One thing we can count on is by the time you have finished reading this buying behavior may have been altered one again.  Changes in buyer behaviors continue unabated.  This is making it difficult for marketing and sales leaders to plan the right mix of strategies and tactics resulting in a winning formula.

5 Buyer Behaviors B2B Marketing Must Keep An Eye On

New buying behaviors means B2B marketers have to become more responsive today.  Creating nimble organizations and improving knowledge in buyer understanding.  Here are ways buyer behavior will continue to reshape marketing:

Buyers Embrace Collaboration

Social and digital technologies has allowed for progress in the area of collaboration.  Meaning the sphere of influence and interaction not only has widened but increased.  Old ideas about roles on buying teams are being shattered as we speak.  The era of collaborative buyer networks has arrived.  We now have to consider internal as well as external members of collaborative networks impacting decision-making.

Buyers Want Co-Creation

Collaborative networks are fostering a new environment for co-creating products, services, and for solving problems.  This new development will put pressure on B2B organizations to get in line with flexible products and services which allow buyers to play an active role in co-creating.  Buyers and their collaborative networks will demand it.  For B2B marketers, this means a broader view on how you deliver messaging.

Buyers Want Less Content

I am sure some will do a double take on the above sub-header.  The fact is buyers are overwhelmed with content.  Here is how one buyer put it to me: “Look, I think twice now about putting my name in a form - not because I am not willing - but I know this just means I am going to get a flood of emails to download more information.” Buyers want less content – yet desire smart content.

Buyers Want 1-to-1

A funny thing happened on the way to marketing automation.  Marketing may be inadvertently dripping back into the mode of 1-to-many as opposed to the coveted 1-to-1.  I came upon this thought after conducting two reviews of lead generation and nurturing campaigns.  Buyers can see right through this screen.  They can smell automation.  A buyer’s voice on an email she received: “What is this?  I really don’t know because it doesn't say anything to me.”

Buyers Want More Than Insight

There is the old adage “too much of a good thing.”  I think we may have such a situation happening.  We have embraced the idea of the Challenger Sale and you see organizations racing to offer insight.  An issue here is too many items are being classified as insight.  This can actually counter-balance the act of contributing insight.   What this means for B2B marketing and sales is they will have to be more judicious in what they label insight.  Why dilute a good thing?

Adaptive and Agile Marketing

With rapidly changing buying behaviors, B2B marketing will need to be more adaptive and agile.  I foresee buyer behaviors shifting in waves.  This means marketing must be able to see these waves and make adaptive shifts in how they connect with buyers.  This will certainly not be easy to do.

Predictability will become even more important as we look ahead.  While Big Data holds promise, it will equally take developing the qualitative ability to anticipate where the new buyers of today are heading.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• The Art of Buying
• 7 Big Questions for B2B Marketers in 2013

Questions? (Photo credit: Valerie Everett)

The more change occurring  the more questions arise.  This year is no exception.  B2B Marketers are experiencing ongoing as well as new challenges as we start to hit stride in 2013.   What are the big future questions for B2B Marketers?  Let's look at a few:

How do we generate more leads and keep them?

Survey after survey indicate B2B marketers have this issue top of mind.  Creating demand and filling up a pipeline is loaded with pressure packed environments.  In my qualitative buyer research work, I see shifts in behavior on the part of buyers.  There are unique sets of goals and behaviors emerging in the area of nurturing.  Calling into question how leads should be defined and segmented.  Lead research and unique lead persona development will emerge to help B2B marketers address this most important question.

How do we use marketing automation effectively?

Marketing automation has crawled out of infancy stage and is being more widely adopted.  Many organizations have been in the "let's just get started" phase.  Experiencing the pain of implementation.  The next level question is how to make marketing automation more effective to get better results.

How do we operationalize content marketing?

Content marketing has certainly arisen as one of the core capabilities B2B marketing must possess.  It is causing radical shifts in thinking about the role of marketing and how to build internally.   To operationalize content marketing begs further questions related to structure, roles, and skills.  Presenting CMO's with the daunting task of figuring out how to build internal strength in content marketing.

What do customers and buyers want?

Usually, when this question is asked, there is a tendency to give a product-centric answer.  If you find yourself doing this - then you might want to catch yourself.  Admittedly, this is one of the hardest questions to figure out.  Since no one is guaranteed to be a mind-reader, this will take qualitative intelligence.  To understand how your customers and buyers think as well as what is motivating this thinking, it takes skilled customer research and buyer research.

How do we create seamless multi-channel experiences?

Existing customers and prospect buyers, simply stated, do not want to have to alter how they interact based on the channel.  My theory on this is based on hearing how buyers complain about how one channel works for them but another does not.  The wider the gap, the more disruptive.  Disrupting your customers and buyers - well - is not a good thing.   Here is an example:

"Okay here's what I mean, I go to the website.  It is impressive and I find some good information.  I am thinking this could be a smart organization to potentially get to know.  Of course, I download the white paper and I get the call.  Let me just say they had no idea what they were talking about." (Director, IT Integration and Service)

How do we stop reacting and plan for the future?

There is palpable tension in the air for B2B Marketers this year.  The need to know and the need to get results creates mounting pressure.  When first quarter results may not have been as expected, it is bound to cause some to push the panic button.  It can become a fire drill.  All hands on deck to create the next campaign.  What I believe is happening is buyers are out in front and B2B marketers are trying to catch up.   I advocate having a solid foundation of buyer intelligence to work with.  This means a collective body of research-based reference knowledge like audience personas, buyer personas, mapping tools related to content and buying journeys, and much more.  These give you the perspective you need to know why something may not have worked and to plan intelligently.  Another words - stop hitting the panic button.

How do we build more buyer predictability into B2B Marketing?

Predictive analytics continues to grow.  With limitations.  It holds promise to scale down Big Data and give the ability to predict buying behaviors.  While this may help us to predict how buyers may behave online for example, it may yield little on predicting why.  A capability I am advocating is developing customer and buyer foresight planning.  This type of planning calls for  emerging buyer scenario modeling and mapping capabilities.  Knowing where your buyers may be headed can give you the foresight needed to anticipate future motivations.  In addition, share your foresight and help them envision a future which includes you.

There are many more questions.  It is the nature of business and marketing.  It is the one constant we can count on.  Things will change enough which will beg more questions.  B2B Marketing leadership and success wil be predicated on the ability to answer the big questions.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• The Art of Buying
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing

As we know, once the initial rounds of advertising takes place, the content then goes out into the ether. Up until recently, these adverts were lost in the great expanse of the internet. Yet as long as the number of views and impressions were in line with what was expected, not too many people have been worried about these finer details.

However, inevitably the money men are going to want some clarity on where advertising spend is going. Results are all well and good, but in an era of Sarbanes Oxley, transparency has never been more important for big corporates. Yet what they will find may well alarm them more than not knowing at all.

In just over the year that we have been running commercially in the UK, we have found around three to four per cent of adverts we monitor are appearing on client-defined inappropriate sites, like peer-to-peer sites offering illegal content. When you extrapolate that figure with the number of adverts that are served monthly, then you are looking at hundreds of millions of adverts appearing on sites that offer zero value.

Worse still, we have documented millions of adverts appearing on sites which support criminality. Up until recently advertisers could legitimately say this was a consequence of the system and there was little they could do to prevent this from occurring. That is now no longer the case with ABC certifying a number of products which offer content verification, helping to stop adverts appearing on inappropriate sites.

With these solutions in place, the vast void of online advertising has had a light shone upon it, highlighting how often these adverts appear in the dark recesses of the internet, and pinpointing where campaigns are failing to deliver value for money. With a greater ability to track and analyse advertising campaigns, practices and methods will need to change to reflect a more scientific and accurate approach. By doing so, it will lead to a safer industry, more confident brands willing to part with online advertising funds, and prevent brands tacitly supporting criminality.

Want to be the go-to guy or gal on your team with the flashiest new apps? The one dressing Instagram photos with never-before-seen filters and stamps, using emoticons our Japanese counterparts only released yesterday?

It can be time-consuming to stay current in social and digital media, so here are some effective ways to quickly surface and assess the hottest toys.

1. Assign yourself playtime. My playtime is Sunday evening after “Mad Men.” I pull out my iPad and iPhone and I furiously start downloading new apps. I jump over to the Featured and Top Charts sections of iTunes to see if there are any new additions. I download them, bring them to the forefront, launch them, create a new account, follow the top accounts (if applicable), invite a few friends and make time to revisit them later in the week. If it’s a photo app, I try out some photos and push them out to Facebook to see how they look. If it’s a news app, I load it up with my interested topics and see how it populates.

Interaction with apps is important. You need to understand the functionality before you make a recommendation. And don’t just bury your new downloads in the graveyard, i.e., the last page of apps.

2. Subscribe to folks who do the research for you. Having been part of the tech PR community, I am (somewhat) responsible for having jammed reporters’ inboxes with pitches about startups. The good folks at TechCrunch, Mashable, The Next Web, ReadWrite and countless other online publications filter through all that noise to help uncover the next big thing. So listen to them, they’ve done their homework.

A few worth noting: I closely follow my buddy Ryan Lawler, who is responsible for introducing Uber and BlackJet to my vocabulary. And Mashable’s Emily Price posts a weekly app roundup of top mobile apps.

Determine what you like to follow on the medium that’s easiest for you to use, and stay on top of it.

3. Identify a network to discuss and share your latest finds. New York Tech Meetup holds monthly events where tech companies demo their products to a large group of tech enthusiasts. Digital LA holds events for “Silicon Beach” startups to showcase their products. These are two examples of larger organizations, but you can replicate the experience with a close group of friends or coworkers. Identify networks both online and offline where you can share exciting discoveries with others. Pass around your phone or pull up the site on your desktop. Don’t just chat about it – do it together.

Yuna Park is Associate Director of Social & Digital Innovation at 22squared. Follow her @yunapark, and follow the agency @22squared.

What other media channel can compare with this?

Consumers are rapidly adopting mobile devices and behaviors and spending an average of 2 hours per day on smartphone devices. We are rarely separated from them, and we check our phones every 6.5 minutes (or 150 times daily). 

MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012

While MOBILE ad/media spending is only 1% of total media (vs. 10% share of consumer media time), MOBILE advertising grew by 88% in 2012 (from $2.4B to $4.5B). MOBILE ad spending growth to-date has been limited by marketers/agencies challenges in creating MOBILE ads designed specifically to take advantage of MOBILE devices. Chia Chen, SVP Mobile Practice Leader at Digitas indicated their client's mobile ad spending grew by 400% (4X more rapidly) because their ads for Amex, Taco Bell, M&Ms and other clients treated smart phones as "small TVs" and incorporated richer media, and more native creative palettes.

Global Tablet Advertising Study - Results Presented

Beth Doyle, Innovation Director at Vivaki, revealed the results of a 14-month global industry study of 20 million global tablet users (sponsored by 12 advertisers including P&G and Coke and 12 media companies) titled The Pool: The Tablet Lane - TABLETS RISING. This study tested 35-40 tablet advertising formats and yielded 3 STD Tablet ad formats being proven as meeting consumers' needs: (1) let me drive; (2) more for me; (3) "tablet-ize" the user experience; (4) no guessing games - keep it intuitive and simple. Clearly, with MOBILE (smartphone and tablet) ad standards emerging, marketers are well on their way to utilizing this new medium in unique ways not available through other previous media channels.

MOBILE's Big Differentiators

MOBILE is a one-to-one media channel and LOCATION is MOBILE's big differentiator. These devices give consumers the ability to find anything they need in real-time and for marketers (with opt-in permission) to find their best customers and prospects when they are in active shopping/buying mode. 40% of consumers already utilize MOBILE devices as their primary (exclusive) online research channel and 60% of mobile shopping converts to purchase (with 75% of sales take place in-store).

Todd Morris, EVP of Mobile & Marketing at Catalina indicated mobile-assisted grocery shoppers buy 8%+ more and over 1M+ consumers are already spending over $1B+ in mobile grocery shopping where items are scanned, store discounts/coupons are applied, and orders are delivered or picked up without waiting in checkout lines.

Trish Mueller, CMO at Home Depot indicated mCommerce grew 129% in 2012 and sales from MOBILE are projected to exceed $650M by 2016. Home Depot has developed a MOBILE web and apps which make it one of the top 10 retail sites creating "an endless aisle" where consumers can access 400,000 SKUs as well as product information and peer reviews at the point of purchase. One of the most innovative apps is "Find A Pro" where consumers can take a video of a problem, send it to Home Depot, and they will connect consumers with "Pros" who can bid the job.

Winston Wang, Global Director - Strategic Innovation at AB Bev, demonstrated "beer and MOBILE go hand-in-hand" indicating beer is the original social network and MOBILE is helping Sales & Marketing along the entire purchase funnel as well as in the loyalty/advocacy areas after purchase. Winston shared MOBILE apps for Stella Artois (9 step pouring ritual, LeBar finder), Beck's and Bud Light.

Announcement: A New MMA Initiative To Address The Mobile Talent Gap

MMA-NA has launched a NEW Mobile Talent Task Force (Jeff Gundersen - Co-Chair) and the first open Committee meeting was held at the MMA-NY 2013 Forum. All parties (marketers, agencies, media companies, technology providers, educators, training & development companies, and other interested parties) are invited to reach out to Jeff Gundersen for a copy of the "Strategic Framework" and related mobile talent research studies pertaining to this new Committee.

A key component of understanding buying decisions is gaining a reality check on how buyers perceive you and whether you match to their criteria.  How well organizations are perceived will serve as one of the primary influences shaping buying behaviors and purchase decisions.

Buyer research can reveal many aspects of what comprises buyer perception.  Buyer experience is now becoming one of the most important factors contributing to and influencing perceptions.  The new digital age is introducing new types of criterion buyers place a value on, which can directly affect their perceptions:

Buyer Experience: previous as well as current experiences can have an enormous impact on how buyers perceive you. Do you think waiting an extra day to return a call was no big deal?  Think again.

Engagement: evidence is building on engagement being a factor in shaping buyer perceptions when making purchase decisions.  What the "engagement experience" tells buyers can make a big difference.  This differs from buyer experience in this way: when you ask customers and prospects to engage - meaning interact - it better not be painful.

Knowledge: the sharing of knowledge and insight is fast emerging as a one area shaping how buyers perceive companies.  Content marketers need to watch for information fatigue setting in with their buyers.  Suffocating buyers with content is not the answer.  On the other hand, if buyers feel like they have to perform a tooth extraction tor pry information from your organizations, then they will move on.

Community: buyers today are getting tuned into joining various communities specific to their industry.  Are your efforts tuned into the communities buyers are at?  Are you contributing to this community - or "selling" and annoying the community?

These are just four factors affecting how buyers can perceive you and your organization.  Based on hundreds of buyer interviews I have done to date - I can say the above directly impact the why and how of purchase decisions.

Now What?

Getting to understand how buyers perceive you can be challenging.  Two ways you can get a handle on buyer perception is:

• Have buyer research performed specifically for perception
• Have mystery shopping performed to get insight on how buyers experience their interactions with your organization

Understanding how buyers perceive you can often be a surprise.  When I have provided insight into buyer perception, I often get the "I had no idea" response.  Given the hyper-competitive digital world of today, this might be one area you should have an idea about.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to theBuyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• The Art of Buying

• 4 New Values Affecting How Buyers Perceive You (tonyzambito.com)
• 5 Buyer Behaviors Reshaping B2B Marketing (tonyzambito.com)
• Is Your Lead Generation Off-Target? (blogs.imediaconnection.com)

Now, back to the beginning.

There is a common practice in the technology industry of putting tablets and smartphones together in a single category and calling them "mobile" devices. Both are compelling and relatively new types of devices that exhibit a similar look and feel, and share some key characteristics. However, there are significant differences between them that make one a mobile device, and the other not.

Why shouldn't they both be considered mobile? More importantly, why is this an issue?

Because mobile is the most transformative revolution in computing since the emergence of the Internet. Mobile takes advantage of extreme portability and continuous network connectivity to enable a completely new set of user experiences that traditional computing platforms cannot. Knowing which devices are mobile and which are not helps us better understand what is happening and how to better plan, and create, the future.

What’s useful is a simple definition of what "mobile" really means.

A primary characteristic of mobile devices is that they are small enough to be continuously carried around through almost all daily activities, including walking, running, and driving, and are found at home, in the office, in-store or anywhere in-between. Mobile devices can easily fit into a pocket or a purse and are comfortable in one hand, instantly available and ready for use at any time.

Mobile devices, literally, go where no computing devices have gone before.

A second, synergistic characteristic of a truly mobile device is that it's always connected, allowing immediate access to the cloud with vast online data and processing resources. (Many apps require connectivity to function.) This strongly implies an always-on cellular data network connection. (While accessibility to WiFi networks is increasing, it is still fractured, often requiring multiple logins and extra fees to use.)

Tablets and smartphones are very different from each other on both of these counts. That, in turn, drives distinctly different usage patterns.

Tablets are more portable than laptops, but are generally too large and cumbersome to carry continuously throughout the day. Even though tablets have touch interfaces and use smartphone-like apps, many of the uses are similar to those previously performed on traditional PCs, such as browsing websites and conventional ecommerce. Tablets are generally used as laptop replacements.

As for connectivity, almost nine out of ten tablets do not have a cellular data plan and rely on discontiguous WiFi networks. This drives localized and stationary behavior - similar to a laptop, users find a location with a network connection and then stay there to use the tablet.

Conversely, smartphones are both smaller and almost always sold with associated cellular networking plans, delivering continuous connectivity. These differentiating characteristics have spawned a completely new set of user experiences such as dynamic street navigation, fitness tracking/GPS apps and digital wallets. They have become digital personal assistants that are always with you and cause a significant deal of anxiety when they’re misplaced.

Still not convinced? Here are some simple observational experiments. Have you seen a jogger running with a tablet? Or a shopper in the store using a tablet to scan products? Or a Starbucks customer presenting their tablet for payment?

While tablets are not mobile, they are an impressive and disruptive advancement over the traditional PC and deserve their due. Their convenient form-factor and compelling touchscreen interfaces are a significant evolutionary step. But on the continuum of devices, tablets are much closer to PCs and laptops than smartphones.

To be sure, there is some overlap between the classifications, especially when some smartphones have larger screens, such as the Galaxy Note, and some tablets have smaller screens, such as the iPad Mini. These “phablets” have even spawned their own subcategory name. And tablets can certainly have cellular connectivity, but as mentioned, only a fraction do.

Again, what does it matter?

Technology analysts and industry pundits often lump both tablets and smartphones into the single category of “mobile devices” and then associate a common set of attributes to the combined grouping. This is useless at best and misleading at worst.

A good example is in online retail. In recent years, the new term "mcommerce" has surfaced, where the "m" stands for mobile. The implication is that it’s a whole new way that people purchase using their “mobile” devices. But the vast majority of this “new” mcommerce is the same old PC-based ecommerce activity now happening through tablets. The shopper experience and buying process are essentially identical to ecommerce on the laptop (even though it might be through an app or an “optimized” website), happening in a stationary location through WiFi. Nothing really new or mobile about it.

What makes real mobile commerce different is that smartphones are actually taken into the physical store and are used for in-store shopping activities – where more than 90% of retail takes place. These activities include finding the exact locations of products inside the store, seeing the most efficient route through the store, receiving personalized offers for nearby products, digital coupons and using digital wallets.

These activities generate large amounts of shopper behavior data for the retailer, including deep insights into shoppers’ decision-making processes. The smartphone also acts as a channel for the retailer to engage in a two-way, real-time conversation with shoppers, while they are in the store.

That’s significantly different than traditional online ecommerce.

Let’s stop putting tablets into the “mobile” bucket. Smartphones are mobile. Tablets are not. Acknowledging and understanding the difference will help drive new insights and innovation – for these devices and others

A problem facing organizations today is generating more leads.  Making this issue even more challenging is changes in buying behavior.  Depending on which study to reference, buyers are performing different activities for up to 70% of their buying evaluation before sales intervention.

A recent report by the Aberdeen Group on sales performance shows there is a fair degree of dissatisfaction among sales leaders.  56% saying they were not seeing sufficient growth in top line revenue.  Nearly 30% expressed dissatisfaction with lead conversion to sales.  A recent CSO Insights report indicated that only 20% of organizations understood their buyer’s buying process.  These two perspectives combined point to one of the key issues – targeting the wrong buyer.

Looking back on over 12 years of qualitative buyer research and buyer persona development work, I found in 6 out of every 10 organization– a different buyer was identified than the organization had been targeting!  If you are off-target with the buyer – you will be off-target on your demand generation and lead generation.

Getting On Target

Marketing and sales leaders today are looking to increase their percentage of being on target when it comes to lead generation.  There are four steps you can take to resolve targeting issues:

Do Lead Research:  It all starts here.  You can no longer assume the buyers you've been targeting are the correct ones.  A level of lead research is needed to outfit your lead generation and nurturing team with knowledge about ideal prospects.  For example - it may not always be the CIO but the IT Director.

Develop Lead Personas:  Lead and buyer personas are useful in understanding consideration and purchasing behaviors.  Organizations, through personas, can determine how a prospect behaves when moving from a lead persona to a buyer persona.   One of the main benefits of this approach is the ability to tailor lead and buyer personas to fit the needs of dedicated lead nurturing teams as well as sales team.

Buyer-Centered Design: Designing your lead generation strategies, systems, and processes should revolve around buyers.  The key is in modeling their behaviors when in lead nurturing and when they enter the buying cycle.  Better results will happen when you meet buyer expectations and goals – which can be distinctly different when in lead nurturing versus buying cycle.  Conversion rates at the point of when a lead persona converts to a buyer persona (becomes a sales-ready lead) will rise.

Conversation Enablement Training:  What is needed is making conversation enablement a staple of training for lead generation and nurturing teams.  The long ramp-up time it takes for lead generation teams to understand prospects is out of synch with the pace of change in buying behavior.  As the CSO Insights report pointed out, barely 20% of organizations understand their buyer’s behaviors and buying processes!  In my qualitative research, I often hear of the frustration prospective buyers have in the lack of productive conversations.

Targeting the right prospect is becoming the lifeblood of organizations today.  For many companies, tackling this issue means discovering who represents their ideal target buyer.  In addition, gaining greater clarity on how buyers differ in behavior when they are being nurtured versus actively engaged in a buying cycle.  Combining these can be a winning ticket and get your lead generation results on target.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to theBuyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle

• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing (tonyzambito.com)

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade.  It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.

We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals.  On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt.  The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized.  These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.

Adapting to New Realities

Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers.  Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers.  For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers.  Yet, there are many more miles to go.  My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to this conclusion:

Personas, specifically in B2B, need to be adaptive to new goals and behaviors of buyers throughout their buyer’s journey.  In addition, personas need to be designed for the new practices, which are developing in marketing and sales.

The term buyer persona has been used universally to an extreme level. The term worked well when buyers relied on sales for their buying cycle for upwards to eighty percent.  We are seeing the inverse today.  Here is where I believe buyer trends as well as qualitative evidence is telling us to go:

B2B personas need to be researched, understood, and designed to meet robust goals and behaviors of buyers throughout the end-to-end buying cycle and brand experience.  In addition, personas need to be designed to enable as well as make more effective new practices, functions, and roles.

Persona Buying Cycle™

As new operational models for marketing and sales develop, there are 5 buying behavior phases of the buying cycle personas must now address:

1. Audience Behavior: the concept of content marketing reaching audiences is more prevalent.  Audience goals and behaviors are distinctly different when not in the market for products or services.  Yet, awareness, insight, and intelligence are an important component of connecting with existing customers and future buyers today.  Content marketing effectiveness is enabled when it can reach many different types of audiences.  Audience personas must now include the likes of industry influences and more.
2. Lead Behavior: one of the fastest growing areas, in terms of emerging practices, is the rise in lead nurturing and lead development.  Buyers have distinct goals and behaviors when they convert from being a part of a wider audience to an interested party.   New forms of lead research and lead personas can create more effective conversions from an interested party to an active buyer.
3. Buyer Behavior: the core persona when buyers have become actually engaged in the process of buying.  Buying behaviors, and buying goals, operate on a different level when buyers are actively engaged in the buying process.  Buyer personas, true their original intent, are designed to enable the buying process between buyer and seller.
4. Customer Behavior: when a buyer becomes a customer, there is a trial period underway.  This trial period consists of a different set of goals and behaviors meaningful to confirmation and customer experience.  Specific customer personas can enable understanding and capabilities to meet customer goals post-sale.  Implementation and customer support teams can benefit immensely from personas designed specifically for their roles.
5. Brand Behavior: brand management is emerging out of the shadows, as a competency B2B companies have to get right today.  Fulfilling the brand promise consistently is one of the hardest jobs of marketing and an organization as a whole.  Customers and buyers have different goals, behaviors, and beliefs, which surround brands.  The goal here is to convert customer personas into brand persona advocates.

A recommendation for forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders is to begin thinking in terms of the Persona Buying Cycle™ versus a singular focus on a buyer persona.  One certainty is the buyer’s journey not only begins before buyers think of themselves as a buyer, but also extends beyond the purchase.  Having a common visual and story of how buyer’s goals and behaviors change throughout the buying cycle is compelling.   We are also seeing activities, functions, and roles widen in marketing and sales in response to changing buying behaviors.  The Persona Buying Cycle™ is a natural extension to address both of these developments.

Positive Outcomes

Creating B2B personas through the lenses of a Persona Buying Cycle™ help bring these positive outcomes:

• • Make personas relevant throughout the major touchpoints of the end-to-end buyer’s journey
  • Make personas more practical to each functional team interacting with audiences, buyers, and customers
  • Make demand generation, lead generation, opportunity management, and customer experience more effective
  • Provide a common communications platform for understanding buyers
  • Foster alignment between marketing and sales by mapping to specific buyer goals and behaviors

In a dozen years, we have seen the then straightforward buyer-seller dynamics become more complex.  How B2B views the use of personas, from a pragmatic standpoint, now must adapt.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• The Art of Buying

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

If the $42.3 billion spent online this past holiday season has taught retailers anything, it’s that capturing customers—and their dollars—online is crucial.

But online is a big place. And mobile, which can seem like an entirely different universe, looms ever larger. So where to even start if you haven’t yet…started? And who should lead the charge?

The modern day merchant must have an intimate understanding of the importance of online and mobile commerce, access to a vast array of customer data, and a strategy for transforming this analytical data into winning online experiences.

In all cases, the goal is to attract and retain both new and returning customers. Whether online novices or experts, business leaders crave insight on how to accomplish this. The question is: who inside the company can embody these traits and help the CEO rule the roost? That responsibility should belong to the chief marketing officer.

A CMO should be somebody who uniquely understands marketing, merchandising, data, analytics and web design, and who can also maintain a creative, innovative organizational structure. IT tends to lean too heavily toward data for data’s sake, while Sales too often relies on revenue and relationships.

Placing the CMO in charge allows for the best of both worlds. Armed with the science of data analysis and the art of consumer engagement, the CMO is well positioned to emulate merchant princes of old and join the ranks of retail royalty. A good CMO can nurture a culture of testing, measuring and learning instead of depending on guesswork and subjectivity, as well as reach out to those on the front lines of customer interactions to figure out what those customers want. The ambitious CMO knows that their company site must be more engaging than the competitions’, as well as a place that customers trust, valuing the available products, services and information on offer. It also needs to be a reliable gateway to actions that grow sales beyond the initial purchase, such as cross-selling and upselling.

What’s the best way to make all this happen? One word: data.

Data is crucial to online retail. It comes in many different forms, the main type being the individual behaviors of current site visitors: which search term or webpage brought them over, what time of day and day of the week they’re most likely to stop by, what recent purchases they’ve already made onsite, what pages they visit and what product categories most interest them. All this pertinent info helps define what the “best content” is for each specific viewer. Other types include customer relationship management (CRM) data and social media data.

The aspiring CMO must then use this accumulated data to gain perspective on what customers want; analytical optimization and personalization tools will aid in this quest. Segmentation sifts through the data to find discrete groups of people with similar traits and/or interests, who can then be targeted and tested with relevant content based on site activity. Product recommendations and other offers are then provided based on what the various groups are most likely to purchase.

Product information tools give customers a deeper understanding of the product at hand—a 360-degree view of an article of clothing, or a close-up of various types of textured materials. User-generated content, like ratings, reviews or social media feedback, also aids and influences purchasing decisions. The savvy CMO uses all these methods to strike the delicate balance between intuition and analysis.

The quest to uncover how and why people and businesses engage in the act of buying is becoming an endurance race.  Spurred on by increasing social technologies advances.  The result is many organizations, whether academia or business, have focused on the science of buying.  What we may be losing is critical understanding of the art of buying.

What we are witnessing in the new digital age is the old rules of near total dependency on understanding processes and rules associated with buying is no longer the sole winning ticket.  Buying processes and rules have been dissected and analyzed many times over throughout the past few decades.  We clung to the belief of knowing the how will lead us to systematic knowledge of how to close more business with buyers.   The problem marketing and selling organizations face today is the how – processes and rules – are not as easily defined or structured as in the past.  Social technologies have made it possible for new networks and collaboration amongst buyers – causing plenty of flex in processes and rules.

The Why of Buying

If the science of buying has focused on the how of buying, the art of buying is a heightened quest for understanding the Why of Buying™.  The focus on how businesses buy in B2B marketing and sales has led to many different spin offs of stages, processes, cycles, and funnel shapes.  These exercises do have value.  However, here is a way of looking at what is missing:

A pure focus on process and stages, for example, creates a focus on what buyers are doing rather than what they are thinking and why it is important.

My point of view goes something like this:

Despite all the hype and efforts made in demand generation and content marketing, organizations are still struggling in these areas.  This is due to campaigns and programs designed to fit into established ideas of how businesses buy.  We have even believed automating processes to fit into our view of how we believe buyers buy will speed up purchase cycles.  This is happening at the expense of innovating marketing and sales to get at the core why of buying.

In the recent B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey 2012 sponsored by Eloqua, CMO, and Software Advice, I was struck by how 45 to 60% of the 155 marketer respondents believed demand generation performance were below expectations.  Those using marketing automation believing performances were better than those not using marketing automation.   In recent CMI as well as eConsultancy surveys, 40 to 50% of marketers surveyed believed their content marketing efforts were not effective.

Effectiveness a Continuing Struggle

Effectiveness and performance continue to be ongoing issues when it comes to demand generation and content marketing.  While organizations may be getting more productive and efficient at automating processes related to demand generation and content marketing, the missing link is an understanding of why buyers behave, think, and decide as they do.  How buyers behave, think, and decide do not always fit squarely into boxes we have defined to go with processes, rules, or stages.

To become more effective at helping buyers, marketing and sales organizations will need to do this:

Put more investment and energy into understanding the why of buying as opposed to an over abundance on the science of marketing and sales.  We cannot understand how to help buyers unless we are grounded in knowing the why.

Competitive advantage will be determined by knowledge of the motivations, beliefs, thinking, perceptions, goals, behaviors, and responses on the part of buyers.  Marketing today must fulfill the role of understanding how buyers behave and think.   Sales must become the enablers of buyers helping themselves.

The Stories of Buyers

The art of buying is represented through the stories of buyers.  For every industry, there are compelling stories about buyers, which can be told.  It is through these stories we can learn the motivations and goals of buyers, which open the door to understand the why of buying.  For marketing and sales, the key to future success will be in understanding what stories are unfolding, why these stories are important, and how to become part of stories. To mold this key, it will take more art than science to achieve.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Follow @tonyzambito

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• 4 Buyer Trends That Will Shake Marketing in 2013

• The Art of Buying (tonyzambito.com)

Now, it looks like LinkedIn is trying to change this perception with LinkedIn Contacts and the recently released visual profile.

LinkedIn Contacts

The new LinkedIn Contacts app creates interesting new options for its users, with a more integrated and richly developed version of the original LinkedIn. As I mentioned previously, over the past few years, the average users’ account has gotten muddled with acquaintances and people they barely know. This add-on app allows the ‘power’ user to focus more on the real details of the people they know well and/or want to focus on. I liken it in many ways to the dashboard function of a CRM. The integration of the app with Outlook, Google, Yahoo and others means that people have access to a cross reference of information, can create calendar reminders and focus more on making quality contact. Also, because this is a separate application, LinkedIn Contacts offers additional functionality without further cluttering the site.

An alternate, but parallel storyline to LinkedIn Contacts is the idea of getting people to live in the app. Similar to Facebook Home, the motivation behind LinkedIn Contacts is to have users rely on the service and use it as their gateway. The high level of integration and the slimming down or hiding of superfluous features again speaks directly to usability and function. These are traits that will help make the app a ‘go-to’ tool for the power users that LinkedIn wants to cater to with LinkedIn Contacts.

LinkedIn Visual Profile

While LinkedIn certainly doesn’t need to add another visual component to the site, the introduction of the visual profile is a step in the right direction to give LinkedIn more credibility. Users can now add photos and videos to substantiate claims that the endorsements function was supposed to offer. For example, those in creative professions like photographers, advertisers or even webcasting providers,  can upload their portfolio or samples of work that provide more depth than someone clicking the endorsement button for “online advertising,” “digital media” or “webcasting.” Instead, clients or colleagues can “like” or comment on the media uploaded. In this case, like with endorsements, hopefully friends or family members are not the people “liking” or commenting on professional work.

I may have been harsh in likening LinkedIn to MySpace, but the site has been moving away from acting like the professional social network and business tool I always relied on it to be. Adding the Contacts app and visual profile element allows the site to be more social without sacrificing its authority in business networking. You’re welcome, LinkedIn.

You think ads in mobile apps are annoying, don’t you?

I believe that the popular backlash against digital advertising stems from poor targeting practices. Bad targeting usually means bad advertising; good targeting means matching people with messages that are actually relevant to them. In fact, Adblock Plus found in a survey that 75% of its users were willing to see responsibly-targeted, unobtrusive ads.

That’s why it’s high time mobile apps take advantage of data to make their ads more relevant.

Most app developers are gathering mountains of data about users’ interests that could be combined with “interest graph” data from Facebook, Twitter and other interlinked social networks to target ads based on what a user actually likes. By doing this, app developers could dramatically boost engagement with their ads and charge a premium for their audiences… not to mention make mobile ads a little less bothersome.

To demonstrate this concept in action, I’ve looked at four popular apps that are not already targeting based on interest data, with a few ideas on how they can get started. Some may disagree with my suggestions for changing their most beloved apps, but I believe that ad targeting done well will enhance user experience, not detract from it.

1. Pandora

Pandora users have become accustomed to irrelevant ads; as one reviewer said, “the app was great, but the ads were ‘completely useless’.” Most of Pandora’s in-app advertising revolves around intermittent audio ads based on a user’s location, but few ads take into account a user’s tastes or preferences. Obviously, just because two users live the same town doesn’t mean they’re interested in the same thing… so why doesn’t Pandora move away from geo-targeting to much more nuanced interest graph targeting?

For Pandora, this means analyzing first-party data (playlist seeds and music ratings) and combining it with third-party data (other interest graph data, such as what a user likes and who they follow). By integrating a user’s thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratings with interests identified from her Facebook and Twitter data, Pandora could easily present ads for products and services she would find relevant.

2. Flixster

Many ads on Flixster promote current movies playing at nearby cinemas, or special offers from advertisers such as LivingSocial. Users get interstitial screen takeovers based on location, and lots of ads for Flixster features and content. Other ads seem completely untargeted, such as LivingSocial pop-ups and Rotten Tomatoes banners.

Flixster has a ton of valuable data about its users (location, types of movies they like, movies they’ve seen and rated etc.) that they could be using to target ads – and they aren’t even doing this simple type of targeting. The app could also go above and beyond targeting based on its own data to include third-party interest graph data from Facebook and Twitter. Combining Flixster’s own interest data with information like which celebrities its users follow on major social platforms could help advertisers reach people who might be interested in TV premieres featuring their favorite movie stars.

3. Yelp

Yelp is one of the most popular local apps around today. Millions of users launch Yelp every day to look up reviews for restaurants, stores, attractions and more. And guess what? Yelp doesn’t serve mobile ads at all! To be fair, Yelp’s monetization strategy focuses mostly on getting local businesses to pony up for “enhanced” listings, but the world’s most popular local reviews app could be doing so much more to monetize its mobile traffic. On the Yelp website, users see relevant promoted events and businesses on the right side of the screen, as well as some targeted advertising – but on the mobile app, nothing.

The thing is, Yelp knows what type of restaurants, shops, events, and attractions you frequent, as well as your location, places you’ve reviewed and more. For its mobile app, Yelp could combine a user’s location, searches, and review history to deliver highly relevant ads. What’s more, Yelp could integrate third-party interest graph data to identify users as “moms” or “sports fans” to create even more relevant ad experiences.

4. OkCupid

OkCupid is another mobile app that serves no ads. This is a company that uses sophisticated data mining to make sophisticated dating matches. It asks users dozens of questions to create their unique profiles, and has data on age, interests, location, preferences for a date, opinions, chats, messages etc. Yet OKCupid does not use this data to serve targeted ads on mobile. I’m sure the daters on OkCupid would be an outstanding audience for ads for relevant local restaurants, bars, comedy clubs, theatres, and other outings, not to mention ads for clothes, makeup, accessories, and other must-have items for actively-dating singles.

OkCupid could start by mining the rich dataset it has on all the singles using its service to create targeted ads based on location, interests and age. It could also combine this information with third-party interest graph data to attract a wider range of advertisers, beyond those that fit the “dater” profile. For example, they could help auto brands find in-market auto shoppers, or help airlines find frequent travelers.

These advertisers could even gear their creative towards this audience to make the ads relevant to the app experience, with ad copy such as “Don’t take her out in your old clunker. Check out the new Jeep!”

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I write in my book THE ON-DEMAND BRAND, we've reached a point now where brands should no longer view social media as a cool new way to connect with consumers.

We must now view social media as a means by which we as brands can enable consumers not just to connect with us, but to each other. And not just in some virtual space, but in the physical world as well.

This initiative can help break the ice in a social setting - as well as continue the conversation (and/or flirtation) after that beer (or the many, many beers, as the case may be) is gone.

Cheers to Bud for the bold idea.

Read all about it, here.

You are reaching the wrong people.

Ok, that’s not a fair statement. You are reaching some of the right people, but they are only sporadically interspersed within a larger group of the wrong people that you are also reaching. If you were always reaching the right people, your marketing efforts would yield a 100% conversion rate. And I’m guessing this is not the case.

But why is this? Why do you continually reach the wrong people at a much higher frequency than the right ones? It isn’t that statisticians and scientists aren’t good at building lookalike and predictive models based on audience data. More likely it is because the data used to power those models just isn’t very good.

A lookalike model is only as good as the data that goes into it. Models are built based on aggregating and correlating the data attributes for a particular audience segment that then identifies commonalities across users taking certain actions. It then uses those commonalities to find people that look the same based on those data attributes. If your model has 2 data attributes, it spits out a value using each of those two attributes. If it has 50, it spits out values and combinations using those 50, and so on. To yield greater efficiencies in targeting, the focus should be on not just having a lot of data attributes for your audience, but on having as many unique and differing types of data attributes as possible. Behaviors, yes, but also genuine interests. The predictive models themselves aren’t broken. The data that goes into the models is what makes the targeting less than ideal most of the time.

This is why many advertisers and companies in our industry are falling short in their targeting efforts. They either don’t have enough data points to make the models meaningful, or they might have many data points from a number of different sources but it is all collected and attributed in a homogenous way, and therefore really doesn’t help a whole lot. Sure, demographic data is great. In fact, going way back, magazines first really introduced the concept of targeting profiles and audiences using this type of data. But now, online behavioral targeting has provided us the opportunity to take this to a whole new level. Still, today, the data most prominently used is based on inferred extrapolated audience behavior and doesn’t properly factor in the interests or even mindset of the individual that explain and outline what caused the person to take that behavior in the first place.

Cross channel data and audience insights solve this. A prime example would be the combination of Facebook and social media profile data with display behavioral data. On Facebook, every attribute is based on user-expressed interests. What people like to do. The activities and media properties they say they are interested in. These user-expressed interests give insights into who the person is, and help explain why that person, based on their interests, is drawn to a particular brand, or towards purchasing a particular product. These are incredibly valuable insights.

In combination with behavioral data, these insights make it much easier to cut down that large group of wrong people you are reaching, and provide the ability to hone in on the people that not only have the behaviors of a person that will take action, but also the underlying interest in doing so. In execution, by just adding the interest profile of a user from social media layered onto the behavioral attributes from a lookalike profile, it consistently yields a 3-5x increase in conversion and engagement rates over the standard behavioral lookalike profile that most use today. Talk about game-changing.

In our journey towards a true cross-channel marketing approach, which is where we’re all heading, the people you identify and target with your messaging will always be the starting point. Therefore, shouldn’t you be targeting a person based on their interests and behaviors, not just their behaviors? The answer is yes, and making this distinction is the start of making your marketing efforts more effective, and will save you from continually reaching lots of the wrong people.

As the shelf life of ecommerce sites gets shorter, it becomes harder for marketers to balance the latest trends while maintaining a seamless customer experience. When constant upgrades and revamps become daily tasks, or the functionality just isn’t meeting your growth demands, it might be a sign that it’s time to replatform—or migrate your site to a more stable, streamlined infrastructure.

The bad news is that if you’re considering a replatform, it’s likely because your ecommerce site is highly complex and dynamic, with rich content, targeted merchandising, interactive customer support and advanced search capabilities. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be tricky. Here’s a checklist of six things to help ensure a smoother process.

Think long-term

According to Forrester Research, 39% of surveyed companies see a drop in conversion rates after replatforming, while 44% note slower load times once a new platform goes live. It’s a given that ecommerce sites will need to be further tested and tweaked after replatforming. Therefore, selling the process as a singular project with a definite end date is counterproductive. Replatforming should be treated as a long-term program that caters to the site’s goals and capabilities. Be upfront about this so stakeholders realize that a post-launch dip is part of the plan. And ensure them that you can bring things back into balance through testing and optimization.

Be realistic

The average delay for a replatforming program is 4.2 months; so promising a three-month turnaround is setting your company up for failure. Functionality and usability issues are common once the transition takes place, so be aware of that when devising a timeline. Companies that rush their replatforming efforts often have to spend more time dealing with unexpected snafus, unlike those who allocate enough time to get things right at the first pass. Pro tip: don’t schedule a replatform in Q3 or Q4—unless you enjoy needless holiday chaos! Instead, plan to make the shift earlier in the year (right now is actually a good time!) so any delays that arise are dealt with during the summer, and the bigger issues can get resolved before shopping season begins.

Use teamwork

While it’s tempting to keep replatforming decisions strictly within the marketing department—perhaps under the assumption that less cooks in the kitchen will make things go faster—remember that other departments (IT, sales, executives) are bound to have their own goals for the project, each with their own key performance indicators. Having all that input and feedback is highly valuable, and crucial to a successful replatforming. Keeping everyone in the loop in a diplomatic and transparent way results in a consolidated master KPI list for the program with fair and effective prioritization.

Stay focused

A big replatforming no-no is trying to fix too many problems at once. New site features, design changes, cross-channel implementations, updated order management solutions…implementing all those changes at the same time will make the possibility of things going haywire even more likely. Adding excess scope at the start often leads to trimming things down later on—in other words, wasted time, money and effort. Figure out what the most important changes will be at the start, and implement those in a focused, rational manner.

Know what you need

Replatforming is not the end…only the beginning. Therefore, it’s important to have a clear idea of what tools and interdepartmental support are needed to keep things running smoothly once the transition takes place, and to make those needs clear during preliminary discussions so there’s no surprises. Any manual effort or IT hours should be estimated in advance, as well as any possible ongoing financial outlay beyond upfront costs.

Test everything

Forrester notes that an astounding 63% of companies decide to re-platform based on “perceived ROI” (otherwise known as hunches), while 54% are motivated by internal company demands (also called wishful thinking). That’s a whole lot of guesswork, when what’s needed is actual customer experience testing to see what really improves matters. Any variable you can think of—site traffic, bounce rates, navigation, checkout processes, layout/design, revenue per visitor—can be tested both before and after replatforming to ensure the changes taking place will actually make a difference to the bottom line.

Call it 3D projection writ small. Very, very small.

In January, I posted about an initiative we spearheaded to super-size a client's core message on a 12-story building through the power and magic of 3D projection mapping.

In celebrating its 10th anniversary, Ropongi Hills - a renowned Tokyo landmark, decided to use the technology in reverse - with a remarkable digital campaign called "Tokyo City Symphony," an interactive website where you can experience playing with 3D projection mapping on a 1:1000 miniature model of Tokyo.

According to the Mori Building Company, the handcrafted model is an exact replica of the cityscape of Tokyo in every detail. Three visual motifs are projected onto the city in sync with music: "Future City," conjuring futuristic images, "Rock City" that playfully transforms Roppongi Hills into colorful musical instruments and monsters, and "Edo City," or "Traditional Tokyo," that portrays beautiful Japanese images.

One very big small idea.

Check it all out yourself, here.

A good example is the recently concluded Linley Tech Mobile Conference, held last week in Santa Clara, CA and organized by Mountain View, CA-based The Linley Group, a market research firm providing independent technology analyses of semiconductors for networking, communications, mobile, and wireless applications. The company also produces a trade publication, Microprocessor Report.

This was the fourth year the event was held; according to company founder and Principal Analyst Linley Gwennap, the conference attracted about 200 people, including those from mobile IP and chip companies, handset and other device vendors, carriers and software vendors, as well as the financial community and press. Attendees represented a broad range of companies, including Broadcom, China Mobile, Cisco, Dell, Ericsson, HP, Huawei, Imagination Technologies, Marvel, Samsung and Sony, as well as financial analysts from Bank of America, Credit Suisse, UBS, and Wells Fargo.

The conference focused on a wide array of topics; here’s a snapshot:

• Heterogeneous processing
• Licensable CPUs for mobile devices
• Licensable GPU and DSP cores
• Mobile semiconductors
• Mobile SoC design issues
• Mobile software trends
• Multicore application processors
• Other low-power IP cores

The presentations addressed design issues for mobile devices -- tablet computers, smartphones, navigation devices, media players, handheld games, and e-book readers.

One of the conference highlights, noted Gwennap, was a panel on the growing China mobile market, featuring executives from China Mobile, Imagination Technologies, MediaTek and Spreadtrum. The panel addressed key challenges and opportunities for mobile products in China, the diverging demands of Chinese consumers and the different tiering in that enormous market. One interesting takeaway: the total available market for mobile handsets in China is larger than the entire population of the United States!

Another session on mobile CPUs talked about major issues for mobile product development. One of the panelists, Mark Throndson, serves as Director of Processor Technology Marketing for UK-based Imagination Technologies.

One of Throndson’s conclusions was that industry trends are forcing more efficiency in how companies build products, and to enable this, new technologies are abstracting software development away from the underlying hardware/instruction sets.

“At the end of the day, even though software is becoming less dependent on the hardware it runs on, good underlying architectures are still important as they affect the user experience through delivering high performance, longer battery life, and lower costs,” said Throndson.

Another interesting session focused on power-optimized design. This is an increasing challenge as today’s mobile devices integrate ever-more features and functionality, yet battery technology hasn’t kept pace. A couple of session participants proposed that the answer lies in adding a bit more complexity in hardware to handle power management. While this additional logic may consume some power, the end result, according to these panelists, is increased efficiency and longer battery life.

I’ve been to gobs of analyst-driven events that focused too much on promoting the market research firm and its offerings; the buzz on the Linley gathering from attendees is that it was two days well-spent.

That's a pretty penny from a medium that until late last year, marketers will still unsure about.

Let's timehop back to August 2012. In an article entitled, "Why is Pandora not making more money in mobile?" Mobile Marketer cites several reasons why the music-streaming service was struggling, including smaller screens that don't allow for large-format, high-impact ad formats.

At that point, most ads were in the form of small banners, and video hadn't really come onto the scene yet. "The mobile advertising market is still in the early stages," they wrote, and is not keeping up with Pandora's mobile use.

Fast forward to today. Mobile traffic in the Music, Video and Media category (Pandora among others) continues to soar, and has consistently been #1 in terms of impression volume on our Opera Mediaworks mobile advertising platform.

However, as you can see here in the Q1 2013 State of Mobile Advertising report, revenue has definitely caught up with impressions.

About 18% of all revenue is generated by mobile sites and apps that serve music, video and media content. Compare this to the more traditional "money-makers" in the mobile, like Sports (11.5%), News & Information (9.5%) and Business & Finance (8%) and you'll see why Pandora is killing it.

The entire category is killing it. Massive numbers of users are using mobile devices to consume music content —and this audience and engagement is very appealing to advertisers. Pandora stands out as the shining star because they understand how to optimize advertising within their user experience in a way that is minimally disruptive, yet highly engaging.

And Pandora is killing it because the mobile advertising market has grown up. With high-impact rich media and video ad formats, and key targeting capabilities using the valuable registration and profile data typically available from music services, the revenue per mobile-user or listening-hour has increased.

Now, whether their revenue will climb at a fast enough rate to exceed their content costs...this is no doubt heavily debated in the music industry today, because companies like Pandora generate huge exposure for their content and actually contribute much-needed revenue. The music industry needs them in order to be successful.

But more about that later.

There’s a lot happening in retail these days, for both the customer and the retailer. Driving much of this is a unique and unprecedented combination of new technologies, unparalleled access to information, and significant changes in shoppers’ behaviors.

What’s especially different today is that shoppers, instead of retailers, are leading the way. Shoppers are taking their own networked computers, disguised as smartphones, into to the store. Retailers are left playing catch up with the new smartphone enabled shopping behaviors. This is in stark contrast from the time where retailers could largely implement and manage the rate of technology adoption.

Looking ahead, there is no doubt that technology will become an even more significant part of in-store retailing.

The questions are: How will traditional brick and mortar retailers deal with the smartphone? How do retailers take advantage of these new shopping behaviors? This is where Amazon comes back into the discussion.

Most importantly: How does Amazon do it and how do more traditional retailers take advantage of these strategies? There are a number of key perspectives, goals and strategies that have positioned Amazon as the highly successful dominant online retailer, as well as a significant influence on off-line retail. We’ll focus on a few of them here.

Look underneath Amazon’s hood - or the website - to learn the additional key drivers of their success.

The golden rule at Amazon is that the customer is, in fact, gold - both figuratively and literally. Customers make the purchase decisions, generating revenue for Amazon. At Amazon, decisions are often made that are good for the customer but may not be directly beneficial to Amazon’s bottom line. These decisions are still made and implemented because of Amazon’s laser focus on consumers.

Secondly, the corporate culture is best described as relentless. They don’t stand still. No challenge is too daunting and employees continually drive to improve what they deliver. If you’re not driving hard, you are in the way. Employees act fast, take measurements, improve and repeat.

Thirdly, they thrive on technology, but not technology for technology’s sake. Amazon does not view itself as a retail company using technology; they’re actually a technology company focused on advancing the state of retail. They are dedicated to scalable systems, fast response/delivery and reliability.

Additionally, Amazon knows data. It is one of the original big data companies. And they know how to use it.
Everything – that is, EVERYTHING - is incessantly measured, analyzed and understood. If you don’t have data, don’t show up at the meeting. That leads to a strong bias toward fact-based decision making. (One of my favorite Amazon conference rooms had the permanent sign “In God we trust, all others bring data” on the wall.)

Finally, Amazon has used this information to personalize the shopping experience. With tens of millions of products in the catalog, Amazon has the ability to show each of its more than one hundred million customers exactly what they are most interested in. They go on to present those products and related information in ways that will help customers make faster, more confident purchase decisions.

How does all of this relate to traditional retailers? The invasion of smartphones has made the physical store more similar to Amazon’s website than to the same store 10 years ago. These same shoppers have been trained by Amazon to use digital tools to help make purchase decisions – but now they’re also doing it in-store.

Data gathered through the smartphones can be used to analyze the complete shopping process. Retailers can know what their customers have on their shopping lists – before they even reach the store. They can see what shoppers search for, the suggestions and offers they respond to and what they eventually purchase. They can even see where the shoppers are inside the store.

This invaluable data can be used to deliver a highly personalized shopping experience, drive more revenue, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

With more than 90% of retail happening in traditional brick and mortar stores, retailers can use Amazon’s strategies to their own advantage. Those that take this data and use it to improve their businesses will be successful. Others will be left struggling to keep up.

The new normal in retail is definitely Amazon.