Understanding The Great Analytics Gap (and What to Do About It)

Analytics. Its at the heart of every conversion optimization strategy and online business decision we make. But some studies are showing an ever-increasing gap between the information key-decision makers want, and the actionable insights needed to drive business forward. The question then becomes, where are we now, and what can be done about this great divide? Lets take a closer look:

The Beginning of the Gap

According to a survey done by The CMO Survey and Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business, even at this time last year, spending on marketing analytics was down even failing to meet the CMOs own predictions. Although their share of spending on marketing analytics was forecast to increase over the next three years, the trend was still lower than anticipated:

Marketing budgets spent on analytics fell from its projected amount year after year

In fact, looking deeper into the survey, its easy to see how CMOs could come to a decision like this. The percentage of projects using marketing analytics has gone down since 2012. Year after year, progress has shown to be rather tepid, which begs the question: are CMOs just not understanding the value of the information being provided? Or are analytics really not worth spending on?

The percentage of projects using marketing analytics has remained fairly consistent since 2012

Insightful Answers Lead to More Questions

The answer is neither. A study done by the MIT Sloan Management Review in collaboration with the SAS Institute showed that CMOs, global executives and senior management clearly want more use of analytics:

Management clearly sees the need for better, more actionable analytics data

Two-thirds of executives reporting in the survey admitted to relying more on management experience than what the data showed, and a slim minority reported frequently having all the data they needed to make insightful business decisions. Is it a knee-jerk reaction to rely on ones experience even if it flies directly in the face of what the data shows?

The study showed some interesting points that may have contributed to this feeling of lukewarm analytics reception:

Its Not The Data its What You Do With It Than Counts

As many as 75% of respondents acknowledged that their access to useful, actionable data had increased, and their ability to capture and leverage that data is improving although slowly.

Whats more telling, is that only one in eight of the respondents were deemed to be analytical innovators a term, according to the report, that was given to those employees who were part of an analytical culture fostered by their senior management. This culture highly prized data and insights derived from it, and were more strategic about their use of the intelligence they gathered.

One in eight. Let that sink in for a minute.

Only one in eight people have enough confidence to say that their company thrives on a culture where making strategic, data-driven choices is encouraged. Where gleaning insights from that data is a top priority.

And its not a case of analytics data not being worthwhile, either. A Marketo sponsored report on the future of online marketing showed that investment in actionable data is a smart decision that will power successful businesses well into the next five years and beyond.

Forecast investments in marketing technology include social media, mobile marketing and analytics

As you can see, marketing analytics found itself squarely in third place, only behind social media and mobile marketing respectively. CMOs and other key decision makers know that marketing analytics are valuable. So its not a lack of investment because they cant see the relevance.

Building a Bridge Making Sense of Analytical Data

So weve narrowed down that the cause of the gap isnt a lack of CMO knowledge or understanding, and despite prior questionable performance, spending still remains at an even level despite wanting more investment.

The cause of the gap is a lack of relevant, actionable, easily obtainable data data that can be leveraged across all major channels to provide the kind of insights the CMOs and their analytics team need to bolster sales, build customer relationships and increase customer acquisition. Theres no shortage of information. All of this big data is being collected, compiled and dropped into the laps of key decision makers to try and make sense of it.

Analytical orientation is even being noted as one of the key skills for todays CMOs to possess with creativity taking a backseat:

Strategic mindset, customer insight and analytical orientation round out the top skills expected of CMOs.

So how do we build a bridge between the numbers and information were collecting, and the business-propelling strategies that stem from it?

When Experience Matters Most

This is where management experience that aforementioned knee jerk reaction to data, comes into play. Try as we might to wring measurable, impactful details on our customers from the information we collect, theres just too much interference and noise clogging up the connection. A lot of useless chatter clouding our vision and hindering our ability to move forward.

The bridge that crosses the analytics gap isnt going to be built by digging our heels into the digital mud and going deeper into the numbers. Its going to be built on the value of the customer experience.

The perception of marketing is going to shift. While anaytics are still going to be useful, crunching numbers will only get us so far. Key drivers are going to be more experience-based rather than data-based. Things like:

• Managing customer expectations over their entire lifecycle and not just the acquisition process


• Measuring customer engagement, not just counting how many customers youve gotten


• Cultivating and nurturing customer relationships rather than passing them off to sales and hoping for the best


• Quickly and fully resolving customer issues before they grow and fester on social media

As you can see, these are intangible things that analytics simply cannot measure. But analytics can tell us which channels open the door to drive these types of experiences. So its not about choosing sides analytics or customer experience but leveraging both in such a way that they form a continuous cycle of clear insights that forge a path for the next sales cycle and beyond.

Now Its Your Turn

Do you feel theres an analytics gap within your own company or department? How are you taking steps to remedy it? Or do you think that the data has a greater role to play we just havent crafted the right kinds of tools to get the kinds of insights we need just yet? Share your thoughts and perspective with us in the comments below!

About the Author: Sherice Jacob helps business owners improve website design and increase conversion rates through compelling copywriting, user-friendly design and smart analytics analysis. Learn more at iElectrify.com and download your free web copy tune-up and conversion checklist today!

How to Edit Instagram Photos: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Instagram Filters & More

Have you ever looked through your Instagram feedand wondered how some people make their photos look so darn good?

Whether I'm looking at drool-worthy photos posted by food brands or crisp, gorgeous shots of full-timeInstagrammers (yes, that's a real job), I've had my fair share of photo envy.

When it comes to posting on Instagram, photo quality iseverything. How good yourphotos are will make or break your presence.If you take great photos and edit them exquisitely, I promise you will be much closer to amassing the thousands of followers you're hoping for.

Download the complete guide to using Instagram for business and marketing here.

But don't be intimidated -- in fact, we have good news for you:Editing photos well on Instagram doesn't take a whole lot of time. It's all about taking great photos, using the right photo editing apps, learning which filters work for which types of photos, and getting the routine down.

Let's learn how to edit photos for Instagramso you can garner more followers and more engagement on your Instagram page. In this post, I'llhelp you turnunedited photos -- like the one on the left of Fenway Park at dawn -- into ones that are much more compelling, like the one on the right.

A Step-by-Step Guide toEditing Your Instagram Photos

Step 1: Start with a great photo.

No amount of editing is going to fix a photo that was poorly taken in the first place. When it comes to posting something awesome on Instagram, it's all about photo quality -- and that starts with aphoto that's great even before you tweak it.

You don't need tobe a photographer ortake classes to take great photos for Instagram. All you really need is a smartphone and the willingness tolearn some key tips for how to use it to take great photos. Start by reading through these 17 tips for taking great photos with your smartphone. This post will teach you how to line up your shots, find interesting perspectives, and take advantage of symmetry, patterns, "leading lines," and more.

Step 2: Edit it using apps other than Instagram.

This step is optional but highly recommended. Before I evenstart editing a photo on Instagram, I edit it using one or two of the other great photo editing apps out there. Click here for a list of 11 of the best photo and video editing apps for mobile.Each of the apps on the list have different strengths, so it's beneficial to use more than one on each photo.

For this particular photo, I used two apps: Afterlight and Snapseed.

Afterlight is available for$0.99 on bothiOSandAndroid-- and in my opinion, it's well worth the dollar. I use it on almost every photo Ipost to Instagram.It's not the fanciest app in the world, but ithas all thefeaturesyou need to do a basic photo edit -- fromcontrolling the color tones and adjusting exposure and brightness,torotating and straightening the photo. While the Instagram app itself has some of these capabilities, Afterlight does havea few important features that Instagram doesn't, like its Highlight Tool that brings the blue hues up. I find this gives photos a cleaner, fresher look.

For this particular photo, I did some basic editing tweaks on things like brightness, contrast, and highlights.

Next, I uploaded the photo into Snapseed, afree app on bothiOSandAndroidthat's alsogreat for basic image enhancements.

While Snapseed has all the classic adjustment tools, such astuning, cropping, and straightening, its main selling point is its "selective" editing tool. This lets you pinpoint an area in a photo and adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation of that single point in the photo. So if you want viewers to focus on a certain part of your photo -- say, the clouds reflecting the beautiful colors of sunrise -- then you can make those clouds more vivid.

Snapseed also has a plethora of cool filters, like the "Drama" one below. Although I didn't use any filters for this particular photo, there are some cool ones in there you can play around with.

Once you're done editing a photo in Snapseed, you can click "Save" and then "Export" to save it to your phone's photo album.

Boom.With a few tweaks using apps outside of Instagram, I've adjusted the original photo (left) to make it a little more striking (right).

Step 3: Upload your photo to Instagram.

Now that we have a photo we're ready to work with in Instagram, it's time to upload your photo to the Instagram app. To do this, open the Instagram app and click the camera icon at the bottom center of your screen.

From there, select the photo you'd like to edit from your photo album. By default, it'll go into "All Photos," but you can click the downward arrow next to "All Photos" at the top of your screen to opena particular album if your photo is located somewhere specific.

Pro Tip:Instagram will crop your photo as a square by default, but if you want to change it to its original width, simply press the "Expand" icon (two outward facing arrows) in the bottom left-hand corner of the photo once you've selected it.

Click "Next" to begin editing the photo.

Step 4: Pick a filter.

Here's where it gets fun. Now that you're in editing mode in the Instagram app,the first thing you should do is pick a filter.Usually, I click through onto each and every filter, in order, and take note of which ones I like. Then, I'll go back and forth between the ones I like until I settle on one of them. How's that for scientific?

While slappingon a filter because it looks good is one way to do it, it ishelpful to play around with each filter and get an idea of its specific purpose.From Lark to Crema to Valencia to Ginza, each filter has its own personality and hues that drastically changes the photo -- not only how it looks, but how it feels. Take a look at these examples to see what I mean:

Here are a few of my favorite Instagram filters and how they change the look and feel of a photo:

• Lark: A filter thatdesaturates reds while pulling out the blues and greens in your photos, thereby intensifying it. Great for landscapes.


• Moon: A black-and-white filter with intense shadows that'll give your photos a vivid,vintage look.


• Crema: Adesaturated filter that givesyour photos a creamy, vintagelook.


• Valencia: A filter that warms the colors of your photo, giving it kind of an antique look without washing out color completely.


• X Pro II: A high contrast filter that makes colors pop and adds vignette edges, giving photos sort of a dramatic affect.


• Lo-Fi: This filter adds high saturation, rich colors, and strong shadows to your photo. Great for photos of food.


• Brannan: A filter with a metallic, grey-ishfeel thatrichens deep colors while softening neutrals. Warning: It always makes your photos look highly edited.

Everyone has their favorites, so as you use Instagram more and more, keep experimenting and learning about your own filter preferences for every type of photo you take, whether they're landscapes, close-ups, portraits, or something else.

For this particular photo, I chose theSkylinefilter because I like how it gave the whole photo a glowing, surreal look, and how it made the rich purples and pinks of the sunrise pop.

Pro Tip:As you begin learning your filter preferences, you can reorder your filters and even hide the ones you don't use. To do either of these things, scrollto the very far right of your filters options and click "Manage."

To reorder your filters, simply hold your finger down on the three grey lines on the far right of the filter you'd like to move, and dragit to reorder.

To hide filters you don't use, deselect themby tapping on the white check mark to the right of the filter.

(Read this blog post for more Instagram hacks, features, and tricks like that one.)

Step 5:Adjust the lux.

The what? If you've ever edited a photo on Instagram, you've likely used the lux feature before, even if you weren't sure what it's called. Lux is a feature that makes your photos more vibrant and brings out the smaller details.

Once you've selected a filter, turn lux on by tapping the sun symbol below your photo and above your filter options.

Then, use the slider to adjust the lux, which willadjust the contrast and saturation of your photo. I usually slide it up and down until I settle on what looks best. Tapthe check mark when you're done and it'll take you back to the filters page.

Step 6: Use the simple editing tools.

Next, open up Instagram's simple editing tools by tappingthe wrench icon below your photo on the right-hand side.

From here, you can adjust a number of settings, including alignment, brightness, contrast, structure, warmth, saturation, highlights, shadows, and sharpness.I usually go through each setting one by one until I've adjusted the photo to my liking.

To adjust each of these settings, click on the icon at the bottom of your screen, use the slider to find a "sweet spot," and then tap the check mark when you're done. If you adjust the slider and realize you don't want to make any changes, simply tap the "X" and it'll exit from that setting without saving any changes.

Once you've made all the changes in Instagram's tools that you'd like, click "Next" in the top right-hand corner of your screen.

Step 7: Either post your photo immediately, orsave it to post later.

Alright -- at this point, you have two options.

Option 1: Post your photo immediately.

If you're ready to post your photonow,then go ahead and post it by adding a caption, a geotag, tagging any relevant Instagram users, and clicking "Share."

Option 2: Save it to post later.

If you're not ready to post it now, but you wanted to get a head start on editing it so you could post it in a pinch, then you can save the photo with the edits you made in Instagram without posting it -- thanks to a little hack.

Ready? To use Instagram as a photo editor without posting anything, all you need to do is publish a picture while your phone is on airplane mode.

First, you'll have to be sure you have "Save Original Photo" turned on in your settings.

Then, turn on airplane mode. Here's how to do that:

• To turn on airplane mode on an Android device: Swipe down from the top of the screen. Then, swipe from right to left until you see "Settings," and then touch it. Touch "Airplane Mode" to turn it on.


• To turn on airplane mode on an iPhone/iPad: Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and click the airplane icon. Or, go to"Settings"and then "Wi-Fi,"and switch "Airplane Mode" on.

Then, go back to your editing screen andpress the "Share" button at the bottom. An error message will appear saying the upload failed, but rest assured the photo will be saved automatically to your phone's photo gallery.

(Read this blog post for more Instagram hacks, features, and tricks like that one.)

Pro tip:Want to edit a whole bunch of photos ahead of time so you can upload them later without much effort? If you have an iOS device, one way to organize your edited photos so you can find them easily later is to add them to your "Favorites" folder on your iPhone.

To add photos to "Favorites," you'll need to "heart" the photo. Here's how it works: When you're scrolling through your photos, tap theheart iconat the bottom of your screen.

The photo will be added to a photo album called "Favorites" in your iPhone's folders, which you can access easily and at any time. Since Instagram doesn't let you schedule posts in advance, this is a great place to store edited photos so you can upload them when you need them.

And there you have it! By now, you should be able to edit your Instagram photos on a pretty basic level.

What other tips do you have for editing Instagram photos? Share with us in the comments.

Google To Shut Down Google Compare Products In Us And UK On March 23

The vertical lead generation programs for credit cards, auto insurance, mortgages and travel insurance will start winding down Tuesday, February 23.

The post Google To Shut Down Google Compare Products In Us And UK On March 23 appeared first on Search Engine Land.



Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

The Art of Emoji Marketing: 7 Clever Examples From Top Brands

This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

Here's something disturbing: According to data gathered by marketing agency Deep Focus, four out of every 10 millennials would rather engage with pictures than read. Yes, you read that right. Nearly half of history's most educated generation would prefer to revert back to some sort of cave painting-esque proto-language than bother to parse through a couple of sentences.

Of course, most prominent among this shift to pictorial communication is the emoji. We detailed its rise to prominence last year, but in short, the emoji as we know it started in 2011 and reached near-ubiquity in the past year or so. Now, in 2016, seemingly every millennial peppers their texts or tweets or Facebook messages or Instagram posts or college essays with yellow faces of varying temperaments.

And because millennials are such an important demographic to reach, brands have been trying to capitalize on the emoji craze. It has gotten so pervasive that an entire industry has cropped up dedicated to measuring the ROI of these type of visual images on campaigns.

However, we're taking a decidedly less scientific approach to judging brands' emoji usage. Below we've recounted our picks based on such subjective criteria like cleverness or memorability.

But before we begin our countdown, we must include a quick disclosure. These below examples are of brands using the standard emojis found on most smartphones, not instances of companies such as Coca-Cola or Disney creating and using their own custom emojis. That's too easy.

The 7 Best Examples of Emoji Marketing

7) Baskin-Robbins

One of the biggest problems arising from a brand's use of emojis is the tendency to get overcomplicated. Try to do too much and risk creating a string of would-be clever emojis that take longer to decipher than to read a Tweet or a tagline. (We're looking at you Chevy.) That's what makes this Baskin-Robbins tweet so perfect. It's an ice cream cone. Nothing fancy, but it helps break up a wall of text.

6) Bud Light

On the Fourth of the July, Bud Light tweeted an emoji American flag composed of fireworks in place of Old Glory's stars and American flags and beers for the red and white stripes, respectively. It was clever, original, and took advantage of the existing emoji language.

5) NASCAR

On World Emoji Day (yes, it's a thing), NASCAR Tweeted a photographic (emoji-graphic?) mosaic of some of the sport's most famous drivers. Art? Maybe. Cool to look at? Certainly.

4) General Electric

Hosted on the website emojiscience.com and modeled after the periodic table of elements, General Electric's "Emoji Table of Experiments" invites users to click on individual emojis to explore "DIY science, videos with special guests, and everything else emoji science." For example, clicking on a smiley face will bring visitors to a video of Bill Nye the Science Guy explaining evolution through the use of emojis, while clicking on a rocket ship pulls up information about NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. Emojis as a teaching tool? Who knew!

3) DeadPool

Sure, this example may be a little crass, but so too is the character the movie is promoting, and that type of on-brand messaging works. Besides, when you have famous comedians tweeting about how brilliant your emoji usage is, you must be doing something right.

2) Smithsonian Institution

Here's another example of emojis as education: On World Emoji Day, the Smithsonian tweeted an emoji that corresponded to a particular piece in their museum along with a link to more information. An emoji trumpet, for instance, brought visitors to facts about Louis Armstrong's trumpet. No word on if any of the millennials actually read the content.

1) Domino's Pizza

The goal of any business should be to reduce friction during the purchasing process. By co-opting the pizza emoji into a food ordering mechanism, Domino's Pizza reduced the time it takes to order to five seconds. And that's perfect because the only thing millennials like more than emojis is instant gratification.

What are your favorites examples of emoji marketing? Let us know in the comments below!