The Pre-Mortem As Antidote To Murphy’s Law

FEBRUARY 11, 2015 BY ANTHONY GARCIA 8 COMMENTS

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Things go wrong.  Murphy of Murphy’s law fame says so. In fact Murphy goes further by stating that whatever can go wrong will. It’s my experience that Murphy is usually right. So I am not taking a faith leap to tell you that right now things are going wrong with your customer experience.

And some of those things are costing you, costing you dearly.

Some of those things are obvious, and you are likely trying to fix them. Other things, not so much. And that is where your biggest opportunities for improvement exist. As well as opportunities to plan against them in the future.

Let me introduce you to the pre-mortem, the antidote to Murphy’s Law.

Gary Klein of the Harvard Business Review writes

A premortem is the hypothetical opposite of a postmortem. A postmortem in a medical setting allows health professionals and the family to learn what caused a patient’s death. Everyone benefits except, of course, the patient. A premortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so that the project can be improved rather than autopsied. Unlike a typical critiquing session, in which project team members are asked what might go wrong, the premortem operates on the assumption that the “patient” has died, and so asks what did go wrong. The team members’ task is to generate plausible reasons for the project’s failure.

In our book, Buyer Legends: The Executive Storyteller’s Guide, we describe the pre-mortem process as it relates to the Buyer Legends process.

• Begin by having your Team imagine that the customer has completed her (or his) buying journey and either didn’t buy at all, didn’t buy what you sell (in favor of an alternative solution), or bought from a competitor. Now ask yourselves:

  • What went wrong that led to these outcomes?Your intuitions about the most likely bad outcomes and most likely causes will be more insightful than you may think.
  • This process will give your team permission to voice doubts or fears about your brand’s interaction with customers that they might not otherwise feel safe in doing.

• For every wrong turn, missed opportunity, or bump that could derail the customer’s successful journey, take time to imagine how that process would most likely play out. For instance, how would this detail-oriented customer react if a major detail about your product is left out of their journey or if that detail was hard to find? What would that look and feel like, and at what point would that frustration or anxiety actually derail the sale?

• Now think up fixes, resolutions, and workarounds for each failure point. The point to the pre-mortem exercise is to give you insight into problems that exist in your current buying paths, so that you can then use it to immunize your conversion funnel from common (and not so common) mistakes that will keep your customer from closing the deal. Understanding these will help you write a more realistic and helpful Buyer Legend when you move onto the next step of Reverse Chronology.

The reality is that most companies lose more sales every day than they make, and we have stated in the past that if you are converting less than 15% you need to evaluate what is broken in your customer experience, get to the bottom of what is going wrong, and plan to get it right.  That is why, hands down, the pre-mortem step is the most impactful step of the entire Buyer Legends process.  In fact, rarely does this exercise fail to produce at least one a-ha moment for our clients.  When you imagine the sale is already dead it frees up all the mental energy that you used to try and get the sale and points it at all the potential pitfalls and problems in your experience.  A pre-mortem is powerful optimization technique but also imagine how powerful it is when you are designing a new customer experience from scratch.

After you perform your pre-mortem you will likely end up with a long list of potential proof of Murphy’s law, but not everything on your list is equal.  Some thing are worth your effort some are not.  In my work with clients we often use Eisenberg’s Hierarchy of Optimization to separate the more pressing issues from the tinier ones.  First sort the list of problems into the follow categories.

Functional. Does this product/service do what the prospect needs? How easy is it for a prospect to determine this?

Accessible. Can she access it? What are the barriers to her ability to realize the need? Is it affordable, reasonable, and findable?

Usable. Is it user-friendly? Are there obstacles?

Intuitive. Does the sales process/Web site feel intuitive and natural based on her buying preferences? Is she forced to endure unnatural buying modalities to realize her need?

Persuasive. Does she want it? Does she truly understand if it fills her need or solves her problem? Is her expectation reasonable? Will she be delighted?

Once they are sorted simply work your way up the pyramid.  Again, remember not every problem is in search of a solution, and you should focus on the problems that are likely to impact the most customers, and problems that you can actually fix. Analytics can also confirm some of the problems you identified exist and give you an indication of which ones are causing you the most grief.

Performing a simple pre-mortem should be a common business practice, but the Buyer Legends process turns it up a notch.  A pre-mortem when used in conjunction with personas (I’ll cover these in more detail soon) will uncover more specific problems and allow you to address the unique problems that exist in more than one customer segment.

Be warned, the pre-mortem is not for those that like to play peek-a-boo. If you like to pretend that the only problems that exist are the ones that you can see then skip over the pre-mortem.  This is not an exercise for anyone that wants to hear the that their not so attractive baby is a supermodel.

We encourage you to try this for yourself, but if you need help , please let us know.

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P.S. This is the first in a series of Buyer Legends Recipe Posts, please sign up to our newsletter for updates.

Anthony Garcia (19 Posts)

Anthony Garcia heads up Client Services for Buyer Legends.  Anthony
began his career by way of radio broadcasting at the young age of 14.
After a 15 years in broadcast radio management Anthony became an ad writer and client
consultant for Roy H. Williams “The Wizard of Ads” and managed a portfolio of high profile
clients including Leo Schachter Diamonds and Robbins Brothers.  He went on to become
the lead consultant for Future Now Inc. working with Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg to help
clients like HP, Webex, and NBC Universal. Anthony has teamed up with the Eisenbergs
to work with such clients as Runa.com, OneSpot, Adorama, and Google.

Recipes For Practical Customer Experience Design & Optimization – Buyer Legends This is an important post that Anthony Garcia wrote on the Buyer Legends blog If I gave you a recipe some of you would be thrilled and others not so much. You can cook a gourmet meal that will have your taste buds fox trotting. I know that to be true. When it comes to food there are alternative ways to acquire a great meal. However, when cooking up great customer experiences there are no alternatives. If you want customers to to tell the only story that matters, why they love your company, you’ll have to learn how. Have you ever followed a recipe only to find that you aren’t ready for the third step? I have. The results? Frustration and a poor meal. A few years ago it was takeout or starve, but now, I love to cook. I credit mise en place, that’s French for having having everything in its place as you cook, for my conversion from takeout king to aspiring chef. Mise en place is a small amount of effort expended up front that actually saves me tons of time and guarantees tasty dishes. The Buyer Legend process is like a recipe for designing great customer experiences. You can use Buyer Legends to define and improve your content marketing, social marketing, search marketing, conversion rate optimization and thereby improve your communications, execution and revenues. You just need to follow the recipe. We’ve published a basic Buyer Legend recipe  but I’ll be adding more detail in this series. I’ve been training clients and staff in the Eisenbergs’ processes’ for over a decade, Let me show you how to prepare mise en place for the Buyer Legends process.  This is the first in a series of articles that will address each major step of the Buyer Legends process. Pre-mortem because it is the antidote to Murphy’s Law  First we’ll explore the most impactful step of the process, the pre-mortem. Some of our largest conversion wins over the last two decades ever were the result of our clients going through the pre-mortem exercise.  Murphy’s law states that everything that can go wrong usually will and a pre-mortem will help you spot previously invisible problems in your current customer experience as well as plan against future problems. But the pre-mortem step is not for the faint hearted as it may show you things about your precious baby that are not as attractive as you wanted to believe.  The only thing that makes a pre-mortem more powerful is by doing a pre-mortem on a persona by persona and then scenario/ campaign by scenario basis. Read the first Buyer Legend Recipe Post here... Reverse chronology because it explains conversions Assuming you have a product or service worth buying then you and your customers have the same goal.  You want to sell and they want to buy. That’s why when you are planning a customer experience it is always best to start at the end point and work your way backwards to the beginning.  This step requires you to get very specific about how and why every decision and action needs to be taken in the buying journey.  It’s specificity also makes this step important to measuring and optimizing your customer experience when you finally implement it. Your Buyer Legend isn’t fiction so every detail must be accounted for, not only that but you must create persuasive momentum at every step. Persuasive momentum because there’s no such thing as a sales funnel Your customer isn’t truly in a funnel. There’s no gravity compelling them through your experience like there is in a real funnel. There is only the customer’s motivation and your understanding of that motivation to create persuasive momentum. Persuasive momentum is the progressive decision making process that aligns the customer’s goals with our own business goals. I’ll show you the three step test that will insure your customers’ experiences are always relevant, valuable and compelling. Personas because their motivations become your action plan Personas are a common marketing tool, but their value is often misunderstood. Simply put, personas should inform you about exactly what you need to be doing. Personas can be elaborate constructs based on reams of research and data, or they can be constructed quickly with data and information at hand, but as long as they are directionally accurate reflections of a segment of your customer they can be powerful tools that will guide your Buyer Legends processes. I will be discussing how to construct ad-hoc personas as well as help you evaluate and if needed fix your current personas if you have them. Write a Buyer Legend because the only story that matters is your customers’ story This is the step when you actually pull out your pots, grab a spatula and fire up your burners.  I will tell you all the ingredients to include so you can have them at the ready. This is the step where all your previous work begins to pay off and when you’re done you will have an action plan that can be distributed, implemented, tested, and optimized.  A Buyer Legend is where the rubber meets the road. Measurement because if analysts cannot tell the stories and business people cannot measure the stories then the strategy isn’t truly aligned with customers’ needs. Your Buyer Legend isn’t fiction, it’s not for fun or for entertainment, or even for creative fulfillment.  This is business, and anything important to a businesses success should be measurable and accountable.  Buyer Legends are both and I will give you a primer on measuring, optimizing, rinsing, and repeating. The Buyer Legend process orchestrates your best efforts and reconciles them to the needs of your customers so you can create profitable customer experiences.  If you want to become even more legendary at using this process I challenge you to follow this recipe series. I look forward to your feedback, questions, and hearing your success stories. As always, we encourage you to try Buyer Legends for yourself, but if you need help, please let us know. The post Recipes For Practical Customer Experience Design & Optimization – Buyer Legends appeared first on Bryan & Jeffrey Eisenberg.     Read this post online...

What Is Content Marketing & How To Use It For Business Growth?

By Trond Lyngbø on January 18, 2013@TrondLyngbo

 

Content marketing means creating and distributing or sharing valuable content with the goal of attracting, engaging and converting prospects into customers, and then into repeat buyers, or into other profitable customer actions.
It involves a sequential process of educating your ideal prospective buyers in a manner that gets them to know, like and trust you, and eventually lead them to doing business with you. Content marketing is known by many other names, including custom publishing, member media, branded content, corporate journalism, and branded media.
The underlying premise of content marketing is to provide valuable information or entertainment – “content” – which influences the prospect to consider taking the next step towards becoming your customer, but without itself becoming a full-blown sales pitch or call to action. Content used in marketing doesn’t have to be limited to any single format. It isn’t just text on the company blog. Content can be in audio-visual and multimedia format, as pictures, videos, podcasts, slideshows, brochures, white papers, or info-graphics.

Who Uses Content Marketing – And Why?

More than 90% of business-to-business (B2B), and a similar fraction of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers, use some form of content marketing to build their audience and boost sales. The approach each uses may vary from a direct special report or brochure that spotlights the value of their product or service, to a more subtle embedded “Brought to you by ____ ” message appended to an informative article or tutorial or infotainment piece.
The idea is that a brand or business can become associated with a positive consumer experience, in the expectation that such an association will translate over time into sales and profit. This is why major corporations including Proctor & Gamble, Microsoft and Cisco Systems employ content marketing in their mix. It works just as well for smaller businesses, and even one-person shops.
When content marketing is effectively carried out…

• You can make a prospect think, feel or behave differently.
• You can have customers looking forward to hearing from you.
• You can create content that spreads virally from person to person, magnified by the reach of social networks.
• You can secure high rankings on Google and search engines, attracting fresh prospects to your business.

And even after you acquire new customers, you can build stronger relationships with them, strengthen your brand, and encourage referrals through a strategic content marketing plan.

Content Marketing Is Not Quite Advertising

Let’s face it. Traditional marketing is getting less effective. Consumers are ignoring the deluge of advertising that bombards them from all directions. We record favorite TV shows so we can skip the commercials. We ignore banner ads online and focus like a laser on the content we consume. We tune out billboards and flashing neon lights, have learned to sidestep the rare door to door salesperson, and can smell a tele-marketer within a few seconds of picking up the phone.
There has to be a better way for marketers to reach their audience and leave an impact. Content marketing provides an alternative. It is not intrusive or ‘in your face’. It sneaks in under the radar by enhancing the user’s browsing experience, enriching a TV audience’s enjoyment of a show, educating a reader who receives a brochure or white paper in the mail.
And by engaging an audience, creating a positive impact, entwining valuable content with a brand’s equity, content marketing scores heavy wins even in an ad-saturated universe.
There’s a generational effect too. 80% of millennials in an Edelman survey said they expected to be entertained by brands. Nearly a third felt that brands should create free content in the form of games, videos, photos and interactive blogs for their fans.
At the root of why content marketing is so effective lies the reality that when people are seriously considering a purchase, they want valuable information instead of more flashy advertising.

How To Use Content Marketing To Create An Audience

The most successful online businesses and individuals give out a high ratio of valuable content that has no apparent sales agenda. Mixed in periodically is a smattering of promotional messages.
This useful content that is given away freely often makes its way in front of many new prospects through word-of-mouth spread and sharing via social networks. This is how content helps build an audience.
Great, helpful, entertaining or informative content gets distributed through:

1. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.
2. Search engines because of the high ranking content-rich pages which are linked to from various delighted consumers.
3. Content sharing tools and platforms such as video and PDF distribution sites.
4. Media through press releases, ad purchases, or even featured documentaries.
5. Syndication where the content is republished to new audiences

How To Know If Content Marketing Is Effective?

Much of content marketing’s impact is quantifiable using similar metrics as for paid advertising.
Factors like traffic, time spent on site, and brand equity surveys can help estimate the role content marketing plays in promoting your business. With the help of tracking links within the content itself, the spread and reach of distributed content can be evaluated with reasonable accuracy.

Trond Lyngbø is Head Of SEO at MediaCom Norway, and Columnist at Search Engine Land, and blogger at well-known websites like MOZ and SEOBook. He can be found on Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and his Norwegian SEO blog.

10 Conversion Segmentation Tips to Optimize Your Online Business

June 2, 2014 By Paul Koks

Let’s be honest. How many of you started out with a 100% focus on the overall website conversions or conversion rate?
There is nothing wrong with putting some attention on this metric, but it is not the end of the story.
Conversion segmentation is a must if you want to do great instead of just good.
There are literally hundreds of ways to segment and optimize your website conversions.
I could write a complete book on this topic… maybe in the future. :-)
In this post I will dive into 10 conversion segmentation tips you should definitely give a try!

1. Channel

What traffic sources are delivering your greatest ROI?
Can you do anything to increase the conversion rates of the least performing channels?
Or should you just concentrate on and move your budget to a few of your top performers.
In my opinion, segmentation step one is taking a close look into each of your channels and how they are performing.
Do you feel you already made it through this first stage? I encourage you to think about conversion attribution to drive smarter decisions.
Offline marketing and segmentation strategies can often be (partly) applied online as well (lessons from McDonalds):

2. Landing Page

Another great way to move from zero to hero is by optimizing each of your landing pages. These 10 tips on increasing your conversion rate might come in handy.
Ok, let’s address a difficulty here.
Each of your segmentation options might interact with other ones at the same time. In this case you might want to take a look at specific landing pages segmented by traffic source.
For example, some of your landing pages might perform better in paid channels than others.
Google Analytics secondary dimensions really help you to gain greater insights into deeper segments.

3. Browser

It wouldn’t be the first time that one browser outperforms a few other browsers.
In order to raise specific and overall conversion rates, you need to take a look at your browser’s performance.
It’s a good practice to start looking at the top 10 (filtered on highest traffic) first.
You could compare the worst performing browsers with the top performers.
Especially if you are reaching a lot of visitors each day, you should consider to invest enough budget to optimize the lower performing browsers.
Tip: I have seen major chances on optimizing the older versions of Internet Explorer. While aggregated they might count for more than 10% of your total traffic! And their initial conversion rates are often dramatic.

4. Device Type

Is your website mobile responsive? Do people finish your payment process in mobile browsers as well?
We are in a decade of explosive consumption growth in the mobile and tablet market. You don’t want to stay behind and lose many of your (potential) customers!
I recommend to watch this video of “Google Webmasters” about optimizing the top mobile tasks on your website:

5. Country

Many of you are probably receiving visitors from countries all over the world. At least I hope so. :-)
In order to serve them all in the correct way, you should think about a multilingual and multiregional SEO approach.
There is a lot to win and a lot to lose here.
If you are running an international business and are only targeting English-speaking consumers, you still want to pay attention to country specific optimization.

6. User Type

Do new visitors convert better or worse than repeating visitors?
Based on the performance of these segments, you could choose to adapt your retargeting strategies. Or maybe add a few new ones here!

7. Internal Site Search

Do visitors using your site search module convert well or not at all? Your site search is a great, extra navigation doorway for your website visitors, don’t neglect it and optimize instead!
You do want to show your visitors great result pages so that they are able to perform their desired action.
Besides this your site search brings up a wealth of information you can use to structure your website in the perfect way.

8. Search Keyword

Both for your organic and paid keywords, it is important to look into conversion segmentation.
What are your winners and what are your losers?
I like to bring up a case of one of my affiliate websites in the health and fitness niche. The focus is on growing organic traffic and conversions.
Actually, this site is a big winner after the last Panda 4.0 update. I must be doing something good; traffic has been doubled since then. :-)
Ok, back to the important stuff.
My main goal of this particular website is driving traffic to Amazon. As it perfectly fits a “hot” product niche, many visitors are willing to buy products on Amazon.
I have compared two groups of visitors:

• First group of visitors that land on my website with a query including “best”.
• The other segment consists of visitors arriving on my website without a query including “best”

When excluding the (not provided) group in Google Analytics the data looks as follows:

Segment one – without best

Segment two – with best

And what do we see here? Seach queries that contain “best” are outperforming the other queries by far.

• With “best”: 27% CR (clicks to Amazon)
• Without “best”: 16% CR (clicks to Amazon)

This tells me a lot about the intent of specific visitors and certainly does help me with future plans on expanding and optimizing this website.

9. Day of the Week

In general – it is risky to make this kind of a statement – Monday is the top conversion performing day in many niches.
Well, take a look at your figures and see whether your brand visibility should be adapted during the course of the week.
Take into account that this is not an easy one. On some days people might be searching more and find your website. On other days they might decide to buy.
However, it is still worth to know more about the behavior on specific weekdays and compared to the weekend.

10. Frequency and Recency

If you are familiar with data analysis, you know it’s better not to focus on averages. Instead, look at the distribution of data segments.
Last but not least, try to understand how visitors interact with your website.
Do your visitors convert better if they pay you one visit, two visits, three visits or…? Do they take one day to convert or maybe even longer than a month?
Are there ways to persuade visitors to directly buy your products? This without them leaving your site and doing a competitor comparison first. If they find them better, you might lose a potential customer!
Thanks for staying with me to the end. I really hope these conversion segmentation tips help you to increase your segmented and overall website conversion!
If you want to know more about segments in Google Analytics, I welcome you to read my segments guest post on Online-Behavior.com.
Well, I am more than happy to hear your thoughts!
Please consider subscribing to the OnlineMetrics blog feed to have future articles delivered to your feed reader. And as always, if you like the article, I very much appreciate a comment or share!

About Paul Koks

Passionate blogger, analyst and conversion optimizer. Creative mind behind data driven insights, tips and tricks on this website.