7 of the Best A/B Testing Tools for 2019

In the marketing industry, we treat experts like they’re village elders, soaking up every tip and trick they have to offer so we can implement them into our own work, desperately hoping for similar results.

But, when you really think about it, marketing is always changing and experts often don’t have visibility into your unique context.

This naturally begs the questions -- what should you do when you can’t find a solution to one of your problems on the internet? To find the answers to your unique problem, consider channeling your inner Sherlock Holmes and become an investigator. Investigators forage for information that’ll lead them to the answers of their own specific questions. And, as a marketer, one of the best investigative tools at your disposal is A/B testing.

Every company has a different set of customers, so there’s no one-size-fits-all formula for designing the most optimal website, crafting the most compelling copy, or building the most effective product. To figure out which website design, line of copy, or product feature will produce the best results for your company, you must discover what your unique set of customers prefer.

To help you do this, we’ve curated seven of the best A/B testing tools for 2019 that’ll help you optimize your website design, copy, product, and, most importantly, help you find the answers to your own specific situation.

Best A/B Testing Tools

1. VMO
2. Optimizely
3. Omniconvert
4. Crazy Egg
5. AB Tasty
6. Freshmarketer
7. Convert

1. VWO

Image Credit: VWO

G2Crowd Rating: 4.2/5.0 (130 reviews)

Trusted by over 4,500 enterprise brands including eBay, Target, and Virgin Holidays, VWO is an A/B testing and conversion rate optimization platform tailored specifically for enterprise brands. In their suite, you can build A/B tests, Split URL tests, and multivariate tests with a drop-and-drop editor.

To gauge the performance of your tests, VWO offers a robust reporting dashboard. VWO also offers a SmartStats feature that leverages Bayesian statistics to help you run faster tests, give you more control of your tests, and reach more accurate conclusions.

2. Optimizely

G2Crowd Rating: 4.3/5.0 (104 reviews)

With 24 Fortune 100 companies as customers, Optimizely is a digital experimentation platform for enterprise marketing, product, and engineering teams. Using their powerful A/B and multi-page experimentation tool, you can run multiple experiments on one page at the same time, allowing you to test various variables of your web design.

Optimizely also offers testing on dynamic websites, various experiment dimensions like ad campaign, geography, and cookies, and various experiment segmentation parameters like device, browser, and campaign.

3. Omniconvert

G2Crowd Rating: 4.5/5.0 (47 reviews)

Omniconvert is a conversion rate optimization platform that offers an A/B testing tool, as well as survey, personalization, overlay, and segmentation tools. Using their A/B testing tool, you can run A/B tests on desktop, mobile, and tablet. Additionally, you can turn winning versions of an A/B test into the control for a future test and leverage Frequentist or Bayesian statistics to validate your tests.

Omniconvert also blends their segmentation tool with their A/B testing tool to let you test over 40 segmentation parameters, like geolocation, traffic source, and visitor behavior, to improve your website’s user experience, product features, and content’s ability to engage and convert. If you work for a medium-sized business, Omniconvert could be a great A/B testing solution.

4. Crazy Egg

Image Credit: Crazy Egg

G2Crowd Rating: 4.0/5.0 (28 reviews)

Crazy Egg is a website optimization software that offers A/B testing, heat mapping, and usability testing tools. Their A/B testing tool lets you test variations of every single page on your website by adding one snippet of code to the pages you want to experiment on.

Crazy Egg also lets you build A/B tests without any coding experience, sends more traffic to the optimal variant of your test once it recognizes it’s the winner, and offers intuitive conversion tracking and reporting tools. If you work for a small business, Crazy Egg is definitely a tool you should consider.

5. AB Tasty

Image Credit: AB Tasty

G2Crowd: 4.4/5.0 (25 reviews)

Trusted by brands like Sephora, Ugg, and Carrefour, AB Tasty is a conversion rate optimization software that offers A/B and multivariate testing, data insights, marketing, and personalization tools.

Using their experiments tool, you can build and run A/B tests, split tests, multivariate tests, and funnel tests with their visual editor. You can also leverage their advanced targeting to test based off various criteria like URL, geolocation, weather, and more. To help validate your tests, AB tasty offers reports that display your tests and their confidence levels in real time. If you work for a medium-sized business, AB Tasty could be best suited for you.

6. Freshmarketer

G2Crowd Rating: 4.5/5.0 (24 reviews)

Freshmarketer, which is the marketing arm of the business platform Freshworks, is a conversion rate optimization software that offers A/B testing and split URL testing. Their A/B testing tool can test, target, and validate your experiment, integrate with Google Analytics, and even track the amount of revenue your experiments have generated.

Freshmarketer’s Split URL testing tool can help you test multiple variations of URLs, turn winning test variations into real web pages, and grasp the effectiveness of your web design by offering heatmaps of every variation of your split URL test. Freshmarketer could be the A/B testing solution for you if you work for a small business.

7. Convert

Image Credit: Convert

G2Crowd Rating: 4.7/5.0 (21 Reviews)

Trusted by brands like Sony, Unicef, and Jabra, Convert is an A/B testing and web personalization software that offers A/B testing, split testing, multivariate testing, and multipage experiment tools. Convert also offers an advanced segmentation tool that allows you to segment users based off their historical behavior, cookies, and JavaScript events.

Additionally, Convert can gauge the performance of all your tests by reporting on a large mix of metrics, from your variations’ click-through-rate to its return-on-investment. If you want to use Convert in conjunction with your other tools, they offer a ton of integrations with third-party tools, like WordPress, Shopify, and HubSpot. Convert is best suited for small businesses.

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The Ultimate Guide to Relationship Marketing

There are plenty of studies that highlight the importance of customer retention -- oftentimes, customer retention has been found to be even more critical to your company's success than customer acquisition.

For instance, research conducted by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company found as little as a five percent increase in customer retention can result in an increase in company revenue by 25-95%.

Alternatively, American Express discovered retained customers buy more often and spend more than newer customers -- they've seen your worth and they're invested loyally in your brand, so it makes sense they're willing to turn to your business for their needs, again and again.

Need further convincing? Consider this -- in 2016, I began using JetBlue for my flights to and from college in North Carolina. Why? Because I could earn points for every dollar spent on a flight (points which never expired), and I appreciated the airline's customer-first mentality. Plus, I liked the free snacks.

Once I graduated college, I took it a step further, paying $99 for a JetBlue Plus credit card, which allowed me to earn more points on every dollar I spent using the credit card. I could use these points for future flights, but alternatively, I could also use them on car rentals, hotel stays, or purchases with JetBlue retail partners, like Amazon.

Then, a few months ago, I convinced my friend to get a JetBlue credit card, so she could reap the same benefits.

I'm not trying to convince you to fly JetBlue, but I am trying to show you the power of relationship marketing. By offering unparalleled rewards for long-term customers, and demonstrating a true desire to cultivate a deeper relationship with their audience, JetBlue doesn't need to spend much time or effort on acquiring new customers -- its existing customers are doing the heavy-lifting for them.

What is relationship marketing?

Relationship marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on cultivating deeper, more meaningful relationships with customers to ensure long-term satisfaction and brand loyalty. Relationship marketing is not focused on short-term wins or sales transactions -- rather, it is focused on delighting an audience and your customers for the long-haul.

Here, let's take a look at some relationship marketing examples, and then explore how you can implement a strong relationship marketing strategy, today.

Relationship Marketing Examples

1. Domino's
2. Marriott
3. GE
4. ArmorSuit
5. Panera

1. Domino's

In the past couple years, Domino's has taken its fair share of risks for the sake of innovation and improvement -- including a series of ads called Pizza turnaround, in which they showcased a series of negative customer reviews, read by real Domino's employees, before promising a new and improved recipe.

These self-deprecating ads appeal genuinely to viewers, but clearly go against any traditional sales playbook ... which is why they work. By admitting their mistake, Domino's re-invented its brand as transparent and honest -- and who wouldn't want to buy from a company like that?

Additionally, Domino's has conducted other genius marketing campaigns like the Domino's wedding registry, in which soon-to-be-married couples can create their own pizza registry. Domino's has also done a fantastic job tapping into their digital audience -- at one point, the company even allowed people to order pizza using a simple pizza emoji. Now, half of Domino's sales are through digital channels.

Ultimately, there are plenty of risky steps Domino's has taken to cultivate a loyal, long-term customer base. They accepted short-term losses for long-term gains by slowly and strategically re-inventing their product and their brand, and then engaging with their audience on their customer's favorite digital platforms.

2. Marriott

Undoubtedly, a 35-minute film is not the most traditional avenue a hotel can take when it wants to increase sales -- and yet, that's exactly what Marriott chose to do with their film, "Two Bellmen Three".

This film, along with other influencer content like "Snapisodes", which mimic TV travel documentaries, enables Marriott to appeal to a younger demographic and build brand awareness on youth-dominant platforms like Snapchat. Best of all, their content rarely resembles an advertisement, and is typically focused on providing an audience with fun or helpful information on various travel destinations.

3. GE

Relationship marketing is ultimately about offering both new and existing customers valuable content -- regardless of where they are in your buyer's journey. Good relationship marketing should appeal to the random viewer as powerfully as it appeals to your long-term customers, to ensure your customers can grow with you for the long-haul.

GE does a great job of diversifying its content, and the platforms on which it promotes, to ensure it satisfies as many people as possible. For instance, GE created two sponsored podcasts, which have collectively resulted in nearly 8 million downloads. Additionally, the company has a popular YouTube channel, and a blog that ranges in topics from Arnold Spielberg to 3D printing.

By consistently offering a diverse range of quality content, GE shows its desire to satisfy its long-term customers even at the expense of short-term wins.

4. ArmorSuit

ArmorSuit's warranty policy begins like this -- "Most warranties are limited to 30 days or one year, but with our Lifetime Replacement Warranty, our customers can request for a replacement screen protector for a lifetime. This way, you never need to purchase a whole new kit when a replacement is needed."

This way, you never need to purchase a whole new kit -- a phrase you'll likely never hear in traditional sales transactions. ArmorSuit's lifetime warranty represents the company's steadfast commitment to keeping its customers satisfied. While it might seem ridiculous to offer a lifetime warranty, it makes sense for building strong relationships with ArmorSuit's customers -- when the company's customers then need other products related to tech, they'll most likely check out ArmorSuit's website first.

5. Panera

In 2014, Panera issued a statement promising its customers it would remove all artificial flavors, sweeteners, and preservatives from all Panera products by the end of 2016. The company remained transparent throughout the process, publishing progress reports to demonstrate a level of accountability and transparency to its customers.

Undoubtedly, it was a risky decision to admit they'd previously used unhealthy ingredients in their food -- but it paid off big-time in 2016, when the brand could officially say "100% of our food is 100% clean".

Now, they continue to focus on cultivating strong relationships with their customers through personalization. For instance, they alert loyalty members about new food offerings they feel will meet the member's "flavor profile".

They also meet their customers where they are -- 26% of Panera's orders are generated digitally, and they offer home and business delivery, rapid pickup, and catering. Their commitment to health and convenience has resulted in 28 million Panera loyalty members, and 13 million email newsletter subscribers.

Next, lets explore how you can create a strong relationship marketing strategy for your own business.

Relationship Marketing Strategy

1. Provide personalized, customer-focused service.
2. Engage with the customer where they are.
3. Offer incentive and rewards for customer loyalty.
4. Create valuable content that tells a compelling story.
5. Collect feedback regularly.

1. Provide personalized, customer-focused service.

When you're creating a relationship marketing strategy, and when you're engaging with your customers, your primary concern should never be focused on your product or service. Instead, your concerns should always revolve around the customer -- Would the customer want to see this ad? Would the customer be excited about this Instagram post? Does our new product delight the customer?

Additionally, it's critical you create channels for direct support when your customers need help. Perhaps you implement a Facebook Messaging Bot for service-related concerns. Alternatively, maybe you answer your customer's questions via Instagram DM. By meeting your customers where they want to be met, you're proving your willingness to help them despite the hassles it might entail for your overall business process.

2. Engage with the customer where they are.

The reason Marriott's strategy works isn't just because of the content they create -- it's also because of where they post that content. Creating videos specifically for Snapchat enables Marriott to appeal to a younger demographic on a platform already popular with that audience.

Similarly, it's critical you do your research to learn which platforms are most popular for your ideal demographic. By reaching out to them through those channels, you're demonstrating a level of helpfulness and understanding that will encourage those users to interact with your brand.

3. Offer incentive and rewards for customer loyalty.

To cultivate a long-term relationship with your customers, and to create lasting brand loyalty, it's critical you continue to engage with customers even after they've purchased a product. Consider what you can offer them once they've become customers -- perhaps they can get a discount on additional products, or receive personalized recommendations based on their preferences.

Consider Panera -- by creating a loyalty rewards program, Panera continues to incentivize its customers to purchase additional products, and slowly forms a more meaningful relationship by gathering information about each customer and then using that information to offer unique suggestions depending on their individual food preferences.

4. Create valuable content that tells a compelling story.

If a customer has already purchased your product, they don't need to see additional product advertisements to become brand loyalists -- instead, they need to feel your business offers valuable content regardless of their purchase intent.

Marriott's film isn't meant to immediately convert a viewer into a paying customer. Instead, its purpose is to increase brand awareness, so that down the road, when that viewer is ready to book a hotel for an upcoming trip, they'll remember the compelling film they saw once and think of Marriott.

5. Collect feedback regularly.

A relationship works two-ways -- to truly develop a meaningful connection with your customers, then, it's vital you ask them for feedback. What do they want to see from your brand? What do they like about your product? What do they wish you wrote about on your blog? This information is critical to ensure you're consistently improving your relationship marketing strategy to best-fit the needs of your specific audience.

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Getting The Message Out Quickly, The Journey, Season 2 Episode 21

Got an important message you need to get out there quickly? Then watch The Journey, Social Media Examiner’s episodic video documentary that shows you what really happens inside a growing business. Watch the Journey This episode of the Journey shows how Social Media Examiner quickly got the word out about an opportunity that had a […]

The post Getting The Message Out Quickly, The Journey, Season 2 Episode 21 appeared first on Social Media Marketing | Social Media Examiner.

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The Ultimate Collection of Free Content Marketing Templates

Does any aspect of your job intimidate you?

For content creators, sometimes the most stressful part of the role can be opening a completely blank document to start a new project.

Whether it's writing a blog post, designing an infographic, or creating an ebook, it's challenging to start creating a new piece of content from scratch, especially if you've never done it before.

Here in the HubSpot content shop, we want to take the work out of it for you. Instead of trying to master how to create every type of content in existence, cut down on the stress and inefficiency and read about our collection of nearly 400 free, customizable content creation templates.

We've broken this list down by each type of content marketing template represented. Jump ahead if you specifically want:

• Content Planning & Calendar Templates
• Written & Editorial Content Templates
• Design Content Templates
• Social Media Content Templates
• Email Content Templates

Content Planning & Calendar Templates

A Content Planning/Goal-Setting Template

(Download the content planning template here.)

HubSpot teamed up with Smart Insights to create a content planning template that will help you put together an effective content marketing plan for either your business or those of your clients. These templates will help you complete a SWOT analysis on your content marketing efforts (and develop a plan to improve them), define the right objectives and KPIs for that plan, brainstorm content ideas and map these across your funnel, and create a timeline for your content plans.

A Content Mapping Template

(Download the content mapping template here)

You know you need a content marketing strategy in place to support the success of your inbound marketing and sales organizations. But how do you get started? We've created a content mapping template so you can walk through your target audience's buyer's journey. The template helps you identify buyer personas, their challenges and needs, and to brainstorm content that provides solutions. You'll come away from the template with tons of targeted blog post ideas to attract your audience to your site and convert them into leads.

A Buyer Persona Template

(Download the buyer persona content template here.)

Marketing with buyer personas means marketing smarter. This buyer persona template will help you easily organize your research to create your very own buyer personas. Use it to create beautiful, well-formatted buyer personas that you can share with your entire company, while learning best practices for persona research along the way.

3 Blog Editorial Calendar Templates

(Download the blog editorial calendar templates here.)

Having an editorial calendar for your marketing content will save you a whole lot of time -- not to mention sanity -- as you plan your content release timeline. We realize there isn't a one-size-fits all solution, so we've created three editorial calendar templates to use at your leisure: one for Google Calendar, one for Excel, and one for Google Sheets. (Read this blog post for a step-by-step guide for using the Google Calendar template.)

2 Social Media Content Calendar Templates (for 6 Social Networks)

(Download the social media content calendar templates here.)

With so many different social networks to manage, a social media manager's life becomes a lot easier when they can plan which content to share on each account -- and when. This easy-to-use social media content calendar for Microsoft Excel lets you organize your social media activities far in advance. Use it to plan your updates and learn how to properly format your content for the six most popular social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and Pinterest.

10 Social Media Tracking & Reporting Templates

(Download the social media tracking & reporting templates here.)

Equipped with a social media calendar, you still need a way to track, report on, and even budget for the social media campaigns you run during the year. These 10 planning templates help you do just that: Track your social media followers, report on each post's performance, manage your paid budget for promoted posts, and more. Download them using the above link or the below graphic.

On-Page SEO Template

(Download the on-page SEO template here.)

The more content you publish to your website, the more traffic sources you'll want to prioritize. One of those sources is organic traffic. To make on-page SEO easier, we've rolled out a handy planning template to help you create a website structure that organizes each webpage, what its purpose is, how long it should be, and how to optimize the metadata associated with each new page you publish.

Written & Editorial Content Templates

5 Blog Post Templates

(Download the blog post templates here.)

Here's the thing with blogging: There isn't one, easy template you can fill in to produce a quality content offering. You need to spend some time brainstorming a title, outlining core content, and so on. While our templates are by no means a fill-in-the-blank type of deal, they'll walk you through the critical steps for creating the following five blog post types:

• How-To Post
• List-Based Post
• Curated Collection Post
• SlideShare Presentation Post
• Newsjacking Post

We've seen these formats crush it on our blogs, and we would love for you to use them to hit your own goals.

5 Ebook Templates

(Download the ebook templates here.)

Year after year, marketers cite lead generation as one of their top content marketing goals for the year. If you want to succeed at lead gen, then you need content offers -- like ebooks -- to help you get there. Our internal creative design team went to work building five, beautiful ebook templates -- in both PowerPoint and InDesign -- for you to download, customize, and use.

A Press Release Template

(Download the press release template here.)

While public relations has adapted to be more lovable and less spammy, press releases can be effective when used correctly. Our press release template takes this into consideration and provides an inbound-optimized version. This means the template can help you script press releases and do so in a format optimized for sharing on your company blog. It's built in Microsoft Word, so you can easily adapt and customize as needed for your PR needs.

50 Call-to-Action Templates

(Download the call-to-action templates here.)

Redesigning your call-to-action buttons can improve clickthrough rates by 1,300% or more. That means visitors will spend more time on your website, and it'll encourage them to become leads. To help you design clickable calls-to-action, we've built 50 pre-designed CTAs for you. These CTAs are super easy to customize, so you don't need to know any fancy design programs -- just PowerPoint.

Bonus: There's also a handy free tool in there that lets you track your CTA clicks in real time so you can see the exact number of clicks that your designs are reeling in.

Design Content Templates

195+ Visual Marketing Templates

(Download the visual marketing templates here.)

Not a designer? Not a problem. We partnered with graphic design software company Canva to create over 195 visual marketing templates that are easy-to-use, work for any industry (finance, dentistry, agriculture, law -- we've got 'em all), and are completely free. Best of all, they're ready to edit in Canva's online design tool, which is included for free with this set of templates. The templates include...

• Infographics templates
• Facebook ad templates
• Facebook post templates
• Twitter post templates
• Email header templates
• Blog title templates
• Facebook cover photo templates
• Twitter header templates
• LinkedIn cover photos templates

15 Infographic Templates

(Download the infographic templates here.)

We've created fifteen, pre-designed infographic templates right in PowerPoint (+ five bonus illustrator templates). That way, marketers can skip the frustrations and start creating the graphics right away. Within each template, we even provide guides to teach you how to use the templates effectively.

5 SlideShare Templates

(Download the SlideShare templates here.)

Creating a SlideShare presentation in PowerPoint doesn't have to be daunting. With the right and tools at your disposal, you can easily create an engaging, visual presentation -- all without fancy design programs, huge budgets, or hiring contractors.

To help you make a SlideShare of your own, we've created some free PowerPoint presentation templates for making awesome SlideShares -- so your presentations will look great and be a breeze to put together. (Read this blog post for tips on how you can update and edit the templates to suit your specific needs.)

37 Pre-Designed CTA Templates for Ecommerce Marketers

(Download the ecommerce CTA templates here.)

Every marketer uses calls-to-action (CTAs) to generate leads from their website content. If you're in the business of ecommerce, however, purchases are just as important as downloads when it comes to your website visitors. The CTA templates above are starter designs specifically for marketers who want to direct attention to their product pages and, ultimately, drive transactions within their online store. Get these templates by clicking the link above.

Social Media Content Templates

100 Social Media Graphics Templates

(Download the social media graphics templates here.)

Visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. But we know well that creating visual content takes more time and resources -- which why we've created these 100 customizable templates for you. These templates are in PowerPoint, so they're very easy to edit -- no Photoshop skills required. Simply customize the text on an image, save it, and post it to social media.

5 Social Media Cover Photo Templates

(Download the social media cover photo templates here.)

I don't know about you, but I sometimes have trouble keeping straight the different size dimension requirements on different social media networks. To take the guesswork out of it and to avoid frustrating re-designs, we've created five templates in PowerPoint that are pre-sized for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+. You can customize them for your social networks without researching design specifications -- don't worry, we've got it covered.

11 Facebook Cover Photo Templates for Businesses

(Download the Facebook cover photo templates here.)

With how frequently businesses change and improve on their Facebook pages today, it's crucial that you have new material in the pipeline. Double-down on your Facebook designs with these 11 templates dedicated to your Facebook cover photo. Get these designs by clicking the link above or the graphic below.

Email Content Templates

15 Email Templates for Marketing and Sales

(Download the email templates for marketing and sales here.)

Did you know that workers spend almost one third of their time at work reading and replying to emails? There are many ways you can streamline your inbox to save time, but you ultimately will still have to create and send emails. That's where these content templates come in. We've written the copy for 15 emails marketers and sales reps are likely to send over and over again to save you time and get you results.

There you have it, content marketers: nearly 400 templates to help you start creating content easily and quickly and further your inbound success.

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The Opportunity Cost Formula That’ll Help You Make Optimal Marketing Decisions

As humans, we hate loss. In fact, losing something emotionally impacts us more than gaining something of the same value. We can get so loss-averse that we’ll take risks just to avoid a loss, like how we sometimes cling onto a stock that continues to plummet in value because we desperately want the price to magically shoot back up.

Needless to say, loss stings. And this rings especially true if you work in marketing. Allocating precious budget to the wrong campaigns or tools not only loses website visitors and leads, but it also wastes your spend -- money that you’ll never get back again.

Fortunately, calculating the opportunity cost of each decision you make can help you separate the campaigns and tools that actually produce results from the ones that only burn cash.

To help you avoid wasting your budget and losing website visitors and leads, read on to learn what exactly an opportunity cost is and a formula for calculating it.

What Is an Opportunity Cost?

An opportunity cost is the benefit you sacrifice by choosing one alternative over another. For example, if you choose to allocate the last portion of your budget to Facebook advertising, and the next-best alternative is LinkedIn advertising, the opportunity cost of allocating budget to Facebook advertising is the loss of benefits you would’ve reaped if you allocated budget to LinkedIn advertising.

Opportunity Cost Formula

To calculate the opportunity cost of your chosen alternative, you need to predict the expected return on investment of each alternative and subtract the expected return on investment of your chosen alternative from the expected return on investment of the next-best alternative.

For example, if you expect an ROI of 50% from investing in Facebook ads and an ROI of 40% from investing in LinkedIn ads, the opportunity cost of investing in Facebook ads is -10 percentage points (40% - 50%). However, since the opportunity cost of investing in LinkedIn ads is 10 percentage points (50% - 40%), this choice would incur a higher opportunity cost than investing in Facebook ads. We can then conclude that allocating budget to Facebook ads would be the better option.

If you need help calculating return on investment, the formula is ((Gain on investment - cost of investment)/cost of investment)

There’s an opportunity cost for not calculating your opportunity cost.

No marketer wants to squander their budget and lose business because they made an avoidable decision. But if you really want to bypass this type of loss and make the smart choice, consider getting analytical and calculating every one of your decisions’ opportunity cost. Otherwise, you might actually squander your budget and lose business -- and there’s nothing you can do about it.

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What's Authentic Leadership, & How Do You Practice It

Whether you've recently been promoted to a leadership position, or you've been leading your team for years, it can often seem tricky to discern what being a "good" leader actually means.

When you're trying to determine the components of a successful leader, it's easy to fall-back on certain terms we commonly associate with leadership -- words like "assertive", "inspirational", and "confident".

But what about being "authentic"? While the idea of authentic leadership is not a new concept -- it has its roots in Ancient Greek philosophy, which posited that authenticity is an important state of being and enables you to control your own destiny -- it can certainly feel like a novel component of leadership today. I mean, what does "being true to yourself" have to do with anything?

In fact, research has shown authentic leadership serves as the single strongest predictor of an employee's job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and workplace happiness.

To ensure long-term happiness and productivity out of your team, then, it's critical you demonstrate a level of authenticity as a leader.

Authentic leadership

Authentic leadership is a management style in which leaders are genuine, self-aware, and transparent. An authentic leader is able to inspire loyalty and trust in her employees by consistently displaying who she really is as a person, and how she feels about her employees' performance. Authentic leadership is the single strongest predictor of an employee's job satisfaction.

Here, we're going to explore how the Authentic Leadership Theory can help you become a better, more inspiring leader, today.

Authentic Leadership Theory

There are four distinct components to the Authentic Leadership Theory. Let's dive into those, now.

1. Self-Awareness

As a leader, it's critical you have a strong sense of self, including your strengths, weaknesses, and values. It's impossible to demonstrate authenticity as a leader if you're unsure of who you are or what you stand for in the first place.

Additionally, by displaying both your strengths and weaknesses to your team, you're able to demonstrate that you have nothing to hide, and don't play games. In this way, you're better equipped to build trust among your team, and when your employee makes a mistake, she'll feel more comfortable admitting her error to you.

Self-awareness is also critical for you to grow as a leader, and strengthen other components of authentic leadership. For instance, perhaps you've noticed you don't do a great job at displaying transparency with your team. By acknowledging this weakness, you can take steps to rectify it.

In Bruce J. Avolio and Tara S. Wernsing's essay Practicing Authentic Leadership, they outline three ways authentic leaders should practice self-awareness:

• Seek feedback from the environment
• Use self-reflection to better understand your behavior
• Practice regular self-observation to stay aware of your feelings at all times

Self-awareness is vital for acting appropriately as a leader, and feeling empathy for how your employees might perceive your feedback. For instance, perhaps you feel a conversation you had with your team was demoralizing -- you'd just received some disappointing news about your team's performance, and you'd spoken out of frustration. It's critical you seek feedback from your environment by asking your team what you can do to help them improve moving forward.

Additionally, perhaps you can mitigate these issues in the future by regularly practicing self-observation, so you're able to notice, in the moment, "I am very frustrated right now, so I will wait until I am calm to have this conversation with my team."

2. Relational Transparency

Passive aggression, subtle messaging, and convoluted feedback have no place in leadership. To truly foster authenticity, it's critical you remain genuine, straightforward, and honest with your team. Let them know where they stand -- if they mess up, tell them.

While it might seem counterintuitive -- "How will I become close to my team if I am often providing constructive rather than positive feedback?" -- it works in your favor in the long-run, as your employees trust that you are not "hiding" your true feelings regarding their performance.

Transparency and honesty must be encouraged from the leadership level if you want your business to be successful. For instance, when Former President and CEO of Ford, Alan Mulally, began working at Ford, he implemented a system in which business leaders would produce color-coded charts at each of their meetings -- green to signify success, red to signify failure.

At the time, Ford was forecast to lose 17 billion that year. At the meeting, however, Mulally noticed every chart was green. He recognized that Ford's culture was one in which leaders hid problems, and avoided transparency out of a fear for job safety.

When one leader, Mark Fields, handed over a chart with red on it -- due to a production issue -- Mulally began clapping. His reaction signified the concept that failure can be seen as an exciting opportunity for growth, and honesty should be always rewarded. The following week, he saw charts varying from green to yellow to red.

The point is, authentic leadership must start with you displaying behavior you hope to see in your employees, as well. If you aren't transparent and honest, how can you expect your employees to come forward with problems when they arise?

3. Balanced Processing

A leader needs to make decisions and stay true to her decision in the face of opposition -- but she must also be capable of receiving and considering alternative viewpoints before choosing a plan of action.

When making major decisions, it's important you ask for alternative opinions and remain open to discussion. While it's important you stick to your values, it's equally critical you seek out opposing viewpoints, which can help you see flaws in your initial course of action, or enable you to strengthen your argument by understanding all points of view.

Additionally, if you want to be an authentic leader, it's critical you create an environment in which employees feel both safe and encouraged to share their opinions. This ties back to self-awareness -- you must be self-aware enough to accept that your opinion, by itself, is likely biased or partial. By collecting outside feedback, you're able to see more potential weaknesses in your decision.

4. Internalized Moral Perspective (“Do the Right Thing”)

An authentic leader needs to know when to put the needs of the company and its customers ahead of herself and her team. Ultimately, a leader should be focused on doing the right thing for the long-term success of the business -- not herself.

Additionally, it's critical a leader have strong ethical values and integrity, and exercise these traits even in the face of tempting shortcuts.

For instance, let's say your employee comes to you with a "make money quick" scheme -- his idea is to make it difficult for customers to know how to cancel their subscription, so they are forced to keep paying unless they call up customer support.

As a leader, it's important you recognize the downfall of this type of decision. While it could temporarily help boost your team's numbers, it's not a decision made out of integrity or fairness for your customer, and won't result in lasting loyalty.

Emmy Jonassen, Director of Acquisition at HubSpot, seconds this point, noting the importance of being a leader whose behavior matches up with the values you want to instill in your team:

"Being an authentic leader means leading by example. It's demonstrating through your actions that you practice the same values and behaviors you expect from your team."

She goes on to say, "For example, if you ask your team to come to meetings on time and prepared, you should as well. If you impress upon your team that no task is beneath anyone if it works toward team goals, you should help out with team 'grunt work' every now and again by being the notetaker, cleaning up after a team birthday celebration, and so forth."

By being a leader who emphasizes the importance of doing the right thing, you're better equipped to set up your team for long-term success.

Why Authenticity in Leadership is Difficult to Achieve

Ultimately, the four components of authentic leadership are good jumping-off points, but it's important you remember the true meaning of authenticity -- the ability to express yourself as you truly are.

The meaning of authenticity makes it inherently difficult to prescribe in any one way.

Meghan Keaney Anderson, HubSpot's VP of Marketing, describes it like this -- "It's funny that something so basic as being yourself starts to become harder as you gain responsibility and scope. But the truth is, being authentic as a leader has to be consciously worked at."

"There are too many examples of how other people lead. There are no examples of what's authentic to you until you get there. So, you have to search for it."

She goes on to say, "You have to create touch-points in the course of meetings, presentations, management that remind you of yourself -- who you are and where you're strongest. When I give speeches, I tend to start with a personal story to set the tone for the rest of the talk, because there's no way to tell a personal story without being myself. When I'm out of my depths on something, or need time to think before a decision, I make sure to say so, so that my team knows I don't always have the answers. Authenticity requires touchstones to remind yourself and the people around you that you're human."

Ultimately, authenticity is a leadership skill like any other -- and skills can always be developed (or weakened) over time, depending on your conscious efforts. To ensure you're able to lead your team as well as they deserve, it's critical you remain focused on demonstrating authenticity whenever possible.

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February 13, 2019 at 12:00PM http://bit.ly/2SL8Oxf
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