Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Monday, April 29, 2019
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
6 Simple Ways You Can Use Neuroscience to Increase Marketing Productivity
Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary science that is concerned with the study of the structure and function of the nervous system. When applied to our professional lives, neuroscience can help us to unlock our greatest potential.
Increasing your meaningful productivity can have a huge impact on your day-to-day work and can greatly influence your professional success over a long period of time.
This week on the Science of Social Media, we’re examining the fascinating field of neuroscience and how it can positively influence our marketing productivity.
Think of today’s show as little tricks for your brain to work smarter, not harder.
6 Simple Ways to Use Neuroscience to Increase Marketing Productivity
What follows is a detailed summary of the episode transcript. Feel free to jump around and explore each of these top marketing lessons from history’s most influential leaders in this week’s Science of Social Media:
- Willpower and working smarter, not harder
- Start your day with difficult tasks
- Add value and meaning to your work
- Avoid multitasking
- Take a deep breath
- Create a to-do list
- Take a break and move
Willpower and working smarter, not harder
One of core values here at Buffer is working smarter and not harder.
When we say productivity and working smarter not harder, we mean working on meaningful projects that make a big impact – not necessarily working more.
In the American Psychological Association’s annual “Stress in America” survey, participants were asked to assess their ability to make healthy lifestyle choices, and willpower was the number one reason they cited for not following through with those healthy choices.
Many people believe their lives would improve if they could boost their willpower — more control over what they eat, when they saved for retirement, and how to achieve goals.
Luckily for us, using neuroscience we are able to increase our willpower, and therefore, our meaningful productivity.
Start your day with difficult tasks
First and foremost, start your day with your difficult tasks
There’s been considerable research into willpower and one of the pioneers in this area is Roy Baumeister.
Baumeister discovered that willpower actually operates like a muscle: it can be strengthened with practice and fatigued by overuse. Willpower in the brain is fueled by glucose and it needs to replenished in order for it to perform optimally.
Willpower and self-control is at its peak first thing in the morning, so this is the best time to make yourself take on the hardest tasks of the day.
When creating your to-do list (more on that later), make sure that you carve our time in the morning for the most challenging tasks. This will help to ensure you’re starting your day on the right foot.
Add value and meaning to your work
One subject that comes up quite often when looking into the field of neuroscience is dopamine. Dopamine a neurotransmitter, which means it’s a chemical release by your nerve cells to send signals to other nerve cells.
There are a couple of different pathways for dopamine, and one of them plays a major role in the motivational component of reward-motivated behavior.
A team of Vanderbilt scientists conducted a study in 2012 analyzing the brain patterns of people they described as “go getters” and that meant they were willing to work hard for their reward, and the other group of people was “slackers” and they were not as motivated to work hard.
To quote the study “The team found that the go-getters had higher levels of dopamine in the reward and motivation part of the brain. The slackers had higher levels of dopamine in the emotion and risk part of the brain.”
Nothing will motivate you to be a go-getter if you don’t truly desire the reward that comes with the work. Tie your performance to something that contains value and meaning for you and you’ll quickly move to the go-getter side of dopamine production.
Avoid multitasking
We all like to believe that we’re master multitaskers.
NPR interviewed neuroscientist professor Earl Miller from MIT and he shared some interesting thoughts about multitasking. In short, the human brain is not engineered to multitask.
Miller is quoted as saying, “People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves, the brain is very good at deluding itself.”
What we can do, however, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.
The way to be most productive is to focus your full attention on one task at a time. Give it everything you’ve got. Then, once you’ve completed the task, move onto the next one and give that your full attention.
When you’re creating content for social, close out your email, turn off Slack, put your phone in your bag and focus fully on the content.
Take a deep breath
When you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, take a deep breath.
In a new study, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and their colleagues have identified a handful of nerve cells in the brainstem that connect breathing to states of mind.
The study demonstrated that slow breathing induces tranquility to your body. And if you think of it, that makes sense. Because if you were to start breathing really quickly right now you’d feel the state of your body starting to change completely.
We know that as marketers and business owners, tasks can really start to pile up throughout the day. Sometimes we feel like we won’t be able to complete everything, let alone at a high level.
Breathing not only reduces stress and increases focus, but it helps to bring a sense of clarity of what really needs to get done and what can be put off for another time.
When you have a million things to do during the day, that clarity is invaluable.
Create a to-do list
There’s nothing like a good to-do list.
It turns out we are not alone in our love of lists, our brains also love lists. That’s because it’s the most effective way for the brain to receive and organize information. Recent research suggests that the key to a more organized mind and productive brain is to make to-do lists.
Neuroscience tells us that the brain’s working memory stores information on a short-term basis.
According to Dr. Daniel Levitin, most people can hold about four things in their mind at one time. When we ask our brain to store more than is optimal, it causes our performance to decline.
Since our brain has an attention filter, urgent matters will be at the forefront. At the same time, our brain doesn’t forget those less important matters either, and won’t hesitate to remind you of them somewhere around 3:00am. If you have a to-do list, your brain can rest because it knows you’re on it.
Research also suggests that when we process information, we do so spatially.
Lists appeal to our general tendency to categorize things—in fact, it’s hard for us not to categorize something the moment we see it—since our brains chunk information into short, distinct components.
Take a break and move
Research into neurogenesis, the ability of certain areas of the brain to grow new cells, indicates that we can foster new brain cell growth through exercise. Our brain has the amazing ability to rebuild and rewire every day.
The area of the brain linked to learning and memory is called the hippocampus. Research shows that endurance exercise sparks new neuron growth in the hippocampus as a protein (called FNDC5) is released into the bloodstream when we sweat.
There’s also other productivity benefits as well.
Exercise can help boost alertness. When you exercise, you’re increasing blood flow to the brain, which can help sharpen your awareness and make you more ready to tackle your next big project.
According to the University of Cambridge, exercise releases serotonin into your brain that helps you feel better and improves your state of mind, making the stresses of work easier to handle.
Daily exercise results in:
- Improved concentration
- Sharper memory
- Faster learning
- Prolonged mental stamina
- Enhanced creativity
- Lower stress
An incredible tool in your neuroscience toolbox.
How to say hello to us
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
- Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
- Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website
Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.
Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!
—
About The Science of Social Media podcast
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.
Thank 6 Simple Ways You Can Use Neuroscience to Increase Marketing Productivity for first publishing this post.
Thursday, April 11, 2019
8 Unexpected Marketing Lessons from History’s Most Influential Leaders
This week we’re taking a journey through time and uncovering some of the greatest, yet most unexpected marketing lessons from some of history’s most influential thinkers, philosophers, and leaders.
You may not realize it now, but there is so much we can learn from leaders like Socrates and Oprah and Cleopatra. Much of what they would consider their mantra has a ton of implications on marketing today.
In episode 141 of the Science of Social Media, Brian and Hailley break down concepts like the Socratic Method, transparency, rhetoric, and lots more.
8 Unexpected Marketing Lessons from History’s Most Influential Leaders
What follows is a detailed summary of the episode transcript. Feel free to jump around and explore each of these top marketing lessons from history’s most influential leaders in this week’s Science of Social Media:
- 1. Aristotle
- 2. Socrates
- 3. Oprah Winfrey
- 4. Abraham Lincoln
- 5. Catherine the Great
- 6. Martin Luther King Jr.
- 7. Cleopatra
- 8. Eleanor Roosevelt
1. Aristotle
One of the most well-known philosophies of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (born in 384 BC), is his idea of persuasion, otherwise known as rhetoric.
He breaks down persuasion into the three categories: Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.
These three concepts can be valuable for content marketers, writers, and bloggers. After all, isn’t persuasion one of the most important parts in marketing?
- Logos: The application of logic in efforts to persuade. Logos tries to persuade an audience using logical arguments and supportive evidence.
- Pathos: Playing to human emotions. Using anecdotes and stories, marketers can connect with their audience, adding a human element to content.
- Ethos: The concept of ethics. It works off the idea that it is impossible to persuade anyone of anything if you’re not credible.
You must establish your credibility and reputation as a writer. This is done through personal branding and your ability to build a following. Ideally this would results in brand building and thought leadership.
2. Socrates
Next up on our list of marketing lessons from historical leaders, born 90 years before Aristotle, is Socrates.
Those that took a middle school science class learned about the Socratic Method. The Socratic Method is used in asking questions and posing theories to investigate and to stimulate the foundation of new ideas.
The Socratic Method applies to the interactive aspect of marketing. Get your readers involved by asking them questions or looking for their ideas on certain issues and engage them with interactive content.
Invite your audience to engage in a lively debate. Actively involve them in your marketing process so that your team can generate new product ideas, marketing campaigns, and content topics based on the feedback you’ve received directly from the people that matter most.
Most of all, don’t forget that the Socratic Method applies internally as well. Your team should be debating and questioning trends, norms, traditions, and ideas at all times.
3. Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey has built much of the rapport she has with fans by being honest throughout her career.
Oprah stayed true to herself and was honest to her audience through ups and downs. She also held her guests to this standard as well – ensuring that honesty was always the number one priority.
The benefit of this honesty and transparency in marketing is that it helps to build trust with your customers. Think of all of the brands that create a memorable customer experience by being genuine, human and transparent.
A modern social media strategy demands authenticity and being transparent is something you can’t ignore. That is one of the most important marketing lessons Oprah has taught us from her success.
4. Abraham Lincoln
As the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln became famous primarily because of his contributions to the abolition of slavery and the American Civil War. But aside from his political and human rights achievements, Lincoln is also known for his oratory skills.
He has articulated some of the most memorable lines throughout his political career. In fact, his Gettysburg Address in 1863 became the most quoted speech in US history.
His words live on as we apply them in the perspective of marketing, particularly when it comes to planning and preparation.
Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.”
Marketers should understand that the more time spent on preparation, the less work they have to do in executing.
In addition, Lincoln taught us that it’s not about the amount of hours you work or the number of projects you launch, it’s about the quality of those hours and projects.
Focusing on fewer, but more impactful projects and campaigns will improve your brand’s results and most likely make you more successful in your career as well.
5. Catherine the Great
One of the most influential political leaders of the Eighteenth Century, Catherine the Great was said to have played an important role in improving the welfare of Russian serfs.
She placed emphasis on the arts and helped to cement Russia as one of the dominant countries in Europe.
Catherine the Great is a shining example to modern marketers that it often takes incredible courage to make your vision come true.
In Catherine the Great’s time, smallpox was a terrible problem throughout what is now the united kingdom and Russia. Catherine heard of the new inoculation treatments in England and risked the entire dynasty to travel and get her and her son inoculated.
We know that creativity requires original thinking and transcending traditional ideas, yet we’re so inundated with incoming information, that it becomes harder and harder to truly think for ourselves.
6. Martin Luther King Jr.
Very few people in American history are as celebrated as Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister and social activist who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.
When examining King from a marketing perspective, he teaches us that not only carefully crafting, but truly believing in and embodying your brand message is critical for people to buy into what you’re saying.
As marketers, it’s only when we truly believe in our message and stand behind it 100% that can it be successful.
Carefully crafting your message is time well spent and pays ten-fold in the long run.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is world-famous still today. We might compare that world-famous effect with going viral. Messages that are particularly well-crafted spread like wildfire throughout the Internet.
The marketing lessons bestowed from MLK Jr. include saying what you want to say as quickly and clearly as you can.
Use words everyone understands. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech isn’t an hour long or even 30 minutes. It’s 17-minutes in total and something that changed the course of history forever.
7. Cleopatra
One of the more interesting, yet fairly unknown historical leaders on our list is Cleopatra. C
Cleopatra ruled ancient Egypt for almost three decades. Well-educated and clever, Cleopatra could speak 6 different languages and was known as a strong and charismatic ruler. During her reign, she forged political alliances with Roman military leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Antony – which helped to hold many regions together over decades.
In terms of marketing lessons, Cleopatra had an incredible knack for seeing the bigger picture.
As marketers it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day: writing articles, posting to social media, analyzing our efforts, and everything that comes with the role.
Sometimes we forget to look up and ask: “why”? Why are we doing this? How does what we’re doing at this moment contribute to the greater goal?
We need to understand how our tactics relate to the strategy and matching our behavior to that understanding.
8. Eleanor Roosevelt
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt is a perfect example of a leader that practiced creative innovation – including helping redefine and shape the role of the First Lady.
She not only participated in radio broadcasts, she also authored a daily syndicated column, held press conferences to discuss women’s issues, and was an active supporter of civil rights policies and New Deal social-welfare programs.
Her ability to redefine expectations is a reminder that great marketers always look for opportunities to break the mold. To get to the next level in marketing, we must think outside the box to what seems unimaginable.
Make space to think. Make space to challenge assumptions. Make space to break things.
So what is it that you hope to accomplish? Does it seem too big or too scary to do?
We hope you challenge that notion and set your goals as high as they can go.
How to say hello to us
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
- Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
- Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website
Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.
Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!
—
About The Science of Social Media podcast
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.
Thank 8 Unexpected Marketing Lessons from History’s Most Influential Leaders for first publishing this post.
Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Monday, March 4, 2019
7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Retargeting Ad Campaigns
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a powerful form of digital advertising in which audiences (potential customers) are targeted with specific ads based on their behavior online.
In other words, retargeting campaigns turn internet “window shoppers” into real paying customers for your business.
While we as marketers would love to live in a world in which a majority of online visitors became customers, the truth is the buying process is extremely complicated. In fact, roughly 98 percent of your website traffic won’t convert into customers upon first visit.
Whether you’re just getting started or a seasoned expert, these 7 easy retargeting advertising tips will help take your campaigns to the next level.
7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Retargeting Ad Campaigns
Feel free to jump around and explore the 7 ways to improve your Facebook retargeting campaigns:
- Retargeting Overview
- Tip #1: Understanding the buyer journey
- Tip #2: Improve audience targeting
- Tip #3: Keep a close eye on advertising frequency
- Tip #4: Experiment until you find a highly-compelling offer
- Tip #5: Utilize Dynamic Creative Ads on Facebook
- Tip #6: Set up simple sequential engagement campaigns
- Tip #7: Embrace the emotional side of marketing
Retargeting overview
As we mentioned in the introduction, roughly 98 percent of shoppers are visiting your store or website and leaving without ever buying from you. Check out this data from Statista on the trend over time:
What if there was a way to communicate with those people?
What if you could sell more products to people that are already familiar with your brand?
Luckily for us as marketers, there is! It involves a highly-effective marketing strategy known as retargeting. Retargeting helps you win back visitors — turning them into customers, email subscribers, product advocates, and more.
Retargeting ad campaigns play into one of the oldest concepts in marketing: The Rule of Seven.
The Rule of Seven simply states that the prospective buyer should hear or see your marketing message at least seven times before they buy it from you.
It is predicated on the notion of building trust with the buyer over the course of several messages or interactions.
Which brings us to the seven easy improvements you can make to your advertising campaigns starting today.
Tip #1: Understand the buyer journey (or buyer cycle)
Understanding the buyer journey (or buyer cycle) is crucial and applies to all of your retargeting campaigns.
It’s similar to the sales funnel, in that the process begins with more customers at the top in the awareness stage and ends up at the bottom with much fewer people in the conversion stage. Here’s a nifty graph showing this process from McKinsey & Company:
Retargeting is intended to capture more of those consumers as they proceed through the funnel. But if you’re not careful, you can actually damage conversion rates by ignoring the buy cycle.
If you’re considering letting your retargeting ad campaigns roll along on their own: don’t do it.
It’s not just about showing your ad to the wrong person multiple times, which by the way, can be quite annoying to customers.
It’s more about losing all awareness of the performance of your ads. If there’s one thing that marketers need, it’s a detailed understanding of their data and the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. That means understanding what’s successful and what’s not. Who’s converting on what? Which ad set or ad creatives have the highest ROI?
Tip #2: Improve audience targeting
We’ve talked to lots of brands that start out with targeting anyone and everyone that visits their website in their retargeting campaigns.
Needless to say that approach isn’t always the most effective.
Customers visit to your website for lots of different reasons. They visit different pages. The pages they visit represent different buyer intents. Perhaps they’re not looking to buy your product at all.
The key is to match your custom advertising audiences to those shoppers’ intents.
For example, if you’re an ecommerce brand and someone visits your website shopping for shoes, make sure that you segment those people into a custom audience labeled “shoe shoppers” or “footwear.”
Over the past year at Buffer we’ve created various audiences based on the subject matter our visitors are interested in learning about. We have a custom audience for traffic to all Facebook marketing pages, Instagram marketing, customer experience, case studies, etc.
That allows us to be hyper-focused on what type of content we deliver, which helps to drive down costs.
Tip #3: Keep a close eye on advertising frequency
Frequency is something that many advertisers don’t necessarily consider in their campaigns, but should be thinking about in terms of improving their overall performance.
A recent study on U.S. consumer emotions associated with retargeting ads determined that ad frequency had a negative impact on buyer emotions.
Heavy ad frequency changes a buyer’s outlook from positive to negative. It can be intrusive, annoying, and worse yet — it may cause customers to become angry with your brand. Which will affect current and future sales.
Make sure to implement some sort of ad frequency limit on your campaigns. At Buffer, we’ve implemented a frequency limit of three. If the audience starts seeing the ad more than twice, we’ll either shut it off or change up the ad creative (which is a best-practice regardless).
Tip #4: Experiment until you find a highly-compelling offer
We had the pleasure of hosting Facebook ad expert Molly Pittman the Buffer Podcast back in episode 42 and she discussed this idea of lead magnets.
Lead magnets are your most compelling call-to-action. Something that you know your customers love and that other people will love, too.
If you’re not sure what that lead magnet could be, start with a quick analysis of your website traffic. What products, pages, articles are people visiting most frequently?
Then if you want to take it a step deeper, analyze conversion rates for those products or pages. In other words, what’s the total number of people that convert from a specific page compared to total number of visitors?
The higher the conversion rate, the better the magnet.
At Buffer, we had no idea where to start with retargeting. After some investigation, we found that one of our posts on Instagram marketing was generating a ton of traffic and had an unusually high conversion rate to product trialists.
Today that ad has driven more than 175,000 visits to our website and thousands of product trials.
Tip #5: Utilize Dynamic Creative Ads on Facebook
You’ve probably experimented with dynamic product ads on Facebook, but have you tried dynamic creative ads?
Dynamic creative ads are a tremendous advertising tool because they ultimately take the guessing work out of your advertising copy.
You can upload multiple images or videos, headline and description variations, as well as CTA button texts – and Facebook will test and automatically optimize for the best combinations. This graphic from WeRSM demonstrates this concept perfectly:
It’s important to note here that, because Dynamic Creative Ads only work with Traffic, Conversions, and App Install campaigns, it’s best to use these types of ads in the middle and the bottom of your sales funnel.
For instance, if your ecommerce business sells sunglasses, you could easily test standard product photos, action shots, vs. customer testimonials in your ads.
Facebook will then put your budget to the ads that are performing best.
Tip #6: Set up simple sequential engagement campaigns
When setting up sequential engagement campaigns, you’re taking a very large audience and converting them into a smaller, more qualified audience.
This is different from segmenting your audience because this is based on people who interact with your content. It’s a great way to grow your brand awareness while also moving people down the funnel.
Let’s say your a small-to-medium sized ecommerce brand that sells unique hair products.
Start by boosting a video that has performed well organically on Facebook or Instagram.
After a while, the views of that video will slowly start to pile up. You can then create a custom audience based on people who have watched 3 seconds, 10 seconds, 50%, 75%, or even 100% of the video and target them with an ad that makes sense sequentially.
Blenders Eyewear does an incredible job of this – delivering ads on Instagram when and where they are most relevant.
Put yourself in the mind of your audience here. Think, if I saw this ad, what would be the next logical step? Then map that out over the course of a few days to a few weeks.
Tip #7: Embrace the emotional element of advertising
We all like to believe that we’re intelligent buyers who always act rationally, but that’s only partially true. Our emotional side has a lot to say when it comes to purchasing products.
A simple list of product features might convince the rational self in some users, but it tends to have no effect on their emotional self. Our emotional self-doesn’t care about features, that part of us wants to see and imagine the benefits.
Coca-Cola’s recent Super Bowl ad, A Coke is a Coke, is a wonderful example of how emotions can elicit strong feelings of connection and understanding:
It’s important to address both the rational and emotional side of potential customers in your ads. Speak like a human. Use emotive language. Talk about benefits, not features.
Help people imagine a life with your product – one they never knew existed.
How to say hello to us
We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!
- Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
- Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website
Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.
Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!
—
About The Science of Social Media podcast
The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode. It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!
The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.
Thank 7 Easy Ways to Improve Your Retargeting Ad Campaigns for first publishing this post.