MARKETING

How To Recognize (and Solve) Wicked Content Strategy Problems

Published

2 years ago

February 11, 2022

How To Recognize (and Solve) Wicked Content Strategy Problems

Content strategy is a wicked problem.

Don’t worry. I didn’t adopt Bostonian lingo.

A wicked problem is hard to solve because of “incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements that can be difficult to recognize.”

I like information researcher Jeff Conklin’s description of wicked problems as those “not understood until after the formulation of a solution.”

I see wicked problems a lot in content strategy. One of the toughest is recognizing why you need to change when you can’t see how things are broken.

One of the toughest things to recognize is why you should change when you can’t see how things are broken, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Cooking up a wicked problem

My wife and I get around our kitchen just fine. We cook. The kitchen gets messy. We clean up and put things back where they go. We do the same thing at the next meal. It works fine for us.

Recently, a friend who came over for dinner wanted to help us cook. It was pure chaos. “Nothing is in the right place,” our guest said. She went to our junk drawer looking for silverware and opened our spice cabinet seeking plates. “Don’t even get me started with how the refrigerator is organized,” she said.

My wife responded, “This is how we’ve been doing this for years. It works for us.” Then I chimed in, “It’s the way we do it. It’s an optimized process.”

Our friend played along and said, “No. It’s the way you do it. But it’s not optimized.”

She was right. As she pointed out how things could be more efficient, we realized we had a problem.

A wicked problem.

In content strategy, experts often say documentation indicates a business’s commitment to its content. At its surface, a document seems oddly bureaucratic. How can creating a robust Google Doc or PowerPoint presentation be the lynchpin of a content strategy?

Spoiler alert: The document isn’t important.

However, having documentation means you’ve thought through the details of who’s responsible for what and how content works in and for your business.

Imagine how different our friend’s cooking experience would have been, for example, if we’d given her a detailed map of our kitchen and meal preparation workflow to review before her visit.

As the chef, she still could have pointed out the sub-optimal parts of our workflow and “asset management” strategy. But she also would have functioned better and, more importantly, could have seen where our kitchen organizational hacks made pragmatic sense.

It’s a lighthearted example, but it shows how documentation takes a lot of wickedness out of the problem.

#Content strategy documentation can take a lot of wickedness out of a problem, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The 3 Strategic Pillars Behind Every Winning Content Strategy

Questions with no answers (yet)

About three months ago, I worked with a large, fast-growing technology company to roll out a new governance model, workflow, and content lifecycle management plan. The people who’d been with the company less than a year rejoiced. They loved it.

On the other hand, senior leaders and many veteran marketing and content practitioners didn’t. They agreed the solution sounded fine, but they didn’t see the problem it would solve.

Wicked.

I hear this question from CEOs and CFOs all the time: “I don’t see the problem. Tell me what’s the benefit of fixing it.”

The answer: We don’t know – yet.

Good people always lose to bad processes

Engineer and professor W. Edwards Deming once said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

What does that mean? For example, I can’t describe the process of writing this column every week, but I still get it done. I know what I’m doing.

But Deming doesn’t mean you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s that the organization doesn’t know what it’s doing.

For example, I talked about the technology company’s content creation process with the two global marketing practitioners responsible for translation and localization. I asked them to explain the process for how the hundreds of content pieces are selected, planned, and prioritized for distribution.

Here’s how they described it:

They select articles based on gut feelings. Sometimes they have email conversations about the options, but sometimes whoever has time chooses the pieces.
They list the chosen content on a spreadsheet, prioritizing each asset by highlighting it in red, yellow, or green.
They upload the assets to an external file-sharing service because their internal digital asset management system doesn’t allow access by the agencies doing the translation and globalization.
The agencies return the translated files to the two managers through the file-sharing service.
The global marketing managers email the translated files to the local marketing managers in the correct regional offices.

How were other regional offices made aware of the content? How were the translated assets made centrally available? The two managers would upload them when they had time.

If those two managers left the business, the business would have a big ball of tangled translation and localization twine for the new person to unravel.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cleaning the occurrent kitchen

Let’s return to the wicked challenge.

How can you answer the executives’ question about the potential value of fixing problems the business doesn’t know exists?

You can’t.

But you can develop a culture of examining occurrent behavior.

Occurrent behavior is what happens in the business vs. what is supposed to happen or what the business perceives is happening.

The technology company offers a great example. From the CMO’s perspective, nothing was broken. She perceived the operating model she inherited as working. When I showed her the translation and localization “process,” she said, “That’s not the way it was designed to work. But if it’s working, it’s working.”

Thousands of similar examples exist in every company. How people think things work differs from how they actually work. How many times have you onboarded an employee with advice like this: “This document says to email this department to get this answer, but just email Jane. She’ll get you the answer 10 times faster.”

Examine your content strategy ‘culture’

Stack up all that tacit knowledge, and it becomes the “culture.” Whether you conduct an audit, a review, or a simple set of experiments, really examine the occurrent behavior of your content strategy.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Figure out what’s going on

Develop a team to examine and document the occurrent behavior around your content – ideating, creating, managing, activating, publishing, promoting, measuring, and archiving.

If necessary, start with one area, such as marketing or thought leadership. Even better, start with one area of the customer’s journey. Document what happens (not what’s supposed to happen.) Identify and categorize the obvious challenges and where approaches go outside perceived models (even for good reason).

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Content Operations Framework: How To Build Yours

2. Plot the obvious gaps and inevitable costs

With the gaps documented, identify the costs, missed opportunities, or high-probability risks if they remain as is. For example, at the technology company, the siloed content creation process prompted employees to create new content rather than reuse content created from another silo. They found one e-book had 32 versions. What is the cost of the time spent on 31 unnecessary e-books?

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How To Manage Your Content Assets So They’re Found and Used

3. Take a dragonfly view of estimating the challenge

Dragonflies see 360 degrees around them. People don’t. No one can develop a perspective that encompasses every aspect of every business process. But after looking at one area, you may be able to estimate the value of fixing your wicked problems based on the audits or experiments you’ve run.

Look at the costs for the obvious things (like the 31 extra e-books). Assume similar issues lie in other unexamined areas and extrapolate the costs. Include estimates based on what organizations similar to yours have found if you can.

Answer the value question

These steps should give you a helpful estimate of the value of developing or improving your strategic content processes.

People (and businesses) are reluctant to change, especially when they’re not feeling pain. But take heart. I’ve worked on more than 300 content strategy engagements and found companies that struggle to build a case for content strategy change end up finding the most success.

They’re already cooking, making meals, cleaning up, and succeeding, and they fear a change to that working routine will mess things up.

They’re not wrong to be reluctant. If they can’t understand the problem, looking at solutions can be confusing.

It’s a wicked problem.

But, if you don’t examine ways to improve incrementally, you’ll always have to fix things disruptively. You may not solve the wicked problem, but you might just pull enough wickedness out of them to be helpful.

Get Robert’s take on content marketing industry news (in just three minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries

Want to learn how to balance, manage, and scale great content experiences across all your essential platforms and channels? Join us at ContentTECH Summit this March in San Diego. Browse the schedule or register today. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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Related Topics:Content Problems Recognize Solve strategy Wicked

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MARKETING

How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

Published

17 hours ago

December 1, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

How to Increase Survey Completion Rate With 5 Top Tips

Collecting high-quality data is crucial to making strategic observations about your customers. Researchers have to consider the best ways to design their surveys and then how to increase survey completion, because it makes the data more reliable.

I’m going to explain how survey completion plays into the reliability of data. Then, we’ll get into how to calculate your survey completion rate versus the number of questions you ask. Finally, I’ll offer some tips to help you increase survey completion rates.

My goal is to make your data-driven decisions more accurate and effective. And just for fun, I’ll use cats in the examples because mine won’t stop walking across my keyboard.

Why Measure Survey Completion

Let’s set the scene: We’re inside a laboratory with a group of cat researchers. They’re wearing little white coats and goggles — and they desperately want to know what other cats think of various fish.

They’ve written up a 10-question survey and invited 100 cats from all socioeconomic rungs — rough and hungry alley cats all the way up to the ones that thrice daily enjoy their Fancy Feast from a crystal dish.

Now, survey completion rates are measured with two metrics: response rate and completion rate. Combining those metrics determines what percentage, out of all 100 cats, finished the entire survey. If all 100 give their full report on how delicious fish is, you’d achieve 100% survey completion and know that your information is as accurate as possible.

But the truth is, nobody achieves 100% survey completion, not even golden retrievers.

With this in mind, here’s how it plays out:

Let’s say 10 cats never show up for the survey because they were sleeping.
Of the 90 cats that started the survey, only 25 got through a few questions. Then, they wandered off to knock over drinks.
Thus, 90 cats gave some level of response, and 65 completed the survey (90 – 25 = 65).
Unfortunately, those 25 cats who only partially completed the survey had important opinions — they like salmon way more than any other fish.

The cat researchers achieved 72% survey completion (65 divided by 90), but their survey will not reflect the 25% of cats — a full quarter! — that vastly prefer salmon. (The other 65 cats had no statistically significant preference, by the way. They just wanted to eat whatever fish they saw.)

Now, the Kitty Committee reviews the research and decides, well, if they like any old fish they see, then offer the least expensive ones so they get the highest profit margin.

CatCorp, their competitors, ran the same survey; however, they offered all 100 participants their own glass of water to knock over — with a fish inside, even!

Only 10 of their 100 cats started, but did not finish the survey. And the same 10 lazy cats from the other survey didn’t show up to this one, either.

So, there were 90 respondents and 80 completed surveys. CatCorp achieved an 88% completion rate (80 divided by 90), which recorded that most cats don’t care, but some really want salmon. CatCorp made salmon available and enjoyed higher profits than the Kitty Committee.

So you see, the higher your survey completion rates, the more reliable your data is. From there, you can make solid, data-driven decisions that are more accurate and effective. That’s the goal.

We measure the completion rates to be able to say, “Here’s how sure we can feel that this information is accurate.”

And if there’s a Maine Coon tycoon looking to invest, will they be more likely to do business with a cat food company whose decision-making metrics are 72% accurate or 88%? I suppose it could depend on who’s serving salmon.

What is survey completion rate?

Survey completion rate refers to the number of completed surveys divided by the number of total survey respondents. The result is then multiplied by 100 to get a percentage. Survey respondents include those who completed the survey, and those who started the survey but didn’t complete it.

While math was not my strongest subject in school, I had the great opportunity to take several college-level research and statistics classes, and the software we used did the math for us. That’s why I used 100 cats — to keep the math easy so we could focus on the importance of building reliable data.

Now, we’re going to talk equations and use more realistic numbers. Here’s the formula:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

So, we need to take the number of completed surveys and divide that by the number of people who responded to at least one of your survey questions. Even just one question answered qualifies them as a respondent (versus nonrespondent, i.e., the 10 lazy cats who never show up).

Now, you’re running an email survey for, let’s say, Patton Avenue Pet Company. We’ll guess that the email list has 5,000 unique addresses to contact. You send out your survey to all of them.

Your analytics data reports that 3,000 people responded to one or more of your survey questions. Then, 1,200 of those respondents actually completed the entire survey.

3,000/5000 = 0.6 = 60% — that’s your pool of survey respondents who answered at least one question. That sounds pretty good! But some of them didn’t finish the survey. You need to know the percentage of people who completed the entire survey. So here we go:

Completion rate equals the # of completed surveys divided by the # of survey respondents.

Completion rate = (1,200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Voila, 40% of your respondents did the entire survey.

Response Rate vs. Completion Rate

Okay, so we know why the completion rate matters and how we find the right number. But did you also hear the term response rate? They are completely different figures based on separate equations, and I’ll show them side by side to highlight the differences.

Completion Rate = # of Completed Surveys divided by # of Respondents
Response Rate = # of Respondents divided by Total # of surveys sent out

Here are examples using the same numbers from above:

Completion Rate = (1200/3,000) = 0.40 = 40%

Response Rate = (3,000/5000) = 0.60 = 60%

So, they are different figures that describe different things:

Completion rate: The percentage of your respondents that completed the entire survey. As a result, it indicates how sure we are that the information we have is accurate.
Response rate: The percentage of people who responded in any way to our survey questions.

The follow-up question is: How can we make this number as high as possible in order to be closer to a truer and more complete data set from the population we surveyed?

There’s more to learn about response rates and how to bump them up as high as you can, but we’re going to keep trucking with completion rates!

What’s a good survey completion rate?

That is a heavily loaded question. People in our industry have to say, “It depends,” far more than anybody wants to hear it, but it depends. Sorry about that.

There are lots of factors at play, such as what kind of survey you’re doing, what industry you’re doing it in, if it’s an internal or external survey, the population or sample size, the confidence level you’d like to hit, the margin of error you’re willing to accept, etc.

But you can’t really get a high completion rate unless you increase response rates first.

So instead of focusing on what’s a good completion rate, I think it’s more important to understand what makes a good response rate. Aim high enough, and survey completions should follow.

I checked in with the Qualtrics community and found this discussion about survey response rates:

“Just wondering what are the average response rates we see for online B2B CX surveys? […]

Current response rates: 6%–8%… We are looking at boosting the response rates but would first like to understand what is the average.”

The best answer came from a government service provider that works with businesses. The poster notes that their service is free to use, so they get very high response rates.

“I would say around 30–40% response rates to transactional surveys,” they write. “Our annual pulse survey usually sits closer to 12%. I think the type of survey and how long it has been since you rendered services is a huge factor.”

Since this conversation, “Delighted” (the Qualtrics blog) reported some fresher data:

survey completion rate vs number of questions new data, qualtrics data

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The takeaway here is that response rates vary widely depending on the channel you use to reach respondents. On the upper end, the Qualtrics blog reports that customers had 85% response rates for employee email NPS surveys and 33% for email NPS surveys.

A good response rate, the blog writes, “ranges between 5% and 30%. An excellent response rate is 50% or higher.”

This echoes reports from Customer Thermometer, which marks a response rate of 50% or higher as excellent. Response rates between 5%-30% are much more typical, the report notes. High response rates are driven by a strong motivation to complete the survey or a personal relationship between the brand and the customer.

If your business does little person-to-person contact, you’re out of luck. Customer Thermometer says you should expect responses on the lower end of the scale. The same goes for surveys distributed from unknown senders, which typically yield the lowest level of responses.

According to SurveyMonkey, surveys where the sender has no prior relationship have response rates of 20% to 30% on the high end.

Whatever numbers you do get, keep making those efforts to bring response rates up. That way, you have a better chance of increasing your survey completion rate. How, you ask?

Tips to Increase Survey Completion

If you want to boost survey completions among your customers, try the following tips.

1. Keep your survey brief.

We shouldn’t cram lots of questions into one survey, even if it’s tempting. Sure, it’d be nice to have more data points, but random people will probably not hunker down for 100 questions when we catch them during their half-hour lunch break.

Keep it short. Pare it down in any way you can.

Survey completion rate versus number of questions is a correlative relationship — the more questions you ask, the fewer people will answer them all. If you have the budget to pay the respondents, it’s a different story — to a degree.

“If you’re paying for survey responses, you’re more likely to get completions of a decently-sized survey. You’ll just want to avoid survey lengths that might tire, confuse, or frustrate the user. You’ll want to aim for quality over quantity,” says Pamela Bump, Head of Content Growth at HubSpot.

2. Give your customers an incentive.

For instance, if they’re cats, you could give them a glass of water with a fish inside.

Offer incentives that make sense for your target audience. If they feel like they are being rewarded for giving their time, they will have more motivation to complete the survey.

This can even accomplish two things at once — if you offer promo codes, discounts on products, or free shipping, it encourages them to shop with you again.

3. Keep it smooth and easy.

Keep your survey easy to read. Simplifying your questions has at least two benefits: People will understand the question better and give you the information you need, and people won’t get confused or frustrated and just leave the survey.

4. Know your customers and how to meet them where they are.

Here’s an anecdote about understanding your customers and learning how best to meet them where they are.

Early on in her role, Pamela Bump, HubSpot’s Head of Content Growth, conducted a survey of HubSpot Blog readers to learn more about their expertise levels, interests, challenges, and opportunities. Once published, she shared the survey with the blog’s email subscribers and a top reader list she had developed, aiming to receive 150+ responses.

“When the 20-question survey was getting a low response rate, I realized that blog readers were on the blog to read — not to give feedback. I removed questions that wouldn’t serve actionable insights. When I reshared a shorter, 10-question survey, it passed 200 responses in one week,” Bump shares.

Tip 5. Gamify your survey.

Make it fun! Brands have started turning surveys into eye candy with entertaining interfaces so they’re enjoyable to interact with.

Your respondents could unlock micro incentives as they answer more questions. You can word your questions in a fun and exciting way so it feels more like a BuzzFeed quiz. Someone saw the opportunity to make surveys into entertainment, and your imagination — well, and your budget — is the limit!

Your Turn to Boost Survey Completion Rates

Now, it’s time to start surveying. Remember to keep your user at the heart of the experience. Value your respondents’ time, and they’re more likely to give you compelling information. Creating short, fun-to-take surveys can also boost your completion rates.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2010 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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MARKETING

Take back your ROI by owning your data

Published

2 days ago

November 30, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Other brands can copy your style, tone and strategy — but they can’t copy your data.

Your data is your competitive advantage in an environment where enterprises are working to grab market share by designing can’t-miss, always-on customer experiences. Your marketing tech stack enables those experiences.

Join ActionIQ and Snowplow to learn the value of composing your stack – decoupling the data collection and activation layers to drive more intelligent targeting.

Register and attend “Maximizing Marketing ROI With a Composable Stack: Separating Reality from Fallacy,” presented by Snowplow and ActionIQ.

Click here to view more MarTech webinars.

Add MarTech to your Google News feed.

About the author

Cynthia Ramsaran is director of custom content at Third Door Media, publishers of Search Engine Land and MarTech. A multi-channel storyteller with over two decades of editorial/content marketing experience, Cynthia’s expertise spans the marketing, technology, finance, manufacturing and gaming industries. She was a writer/producer for CNBC.com and produced thought leadership for KPMG. Cynthia hails from Queens, NY and earned her Bachelor’s and MBA from St. John’s University.

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MARKETING

Revolutionizing Auto Retail: The Game-Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

Published

2 days ago

November 29, 2023

Entireweb News Bot

Revolutionizing Auto Retail: The Game-Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

In a groundbreaking alliance, Amazon and Hyundai have joined forces to reshape the automotive landscape, promising a revolutionary shift in how we buy, drive, and experience cars.

Imagine browsing for your dream car on Amazon, with the option to seamlessly purchase, pick up, or have it delivered—all within the familiar confines of the world’s largest online marketplace. Buckle up as we explore the potential impact of this monumental partnership and the transformation it heralds for the future of auto retail.

Driving Change Through Amazon’s Auto Revolution

Consider “Josh”, a tech-savvy professional with an affinity for efficiency. Faced with the tedious process of purchasing a new car, he stumbled upon Amazon’s automotive section. Intrigued by the prospect of a one-stop shopping experience, Josh decided to explore the Amazon-Hyundai collaboration.

The result?

A hassle-free online car purchase, personalized to his preferences, and delivered to his doorstep. Josh’s story is just a glimpse into the real-world impact of this game-changing partnership.

Bridging the Gap Between Convenience and Complexity

Traditional car buying is often marred by complexities, from navigating dealership lots to negotiating prices. The disconnect between the convenience consumers seek and the cumbersome process they endure has long been a pain point in the automotive industry. The need for a streamlined, customer-centric solution has never been more pressing.

1701235578 44 Revolutionizing Auto Retail The Game Changing Partnership Between Amazon and Hyundai

Ecommerce Partnership Reshaping Auto Retail Dynamics

Enter Amazon and Hyundai’s new strategic partnership coming in 2024—an innovative solution poised to redefine the car-buying experience. The trio of key developments—Amazon becoming a virtual showroom, Hyundai embracing AWS for a digital makeover, and the integration of Alexa into next-gen vehicles—addresses the pain points with a holistic approach.

In 2024, auto dealers for the first time will be able to sell vehicles in Amazon’s U.S. store, and Hyundai will be the first brand available for customers to purchase.

Amazon and Hyundai launch a broad, strategic partnership—including vehicle sales on Amazon.com in 2024 – Amazon Staff

This collaboration promises not just a transaction but a transformation in the way customers interact with, purchase, and engage with their vehicles.

Pedal to the Metal

Seamless Online Purchase:

Complete the entire transaction within the trusted Amazon platform.
Utilize familiar payment and financing options.
Opt for convenient pick-up or doorstep delivery.

Become A Certified E-Commerce Marketing Master

The Industry’s Most Comprehensive E-Commerce Marketing Certification For The Modern Marketer. Turn Products Into Profit, Browsers Into Buyers, & Past Purchasers Into Life-Long Customers.

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Hyundai’s Cloud-First Transformation:

Experience a data-driven organization powered by AWS.
Benefit from enhanced production optimization, cost reduction, and improved security.

Alexa Integration in Next-Gen Vehicles:

Enjoy a hands-free, voice-controlled experience in Hyundai vehicles.
Access music, podcasts, reminders, and smart home controls effortlessly.
Stay connected with up-to-date traffic and weather information.

Driving into the Future

The Amazon-Hyundai collaboration is not just a partnership; it’s a revolution in motion. As we witness the fusion of e-commerce giant Amazon with automotive prowess of Hyundai, the potential impact on customer behavior is staggering.

The age-old challenges of car buying are met with a forward-thinking, customer-centric solution, paving the way for a new era in auto retail. From the comfort of your home to the driver’s seat, this partnership is set to redefine every step of the journey, promising a future where buying a car is as easy as ordering a package online.

Embrace the change, and witness the evolution of auto retail unfold before your eyes.