It’s been more than a few weeks since Google’s Bard returned an incorrect output during a demonstration of its capabilities. That doesn’t mean that tools like this have no place being integrated into society – it means there is still some work to be done to realize its potential.

These systems are classified as weak (or narrow) AI. They work as well as the data input or learning model. What we are seeing with some of these tools is that if the data isn’t updated or exists – these tools return incorrect answers.

When you look at the FAQs for Microsoft’s AI-driven search engine Bing, Microsoft clearly acknowledges this – they state “Use your own judgment and double check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on Bing’s responses.” Recently, Microsoft’s AI-powered search has had its own issues where the AI took on a personality that was somewhat alarming to users of the system. Microsoft responded by limiting the number of queries that can happen in a day.

As Big Tech embraces and integrates AI-powered search, we think of the famous quote ‘with great power, comes great responsibility.’ Google and other search providers are where they are today because of the ease of use, level of accuracy, and relevance of results. So we know accuracy and relevance matter.

That’s not to say that the big search engines are pillars of accuracy, but it’s one thing to search and find the wrong results – it’s another for an AI to generate and provide incorrect information in order to always have an answer.

We won’t go into a detailed technical discussion on how ChatGPT and Bard are built, but we can say that ChatGPT and the large language model it was based on, GPT3.5, is different than Bard and its associated large language model roots, LaMDA. ChatGPT is a pre-trained model versus Bard which is a supervised learning model. The difference is that Bard’s responses are more human-like and ChatGPT’s knowledge base goes back to 2021 as they state on their website.

Some of the challenges with these models are:

• Data issues: Preprocessing, missing values, data not available
• Issues with testing – not selecting a wider representation of data in testing
• Issues with the model – underfitting or overfitting a model
• Lack of governance

These challenges are not insurmountable, but it’s up to the team developing these models to have a structure that addresses some of these potential challenges and issues.

This technology is ever-evolving, and Google and Microsoft will continue to innovate, update and improve on current offerings – it’s in their business interests. These companies are investing heavily in conversational AI, and as a result, users can expect more conversational responses from search engines – instead of just straightforward search results. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, stated that these models will be available in the coming weeks or months and serve as a “companion to search.”
Conversational AIs aren’t exactly new, we’ve been using them for years… don’t believe us? When was the last time you asked Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant to change a song or answer a question?

In conclusion, these conversational AIs are here (to stay), and they have the potential to make a huge impact on existing technology, processes, and user activities that will improve results and provide a more ‘human’ experience. We are excited to see what the future holds.

With marketing going digital, it’s becoming increasingly important to measure results. There are 5000+ data sources, and the challenge of tracking and making sense of all this data is getting harder.

So what metrics should a marketer’s dashboard contain? If your answer includes only activity-based metrics such as impressions, clicks, and form fills, please read further.

We recommend looking at the data across two dimensions: depth and breadth.

On the depth side, the data can be organized into four layers:

1. Assets – The most granular level is assets, which are typically landing pages (LPs) and email templates. The objective here is to determine which landing pages have high conversion rates and which emails have better open rates or click-through rates.

2. Programs and Campaigns – Programs and campaigns are groups of ads, emails, and LPs that have a specific objective. The objective could be lead generation or conversion of leads from the top of the funnel to further down the funnel.

3. Leads – At the lead level, the analytics you’ll be most interested in are the volume of new leads generated and the funnel view of the leads.

4. Pipeline – The dollar value of the pipeline generated or influenced by marketing and the value of revenue closed are the most important data points. Setting up well-integrated marketing systems will enable you to determine the economic contribution of channels and campaigns.

On the breadth side, the measurement spans across these areas:

1. Lead Acquisition – Web traffic, campaigns, and events that offer top-of-funnel metrics

2. Lead Management and Nurturing – The volume of the marketable database, the volume of leads, the movement of leads from one stage to another (conversion rate), email campaign performance metrics such as open rates, and click-to-open rates

3. CRM – To arrive at the pipeline and ROI metrics, it’s important to map the leads that came in via multiple sources to their end journey, either opportunity generated or deal closed.

While you’ll start with basic cuts of the data (by time, industry/vertical, and acquisition channel), over time you’ll likely want to add more customized dimensions, including BUs, geos, products, and services.

Also, you’ll want to convert the measurements into key performance indicators (KPIs), which are typically ratios, to determine efficiencies. Best practices include comparing against goals or past performance to determine corrective actions.

Perfect marketing dashboards are not the ones that contain real-time data on siloed metrics but the ones that can give you a comprehensive view of marketing performance across the breadth and depth of marketing activities. We are confident that Arena Calibrate provides an easy to set up and use dashboard. Give it a try and see how it can make your life easier. Once you start using it, we would love to hear your ideas on how we can make it better and more useful for marketers.

Marketing strategies are ever-evolving, year after year, with 2019 being no different. Trends like live videos and video ads will continue to grow strong because of the instant visual appeal to the audience and with more than 80% of the internet users who indulge in watching these videos. Similarly, chatbots continue to trend this year by becoming widespread and pretty ‘normal’ for brands. The novelty factor has reduced, and they have become quite common.

Here are some of the B2B strategies that aren’t new but continue to stay in the market:

Longtail SEO: In the B2B space, the only way to compete with the big players with deep pockets is not to outspend them but to outsmart them. Smaller players should take advantage of the longtail keywords in their industry that have lower search volumes but more qualified searchers. Fewer websites compete for longtail SEO keywords. Hence, it’s comparatively easier to rank for them.

Longform Content: We all know that the attention span of the consumer is very short. However, for B2B marketers, long-form content may just turn out to be more beneficial this year. The reason is that Google has started giving more weight to content that has authoritative information. It’s not just about keywords anymore.

Also, from a lead-generation point of view, the prospects who dig deeper during the Awareness stage, even if just a small number, are the most profitable leads to take to the consideration stage.

It’s clear that solid, detailed and in-depth information for the right leads at the right time improves the chances that the prospect will engage further and consider the brand.

Micro-influencers: We all know that having big industry influencers advocate for our brands can ensure a large exposure based on their social media reach and engagement. This, of course, would require you to spend a pretty penny. On the other hand, we have “micro-influencers” who are smaller players in the industry but may have a more engaging follower list.

The number of followers and, hence the social media reach, maybe smaller for the “micro-influencers”, but the engagement with the followers could be so much more powerful. It’s a new approach to not burn a hole in your pocket, but still, be able to reach out to your audiences effectively through an influencer. It’s just the right amount of smartly targeted PR within an optimal budget.

Account-based marketing (ABM): ABM is a B2B strategy that focuses on sales and marketing resources on target accounts within a specific market. It’s a strategy that aligns sales and marketing efforts and takes advantage of available data, analytics, and technology.

Though ABM has been growing through the years, personalizing the customer experience has started to catch on even faster than ever. With the help of CRM, marketing automation tools and digital marketing, marketers need to invest in a well chalked-out strategy that is going to support multimedia, multi-channel and multi-device targeting.

With the growing competition, B2B marketers with limited budgets need to get smarter and need to build strategies based on these old but evolving trends that are here to stay.

Pic courtesy: Anand Thaker, Chiefmartec

It’s A Forest Out There!

In case you haven’t seen the above infographic, brace up to the challenge as a digital marketer. As on date, there are over 5,000 tools/platforms that help you solve digital marketing problems. There will be overlaps, and methods that are complementary, or plain opposing. But each of these does perform an activity that forms a part of your overall digital marketing solution.

While choosing from the above list is a challenge, one cannot dismiss the fact that getting these to work together is also a sizeable exercise. Especially when there is no common language of communication or data exchange across these platforms/tools. To give an example, assume you use a marketing automation platform. A simple nurture program setup will need you to define certain parameters as inputs to the design process. These are elements like product information, communication strategy, digital assets, target persona etc. Let’s take “Target Persona” as an example. A typical campaign can have anywhere from one to more personas. To make things much easier, let’s just take one persona. Say a Franchisee owner.

The process of defining the target persona has no pre-defined templates. Each agency, or marketer, or for that matter, each presentation uses a different template for this. It may typically look like this.

Sirius Decisions, a thought leader in the B2B marketing space, has created a template for Persona that lists 10 key attributes. So if we were to revisit the persona definition, it would look like this

Sharing Defined Persona With Stakeholders

This information about your target persona needs to be shared with your search marketing program – essentially if you are setting up a display campaign – the above will need to be configured when you select audiences in either the Google network or Linkedin or Facebook. Now all 3 have varying definitions of the audience. So the agency/marketer will need to map persona to what the networks provide. Now, these are the big 3 – try doing that with other publisher networks.

What if, there was a common definition or listing of persona that all parties could refer to? A publicly available list that one can use, contribute and refer to. So all you have to do was input a predefined persona into a field in the above platforms. In today’s world with technology like blockchain, implementing this is not a big challenge from a tech perspective, it’s more of an acceptance challenge with the relevant stakeholders.

This was just the persona, as you go deeper, there are other pieces of information required. E.g Budget – which can be further split by Geo, the day of the week, time of the day, and mapped to the persona. Another set of information can be related to targeting, response tracking and thresholds, measurement standards – e.g how to measure lead velocity – and the list goes on. What if, all these were standardized? Wishful thinking?

At Position², we are putting together broad level frameworks that can help standardize these. The approach is to work closely with industry bodies to collaborate and build consensus. So when designing your solution integrating each of the over 5,000 tools can potentially be a simple plug and play!

Do you have ideas or suggestions, feel free to connect with us. You can put in your comments below or email vinod@position2.com

A visitor today can be your prospect tomorrow with personalization!

The importance of knowing your visitors, be it unknown, and their behavior is now a priority across industries, organizations, and individuals. It doesn’t matter if they are personal (visitors at home), professional (clients) or online visitors (web visitors). They are always important and expect that special and personalized attention.

Attention to visitors on personal and professional front has always been there but what about your online visitors? Who are they? What is their line of business: B2B, or B2C? Do you give them that personal attention and experience as well? Do they get what they want, when they visit your website? Are you giving them your personalized messaging so they feel unique and important? Are you directing them through the right channel by understanding their intent and interests?

These are some of the many questions that need to be addressed. The more the marketers are aware about their web visitors’ needs, behavior, persona and demographics, the easier it is to educate or engage with them to make a personalized buyer journey.

So, what’s this web personalization in digital marketing all about?

To answer – It’s all about personalization and not just personalization but Real Time Personalization (RTP) and that’s the digital mantra and strategy for today’s marketers.

Welcome to the world of Real Time Personalization – that creates a unique and personalized experience for your web visitors. Real time personalization gives organizations the power to create individualized experience for their website visitors, based upon various factors such as search terms, demographics and industry. This experience helps to boost their movement through the sales funnel.

“If the user experience is good, the reputation of the website will be even better”

Real Time Personalization uses behavioral data collected from web visitors. Using this, marketers can segment and modify messaging and content in real time to boost engagement with prospects.

Marketers are catching on!

According to Forrester Research, 92% of marketers say their interest in personalization has increased and 83% say it is critical to their company’s success.

There are numerous ways to implement real-time personalization. Let’s take a look at few of them:

• In-depth identification of buyer personas
• Developing content that appeals to each type of buyer persona
• Using big data processes to understand who the visitor is, and what they are looking for
• Building a site that responds to the broad categories the visitor falls into (such as “region” or the “source” they arrived from)
• Using machine learning techniques to customize, as per the individual
• Customization beyond the website

With real-time personalization, marketers can now concentrate on being found, and establish relationships with buyers. With so much valuable information about visitors, marketers can understand their audience better, present much more relevant content and hence drive more sales.

By Swet Kshitiz