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The Art Of Storytelling Through Data

The Art Of Storytelling Through Data

In this episode of Five Questions with… I am talking with JLA Analytics founder Julie Alig about the art of storytelling with data in business and how to present complex stories with data. This is part two of the interview. You can find the first episode on Visual Storytelling With Data here.

How do you come up with the question that you're going to tell the story around?

Definitely in a conversation, it’s a back-and-forth with the customer. That’s the way I do it. That’s the way I’ve found the strongest results come out.

I might be the person in the room who has the most experience with research methodology, with statistical tools, this, that, the other. I’m not the subject matter experts of what my clients are. In my mind, any good research project – kind of like this – needs to be a collaboration between the subject matter expert and the people with the tools and expertise.

Working with my clients, I really like to have that kind of conversation or communication continue, and if anything I like to over-communicate, because I want to make sure that I’m going in the right direction. I think I responded to one of your posts on LinkedIn and said something like,”Let your client, or their questions, be your North Star.”

That needs to be what I’m focused on. That’s where I find the best results with my clients.

Four Tips To Successful Storytelling

I sit in all these meetings, I get Powerpointed to death, with slides with a gazillion data points on them. We spoke about taking this data, understanding the North Star, answering the questions, pulling it together so you can tell a story with it, but now you have to deliver it.

What’s your tips and tricks for boiling that down, putting it onto paper so that people in the room can understand it and so when it gets passed around outside the room they can still follow the story.

That’s the question isn’t it? That’s the 64 million dollar question!

I think that’s where a lot of your skill and expertise come into play. You really have to distill down all the findings into something very short and small. I forget who but there was a British author who said,

"I would've written a shorter letter if I had the time."

1. You have to be concise and get right to the point.

I would say the tip is: A – keep going back to those original questions and make sure that you’re still focused on those. B – I really get a lot out of visuals.

2. Communicate so much with visuals

I was just on a call with a colleague last week, and she was talking about a process, and I whipped out my journal and drew a little picture, and held it up for her, and she was like,”that’s exactly it!” She got it.

So I think we’ve all been in those situations. The danger though is that you’re going to load up too many ideas and too many concepts into one poor little graphic or image. I really like using maybe a couple of visuals to tell a story, and in a storyboard kind of manner.

3. Stick to the basics, and throw everything else in the appendix.

That’s kind of what I used when I was writing my dissertation in grad school. All those great supporting analyses, stick ’em in the appendix.

I love that storyboard analogy. It’s like these are the ones you can always pop out and say, “Okay are we gonna use these images in this order? Is it telling the story that we want?” Instead of “well there’s a slide, and now there’s another slide…”

4. That you and your client or customer are on the same page.

So, especially from that first slide, statement of the problem, statement of the question, and what you’re going to do with it.

What is Geofencing?

Geofencing marketing is location-based ads where a user’s location is recorded via the internet, and advertisements are only shown to people in a specific location target.

Marketing professionals use geofencing to pinpoint specific advertisements based on the target audiences exact location.

The targeted users participate in location targeting when they use applications or programs where they are prompted to enter their location or allow a web service to access their location.

Geofencing ad campaigns are ideal to find consumers based on exact locations and serve “hyper-local” advertisements and messages. Geofencing campaigns can be set up across multiple types of online advertising campaigns, such as search engine advertising, display advertising, remarketing, and video advertising.

Here are some examples of how businesses can use geofencing to enhance their digital marketing efforts and unleash the full power of geofencing marketing:

A retail store could create a simple geofence in an area surrounding its physical location
An auto dealer could set up a geofence which is aimed at targeting individuals who are leaving a competing dealership after browsing for a vehicle.
Artists and musicians and their managers could also establish geofences around different tour stop ahead of time.
Another possible application would be an attorney, lawyer, or law firm setting up a geofencing advertising campaign to target specific areas of interest such as hospitals or jails to reach their target client.

Geofencing advertising is supported by Google Adwords, Facebook and Instagram. Once you select Locations you can expand the geofencing options in the Google Adwords campaign.

For most local geofencing marketing campaigns, you will select the option of entering a location. Most of the tools have preset locations already loaded, especially large or highly populated areas.

The best part is Geofencing is incredibly affordable. Neither Facebook nor Google Adwords charges any additional fees to set up geofencing campaigns.

Not only is geofencing cheap and relatively easy to do, it’s effective. You add more specific targeting layers to local online marketing campaigns, which boosts performance.

For local businesses, the more locally targeted your message is, the better it’s going to perform when your customers are local.

If you’re looking for help with your Google Ads campaign, contact Braveheart Digital Marketing. We’re a PPC agency in Manchester, NH that can help you create a successful campaign and achieve your business goals. Get in touch today to learn more!

Four Reasons Why You Should Be Advertising Right Now

When the Stay at Home order in New England gets lifted, are you positioned to reach out to past customers and let them know that you are open for business?

The normal reaction to a recession or global pandemic is to cut company spending. And the first place they go to make those cuts is usually marketing. But that is a big mistake.

There are endless reasons why company’s that choose to invest in digital advertising when times are tough also do better in the long run.

Here are four reasons why we think you should be advertising right now.

#1 It’s cheap right now!

Both Facebook and Google have reported a decline in advertising revenue due to the coronavirus. In essence, there’s more digital ad space available right now than buyers as companies who are too focused on the short-term have paused their ad spend.

According to a study from IAB, digital ad spend for the March-to-June period is expected to be down 33%. It has not been this cheap to acquire a customer from paid advertising in years. That window will close soon.

#2 You need to maximize sales

If revenue is an issue, you need more sales. To get more sales, your consumers need to know what you’re offering. That’s where advertising comes in.

Companies have been using Braveheart Digital Marketing for close to two decades to drive leads, sales and revenue through their website. Let’s Start Strong together! Start Strong is our new Economic Recovery program to maximize and optimize your marketing efforts. Let’s have a conversation!

#3 Maximize what you get from your ad budget.

Did you know that 43% of all search-related conversions happen over the phone? And that 65% of businesses find their most valuable customers are calling them because they are ready to do business?

Let us set up an advertising campaign where you only pay when a conversion (lead form completion or phone call) actually happens. This is a great way to maximize your ad budget.

#4 You’ll gain market share

While your competitors are cutting back on spend, there’s a room for your brand to take precedence in the mind of your target consumers. This is a rare opportunity for smart brands to shift the whole competitive landscape in their favor in the long run.

If you have gone dark with your advertising and are ready to emerge stronger and clearer, we can help you with our Let’s Start Strong together!

Start Strong is our new Economic Recovery program to maximize and optimize your marketing efforts. Let’s have a conversation! Contact us today to get started.

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Small Business Advertising Packages

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Visual Storytelling With Data

In this episode of Five Questions with… I sit down with JLA Analytics founder Julie Alig to talk about visual storytelling with data. This is part one of a two-part interview.

Can you tell the audience a little bit about your background Julie?

At heart, I’m basically a storyteller. As I look back I’ve really always been interested in stories. It was in grad school that I really got interested a lot more in data, using data and marrying that with stories to be able to really have an impact. I went to the University of Chicago, I got my doctorate in Political Science, I did a lot of work in quantitative methods, survey research, that sort of thing.

What I really wanted to do was be able to understand how to use data, and how to use it in a very honest, methodologically rigorous way, so that people could really feel what the story is in it, and beyond that to figure out, “what do we do with that? Where do we go next?”

And so that’s what my company does. We work with clients that have a lot of data and don’t know what story it’s telling, and who need someone with the tools and the expertise to come in and work with them to figure out what’s going on and plot a course for going forward.

Common basis of understanding

With COVID-19 there’s just so much data that’s out there. I think Andrew Cuomo has done a really good job of visual storytelling with data by condensing it down into understandable parts.

Most data analysts do not do this. When you have a complex dataset, what are some of the tips and tactics that analysts can use to sort of take that and tell a story around it that people understand.

With a complex data set, you can answer a whole lot of questions, and you can do a lot of really fun stuff. I think we’re all pretty aware of all the powerful machine-learning algorithms out there, a lot of these very, very complex statistical analyses. I find, honestly, that if you can’t tell a story, even if it’s a complex story, if you can’t tell it in a very simple way then what good is it?

You might have all of this data, you might have these really cool hierarchical clustering algorithms or whatever you call them – logistic regression of whatever – but if you can’t get down to and answer that question that your customer or client has then what good is it?

I think that’s where thinking of this in terms of visually telling a story with data helps me, and I think it helps other people to think about breaking that down. The first thing you need to do as a practitioner when you start having a conversation about a really complex topic is to make sure you find a common basis of understanding with your audience, with our client.

If you don’t have that common basis, that foundation from the get-go, you’ve lost them. It doesn’t matter how great your R2 is or this, that, the other. It’s over their head and you’ve lost them, and what good is it then?

So I really try to stay true to what the original questions were, and really think about how someone is going to use the data. We all fall under these traps of going off on tangents or going down rabbit holes. For me, analysis is really iterative.

Coming back to the questions, answering a few more questions, coming up with a few more findings, and then going back and iterating. Almost like a palimpsest.

Presenting too much information

What I find a lot of times is that analysts we work with or have seen elsewhere, they’re so focused on showing that they’re the smartest in the room that they just go really deep. They lose everybody, because yes they are the smartest one, because they own the data, but you have to be able to – as you say – bring that up to that story point at the top that says, “these are the terms that we can all understand, and this is the story part that’s around that.”

That’s powerful when it works, it’s a really tough meeting when it doesn’t, when you go too far with that.

Yes And full disclosure, I’ve been doing this for 20, 25 years, I was a young analyst way back in the day! There is something really cool about when you’re able to find something that allows you to dig and dig and dig, and come up with something. You get excited about it and you want to share it!

I’m sure I’ve been guilty of that in the past, but you need to come back to,”Okay, so what? What are we gonna do with this? Does it really answer the question?”

And if it doesn’t, okay, let’s stick a pin in it, stick it over here in the parking lot and get back to the question at hand: how can we really help the client or the customer to make a difference?

Consumer Insights And Behavior

In this episode of Five Questions with.. We’re continuing our conversation with Captify CEO and co-founder Dom Joseph about pulling some insights into how consumer behavior has changed as a result of the Coronavirus. Part one of our conversation about changing consumer behavior and consumers in a COVID-19 world can be found here.

What are some consumer insights you have on the type of messaging that resonates with consumers today?

I think there’s been some very clever stuff coming out from some brands that have managed to move quickly. I do think some messages have been a bit ‘done-straight-away’.

I saw a funny meme yesterday that got sent around about brands trying to evolve their messaging to the emotional state of the country right now but still trying to sell their product straight away afterwards. Consumers will really see through that sentiment.

It’s a tricky one for brands to work out. I think they’ve probably got to try a few things and iterate and find out what

I think this causes a lot of problems for a lot of companies because often the link between creative and media buying strategy is so disparate that actually a lot of brands won’t be able to move quickly enough. They won’t be able to adopt and listen. You’ve got to have a different message right now.

One of our biggest clients, KFC , were very, very quick to change. Their slogan is normally ‘finger lickin’ good’, and right now we’ve been told not to touch our faces! I was very impressed with how quick they were to do that. So, some brands are able to change their messaging and make it right for the scenario, and a lot of others are going to really struggle.

Again, we’re just here to help. If consumer insights can help inform that creative strategy, and if we can help with the creative build, then that’s something that we would do. Then, we can offer to help you guys out. I do think that companies have got to evolve it right now. You have to really understand your audience, which is a very difficult one to work out.

Who does Captify work with?

https://www.captify.us/We work with about 700 brands around the world. Most of it is still with agencies. We’ve really built up a lot of our setup focused on servicing agencies. However with a lot of our agencies, we’re starting to get a closer integration with the brand itself. That is very much of interest, because what we don’t like is being too cut off from really getting the best out of our product.

The best way to use Captify ‘s product is in combination with the client’s data, so we can actually look at the full end-to-end customer journey. We can overlay our first-party client’s data on our data to see and understand the search behaviors of their users and that allows us to be able to pull the consumer insights from the data.

If we can match all the search data we already have on those users it gives us a much richer understanding of what your existing or high-value audiences have been doing over the last twelve months, what have been the trigger points.

If we can get to that level of integration with a client then we’re able to do much more stuff together and the consumer insights get more powerful, the way that you can react quickly and customize content is more powerful.

The ideal client at Captify is one where we are using our product to its full capacity to inform everything from strategy to buying, all the way through to measurement. We really strive as a business to be a core partner that can be used at all stages in that journey. There’s no specific brand, we work in every vertical, but our biggest verticals are travel, automotive, finance and retail.

Three Ways To Increase The Conversion Rate Of Your Website

When a client says that they want to generate more leads, sales, revenue from their website, the most common tactic is to focus on increasing traffic, whether that is through increasing the PPC and/or social media budgets or adding more content in order to attract more organic search traffic.

One option that is often overlooked is increasing the conversion rate. For example:

That is a 50% uplift in results!

How do you achieve that? Here are three ways you can increase the conversion rate of your website.

1. A/B Test

A/B or split testing allows you to test two alternative versions of your page (page A and page B) so see which one has the highest conversion rate.

There are a lot of different things you can test on a page, but these are the three that I start with:

The headline. You should have a strong, convincing and believable headline that promotes the main offer. The legendary ad guru David Ogilvy once said: “On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. It follows that, if you don’t sell the product in your headline, you have wasted 80% of your money.“
The offer. What is it that the customer is getting for their money (how is it all described and laid out).
The size of your order buttons and the wording of call to action (e.g. “Join now and get access to XYZ” vs “Sign up”). For software products the primary call-to-action should often be the “demo/trial”, not the “checkout/purchase” buttons. Enlarging your action buttons usually helps.

2. Optimize Your Form

ImageScape reduced the number of form fields from 11 to 4 and saw a 160% increase in the number of forms submitted and their conversion rate increased 120%.

Here are three ways you can improve the conversion rate of your form:

Test the button copy:

One of the easiest changes to make on a form. Instead of using the generic “Submit” text, tests have shown a higher conversion rate using “Click Here” and “Go”.

Form length really does matter:

Expedia has done a lot of testing on what is the idea length of form, and they found that by eliminating company name from a form they were able to increase profits by $12m.

Require Unnecessary Information

Testing has shown that reducing the length of a form from 11 fields to 4, can increase conversion rates by as much as 120%.

What changes can you make to your form?

3. Focus On Google Analytics

One of the most overlooked tools that can be used to improve conversion rate optimization is Google Analytics.

In the Conversions section of Analytics you can review your conversion funnels. By looking at the Funnel Visualization below, we’re able to see how many users dropped off from each step, indicating areas of optimization.

As we can see, it breaks down that we have a significant number of people dropping off after they reach the cart page. Maybe there’s an area for optimization to reduce that drop-off amount.

Need help increasing the conversion rate of your website? Need your landing page audited? Then contact us today and start converting more traffic into leads, sales and revenue.

Consumer Behavior And Insights

In this episode of Five Questions with.. we’re chatting with Captify CEO and co-founder Dom Joseph about how consumer intent and consumer behavior has changed as a result of the Coronavirus.

Who is Captify?

Captify is the largest holder of search data outside of Google . We essentially bring in search data from publishers all over the web. Consumers who are searching outside of Amazon and Google for holidays, cars, different types of products, even just researching things in life and so on, we bring all that search data in and then use it to provide ad campaigns and insights to our clients.

We bring in about 46 billion searches a month and Google does about 110 billion, so it has a relatively large scale, but we’re really focused on consumers who are specifically a little bit further down the funnel. You might actually use Google to research a topic, but since you want to buy something you would actually then go to the next level of publisher or partner, and those are the companies we work with. It’s the on-site search data from those partners that provides us with the consumer insights..

We provide value to our clients through consumer insights, using the data to derive the interest and intent that users are showing, informing media buying strategies with it.

For example if you’re looking to sell more cars, it’s helpful to look at how consumers are searching and going through the consideration phase and then engage them across all channels from CTV to video and display native. A true omnichannel view of consumer behavior and the buyer’s journey.

How has coronavirus changed Consumer Behavior?

What we’re seeing is that obviously as Coronavirus broke there was a very abrupt change in consumer behavior. We have moved past the crisis and panic mode, and now we’re seeing a real shift towards people looking for a positive presence in their lives.

We’re seeing higher trends in movies that provide comedic relief and escapism from the constant barrage of news. I know for one that I’m certainly doing that myself. I’ve stopped watching the news, I’m just tired of seeing day-by-day how many tens of thousands of people are affected, it’s all got a bit too much.

Another change in consumer behavior we are seeing is that consumers are really searching in a different way. We are seeing a huge rise in people searching for specific products, everybody looking for fitness stuff as well as home appliances to really enhance the way they’re spending their lockdown.

Home office is also a big one, we’ve seen a huge amount of that. We’ve seen a huge amount of spend from our clients in all of these verticals.

So, despite the fact that many advertisers are clearly paused we’re still seeing that actually some of them are going for it in quite a buoyant fashion. Some sectors are clearly going to be in a very good way from this, everybody that’s advertising around food and home office and such, as I said. That’s reflected in the search behavior that we see.

We’re also seeing parents looking for new toys and new methods to entertain their children. Everybody’s starting to run out of ideas now having had this prolonged period indoors.

I think generally the consumption on the internet and watching videos is so much higher right now too, which in combination with our search data is evolving to the areas I mentioned above.

We’re also seeing a huge influx in video inventory, which has led to a big opportunity for advertisers to take advantage of perhaps cheaper inventory, and more being available in CTV and so on. That in turn is shifting advertiser patterns as well.

You can hear more of our interview with Dom Joseph on our YouTube channel.

Should You Be Advertising Right Now?

We are a month or so into a Stay at Home order in New England and a like many small business owners you are wondering whether you should pull or pause your ad spending as the COVID-19 crisis puts a strain on your businesses.

The good news is that research shows that your buyers want you to continue to advertise.

A March 2020 survey by GlobalWebIndex asked internet users in 13 markets whether companies should continue advertising as normal. Nearly four in 10 US respondents agreed, and a similar share (35%) were neutral, compared with 28% who disagreed.

These results are similar to what we saw in a survey from Kantar, where just 8% of consumers in 30 countries believed that businesses should not advertising during this crisis.

This does not mean that your messaging now will be the same as before the pandemic.

In fact 77% of respondents said they wanted advertising to “talk about how the brand is helpful in the new everyday life,” and 75% said it should “inform about [the brand’s] efforts to face the situation.”

The type of messaging we are seeing work really well right now is advertising that shows that you are part of the community and what you are doing to help your employees, customers and community.

Here is a good example from Ford Credit giving customers that they have some breathing room around their car payments.

Or this tweet from Budweiser announcing they are diverting their sports budgets to crisis aid efforts.

In uncertain times, there’s one thing that remains certain: we are #OneTeam.

Let’s come together in support of the heroes on the front line of the health crisis.

Learn how you can join us and the @RedCross at https://t.co/a3OxgiGqeF pic.twitter.com/e7OC8cKAMm
— Budweiser (@budweiserusa) March 25, 2020

If you have gone dark with your advertising and are ready to emerge stronger and clearer, we can help you. Contact us today to get started.

The Art Of Storytelling Through Data

How do you come up with the question that you're going to tell the story around?

Four Tips To Successful Storytelling

1. You have to be concise and get right to the point.

2. Communicate so much with visuals

3. Stick to the basics, and throw everything else in the appendix.

4. That you and your client or customer are on the same page.

Recent Posts

What is Geofencing?

Recent Posts

Four Reasons Why You Should Be Advertising Right Now

#1 It’s cheap right now!

#2 You need to maximize sales

#3 Maximize what you get from your ad budget.

#4 You’ll gain market share

What They Say About Us?

Small Business Advertising Packages

Recent Posts

Visual Storytelling With Data

Can you tell the audience a little bit about your background Julie?

Common basis of understanding

Presenting too much information

Recent Posts

Consumer Insights And Behavior

What are some consumer insights you have on the type of messaging that resonates with consumers today?

Who does Captify work with?

Recent Posts

Three Ways To Increase The Conversion Rate Of Your Website

1. A/B Test

2. Optimize Your Form

Test the button copy:

Form length really does matter:

Require Unnecessary Information

3. Focus On Google Analytics

Recent Posts

Consumer Behavior And Insights

Who is Captify?

How has coronavirus changed Consumer Behavior?

Recent Posts

Should You Be Advertising Right Now?

Recent Posts

What we do

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