaining credibility for resonant and relevant posts a homebuilder can greatly increase traffic and potentially sales on their website. In a world where 88% of pinners purchase something they have pinned and 49% purchase 5 or more products they pinned, homebuilders must join the movement.

Instagram offers more than just pretty pictures for homebuilders and home buyers

Instagram has a lot more to offer than initially meets the eye. Its initial use was as a platform for pushing pictures with relevant and trending hashtags to sort conversations. Those discovering these pictures through hashtags can then like the pictures and, in a sense, organize the feed they subscribe to with certain images that they want to see.

Now, Instagram is an opportunity for homebuilders to follow up on those who are interested in their posts and then to follow them and see what else they are interested in. Using information like this and collecting personas can be very helpful data in the long run. Discovering, from lead to customer, what a typical BUYER persona is on social media can greatly alter the strategy a homebuilder can use to target the right audience.

Instagram also offers the unique opportunity to post short video clips. For example, new home builders can use this option to give a tour of a new build or a walk through a construction zone as led by the president of the company herself. These kinds of insider looks help build integrity and emotional connections with those who are serious about their home buying search and are evaluating their options of brands. It is a well-known fact that “[people] are not thinking machines…[but] are feeling machines that think” – so cater to the emotional side of a big decision.

Are you more likely to buy a new home from a builder who has a 10 second video of a woman buying a new house, getting help from the builders to make it just right, and then ending with a soldier in uniform walking up to the door finally seeing his new home or from a brand that isn’t even on Instagram?

These three social media channels have changed the strategy of selling over the past couple of years. Cold calls won’t cut it when your competitor is researching buyer personas based on trends on their own social media sites and is interacting directly with interested consumers from the comfort of their own homes and smartphones.

It’s time to change your strategy and find what works for you. The biggest risk you can take in 2016 is to keep doing what you were doing in 2015.

http://bit.ly/1OJCr7t

The Anatomy of an Optimized Marketing Email [Infographic]

December 03, 2015 at 06:00PM

For email marketers, the inbox is a battlefield.

Chances are, the folks on your email lists are receiving promotional emails not just from you, but from a lot of different businesses. Whether they open your emails depends on a lot of things, including your subject line, how well they liked your past emails, and so on.

But with 91% of consumers checking email every day, it's still one of the best places to reach your target audience. To inspire them to open and click through your emails, you'll need to make sure you're consistently sending great marketing emails that warrant your recipients' time and attention.

So, what does a great marketing email include? Check out the infographic below from QuickSprout to learn the anatomy of an optimal marketing email, including how to optimize your subject lines, body content, and calls-to-action.

Download our free guide here to learn how to create awesome email newsletters of your own. 

http://bit.ly/1IGcG3b