The spork is a creative invention. The only problem: Nobody likes using sporks.
Sure, they’re convenient, but they’re not as good as normal forks. And they’re too scratchy to be a spoon.
Even if a spork functioned perfectly, the experience feels like a compromise.
You might see your idea as a creative mash-up, but your customer sees an underwhelming product that tries to do too much. If you’re promising convenience, make sure your customer prioritizes that enough to choose your product.
Increasing engagement is a big deal for most startups and brands. You might have a presence on a channel—Instagram, Facebook, Slack, email, or your own internal platform—but do people want to show up?
The more engaged people are, the stickier your product is, and the more reason they want to stay. The longer a customer stays, the more chances you have to ultimately make a sale. But without a strategy for increasing engagement, digital communities can easily fizzle out. This leaves you panicking for ways to get people to come back, which is not a fun spot to be in.
If you're a co-founders or marketer, here are the key elements of maintaining (and growing) community participation.
Read MoreDigital communities... Everyone seems to be talking about them.
At the altMBA, I had the privilege of building our community from scratch to 2,000+ alumni. You might have read that a community can increase engagement, build a moat around your product, and lower your cost of customer acquisition over time. All of that can be true.
You might be thinking, I'm sold. Can I skip the strategy and go straight to building my community? I want to start sending out Slack invites!
But wait:
First, having a Slack room does not equal a community. (That’s a topic for another post...) Second, you can skip straight to execution, but you might end up building the wrong thing. You could invest several months and thousands of dollars into a digital community that no one wants to be part of.
As a marketer, salesperson, UX designer, or product leader, part of your job is to reduce the friction involved if someone wants to buy something from you.
For example:
Make the button bigger
Use brighter colors
Write shorter copy
Put everything on the homepage above the fold
Add the call-to-action button everywhere on the website
Send reminder emails about the sale
Use monetary incentives, e.g. discounts, bundles, promotions, and reverse promotions ("The price goes up next month!”)
The underlying assumption is, “If I make this easier (or cheaper) for you, you’ll eventually want it.”
Read MoreI meet so many smart, talented non-marketers who still believe their idea should sell itself. I'll break it to you now: no idea ever sells itself. You just don't see the leader behind-the-scenes working hard to make their idea seem to spread "organically."
The host of the Future Tech podcast, Richard Jacobs, interviewed me about why the best innovation doesn't always win. We discussed why technical leaders–scientists, engineers, researchers, innovators–need to embrace storytelling.
Years ago, I had a roommate in San Francisco. He was a 6'1'' software engineer and marathon runner. One day, I heard him squeal. I ran outside to see what was going on.
He was jumping up and down that a big cardboard package arrived. What was it? I thought it would be a new iPad, Bose speaker, Patagonia jacket, flat screen tv...
It was a vacuum cleaner.
Read MoreWhen you're launching a thing, it's helpful to think about the process in three roughly equal parts. What's considered 'a thing'? I define a product or project as something that you're creating to put out into the world.
It could be a web product, website, app, zine, publication, course, poll, physical product, blog post, album, video, collection, survey, directory, event, book, and many other items.
You might be setting yourself up for disappointment if you think that one part of the launch process is 90% of the battle, but it's really only 33% of it.
Read MoreAt Safeway, there are pricing signs everywhere that allow you to compare exactly how much something costs. Milano cookies are 2/$5, or a package that's $7 is actually 23.5 dollars per ounce if you break it down.
There are coupon inserts in the front of the store. There are bright yellow signs saying peaches are $1.99 per pound this week, hanging over the sign that says that they're normally $2.49.
If you go to a farmer's market, GOOD LUCK trying to find how much that organic kale costs. There's typically little mention of price anywhere.
Read MoreI recently shipped a product for Valentine’s Day called Good Morning Love. It’s a seven day drip email campaign where you write lovey-dovey notes that get sent to your partner every morning from Feb 14 - Feb 21, 2015. If you want to sign up, it’s not too late - click here. The concept might seem fairly simple, but there were a lot of decisions that went into shaping the product and user experience. I want to go behind the scenes to share how I built psychological hooks into the product and why it’s important to do so.
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