Author: Franz Malten Buemann

After months of hard work, multiple coffee runs, and navigation of the latest industry changes, you’ve finally finished your next big marketing campaign.
Complete with social media posts, PPC ads, and a sparkly new logo, it’s the campaign of a lifetime.
But how do you know it will be effective?

While there’s no sure way to know if your campaign will turn heads, there is a way to gauge whether those new aspects of your strategy will be effective.
If you want to know if certain components of your campaign are worth the effort, consider conducting a marketing experiment.
Marketing experiments give you a projection of how well marketing methods will perform before you implement them. Keep reading to learn how to conduct an experiment and discover the types of experiments you can run.
What are marketing experiments?
A marketing experiment is a form of market research in which your goal is to discover new strategies for future campaigns or validate existing ones.
For instance, a marketing team might create and send emails to a small segment of their readership to gauge engagement rates, before adding them to a campaign.
It’s important to note that a marketing experiment isn’t synonymous with a marketing test. Marketing experiments are done for discovery, while a test confirms theories.
Why should you run a marketing experiment?
Think of running a marketing experiment as taking out an insurance policy on future marketing efforts. It’s a way to minimize your risk and ensure that your efforts are in line with your desired results.
Imagine spending hours searching for the perfect gift. You think you’ve found the right one, only to realize later that it doesn’t align with your recipient’s taste or interests. Gifts come with receipts but there’s no money-back guarantee when it comes to marketing campaigns.
An experiment will help you better understand your audience, which in turn will enable you to optimize your strategy for a stronger performance.
Performing a marketing experiment involves doing research, structuring the experiment, and analyzing the results. Let’s go through the seven steps necessary to conduct a marketing experiment.
1. Brainstorm and prioritize experiment ideas.
The first thing you should do when running a marketing experiment is start with a list of ideas.
Don’t know where to start? Look at your current priorities. What goals are you focusing on for the next quarter or the next year?
From there, analyze historical data. Were your past strategies worked in the past and what were your low performers?
As you dig into your data, you may find that you still have unanswered questions about which strategies may be most effective. From there, you can identify potential reasons behind low performance and start brainstorming some ideas for future experiments.
Then, you can rank your ideas by relevance, timeliness, and return on investment so that you know which ones to tackle first.
Keep a log of your ideas online, like Google Sheets, for easy access and collaboration.
2. Find one idea to focus on.
Now that you have a log of ideas, you can pick one to focus on.
Ideally, you organize your list based on current priorities. As such, as the business evolves, your priorities may change and affect how you rank your ideas.
Say you want to increase your subscriber count by 1,000 over the next quarter. You’re several weeks away from the start of the quarter and after looking through your data, you notice that users don’t convert once they land on your landing page.
Your landing page would be a great place to start your experiment. It’s relevant to your current goals and will yield a large return on your investment.
Even unsuccessful experiments, meaning those that do not yield expected results, are incredibly valuable as they help you to better understand your audience.
3. Make a hypothesis.
Hypotheses aren’t just for science projects. When conducting a marketing experiment, the first step is to make a hypothesis you’re curious to test.
A good hypothesis for your landing page can be any of the following:

Changing the CTA copy from “Get Started” to “Join Our Community” will increase sign-ups by 5%.
Removing the phone number field from the landing page form will increase the form completion rate by 25%.
Adding a security badge on the landing page will increase the conversion rate by 10%.

This is a good hypothesis because you can prove or disprove it, it isn’t subjective, and has a clear measurement of achievement.
A not-so-good hypothesis will tackle several elements at once, be unspecific and difficult to measure. For example: “By updating the photos, CTA, and copy on the landing page, we should get more sign-ups.
Here’s why this doesn’t work: Testing several variables at once is a no-go when it comes to experimenting because it will be unclear which change(s) impacted the results. The hypothesis also doesn’t mention how the elements would be changed nor what would constitute a win.
Formulating a hypothesis takes some practice, but it’s the key to building a robust experiment.
4. Collect research.
After creating your hypothesis, begin to gather research. Doing this will give you background knowledge about experiments that have already been conducted and get an idea of possible outcomes.
Researching your experiment can help you modify your hypothesis if needed.
Say your hypothesis is, “Changing the CTA copy from “Get Started” to “Join Our Community” will increase sign-ups by 5%.” You may conduct more market research to validate your ideas surrounding your user persona and if they will resonate better with a community-focused approach.
It would be helpful to look at your competitors’ landing pages and see which strategies they’re using during your research.
5. Select your metrics.
Once you’ve collected the research, you can choose which avenue you will take and what metrics to measure.
For instance, if you’re running an email subject line experiment, the open rate is the right metric to track.
For a landing page, you’ll likely be tracking the number of submissions during the testing period. If you’re experimenting on a blog, you might focus on the average time on page.
It all depends on what you’re tracking and the question you want to answer with your experiment.
6. Execute the experiment.
Now it’s time to create and perform the experiment.
Depending on what you’re testing, this may be a cross-functional project that requires collaborating with other teams.
For instance, if you’re testing a new landing page CTA, you’ll likely need a copywriter or UX writer.
Everyone involved in this experiment should know:

The hypothesis and goal of the experiment
The timeline and duration
The metrics you’ll track

7. Analyze the results.
Once you’ve run the experiment, collect and analyze the results.
You want to gather enough data for statistical significance.
Use the metrics you’ve decided upon in the second step and conclude if your hypothesis was correct or not.
The prime indicators for success will be the metrics you chose to focus on.
For instance, for the landing page example, did sign-ups increase as a result of the new copy? If the conversion rate met or went above the goal, the experiment would be considered successful and one you should implement.
If it’s unsuccessful, your team should discuss the potential reasons why and go back to the drawing board. This experiment may spark ideas of new elements to test.
Now that you know how to conduct a marketing experiment, let’s go over a few different ways to run them.
Marketing Experiment Examples
There are many types of marketing experiments you can conduct with your team. These tests will help you determine how aspects of your campaign will perform before you roll out the campaign as a whole.
A/B testing is one of the popular ways to marketing in which two versions of a webpage, email, or social post are presented to an audience (randomly divided in half). This test determines which version performs better with your audience.
This method is useful because you can better understand the preferences of users who will be using your product.
Find below the types of experiments you can run.
1. Website
Your website is arguably your most important digital asset. As such, you’ll want to make sure it’s performing well.
If your bounce rate is high, the average time on page is low, or your visitors aren’t navigating your site in the way you’d like, it may be time to run an experiment.
2. Landing Pages
Landing pages are used to convert visitors into leads. If your landing page is underperforming, running an experiment can yield high returns.
The great thing about running a test on a landing page is that there are typically only a few elements to test: your background image, your copy, form, and CTA.
3. CTAs
Experimenting with different CTAs can improve the number of people who engage with your content.
For instance, instead of using “Buy Now!” to pull customers in, why not try, “Learn more.”
You can also test different colors of CTAs as opposed to the copy.
4. Paid Media Campaigns
There are so many different ways to experiment with ads.
Not only can you test ads on various platforms to see which ones reach your audience the best, but you can also experiment with the type of ad you create.
As a big purveyor of GIFs in the workplace, animating ads are a great way to catch the attention of potential customers. Those may work great for your brand.
You may also find that short videos or static images work better.
This Instagram ad from We’re Not Really Strangers uses multimedia to make its post stand out. If you’re testing out PPC advertising, try diversifying those ads to capture the interest of more audiences.
Additionally, you might run different types of copy with your ads to see which language compels your audience to click.
To maximize your return on ad spend (ROAS), run experiments on your paid media campaigns.
4. Social Media Platforms
Is there a social media site you’re not using? For instance, lifestyle brands might prioritize Twitter and Instagram, but implementing Pinterest opens the door for an untapped audience.
You might consider testing which hashtags or visuals you use on certain social media sites to see how well they perform.
The more you use certain social platforms, the more iterations you can create based on what your audience responds to.
You might even use your social media analytics to determine which countries or regions you should focus on — for instance, my Twitter Analytics, below, demonstrates where most of my audience resides.

If alternatively, I saw most of my audience came from India, I might need to alter my social strategy to ensure I catered to India’s time zone.
When experimenting with different time zones, consider making content specific to the audience you’re trying to reach.
5. Copy
Your copy — the text used in marketing campaigns to persuade, inform, or entertain an audience — can make or break your marketing strategy.
If you’re not in touch with your audience, your message may not resonate. Perhaps you haven’t fleshed out your user persona or you’ve conducted limited research.
As such, it may be helpful to test what tone and concepts your audience enjoys. A/B testing is a great way to do this, you can also run surveys and focus groups to better understand your audience.
6. Email
Email marketing continues to be one of the best digital channels to grow and nurture your leads.
If you have low open or high unsubscribe rates, it’s worth running experiments to see what your audience will respond best to.
Perhaps your subject lines are too impersonal or unspecific. Or the content in your email is too long.
By playing around with various elements in your email, you can figure out the right strategy to reach your audience.
Ultimately, marketing experiments are a cost-effective way to get a picture of how new content ideas will work in your next campaign, which is critical for ensuring you continue to delight your audience.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in December 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Hi, I just built a web app where you can create image & video dynamically for marketing. It’s like canva but dynamic, you can generate your images or videos through form, spreadsheet and API (zapier coming soon) Here’s the url https://duply.co ​ Would love to hear perspective from marketing side – What do you think about the app? – What features are missing / need to change / improve? – or any other ideas you have Thanks
submitted by /u/distartin [link] [comments]

Do you think that marketing automation tools are relevant for someone who’s working alone in a marketing department? (I don’t refer to email tools like Mailchimp, but tools like Active Campaign, Hubspot…). What’s your opinion?
submitted by /u/Calista110 [link] [comments]

Looking for inspiration for your online portfolio? Learn from these 12 top-notch portfolio sites.

 

 

Email marketing personalization is a surefire way to boost performance in this channel. According to Smart Insights, up to 63% of consumers won’t buy from brands that don’t use personalization*. Email marketing practitioners know many tricks to personalize email campaigns even better. Here are 5 turbo-charged ways to personalize emails.

 

There is no need to convince anyone about the necessity of using personalization in email marketing. It is quite a well-known fact.

 

Personalized emails have a 29% higher unique open rate (OR) and a 41% higher unique click rate (CR) than non-personalized ones. (Active Trail)
About 75% of consumers find the idea of “living profiles” (highly detailed customer profiles) valuable if they were used to provide more personalized experiences. (Accenture)

 

The top three reasons to use personalization in email marketing are (SaleCycle):

 

better OR (82%),
higher click-through rate (CTR) (75%),
greater customer satisfaction (58%).

 

The question arises, “How do you do it?” when everyone has it as standard? The answer is to go above and beyond what your competition is offering.

 

5 turbo-advanced ways to personalize an email

 

Easy to say, but how to implement it? What specific mechanisms are worth using when creating an email to mesmerize your audience? Here are 5 examples.

 

#1 Find a logical connection to encourage discovery of new products [Online drugstore example]

 

The connection between products worth recommending is not always obvious. What motivates a person buying, for example, perfume in an online drugstore? Most likely they have their favorite fragrance compositions. Thorough analysis of purchased products allows you to suggest products that are likely to be of interest to individual clients. You can, of course, recommend products already bought, or chosen by people who have already bought the product, but there are many other, more impressive possibilities.

 

The idea: 

Emails personalized regarding the favorite perfume lines / fragrances / fragrance notes

 

Conditional content helps you tailor a 1-to-1 message to your recipients

 

The setup:

 

To carry out this procedure, you will need a solid description of the assortment in the XML file. In the description, it is certainly worth marking the fragrance notes and fragrance category for different perfumes. This will make it easier to recommend perfumes with similar notes, but for example from different price shelves (upselling), or whole fragrance lines of different products (cross-selling).

 

This is the data you will use:

transactional data
declarative data
visits to a website
visits to a mobile application
transaction analysis (XML)

 

Actions: 

 

Using selected data, you can segment your recipient groups into appropriately named groups, e.g. floral fragrances, Channel, musk (fragrance notes). You can also assign appropriate tags to contacts based on preferences and transaction history.

 

Those are the features you can use:

With your audience and recipients already segmented, you can start sending diversified content to them based on the segment they belong to. There are many ways to personalize email, but in this case the best choice will be Conditional Content and Dynamic Banners. You have several scenarios to choose from, such as:

 

Discover new [Fragrance line] fragrances
Set of [Fragrance name] perfume + body lotion
We just added a [fragrance note] perfume that you might like

 

#2 Paint the world with your favorite team’s colors [Sports streaming service example]

 

To quote a 2004 study by Alain Decrop and Christian Derbaix “Color seems to be the key attribute of a ‘good’ football fan. Half of our informants spontaneously refer to that attribute when defining a ‘good supporter’. It is seen as an easy way to make a distinction between a football supporter and another person. Colors are related to clothing items such as scarves, hats, or shirts.” The Effect of Identification with a Sports Team and its Performance on the Willingness of Fans to Pay for Team Products study says that the level of identification with a team is one of the key factors (along with team performance) affecting fans’ willingness to spend money on team-related activities and items.

 

The idea: 

The entire message (layout, content) is tailored to the aesthetics of your favorite team/sport plus it presents interesting facts about your favorite athletes

 

Transactional data is an excellent basis for email marketing personalization

 

The setup:

Take information about purchases, visited websites, declarative data and in-app behavior and prepare 3 segmentations based on them: favorite teams, favorite sports, favorite sportspeople.Then group the graphic materials and order banners in the colors of selected teams.  Finally, prepare interesting facts about people from the world of sport and divide them according to the sport they practice and the teams they belong to.

 

This is the data you will use:

transactional data
declarative data
visits to a website
visits to a mobile application
transaction analysis (XML)

 

Actions:

Instead of drafting a separate email to each sports enthusiast, create a universal message that automatically serves your readers information about their idols. You can send information about upcoming broadcasts, offers from the fan store, and even interesting facts about the lives of celebrities associated with specific sports.

 

Those are the features you can use:

Using advanced hyper segmentation capabilities, you can target people from a variety of predefined segments, such as those interested in making a purchase or avid fans who frequently visit the website. Then, using personalized banners and conditional content, customize messages to show information that will interest them.  You can create, for example:

 

newsletter for [athlete’s name] fans
gadgets offer for [soccer team name] fans
educational series for [sport name] fans

 

#3 Address your customer’s shopping habits [Apparel eCommerce example]

 

A research article The Influence of Product Price on Consumers’ Purchasing Decisions states that “price is an important factor in the purchasing decision, especially for products that are frequently purchased, and in turn, influences the choices of which store, product, and brand to patronize.” Following this logic, consider a campaign that will leverage this very factor to convince customers and clients to make a purchase.

 

The idea: 

Personalization by price range combined with recovery of abandoned carts through offering cheaper products / progressive discounts

 

The CDP platform offers the possibility to automatically grant progressive discounts

 

The setup:

Prepare a product feed (XML) and make sure you have access to the AI recommendation module.

 

This is the data you will use:

transactional data
RFM
product feed

 

Actions:

Prepare a mailing that implements an AI-driven recommendation scenario. You can combine it with abandoned shopping cart recovery. You will encourage shoppers by showing them slightly cheaper products and additionally adding a personalized discount.

 

Those are the features you can use:

When preparing the message, make room in it for AI recommendations with additional filters (filters: price range). Furthermore, configure the appropriate segmentation rules that will assign discounts. To display the discount in email, use personalization formulas in the body of the email. You will get a message showing products from a selected price range and also encourage your recipients to make a purchase with an attractive progressive discount.

 

#4 Use data to make others’ lives easier [Delivery company example]

 

According to Harvard Business Review “after controlling for other factors that drive repeat purchases in the transaction-based business (for example, how often the customer needs the type of goods and services that the company sells), customers who had the best past experiences spend 140% more compared to those who had the poorest past experience.” Post-transaction emails, including the shipping message, are a very important part of the customer experience. That’s why it’s worth taking care of them.

 

The idea: 

Personalization using package details combined with footer personalization with region manager signature

 

Post-purchase message with shipping details makes life easier for buyers!

 

The setup:

Create a message that provides the orderer with all the details about the package. Also add a footer of the person who is in charge of customer service in the region to which the package is sent. You can read about how to do this in the article: 3 Out-of-the-box Ideas For Personalizing B2C Emails.

 

This is the data you will use:

external events (e.g. RESERVATION)

 

Actions:

In desired places in the message, add fields that pull value from external events. This way each message will be fully personalized and responsive to the needs of the selected recipient.

 

Those are the features you can use:

You will definitely need segmentation rules to assign a set of details needed for personalization. Also, make use of the formulas for personalization. These are responsible for displaying the package details and the personalized footer in the body of the email.

 

#5 Take advantage of the specifics of the VIP sector [Jewelry eCommerce example]

 

Price is the first threshold of entry into the VIP area of luxury products. Unlike the premium class, luxury goods are distinguished by the fact that not everyone can have them and they are perceived as artifacts of luxury. This is why customers who buy them often like to be treated like a closed VIP club. Upselling and raising prices while limiting product availability works very well in this group.

 

The idea: 

Personalization using scoring, RFM segmentation and VIP funnel, so that the exclusivity of recommended products increases along with the spending

 

Singling out VIP customers is a good practice in the high-end products industry

 

The setup:

Your main tool will be a sales funnel, which you can easily create in the SALESmanago system. To add a new sales campaign (funnel) go to CDP → Campaigns and funnels → Add new campaign. Then fill in the right fields, add campaign stages, choose how to add contacts to the funnel and save your progress.

 

This is the data you will use:

transactional data
RFM

 

Actions:

Using RFM segmentation and transactional data, prepare a set of rules that will add customers to the campaign and move them down the purchase funnel if they reach the required in-store spend cap. The funnel will be the basis for segmentation in the VIP campaign. Order appropriate banners and graphics for your messages as well. You may also decide to change the layout and color scheme as the prestige level in the campaign increases.

 

Those are the features you can use:

Segmentation rules are the basis in this case. They will assign specific contacts to the appropriate stage in the funnel. Of course, you also need the funnel itself. While creating an email campaign, use dynamic banners, which will differ depending on the segment. You can also leverage conditional content and AI recommendations with additional filters (filters: products marked as exclusive in the product feed).

 

Advanced email personalization: a brief closing note

 

Personalizing emails is a lot of fun. Discovering newer and newer ways to reach your audience 1-to-1 is a fantastic analytical and psychological exercise. A thorough knowledge of your target group and a hyper-personalization tool make this process much easier.

 

If you have any email personalization ideas and want to test them in practice, be sure to email your account manager at SALESmanago. Let’s explore the vast possibilities of our CDP platform together. 

 

*Source: Smart Insights

If you’re working in digital marketing for a business with an online presence (which, let’s be real, is most businesses these days), there’s a good chance that you live in dread of the infamous “Google algorithm update.”
Many marketers see this periodic switch-up in Google’s algorithm as a lurking nemesis out to slash their metrics and banish traffic.
The typical response? Every time Google comes out with an algorithm update, SEO specialists and thought leaders try to decode and decipher the algorithm’s secrets to find out what makes it tick. The idea is that, if you can figure it out, you can reorganize your SEO and content strategy to regain (or surpass) your pre-algorithm rankings.
This might seem like the best plan of attack. However, I believe this metrics-hungry, beat-the-algorithm mentality just ends up hurting companies in the long run. It’s inefficient, it distracts from the true purpose of SEO, and it ultimately wastes your company’s time and money.
My take? While algorithm updates shouldn’t be minimized (because they can negatively effect businesses), they also shouldn’t be feared. I believe we should work with the algorithms, not against them, ultimately creating a win-win: a better experience for users and a more successful web presence for deserving businesses.
Let’s explore how to do that next.

Algorithm Updates Improve User Experience
Because the digital landscape is constantly changing, businesses have to accept that these algorithm updates aren’t going anywhere. They are happening, and will continue to happen, indefinitely. And that is okay … and what we, as search engine customers, should want too!
The first step in working with Google algorithm updates is to understand why they happen in the first place. These updates are designed to create a better internet experience for both businesses and consumers.

The idea is to make browsers “smarter” so that internet users are able to find what they’re looking for faster, and with less effort.

Sounds great in theory, right? Under this model, businesses find the right customers and vice versa. If it’s an improvement for the user, it should be an improvement for you.
The problems start when we begin to analyze and crunch numbers after a post-algorithm-update …  
Don’t Get Caught Up In The Metrics Game
For many SEO managers, numbers are everything — total organic clicks, bounce rates, keyword rankings, impressions, the list goes on. And for good reason! This data helps us to understand what’s going on on the other side of the screen.
However, when this data becomes the end goal, we get into trouble. A lot of times, from an SEO standpoint, there’s a tunnel-vision focus on metrics and traffic, which leads to tilted strategies purely bent on maximizing the wrong numbers.
But, here’s the thing — higher rankings on Google aren’t necessarily great for business. Yes, they look great on a quarterly report. Yes, they’re easy to track. But do impressions necessarily convert to leads? No. These numbers turn into a sort of meaningless trophy rather than a useful tool.
Let’s take a look at an example to highlight what I mean.
Lower Traffic Could Mean Higher Revenue
Over a period of time, I worked with a business that had two sides to their site: user-generated content, and professionally-generated content. The user-generated content was produced in higher volumes, but also tended to be lower quality.
Every time there was an algorithm update, the user-generated side of their business was impacted negatively. They lost significant chunks of their traffic, time and time again. However, the company’s overall revenue simultaneously increased.
Why? Because the other side of their business was benefiting. The high-quality, professionally-generated content was favored by the algorithm because it was closer to what internet users were actually looking for. Therefore, it benefitted when its lower-quality competitors were demoted.
To me, this is the perfect argument for why businesses should spend time creating a great product rather than putting a laser-focus on SEO hacks or metrics. If you create an effective website with relevant content, the clicks will come organically.  
Stay Focused on the User
Ultimately, the solution sounds too good to be true — stay focused on who the user is and what the user wants to find on your site.
Rather than asking yourself, “Do we deserve to be #1 because we have the most keywords or the best backlinks?”, ask yourself, “Are we the best solution for what the user would want? Do we deserve to be #3 from a user standpoint?”
The way Google algorithms are headed, I believe that focusing on the actual service or product over the minutiae of SEO is the secret to creating a successful business.
This is what I termed “Product-Led SEO” in my book with the same name. This approach upends the whole premise of marketing the product to promote adoption.

Instead, the shift focuses on getting a great product into the hands of users who get excited enough to become marketing agents on the product’s behalf. In this paradigm, there may also be innate triggers within the product that encourage sharing, thereby forcing the hand of the user.
Algorithm Updates Aren’t Your Enemy
In the end, Google Algorithm updates are a fact of life. The sooner everyone can accept this and learn to work with the updates, not against them, the sooner they will find successful strategies.
The key to “going with the flow” is to take a good, long look at which direction the water is going. And, from everything I’ve seen, the proverbial algorithmic river is flowing straight towards the direction of Product-Led SEO. In my opinion, every good SEO strategy will follow.
Start by talking to users. Get in touch with what your customers want. What are they looking for? What do they like? What makes them click on a CTA? What cues do they use to navigate a site? Once you have a good handle on the needs of the user, you can begin to create a site that naturally rises above the algorithmic chopping block.
When your site becomes more effective, and you are able to connect with the right customers, everyone wins. This is the whole point of algorithms, and finding the harmony between the two will help ease a lot of stress and boost business.

“Your company is one viral moment away from a potential shutdown.”
Yes, you read that correctly.
Imagine your company is fortunate enough to appear for a few minutes on a national TV show with millions of viewers. You can hardly contain your excitement. All eyes are on you. There’s no turning back. 
Your excitement soon turns to horror, however, when you realize your company isn’t ready for this type of attention. Suddenly, a surge in traffic to your company’s website causes it to crash. Team members quit from the stress of performing under pressure. Vendors threaten to sue you for late payments. Customers are angry because their orders are either incorrect or weren’t provided on-time.
What took you years to build has effectively been destroyed overnight. 
How can a successful organization good enough to land a coveted spot on a TV show succumb so quickly? The answer lies in Marketing vs. Operations.

The Paradigm Shift from Not Enough Customers to Too Many 
When an organization officially opens its doors for business, marketing-related activities tend to be the primary focus. And it makes sense. After all, if no one knows about your product or service, you won’t be in business long. Those activities can include sales strategies, P.R. and social media campaigns, and digital ads that catalyze advancement from the startup to the growth stage of business. 
Eventually, if you have a great product or service that customers want, you’ll see a return on investment for those marketing activities. At this point, as an organization advances from the growth stage to the emerging and scaling stages of business, the need for Operations becomes paramount.
The reason is that this transition is usually accompanied by periods of unmanageable fast-growth – customer demand is greater than what your company can supply. It’s at this point that Operations-related activities like building the right teams, documenting and standardizing processes, and upgrading equipment and digital technologies becomes a higher priority.
If Operations is critical for scaling, why don’t more companies focus on it?
The answer depends. When it comes to Operations, leaders of small businesses fall in one of more of three categories:

Unaware: They either don’t know about Operations or they’ve never been exposed to it.

Uninterested: They believe that Operations isn’t “sexy.”

Undiscovered: When they try to search for information to scale their organizations, they find the lion’s share is reserved for large enterprises or manufacturing companies.

Let’s unpack each of these.
1. Unaware
It’s no surprise that many founders and leaders (business savvy and technical acumen aside), are largely unaware of Operations – what it is and how it applies to their businesses.
With customers and cash being the lifeline of any organization, special attention is given to customer-facing activities that ensure their satisfaction. This is an anchor against which we can define Operations.
As the diagram below illustrates, Marketing represents highly visible activities that customers tend to interact with directly. It involves making some sort of promise or guarantee to customers who purchase your product or service. 
Conversely, Operations is like the stealthy cousin of Marketing. It represents those activities that ensure customer orders are fulfilled on time, within budget, and within specification.
As the heartbeat of an organization, day-to-day Operations are not necessarily seen by your customers, but they certainly experience the result of it.

Operations teams work behind the scenes to make sure a company can deliver on promises made.

A frustrated client in charge of Operations once told me, following a conversation with a Sales Manager, “They sell the dream while we deal with the nightmare!” It’s a humorous take on the historical divide between Marketing and Operations teams.
That’s why the Revenue Operations movement is so important — it breaks down these silos to encourage transparency while working toward the common goals of customer satisfaction and profitability.

2. Uninterested
Founders and CEOs are known for being big-picture, strategic visionaries. The thought of getting bogged down by details isn’t necessarily their strength or interest. It’s part of the reason why Operations can take a back seat to the more visible initiatives offered by the Marketing department.
But there’s another culprit — small business event planners. Attend any small business seminar, webinar, or conference, and your chances of seeing an Operations topic included is slim to none. This omission creates a knowledge gap for leaders of small businesses and causes disinterest.
Through personal conversations and informal surveys, I’ve learned that a shockingly high percentage of these event planners think, “Operations is boring.” I’ve also had many of them tell me that, “No one is interested.” And perhaps most egregiously that, gasp, “Operations just isn’t sexy.” This type of thinking is dangerous and does a disservice to those seeking resources to scale to the next level. 
Consider these stats from the U.S. Small Business Administration:

81% of businesses are sole-proprietorships

32% of small businesses fail within the first two years

51% of small businesses fail by year five

67% will fail by year 10

I’ve often argued that more businesses could graduate from sole-proprietorships if they had a better understanding of Operations. This means job creation which has a net positive effect on local communities and economies.
I also believe that more businesses can avoid failure if they had a solid Operations foundation. Yes, there are number of reasons why a business fails. But the reasons why they fail within the first five years versus years five through ten can vary significantly.

There are businesses that fail not from a lack of customers or poor cash flow, but because they have too many customers.

3. Undiscovered
When small business leaders proactively seek resources to scale, they often find that those resources are not written or formulated with them in mind. Plus, if they are lucky enough to find resources for small businesses, it’s usually for those selling tangible goods.
Where can service-based businesses go for guidance on scaling without failing? 
Learning about frameworks like Lean and Six Sigma can be intimidating and sometimes too “corporate” for a small business’ needs. Thankfully, there’s a growing faction within the Operations community who are actively working to make this information accessible to small businesses. 
Learn More about Operations for small businesses in HubSpot’s RevOps & Operations Community
 Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker is one of them and he was careful to be more inclusive in the second edition of his critically acclaimed book, The Toyota Way.
Listen to my interview with Dr. Liker to learn more:

Ignore Operations at Your Own Risk: Cautionary Tales
Perhaps Kyle Jepson, Senior Inbound Sales Professor at HubSpot, said it best: “Operational failures are dramatic and visible. Operational success is invisible.” 
He’s right. There’s no shortage of examples of companies that, to their detriment, chose to ignore the due diligence and rigor required for sustainable Operations and continued to focus on the outward appearances that great Marketing afforded them.

One example is Ample Hills Creamery. Once known as “Brooklyn’s most beloved” establishment, this local New York ice cream shop caught the attention of Disney’s CEO. Soon, they landed a contract with Disney World only to lose it all a couple of years later as they hemorrhaged money despite enjoying a steady flow of customers.
One of their investors, Greg O’Connell noted, “It was a fairy tale. They were kind of living in a dream world because their marketing was so great.” Their failure resulted in bankruptcy, but other more severe failures land leaders in jail.
 Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos), Adam Neumann (WeWork), Billy McFarland (Fyre Festival), and Trevor Milton (Nikola) are highly visible examples of leaders who, despite receiving warnings, continued to mislead and defraud investors and customers only to find themselves either incarcerated or facing serious allegations.
Examine the back office of any wildly successful company and you will find ironclad Operations: solid teams backed by standardized, streamlined, and efficient processes and technologies. Operations pairs with innovation, and both are imbued into the fabric of the companies that are both profitable and sustainable.
Achieving this balance with Marketing is critical. This is what marketing expert Andrea D. Smith and I talked about on an episode of the Business Infrastructure podcast:

Business is complicated. It requires a constant balancing of not just Marketing and Operations, but all aspects of business. Don’t silo or sacrifice one group for the other. Attracting a steady flow of customers is fruitless unless you can also guarantee customer satisfaction.
Join the quest to change the narrative about back-office activities. Operations is savvy, sophisticated, and smart. And that’s very sexy!