Welcome to My Blog

During the summer of 2016, Pokemon Go revived countless amounts of people’s inner Ash Ketchum, making street corners, parks, and backyards look like an arcade from the 80’s. Over 100 million people lived their childhood fantasies of catching, training, and battling Pokemon in (augmented) real life that summer, and the app’s enourmous popularity stimulated public interest in augmented reality technology as a whole. In fact, since Pokemon Go’s release, the number of AR app downloads has exploded by 366%.

If you want to see what all the augmented reality hype is about, but don’t want to download and test out the more than 2,000 AR apps on the App Store right now, we’ve got you covered.

We curated a list of the mobile AR apps that are better than the app that popularized augmented reality, helping you grasp and enjoy the technology’s current capabilities.

1. MondlyAR

App Rating: 4.7/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

Even though my parents are native speakers of Mandarin and I took a year-long Chinese course in college, I’m still terrified to speak the language. My American accent and lack of fluency is personally too embarrassing, so I just don’t speak Mandarin — ever.

But one of my goals in life is to become fluent in the language, and the only way to accomplish this is by constantly conversing with native speakers. I can’t seem to muster enough courage to reveal my weak speaking abilities to them, though.

If you’re in similar situation, you might feel like you’re trapped in a vicious cycle, where your embarrassment leads to inaction, which leads to decline and, ultimately, more embarrassment.

Luckily, Mondly, a language learning platform, created an AR app to help you practice your speaking abilities with your very own virtual language assistant.

Your digital assistant can converse with you in seven different languages — Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, German, British English, and American English — and with MondlyAR’s advanced features like speech recognition, chatbot technology, and artificial intelligence, she can also give you feedback on your pronunciation and make your lessons as engaging as possible by summoning virtual animals, instruments, and other objects to your room.

2. Inkhunter

App Rating: 4.7/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

Getting a tattoo can be one of the most stressful decisions of your life. If you get the wrong one, it’ll stay with you forever — until you opt for laser tattoo removal.

Fortunately, though, Inkhunter leverages augmented reality to take the guesswork out of getting a tattoo. After you upload your own art to the app or choose designs from Inkhunter’s gallery, all you have to do is mark the potential area for your tattoo and hover your phone over the mark to see how it’d look on your body, letting you think before you ink.

3. Star Chart

App Rating: 4.5/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

Stargazing has been a pastime for thousands of years. Who doesn’t love admiring a bright, dusty sky full of stars and learning about the wonders above? Unfortunately, if you didn’t study astronomy, the heavens can be quite challenging to understand. 

With Star Chart, though, you can identify any star, constellation, meteor shower, comet, and planet in our solar system. All you have to do is point your phone to the night sky, and the app will automatically follow your movements, chart the sky, and teach you some cool tidbits about space.

4. Housecraft

App Rating: 4.5/5.0

Available On: IOS

Price: Free

Designing a room is just like getting a tattoo. If you buy the wrong furniture, it could ruin the room’s entire aesthetic. And you’d have to deal with the embarrassment of living in an eye-sore — unless, of course, you shell out more money on some new furniture. But even if you buy the most expensive furniture, it still might not fit your room’s look. The same thing could happen all over again.

To avoid this regretful situation, consider downloading Housecraft before you buy any new furniture. The app uses augmented reality to place fully rendered 3D models of a variety of furniture in your home. And all the furniture is resizable to fit your room’s dimensions, observable from any angle and in any light, and you can even save specific room designs for future reference.

You can also use Housecraft just for your own amusement. With the app’s video recording feature, you can document your dream home or something utterly absurd, like a room filled with potted plants, and send them to your friends and family.

5. ROAR Augmented Reality

App Rating: 4.3/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

ROAR is like Shazam, but for food and beverages. The app lets you can scan over 10,000 different products to learn about their prices, nutrition facts, ingredients, reviews, and relevant promotions.

You can also compare any product’s price in ROAR’s database by retailer, buy select items within the app, and even scan movie posters to buy tickets for the next show at certain theaters.

With all this valuable information at your fingertips, ROAR is like your personal shopping advisor.

6. GIPHY World

App Rating: 4.6/5.0

Available On: IOS

Price: Free

GIFs are already one of the most popular and lovable ways to communicate through messaging and social media, but Giphy didn’t want to end their empire there. After the viral success of Snapchat’s dancing AR hot dog, they developed an AR app called GIPHY World, which arguably makes AR communication just as fun and engaging as Snapchat does. The app lets you record AR GIFs and stickers directly into your videos, post them to the internet, and share them with your friends who also use the app.

Nowadays, not a lot of people complain about the amount of GIFs they receive — they usually rave about them. And since AR GIFs are novel, unique, and hilarious, their popularity will most likely soar.

7. Holo

App Rating: 4.4/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

Similar to GIPHY World, Holo lets you place AR visuals into your photos and videos. But the main difference between the two apps is that Holo’s AR visuals, or holograms, are of celebrities and famous fictional characters. Taking a selfie with Spider-Man is entirely possible on Holo, and regardless if your friends believe you’re tight with Peter Parker or not, the AR app is still an incredibly unique and fun way to interact with people.

8. Just a Line

App Rating: 4.6/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: Free

As one of Google’s flagship AR apps, Just a Line is surprisingly simple — the only thing you can do on the app is make simple drawings.

But Just a Line can actually be just as fun and engaging as a more sophisticated AR app, if you’re creative. To draw things in the app, all you have to do is doodle on your phone’s screen. Then, you can press record to document your AR masterpiece.

Just a Line can also sync your phone with your friend’s phone, letting you both share the same drawing space and potentially play the most engaging Tic-tac-toe game of your life.

9. Splitter Critters

App Rating: 4.8/5.0

Available On: IOS & Android

Price: $2.99

Splitter Critters is an AR game that projects aliens who are lost in a forest onto a white box the game’s developer sends to you. By slicing the forest with your finger, your goal is to lead the aliens back home to their UFO. Splitter Critters might seem simple and straightforward at first, but there are a whopping 57 levels, so it’s definitely a challenge to beat the entire game.

10. Euclidean Lands

App Rating: 4.7/5.0

Available On: IOS

Price: $3.99

Euclidean Lands is like the 3D version of the popular mobile phone game 2048. To win, you need to hone your spatial awareness, geometry skills, and perspective taking. Thankfully, you can play the game in any wide-open space, making it easier to devise a strategy that will help you beat each level.

Work events are really hit or miss. Let’s be honest: How many times have you found yourself anxiously fidgeting with a paper napkin in the corner of a stuffy networking happy hour?

Here’s the thing: It’s not the event itself that prevents you from coming back the following year. It’s the experience you remember having. In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the best experiences brands have ever offered their customers.

I have a big problem with generic trade shows and industry conferences. That’s why I was not only relieved, but surprised and delighted, when I attended a holiday party that featured a live, interactive version of an arcade game.

An entire room had been curated to look like a video game setting, and people were dressed up as characters from it. There was a giant, real-life scoreboard, boppy electronic music, and best of all, there was no tedious small talk.

It wasn’t just another tired work event … it was an experience. And in our line of work, that sort of thing has a name: experiential marketing.

While a surprising number of people haven’t heard of the concept, it’s kind of a big deal — there’s an entire three-day summit dedicated to it, and 65% of brands that use it say that it positively correlates with sales.

But what is it, exactly? And how has it been used effectively? We found 11 of the coolest experiential marketing campaigns that really break down how it works, and how you can apply those lessons to grow your business.

Experiential marketing might sound a bit like event marketing, which makes sense — experiential campaigns do tend to be event-centric. But there are also times when they have nothing to do with a specific event, as you’ll see from the examples we picked.

When an engagement marketing campaign is event-centric, it’s dedicated less to the type of event — like a concert, festival, conference, etc. — and more to interactions between the brand and the customer. (If you already have an event in the works, check out this guide to adding experiential elements to it.)

These campaigns can take an integrated approach. The primary purpose is to experience a brand in a tangible, offline way, but you’ll still want an online dialogue around it. When you consider that 49% of folks create mobile video at branded events — 39% of which is shared on Twitter — it makes sense to incorporate a digital element. A branded hashtag, for example, can get people talking about the experience.

11 of the Coolest Experiential Marketing Examples We’ve Ever Seen

1. Refinery29: 29Rooms

For about three years now, lifestyle brand Refinery29 has hosted the 29Rooms event: What it calls “an interactive funhouse of style, culture, & technology.” As the name suggests, it consists of 29 individually branded and curated rooms — and attendees can experience something different in each one. The rooms are designed and created with brand partners, who range from personalities like artists and musicians, to consumer-facing companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, Dyson, and Cadillac.

Each year, 29Rooms has a different theme, with this year’s being “Turn It Into Art.” Attendees, it seems, are encouraged to enter each room and use the surroundings to create something — one room, for instance, invites participants to put on punching gloves and hit punching bags that each produce a different sound when contacted to create a symphony of sorts. A truly hands-on experience, indeed.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Go nuts, but keep it on-brand. An experience should be memorable, but relevant to the people attending.
• Partner with creators like artists and musicians to create experiences, especially if they are recognizable within the region where you’re trying to build or augment an audience.

2. Red Bull: Stratos

If you were online October 14, 2012, you probably came across a live stream of the “Stratos” jump.

Red Bull has been at the forefront of extreme sports coverage for almost as long as the brand has existed. But in 2012, the company brought its content marketing to new heights — a world-record height, actually.

Affectionately named Stratos, Red Bull’s superterrestrial marketing campaign featured Felix Baumgartner, a skydiver from Austria who partnered with Red Bull to set the world record for highest skydive.

That record: 128,000 feet, about 24 miles above Earth’s surface. Gulp.

To pull off this amazing stunt, Red Bull housed Felix in a small communication capsule and sent him up to the stratosphere using a large helium-filled balloon. And what’s truly remarkable is that his ascent and preparation to jump, alone, allowed him to break another record before landing safely back on Earth (spoiler alert): Red Bull streamed the entire event online, and saw the highest viewing traffic of any live stream ever broadcast on YouTube — at just over 8 million viewers.

Want to see that experience again? Check out Red Bull’s recap video below. I won’t lie, I indulged in a rewatching as I wrote this article.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Don’t underestimate the power of suspense when hosting an event your audience can own a piece of themselves. Being able to witness something new, and maybe a little scary, is such a personal experience. And the better the result, the longer your audience will remember and reminisce over it.
• Oh, and if you can put your brand in the record books while you’re at it, that’s pretty cool too.

3. Lean Cuisine: #WeighThis

It’s disconcerting how many commercials today tell women to change something about themselves. Sitting on the couch and watching TV for just two minutes, I had already lost count of the number of times that message came up.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to see brands like Lean Cuisine, whose marketing used to center solely on weight loss, stray from diet-centric messaging. And its #WeighThis campaign is a great example of just that.

As part of the campaign, Lean Cuisine curated a gallery of “scales” in New York’s Grand Central Station, and invited women to “weigh in.” But here’s the catch: The scales were actually small boards where women could write down how they really wanted to be weighed. And rather than focusing on their weight in pounds — or anything pertaining to body image — the women opted to be measured by things like being back in college at 55, caring for 200 homeless children each day, or being the sole provider to four sons.

What’s particularly cool about this experience is that none of the participants actually interact with a Lean Cuisine product. No one was interrupted, asked to sample something, or stopped to answer questions. In fact, no one was really asked to do anything — the display itself was enough to make people stop, observe, and then voluntarily interact.

Lean Cuisine figured out what message it wanted to send: “Sure, we make stuff that fits into a healthy lifestyle. But don’t forget about your accomplishments. That matters more than the number on the scale.” But instead of blatantly advertising that, it created an interactive experience around the message.

Still, the experience was clearly branded, to make sure people associated it with Lean Cuisine. The company’s Twitter handle and a branded hashtag were featured on the display in large text, which made it easy for people to share the experience on social media. And that definitely paid off — the entire #WeighThis campaign led to over 204 million total impressions.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Don’t interrupt — especially if you’re trying to grab someone’s attention in New York City, like Lean Cuisine was. If you create an experience that provides value to the people who pass by it, they’re more likely to participate.
• Figure out the message you really want to your brand to send — that may or may not be directly tied to an actual product, and it might be something that your brand hasn’t said before. Then, build an experience around it.

4. Volkwagon: Piano Staircase

Smile, you’re on piano camera!

In 2009, Volkswagen caught people at their most musical by turning a subway staircase in Stockholm, Sweden into a giant piano when nobody was looking. The next day, each step produced the sound of a different piano key as people climbed up and down the stairs. The campaign was a part of “The Fun Theory,” which suggests people are more likely to do something if it looks fun (I happen to agree).

For Volkswagen, however, the message of fun goes a bit further than just catching people discovering a musical staircase on their way to work.

As the automotive industry started to take big leaps into environmentally friendly products, Volkswagen wanted to help make people’s personal habits healthier to go along with it. According to Volkswagen — and its partner, DDB Stockholm, an ad agency — “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.”

According to the video below, 66% more people chose the stairs over the escalator at that particular subway terminal, as a result of Volkswagen’s piano staircase.

Takeaways for Marketers

• With every marketing campaign you launch, find the “fun” factor. It’s easy to get caught up in how much your brand helps solve your customer’s problem. But what about them, as people, would also bring them enjoyment?
• Once you find your campaign’s “fun” factor, find the “good” factor. Hosting an experience is your chance to make an impact on your community, not just the users of your product.

5. Google: “Building a Better Bay Area”

Corporate philanthropy is definitely on the rise. Between 2012-2014, 56% of companies increased charitable giving, and Google is no exception. But when the search engine giant gave away $5.5 million to Bay Area nonprofits, it let the public decide where that money would go — in an unconventional, interactive way.

Google allowed people to cast their votes online, but they also wanted to involve the Bay Area community in a tangible way. So they installed large, interactive posters — in places like bus shelters, food trucks, and restaurants — that locals could use to vote for a cause.

Source: Google

In the video below, the narrator notes that this experience reaches “people when they had the time to make a difference.” That’s a big thing about experiential marketing: It allows people to interact with a brand when they have the time. Maybe that’s why 72% percent of consumers say they positively view brands that provide great experiences.

And that concept works in this experience because it takes advantage of a “you’re-already-there” mentality. In San Francisco, finding people waiting for the bus or going to food trucks is pretty much a given. So while they were “already there,” Google set up a few opportunities:

1. To learn about and vote for local nonprofits
2. To interact with the brand in a way that doesn’t require using its products
3. To indirectly learn about Google’s community outreach

With the help of the online voting integration — and a branded hashtag: #GoogleImpactChallenge — the campaign ended up generating 400,000 votes over the course of about three and a half weeks.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Create a branded hashtag that participants can use to share the experience on social media. Then, make sure you’ve integrated an online element that allows people to participate when they learn about it this way.
• Keep it local! It’s always nice when a large corporation gives some love to its community — in fact, 72% of folks say they would tell friends and family about a business’s efforts like these.
• Remember the “you’re already there” approach. Find out where your audience is already hanging out and engage them there, instead of trying to get them to take action where they don’t usually spend their time.

6. Misereor: Charity Donation Billboard

When was the last time you used cash to pay for something?

Tough to remember, right? We’re kind of a species of “mindless swipers” — globally, an estimated 357 billion non-cash transactions are made each year. And knowing how often we whip out our cards, German relief NGO Misereor decided to put our bad habit to good use with its charitable giving billboard.

It was what they called SocialSwipe. Set up in airports, these digital posters would display images of some problems that Misereor works to resolve — hunger was depicted with a loaf of bread, for example.

But the screen was equipped with a card reader, and when someone went to swipe a card — for a small fee of 2€ — the image moved to make it look like the card was cutting a slice of bread.

Even cooler? On the user’s bank statement, there would be a thank-you note from Misereor, with a link to turn their one-time 2€ donation into a monthly one.

Needless to say, this experience required a lot of coordination — with banks, airports, and a mobile payment platform. Because of that, the experience couldn’t just be a one-time occurrence. The people who interacted with it were later reminded of it during a pretty common occurrence: receiving a bank statement.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Visually represent the impact of participating in the experience. People interacting with this display were shown exactly where their money was going — like slicing bread for a hungry family. (Infographics work nicely here, too — check out our templates.)
• Partner with another brand to create an even better experience. In this instance, Misereor worked with Stripe.com for the payment technology, and with financial institutions to get a branded message on users’ bank statements. (And stay tuned — we’ll talk more about the value of co-branding here later.)
• Don’t be afraid to nurture your leads. Even if you don’t use something like a branded hashtag to integrate the experience with an online element, find a way to remind someone that they participated.

7. Guinness: Guinness Class

One of my favorite types of marketing is the “aspirational” kind — or as the Harvard Business Review defines it, marketing for brands that “fall into the upper-right quadrant.” Think: luxury cars, haute couture, and private jets. Things we aspire to own.

It’s that last one — private jets — that set apart the Guinness Class experience. For a few weeks, ambassadors dressed in Guinness-branded flight attendant uniforms entered bars across the U.K., where they surprised unsuspecting customers with a chance to win all kinds of prizes.

In order to participate, bar-goers had to order a pint of Guinness. After doing that, they would shake a prize-generating mobile tablet that displayed what they won. They could win everything from passport cases to keychains, but one player per night would get the ultimate prize: A free trip to Dublin — via private jet, of course — with four mates.

What we like about this experience was its ability to associate Guinness with something aspirational, like traveling by private jet. And according to Nick Britton, marketing manager for Guinness Western Europe, that held the brand up as one that doesn’t “settle for the ordinary.“

That’s important — and can be tricky — for a brand that’s nearly 257 years old: to maintain its authenticity, while also adapting to a changing landscape and audience. But Guinness didn’t have to change anything about its actual products in this case. Instead, it created an experience that addressed changing consumer preferences — for example, the fact that 78% of millennials would rather spend money on a memorable experience or event than buy desirable things.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Think about the things your target audience might aspire to, and that you’d like to associate with your brand. Then, build an experience around that.
• If you do require a product purchase in order to participate in the experience, make it convenient. In this case, people had to buy a pint of Guinness to win a prize, but they were already in a bar that served it.

8. GE: Healthymagination

Think experiential marketing is just for B2C brands? Think again — 67% of B2B marketers say that events make for one of the most effective strategies they use.

That’s why it made sense for GE to invite industry professionals to experience its Healthymagination initiative. The point of the campaign was to promote global healthcare solutions, especially in developing parts of the world.

Source: agencyEA

To help people see the impact of this initiative, GE worked with agencyEA to create “movie sets” that represented different healthcare environments where Healthymagination work took place: a rural African clinic, an urban clinic, and an emergency room. The idea was that doctors would share their stories — live, in front of 700 attendees — that illustrated how GE’s healthcare technology played a major role in each setting.

When people measure the success of experiential marketing, one thing they measure is how much of a dialogue it prompted. And that makes sense — 71% of participants share these experiences. In GE’s case, the point ofHealthymagination was to get people talking about a pretty important, but uncomfortable issue: Access to healthcare in impoverished parts of the world.

But when you create a way for people to become physically immersed in the issue, it also allows them to acknowledge a topic that isn’t always easy to talk about. And that can have quite an impact — this particular campaign, in fact, won a Business Marketing Association Tower Award.

But fear not: That concept also works for not-so-serious, but equally uncomfortable discussion topics. Just look at how well it worked for Charmin.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Experiential marketing does work for B2B brands. Think about who you’re selling to, and create an engagement that would not only attract that audience, but also present an opportunity for them to experience your product or service first-hand.
• Get uncomfortable. If your business centers around something that’s difficult or “taboo” to talk about, creating an experience around it can prompt a conversation. But make sure you keep it respectful — don’t make people so uncomfortable that they have nothing good to say about your brand.

9. Facebook: Facebook IQ Live

Facebook — who also owns Instagram — has always understood how much data it has on how people use these platforms. For that reason, it created the Facebook IQ Live experience.

For this experience, that data was used to curate live scenes that depicted the data. Among them was the IQ Mart: A “retail” setting that represented the online shopper’s conversion path when using social media for buying decisions. There was also a quintessential Instagram cafe, chock full of millennial-esque photo opportunities and people snapping them — latte art and all.

The campaign wasn’t just memorable. It also proved to be really helpful — 93% of attendees (and there were over 1500 of them) said that the experience provided them with valuable insights on how to use Facebook for business.

But what makes those insights so valuable? Momentum Worldwide, the agency behind Facebook IQ Live, puts it perfectly: “When we understand what matters to people … we can be what matters to them.” In other words, we can shape our messaging around the things that are important to our target audiences.

And by creating this experience, Facebook was able to accomplish that for its own brand. In creating this experience, it also created a positive brand perception for a few audiences — including, for example, the people who might have been unsure of how to use the platform for business.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Build an experience for people who aren’t sure about how they would use your product or service. Find ways for them to interact with your brand in a way that creatively spells out how it can benefit them.
• Bring your data to life. We love numbers, but creating a live installment that illustrates them can help people understand exactly what they mean. And since 65% of people think that live events help them understand a product, this setting is a great place to do it.

10. Zappos: “Google Cupcake Ambush”

To help promote its new photo app, Google took to the streets of Austin, Texas, with a cupcake truck in tow. But people didn’t pay for the cupcakes with dollars — instead, the only accepted currency was a photo taken with said app.

And really, what’s better than a free-ish cupcake? We’ll tell you what: A free-ish watch or pair of shoes.

That was the answer from Zappos, anyway. That’s why the brand playfully “ambushed” Google’s food truck experience with one of its own: A box-on-feet — strategically placed right next to Google’s setup, of course — that, when fed a cupcake, would dispense a container with one of the aforementioned goodies.

In order to reap the rewards of the Zappos box, people had to have a cupcake. So while only one brand came away from the experience with an epic sugar high, both got plenty of exposure. And since 74% of consumers say a branded experience makes them more likely to buy the products being promoted, Google and Zappos both stood to gain new customers from this crowd.

But what we really like about this example is how much it shows the value of experiential co-branding. Because Google and Zappos pursue two different lines of business, they weren’t sabotaging each other, but rather they were promoting each other (which is what happens when you pick the right co-marketer).

Takeaways for Marketers

• Use experiential marketing as a co-branding opportunity.
• Pick a partner with an audience that would be interested in your brand, but might otherwise be difficult to reach.
• Make sure your partner would benefit from your audience, too — you want the experience to be a win-win-win: for you, your co-brand, and the consumer.
• When you do pick a marketing partner, build an experience that requires an “exchange” of each brand’s product or service. That way, the audience is more likely to interact with both of you.

11. Docker: Docker Dash

Docker is a software platform that allows developers to make and run apps on different operating systems — a technology known as “containerization.” By some standards, it’s not the sexiest product you can buy. By an enterprise’s standards, it’s not even the easiest product to understand. Enter: Docker Dash.

In partnership with Jack Morton, Docker used its developer conference, DockerCon 2017, to nurture its core enterprise market with a unique product demo called Docker Dash. What made it so unique? It wasn’t a demo — it was a game. And conference guests weren’t guests — they were players.

Docker Dash was a live video game-style simulation of Docker’s application platform, and it recruited 5,000 of its enterprise attendees to create an app together by solving a series of fun challenges inside the game. Each challenge presented in Docker Dash allowed the “players” to engage a feature of Docker’s product and ultimately complete their app. It was a fun, collaborative way to show enterprise software developers why Docker is invested in the containerization market and the value these people can get from Docker’s product.

Docker Dash got the attention of more than 3.6 million people — those who watched and posted about the event from social media, in addition to those who attended DockerCon in person.

Takeaways for Marketers

• Conference hosts thrive on attendees who network with one another. By creating opportunities for your attendees to collaborate and play together, you allow them to share their ideas — making for more educated customers as a result.
• “Gamify” your brand. Give people the ability to play and compete for something, and you’ll instill in them a sense of accomplishment that makes them more passionate about your industry.

Clearly, taking some very calculated risks worked out pretty well for these companies. So when it comes to creating an experience with your brand, don’t be afraid to think outside of the box — and don’t be afraid to work together on it with someone else.

Invest some time into thinking about the ways people could interact with you, even if it seems a little nutty. If it’s aligned with what you do and executed thoughtfully, people will be talking — in the best way possible.

What do you see in the below image?

A duck?

Look again … a rabbit?

You’ve probably encountered this image before. The duck or rabbit optical illusion is one of the oldest and most controversial optical illusions.

First used by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1899 to prove that perception involves not just visual activity but also mental activity, the duck or rabbit drawing is one of the earliest, most popular examples of the perceptual set theory.

Besides the fact that different people tend to see the image differently, what makes the duck or rabbit illusion more interesting is that people tend to see different things at different times of the year: for example, during the Easter period (thanks to the “bunny” association) people are more likely to see a rabbit thank a duck while they are more likely to see a duck in October.

Which goes to show that what we see is about more than just what is actually there — but more about what is happening to — or around — us.

An even more interesting and related example is the 13 or B illusion. Take a look at the image below:

Is that a B or a 13?

While you could confidently wager on it being 13, or B, you’re most likely biased.

Here’s why — in two images:

Image 1:

Image 2:

As you can see from the above examples, what precedes the controversial “B or 13” influences what you see. You’re most likely going to see the figure if figures precede and you’re most likely to see the letter if letters precede.

That, in essence is perceptual set in action: Whether it’s looking at ducks or rabbits, the letter B or figure 13, or an image of the famous Loch Ness monster (which is arguably a tree trunk), psychologists have observed that people are likely to see different things while looking at the same object — and that what they see is influenced by several factors, including their culture, gender, background, and even information previously available to them.

In essence, this means you could show people the same statement or image and they’ll see it in a different way.

This is good news for you as a marketer.

With a clear understanding of the perceptual set theory, you can more intently position your marketing messages and offers in a way that people see exactly what you want them to see regardless of their background, positioning you for maximum ROI from your marketing efforts.

Here are some ideas:

1. Don’t stray from user expectations on your website.

When users visit your website, they have certain expectations when it comes to certain elements of the site. This includes your CTA, organization of form fields, and other elements of your website.

For example, most users expect CTAs to stand out and be easy to locate due to their general web experience. Also, most users expect the name field to come first before the email field and the password field in a signup form. These are norms across industries, and if you try to switch things up and use a different approach (such as by asking for the password first before asking for the name and email), you will be interrupting the flow and violating the perceptual set principle — and your conversions would suffer.

2. Leverage anchoring to influence user perception of your offer.

Bobby wanted to buy a pair of sneakers he really liked. He did research on the web and found that the kind of sneakers he wanted to buy costs $50. Shortly after, he saw another site listing the exact same pair of sneakers for $37. He quickly rushes to buy because he assumes he is getting a bargain. That’s anchoring in action.

In essence, anchoring refers to the reference point users use for comparison when considering an option. Usually, this is the first information available to them.

In Bobby’s case, he rushed to buy the sneakers because he felt he was getting a bargain since the sneakers “should cost” about $50, because that was the first piece of information available to him. He would compare any future information with the first range of price he was exposed to. If he saw the sneakers advertised elsewhere for $70 for example, he is highly likely to avoid buying because he feels it is expensive. If he sees it for less than $50, however, he feels he is getting a bargain.

Anchoring can be used in different ways, but you’ll be more effective at marketing if you work on controlling the “anchors” that influence the perception of your offer instead of leaving it to chance.

For a real life example, below is a screenshot from my review of the best website builders:

As you can see from the above screenshot (which is part of the introduction of the review), I mentioned the fact that a “good custom website could easily cost $2000 (on the low end).” This first piece of information (the price: $2,000) is my anchor.

Later in the article, I then go on to show that the website builders I feature cost a maximum of $16 monthly:

Using my anchor of “$2,000,” most users find the $16/mo price to be a bargain, resulting in a boost in conversions.

There are different ways you can use anchoring in your marketing. Some of the most common ones are:

Featuring a “discounted” price alongside a product’s “original” price: A good example of this kind of anchoring in action is this product page promoting the Asus VivoBook on Amazon:

As you can see, this product page indicated that the list price of the product is “$599” and that the user can get it on Amazon for $509.99. The list price is the anchor, and now users feel that they are getting a bargain.

Monthly vs. annual product price comparison: The screenshot below shows the OptinMonster pricing page, which uses the monthly price as an anchor to show people how much of a bargain they will be getting if they pay on an annual basis instead:

If your annual plans are cheaper and you’d like people to go with them instead of your monthly plans, you might want to consider using this kind of anchoring.

Be intentional about product order when trying to cross-sell to users: You want to pay even more attention to anchoring when cross-selling products to users – by ordering your products in such a way that the one that is more expensive comes first.

For example, if you want to sell a $2,000 smartphone and a $50 earpiece as an accessory for the smartphone, you will achieve more impact if the cheaper earpiece is introduced immediately after the user buys the $2,000 smartphone — not before, and not too long after. This is because the $2,000 price of the smartphone serves as an anchor that makes the $50 earpiece look like a bargain.

3. Prime users to act according to your expectations.

Priming is “when exposure to something influences the behavior of an individual later on, without that individual being aware that the first thing is guiding their behavior to a certain extent.”

For example, if you were recently exposed to a mug and were asked to complete the word “TE_,” you are likely to complete it with “TEA” instead of “TEN,” without necessarily knowing that your exposure to the mug influenced your response. Researchers have also found that being exposed to warm or cold substance can determine whether people respond warmly or coldly to situations shortly after the exposure.

In most cases, we are being primed without knowing it. Take a look at the following screenshot from the Starbucks app for example:

If you pay attention to the “Reload amount” in particular, you’ll notice that there is “$25,” “$50,” and then “$75.” While most users would probably not be aware of this fact, these higher amounts are likely to influence them to reload a higher amount if they were planning to reload a smaller amount like say $1, or $2. However, it could also prime them to reload a lower amount if they were planning to reload an amount higher than $75.

A 1974 experiment by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman shows just how much we can be primed by factors we are not even aware of. In the experiment, Tversky and Kahneman surveyed participants and asked for an estimate of the percentage of African nations in the United Nations. However, participants were first asked to spin a wheel that has numbers from 0 to 100, not knowing that the wheel has been rigged to always display only 10 or 65. Tversky and Kahneman found that participants that were shown the number 10 estimated that 25 percent of African nations were UN members while participants that were shown the number 65 estimated that 45 percent of African nations were part of the UN — such a massive difference!

In your marketing, even when there doesn’t seem to be much justification for it, when the opportunity allows, throwing up huge numbers automatically primes users to pay more compared to throwing up small numbers.

“Unriddled” is HubSpot’s mid-week digest of the tech headlines you need to know. Each week, we highlight the top stories in a quick, scannable way and break it all down. It’s tech news: explained.

Unriddled: The Tech News You Need

1. Twitter (and Facebook) Takes Washington

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made not one, but two appearances before U.S. lawmakers last week to testify on foreign interference on social media, as well as the company’s algorithms and content moderation policies.

Dorsey was joined by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for the former — held before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) — where it was revealed that between October 2017 and March 2018, Facebook deleted 1.3 billion fake accounts — an eyebrow-raising figure given the company’s current metric of “2.23 billion monthly active users on Facebook as of June 30, 2018.”

“How can 1.3 billion accounts account for only 3 percent to 4 percent of 2.2 billion users?” asks Siva Vaidhyanathan in a New York Times op-ed, noting the statistics from Facebook’s own transparency report. “The answer is that such pages are going up faster than Facebook can swat them down.”

Twitter also plans to release a revamped version of its own transparency report, Dorsey said during his latter hearing before the House Energy and Commerce committee — one that will disclose data on harassment reports and violations taking place on the platform.

The new report “will make that data more public,” Dorsey said, “so that all can learn from it and we can be held accountable.”

Thank you Chairman Walden, Ranking Member Pallone, and the committee, for the opportunity to speak on behalf of Twitter to the American people. I look forward to our conversation about our commitment to impartiality, transparency, and accountability.

— jack (@jack)
September 5, 2018

Since the hearings, both platforms have announced new initiatives to combat many of the issues about which Dorsey and Sandberg were questioned by lawmakers. After weeks of various excuses for not doing so, Twitter banned the notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from its platform (following in the footsteps of peers Apple and YouTube), and Facebook announced more transparency tools to allow brands to see where their video ads might appear.

Google, meanwhile, was notably absent from the morning’s hearing, despite the SSCI’s wishes for CEO Sundar Pichai to testify, as well as an invitation extended to parent company Alphabet Inc.’s CEO Larry Page. The day prior to the hearing, a new report from the Campaign for Accountability revealed the ease with which Google’s safeguards against spreading misinformation can be manipulated and compromised.

Tony Romm and Craig Timberg of The Washington Post covered the day’s events in more detail. Read full story >>

2. Also From Facebook: New AI for Content Review

One of Facebook’s seemingly endless sources of grief (not to mention, controversy) is content moderation: finding the right and sufficient human resources, battling implicit biases, and varying shades of what does (not) violate its community standards.

Now, Facebook has unveiled Rosetta: a new AI technology that can extract text from images and video frames (in up to 24 different languages). It then feeds the text into a recognition model, which helps process and understand the combined context of both the text and image.

Why is this important?

First, let’s account for volume. Rosetta is equipped to process over one billion images and video frames on both Facebook and Instagram on a daily, realtime basis — likely far more than even the most efficient human content moderation can do in the same time period.

“Taking into account the sheer volume of photos shared each day on Facebook and Instagram,” the company explains in a blog post, “the problem of understanding text in images is quite different from those solved by traditional optical character recognition (OCR) systems, which recognize the characters but don’t understand the context of the associated image.”

Source: Facebook

The second point is the nature of the visual content historically used by foreign actors in coordinated misinformation and election interference campaigns. Much of it is comprised of memes: images with overlaid text. That could explain the emphasis on this combined context, which Rosetta could potentially detect more proactively than human review. Read full statement >>

3. 5G: Coming Soon (Maybe) to a Home Near You

5G — the latest generation of wireless technology — has been a hot topic among the mobile tech circle for at least a year. February’s Mobile World Congress, for instance, was something of a showdown among numerous wireless carriers to claim the title of the “best” 5G provider.

Now, 5G could be coming to a neighborhood near you. Starting today, customers within communications company Verizon’s four 5G launch markets — Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles and Sacramento — will be able to enroll in its 5G internet service, which is scheduled to launch October 1.

Customers can check FirstOn5G.com to see if their neighborhoods are covered.

Verizon’s 5G internet service shouldn’t be confused, however, with 5G mobile service — the goal of which is to support the rising number of mobile internet users. However, it should still (in theory) provide better speed and handle more data than previous generations of internet service.

“Verizon 5G Home customers should expect typical network speeds around 300 Mbps,” the company wrote in a statement, “and, depending on location, peak speeds of nearly 1 Gig, with no data caps,” making it “ideal for consumers looking to ‘cut the cord’ or upgrade from their current cable service.”

Ina Fried of Axios has more. Read full story >>

4. Twitter Makeover

Twitter is reportedly testing a a new look for its desktop site — which, if fully executed, would include the ability to bookmark tweets (a feature currently only available on its mobile app), as well as new options for embedding content elsewhere.

Love to use Bookmarks and want it on web? Into scrolling through Explore to see what’s happening?

We are testing out a new Twitter for web, which a small number of people will see today. Love it? Missing something? Reply and tell us. Don’t have the new experience? Stay tuned. pic.twitter.com/w4TiRrVFHU

— Twitter (@Twitter)
September 6, 2018

The company announced that it’s testing the redesign via — what else? — a tweet, which confirmed only a “small number of people” would be privy to the new look and features. Insider got a look at some of the changes. Read full story >>

5. Yesterday, Apple Told Us: It’s About More Than a New iPhone

It’s been over 11 years since the first iPhone was released. At yesterday’s Apple event — where a suite of new products and features were announced — we saw how that history has manifested. Read full story >>

You’ve got your Bitcoin wallet, address, and mining hardware. Now, all you have to do is get a free Bitcoin mining software that can help you effectively manage and oversee your hardware’s crypto dig.

Like any popular, free product, though, there’s a lot of options to choose from. Without testing them all out, how do you separate the Doctor Peppers of mining software from the Doctor Thunders?

Fortunately for you, we scoured the web to find some of the absolute best mining software options for 2018. We’ll cover their best benefits, features, and their compatible operating systems and mining hardware below. Read on to find your ideal Bitcoin mining software.

8 of the Best Bitcoin Mining Software for 2018

1. CGMiner

The crypto community generally considers CGMiner to be the best Bitcoin mining software on the market due to its great versatility. CGMiner is open source and written in C, runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and is compatible with three types of mining hardware: GPU, FPGA, and ASIC.

The mining software also has a ton of other benefits, like advanced detection of new blocks, remote interface capabilities, and an ability to scale to a hash rate of any size with zero delay.

2. BFGMiner

Just like CGMiner, BFGMiner is written in C, so it can run on most operating systems like Mac, Windows, and Linux. The modular software miner is also compatible with mining hardware like FPGA and ASIC.

Some of BFGMiner’s best benefits are its ability to simultaneously hash on popular mining algorithms, like Scrypt and SHA256d, and mine multiple cryptocurrencies at the same time. Its other useful features include integrated overclocking, full monitoring, and fan speed control.

3. EasyMiner

EasyMiner is a GUI-based, open-source frontend software upgrade for mining software like CGMiner and BFGMiner. The upgrade gives you a clean user interface and can integrate with your cryptocurrency wallet. It also allows you to mine various cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and others, but only with the Windows operating system and ASIC mining hardware.

When you start mining cryptocurrency with EasyMiner, you can either choose the “Moneymaker” mode, which sets you up with stratum pool to mine Litecoin, or the “Solo” mode, which lets you pick your own type of pool, the cryptocurrency you want to mine, and the custom hash algorithm associated with your chosen cryptocurrency.

4. BitMinter

Similar to EasyMiner, BitMinter is a GUI-based, open source mining software. But its versatility is what sets it apart from EasyMiner — you can run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux and it’s also compatible with mining hardware like GPU, FPGA, and ASIC.

To mine Bitcoin with BitMinter, you actually need to join its Bitcoin mining pool, which has had over 450,000 users register for an account since 2011. BitMinter requires you to join the mining pool before you can use the software because they want to make it easier for their users to mine Bitcoin and win higher payouts.

5. BTCMiner

BTCMiner is a cloud-based mining software with over 142,315 users. Anyone with a Bitcoin wallet and address, FPGA mining hardware, and an internet connection can mine cryptocurrency on the software.

One of BTCMiner’s coolest features is that its dynamic frequency scaling is based on error measurement, so the mining software automatically selects the frequency with the highest hash rate.

BTCMiner also boasts other great features like power save mode, overheating protection, and ready-to-use Bitstream, which lets you run the mining software without Xilinx software or a license.

6. DiabloMiner

DiabloMiner uses the OpenCL framework to swiftly conduct hashing computations and support unlimited amounts of mining pools for its users.

The mining software is compatible with GPU mining hardware and runs on Mac, but if you have any of the current Nvidia drivers or an ATI Stream SDK 2.1, it’ll run on any operating system. You also have the option of either doing solo or pool mining.

7. MultiMiner

Considered the easiest-to-use mining software with its intuitive graphical UI, MultiMiner is also one of the most versatile. You can run it on Windows, Mac, and Linux, seamlessly switch from one type of mining hardware to another with it, and use it to mine different types of cryptocurrency.

One of MultiMiner’s most advanced benefits is its ability to automatically scan and detect your mining hardware’s details, like its average hashing power and the pool that it’s linked to.

The mining software can also give you the option to automatically mine the most profitable or lowest difficulty cryptocurrency at any given time and even displays your projected profits.

8. Awesome Miner

Awesome Miner is a robust mining software that can simultaneously handle multiple types of mining hardware, supports more than 25 mining engines, is compatible with every popular mining algorithm, and lets you manage multiple miners’ pools at the same time.

The mining software also features a dashboard that displays each of your hardware’s temperature and status, which lets you monitor its progress and health. Awesome Miner runs on Windows, but you can access the web version of it on any type of computer and operating system.

Have you ever wondered why two heads are better than one — and four heads are better than two? It’s because we’re all limited by our own experiences, biases, and areas of expertise.

These areas of expertise give rise to “mental models,” assets we’re using all the time but might not realize we have.

Your coworker in sales has a different background than you, which means she can bring different ideas to the table. You might spend most of your time creating content on a daily basis, giving you a unique understanding of your brand’s voice and position in the industry. Meanwhile, your coworker might spend most of her time speaking to customers, giving her visibility into what your industry really wants right now.

Put you and your sales-minded coworker in a room together, and your combined insights can crack a challenging problem.

But it’s just not feasible to host a roundtable discussion every time you need to make an important decision. As individuals, we need to be able to think about our business’s problems differently every time we encounter a new one.

Luckily, there’s a way to hack the decision-making process and reap the “two heads” effect by yourself: mental models.

A mental model is a way of examining a problem. As James Clear explains, “Each mental model offers a different framework that you can use to look at life … If you develop a bigger toolbox of mental models, you’ll improve your ability to solve problems because you’ll have more options for getting to the right answer. This is one of the primary ways that truly brilliant people separate themselves from the masses of smart individuals out there.”

Charlie Munger’s Latticework of Mental Models

To really understand mental models today, take a page from Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. — a conglomerate holding company that owns such companies as Geico, Dairy Queen, and Helzberg Diamonds.

A close friend and colleague of Warren Buffet, Munger is known for his interest in psychology. On the subject of decision-making — primarily in business — he suggests there are numerous mental models that can help us dismantle and solve difficult problems. Says Munger:

“You can’t really know anything if you just remember isolated facts and try and bang ’em back. If the facts don’t hang together on a latticework of theory, you don’t have them in usable form.”

It’s this latticework of mental models that allows to adjust our view of a challenge if we need to. After all, not every dilemma is presented to us the same way, or can be decided on from the same vantage point. The more mental models you experiment with, the more adaptable you’ll become to the challenges that come your way.

So, where do you even begin to build your own “latticework” of mental models? Take a look at some of the most common mental models below — a few of them you might be practicing without realizing it.

14 Examples of Mental Models to Practice (and Avoid)

1. Bayes’ Theorem

This describes the probability of something happening based on potentially relevant factors. These factors include evidence from past results and current conditions that could affect a new outcome.

To give you an idea of how this theorem might look in the marketing industry, imagine you launched an email marketing campaign four months ago that had a 20% open rate. The following month, you launched a similar email marketing campaign with the goal of a 20% open rate, but instead received a 25% open rate. In the third month, your email campaign saw a 26% open rate. Then, last month, you purged your mailing list of contacts who haven’t opened an email from your business in the last 60 days — and subsequently launched another email campaign.

Given the steady increase in your open rate over the last four months, and the fact that you removed your most inactive emails from your contact list, a realistic open rate goal under Bayes’ Theorem might be 30%.

2. Circle of Competence

We can thank Warren Buffett for this mental model. In 1996, Buffett told his shareholders, “You don’t have to be an expert on every company, or even many. You only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital.”

Concentrate on your area of expertise, and don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know” when you’re dealing with someone else’s circle of competence.

For example, a HubSpot content creator can write an article that teaches realtors how to use the inbound methodology to attract homebuyers, but she shouldn’t try to write about the real estate industry itself. Realtors know far more about their customers and how the industry operates than HubSpot content creators do.

3. Confirmation Bias

This is a human tendency to look for and interpret information in a way that reinforces or confirms what you already believe.

For instance, if you’re confident your website’s organic traffic for December will exceed its traffic from November, you might focus too much on December’s promising traffic level after just the first week, and not enough on the fact that the holidays later into December often cause B2B website traffic to decrease.

To protect yourself against confirmation bias, accept the idea that your perception doesn’t always (or even frequently) equal reality. Challenge yourself to find different interpretations of what’s happening.

In the above example, you might think, “Is there anything to suggest our organic traffic for December will drop before the month’s over? What might stand in the way of our goal?

Being more skeptical will lead you to probe more deeply for objections — which, in turn, will help you defuse the buyer’s price anxiety before it’s too late.

4. Inversion Mental Model

The inversion perspective is one of the most powerful mental models. Rather than thinking about your desired outcome, consider the outcome you’d like to avoid.

For example, say you want to be promoted to senior marketing manager. Instead of asking yourself, “What are the top five things I could do to get promoted?” ask yourself, “What are the top 10 things that would prevent my promotion?”

Then, you’d make sure to do none of those things.

As Shane Parrish says, “Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” While you won’t always find the answer by inverting the problem, you’ll definitely improve.

5. Fundamental Attribution Error

We’re more likely to believe someone is acting a certain way because of their character than the situation.

In other words, if your social media strategist doesn’t show up to a marketing team meeting, you’ll probably think, “They’re flakey,” not “They must have gotten stuck in traffic.”

Challenge yourself to give people the benefit of the doubt. Behavior is usually situational, so your predictions of how people will act will be more accurate if you don’t chalk things up to “how they are.”

6. Hanlon’s Razor

If a marketing qualified lead (MQL) goes dark at a critical point in the acquisition process, you’re probably going to assume they were “kicking tires” or decided the information they had wasn’t good enough to continue the conversation. Hanlon’s Razor, however, asks us to “Never attribute to malice what could be explained by carelessness.” In other words, it’s more realistic to assume the person is busy instead.

7. Jealousy Tendency

There are two types of envy. The productive type is “inferiority,” or the desire to raise yourself up to another person’s level. Do you want to become as successful as your team’s marketing director? You’re motivated by this kind of envy.

The unproductive type is malicious envy, or the desire to take something valuable away from someone else — not for your own means, but so they don’t have it.

These motivators are worth remembering when, for example, you’re writing website copy for your online visitors. Your visitors might be personally invested in a particular goal because they want to do as well — or better — than another person at their company, or beat someone else’s record. Identifying your visitors’ desires will help you craft landing page copy that seeks to solve their personal goals.

You should also be conscious of the jealousy tendency in your own decision-making process. While a competitive streak (inferiority envy) might benefit you in a fast-moving startup, wanting other people to fail (malicious envy) will only distract you. Overcome envy by reminding yourself of your similarities to this person, which will trigger your empathy, and avoid the temptation to sabotage them. Turn those impulses into growth opportunities: What skill or habit can you improve to get their results?

8. Law of Diminishing Returns

At a certain point, the incremental benefits you get from an investment get increasingly smaller. The first month you go on a diet, for example, you might lose six pounds. The second month you might lose three. The third month you might lose two.

This concept applies to marketing in several ways. First, make sure you’re focusing on the most valuable activities. Let’s say you’ve spent a week researching your buyer persona before launching a blog dedicated to them. As crucial as a detailed buyer persona is to your business, know when to call it complete. You’re probably not going to double your results by spending another week sizing up your ideal buyer, and the more trivial the details get, the less those details will actually benefit your content. Instead, use that time to research a different buyer and establish multiple audience segments.

To ensure you spend your time on the things that offer the biggest returns, recognize what you need to know to be successful. Developing a brand voice and a series of calls-to-action for your blog might be more productive than mastering the entire AP stylebook cover to cover.

There are diminishing returns to memorizing obscure details, and the sooner you notice them, the sooner you can jump on the projects that are more valuable to your business’s growth.

9. Margin of Safety

A bridge might theoretically handle up to 15,000 pounds, but it would be wise to cap the weight limit at 14,000. It would be a major disaster if the bridge wasn’t actually that strong — and the risk isn’t worth it.

The margin of safety is the idea that we should leave ourselves room for mistakes or failures. For instance, when creating your website’s conversion goals, you might not count a downloaded ebook as a lead until they’ve responded to a follow-up email or sought more information from you, just in case they change their mind.

Think of this model as a safety net. It’s better to be pleasantly surprised than proven right.

10. Occam’s Razor

This principle states the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. If you’re trying to understand what happened, develop the most basic hypothesis possible.

11. Opportunity Costs

Every choice comes at the cost of another. If you decide to send emails after lunch, you can’t use that time to write a blog post. If you pursue one large, unpredictable lead-generation campaign, you won’t have the bandwidth or the risk tolerance to pursue another at the same time.

Keep this in the back of your mind every time you’re deciding what to do. What’s the alternative? Are you willing to give that up?

12. Pareto Principle

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, means most results aren’t distributed equally. In other words:

• 20% of the work generates 80% of the returns
• 20% of your traffic yields 80% of your leads
• 20% of features are responsible for 80% of your usage
• 20% of your time produces 80% of your results

If you can hone in on your top customers, selling activities, and so forth, you’ll be dramatically more successful.

At my former company, for example, we analyzed our customers and found those who spent the most (i.e., the 20% who created 80% of our revenue) worked in HR. Once we knew that, our sales and marketing teams could target HR professionals. As a result, the company’s revenue increased by 230%.

13. Preferential Attachment

Imagine two runners competing in a race. The first runner to pass the one-mile mark gets water and a protein bar. The slower one gets nothing.

This describes the preferential attachment, where the leader is given more resources than their competitors. Those resources give them an even greater advantage.

As a marketer, you see this effect in the lead-nurturing process. It can be tempting to spend all your time serving content to your most qualified leads. But in the process, you might be neglecting the people who are in the early stages of learning about your business, or take a bit more time to open their emails and download certain resources.

No matter how much you might “prefer” getting your furthest-along leads into the hands of a salesperson, it’s important not to develop preferential attachment to these people at the expense of other website visitors.

14. Redundancy

Along similar lines, redundancy describes what good engineers do to put back-up systems in place to protect against failure. This drastically reduces your chances of total failure.

As a marketer, you can use this strategy to create a campaign that keeps your readers, subscribers, leads, and existing customers happy and educated while also making a bet on a brand new offering. Maybe you’re promoting a huge product right now and have an ambitious lead-generation goal to hit next month. Pursue four or five smaller, low-risk content campaigns at the same time to ensure your lead-gen pipeline remains stable while also rolling out your new product.

With these mental models at your disposal, your analytical and decision making skills will exponentially improve.

Nearly a year ago today, I wrote a story titled, “Yesterday’s Apple Event Was as Bananas as We Expected.”

The topic, of course, was Apple’s 2017 fall launch day: the annual press event held by the company where it announces the year’s major lineup of new mobile devices, features, and gadgets. 

The event is known, almost every year, for its “cool factor.” And each new iPhone? Well, we always want to know just how Apple is going to one-up itself with the latest edition. Will it be the biggest, most expensive smartphone in history? Or will it be an entirely new way of unlocking your phone? What will it be this time around?

Ladies and gentlemen: This time, it was — dare I say — the entrance of Apple into the era of flashy new toys no longer being good enough.

Things were different this year.

A Different Time, 12 Months Later

We didn’t expect “bananas.” We expected to see how Apple was going to respond to the ongoing existential crisis facing the tech industry. The world — especially the tech world — looked much different a year ago today.

We hadn’t yet learned of Cambridge Analytica — the headline-making  company charged with improperly harvesting and using Facebook users’ personal data in order to sway votes in political elections. And while we knew social media had been weaponized for election interference, we didn’t yet know to what extent. We hadn’t yet witnessed 10 hours of Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before U.S. lawmakers. 

So when Apple told us we would now be expected to unlock our phones with our faces — and pay $1000 to do so — well, we made fun, but we also didn’t call it preposterous.

And sure — Apple didn’t shy from the high price tag this year. The iPhone XS Max, which boasts a large display and a newly superior speaker, starts at $1,049.

But something interesting happened this year: Apple didn’t kick things off with the iPhone, as it has in previous years, including 2017. Instead, it began with the Apple Watch.

You First

The Series 4

Speaking as something of an Apple loyalist — I use an iPhone, as well as a MacBook both at work and at home — the Apple Watch has always struck me as a “nice to have” product. Unlike even the fanciest of iPhones, its watch didn’t exactly satisfy a fundamental need, like being able to communicate via phone and text, or — perhaps a stretch — taking photos.

Instead, it was a second channel through which you could receive calls and messages, and — if you please — monitor and track certain health metrics.

But that’s where Apple placed a huge emphasis this year: health.

Apple spent what was arguably a disproportionate amount of time on the Apple Watch Series 4: the latest generation of its smartwatch. And in that time, much of it was spent covering its wellness features, from detecting falls to sensing an abnormally low heart rate.

For that first detection — if someone wearing the watch has experienced a fall — Twitter was ablaze with a mass recollection of Life Alert, a wearable medical alert and emergency response button known mostly for marketing to senior consumers. 

twitter algo doin’ work pic.twitter.com/Q1WBRPmtPu

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus)
September 12, 2018

Use It in Good Health

There are a few key things to take away from the event’s focus on the Apple Watch and its health-related tools — which also include ECG-reading capabilities that can sense and alert the user if there are signs of Atrial Fibrillation (AFib), a rather serious cardiac condition.

Let’s think back, for a moment, to the aforementioned series of consumer trends that have taken place over the past year. We’ve lost trust in the tech companies they once relied on to fill their time, causing a slowing of user growth and brands struggling to keep up with the preferential sea change.

For Facebook, that was shifting the News Feed algorithm to boost content from friends and family. For Twitter, it was submitting a public RFP to measure its network health. And for others, it was releasing tools for measuring how much time you might be spending on a given social network.

But Apple has truly leaned into the topic of health. And while tracking exercise and physical activity through Apple Watch is nothing new, promoting its use for the utmost purpose of wellness certainly is. 

Consider that the first iPhone was released over 11 years ago in June 2007. Sure, the world is a different place than it was only a year ago. But think about how much has changed in more than a decade. Not only are we, the once cool and hip early adopters of Apple’s latest and greatest products, 11 years older — but so are our loved ones.

We’ve grown in those 11 years. We have problems now that we didn’t when the iPhone was still an early-adopter-only product. These problems aren’t limited to those who were victimized by a lack of data protection, or the weaponization of tech — consider also the responsibilities that come with time, like aging parents.

Here, Apple has introduced a product that not only conveys the message that it is putting the user first — but also the user’s responsibilities to both herself and her loved ones. Sure, we can laugh about Life Alert. But the combination of the Series 4 vitals-monitoring technology, fall detection, and call-making capabilities from a single device is one with game-changing potential for aging populations.

The Bottom Line

It’s easier, and far more pleasant, to wax idealistic about the intent and motivation behind Apple’s emphasis on health and wellness, which wasn’t limited to the Series 4. During an augmented reality demo, there was a similar undertone of using the technology for an in-real-life experience, to be enjoyed with others.

Source: Apple

Maybe part of that optimistic, starry-eyed theory is true, and Apple has been walking alongside us on the path to now, experiencing its own growing pains on its road to a $1-trillion valuation.

But really, it’s probably about that more than anything else: Apple is meeting the user sentiment and demand. 

“Apple is a company with a great brand and knows that to continue building that brand, it needs to take important positions — especially relative to the larger tech industry,” says HubSpot CMO Kipp Bodnar.

So, at least Apple is listening — or at least trying to uphold what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once called “glib” comments from Apple’s CEO about data protection:

.@karaswisher asks Apple CEO @tim_cook what he would do if he was Mark Zuckerberg.

“I wouldn’t be in this situation.”#RevolutionCHI pic.twitter.com/EuVLEEGTem

— Recode (@Recode)
March 28, 2018

But that doesn’t mean Apple — like the rest of us — isn’t maturing.

“I think every technology has its own lifecycle, and as that technology matures, new things become possible,” says Bodnar. “Apple cares about things like health monitoring because it is a massive market — and it now has technology that is mature enough to deliver value.”

It’s a case of maturation looking different for everyone — even tech companies.

And maybe, just maybe, today’s announcements show what growing up looks like — and how manifests — for that aging cool kid we know as Apple.

By 2020, it’s estimated there will be over 30 billion IoT devices. As the popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to rise across industries, it’s important to take note of which trends could affect your business.

IoT will affect every industry, from retail to healthcare. As a marketer, you’ll want to stay informed on the upcoming trends to know which ones can help you achieve sustainable, long-term growth, and which ones are more hype than substance.

While there are numerous trends emerging in the IoT world today, let’s take a look at the seven we believe will most affect consumers and businesses in 2018.

1. Smart devices will become more commonplace.

In 2018, smart home systems and devices are going to become increasingly connected, and much more common. Don’t be surprised if next time your neighbor invites you to dinner, he grills your chicken with a smart device, or turns on the lights in his house using voice command.

If you’ve been curious about creating your own smart home, this is your year to do it — by 2020, the consumer electronics industry is expected to exceed 2 trillion dollars, doubling in value since 2014. Today, smart devices can do a lot more than you might realize, including vacuuming your floors or acting as your home security system. As the popularity of smart devices continues to grow, so will the scope and quality of the products.

If you’re ready to dip your toes into the IoT consumer pool, take a look at “The 11 Best Smart Home Devices & Systems of 2018“.

2. IoT in the healthcare industry will grow.

According to research from Frost and Sullivan, the Internet of Medical Things industry is expected to reach $72 billion by 2021. Within the past few years, we’ve seen vast improvements in healthcare as the industry has implemented connected devices.

In 2018, the healthcare and IoT partnership is stronger than ever. Patients are now able to wear IoT health monitors or devices and use virtual assistants to monitor their health at home. These devices allow doctors to remotely check blood sugar levels or heart monitors, and take preventative action if necessary. Additionally, smart cars can keep track of a patient’s vitals in-transit.

In hospitals, connected devices can help professionals track products from factory to floor, manage resources, and monitor equipment to prevent critical hardware from breaking. Plus, sensors on hospital beds help reduce wait times by providing information regarding when and where a bed is available.

3. There will be increased security concerns.

As the popularity of IoT devices continues to rise, so will security risks — in fact, IBM reported that criminal IoT compromises have exploded by 600% since 2017. Unfortunately, in the race to release the coolest new IoT products, most companies put security on the back-burner.

IoT devices often don’t come equipped with the kind of security features you have on your computer — in 2018, this will begin to change. Manufacturers will need to start taking measures to ensure consumers’ data and privacy are safe, or they’ll fall behind in the industry.

If you want to learn more, check out “IoT Security: Why Experts Are Scared — And What You Can Do to Protect Yourself“.

4. More marketers will use IoT.

In 2018, you’ll see an increase in connected devices used in marketing campaigns. As IoT shifts to mobile-first, and as more products hit the market, marketers will begin testing different opportunities to advertise using smart devices. 

A few early adopters have already begun integrating IoT into their marketing campaigns. For instance, Diageo, a leader in the alcohol industry, created an IoT campaign by embedding a QR code onto their whisky bottles for Father’s Day 2012 — when a bottle of whisky was received, fathers could scan the QR code to receive a personalized message from their son or daughter.

Additionally, in India, Allen Solly used IoT to connect social media hashtags with an interactive billboard. When a user tweeted #RainingSolly, they had a chance to win a shirt off the billboard.

Along with campaigns, IoT gives companies a chance to create more marketable products. For instance, General Motors used IoT to create a marketplace in their new cars, so drivers can order Starbucks coffee straight from the car’s dashboard. Uber and Spotify, meanwhile, have teamed up to create a more enjoyable and cohesive experience for their riders.

5. There will be an increase in edge computing.

As the popularity and function of IoT increases across industries, we’re going to see an influx of data-related challenges regarding bandwidth, network speed, and more. To combat these issues, you’ll notice an increase in edge computing, which essentially means processing and analytics on the IoT device itself, rather than using the cloud.

An example of a product using edge computing is the Nest Cam IQ indoor security camera, which uses on-device processing tools to distinguish faces and send alerts if someone doesn’t look familiar. Other IoT security cameras rely on the cloud for processing, but Nest’s product sets itself apart as one that operates on less bandwidth and storage. Additionally, on-device processing can improve the speed and precision of alerts, making Nest’s product more accurate than other devices in the market.

By 2020, it’s predicted IT spend on edge infrastructure will reach 18% of the total budget on IoT infrastructure. This year, we’re going to see the beginning of this shift.

6. You’ll see more IoT in retail.

There will be numerous IoT-related benefits in the retail industry alone in 2018, including automated checkout, smart shelves, and robot employees.

IoT devices can help retail owners and employees reduce inventory error and optimize supply chain management. Additionally, IoT makes the shopping experience easier for the customer. For instance, store scanners will allow shoppers to skip the checkout line, and beacons can send alerts about discounts to a shopper’s smartphone.

While IoT in retail is a long way off from being pervasive, we’ll begin to see these changes in a few major retail stores, like Target or Macy’s.  

Take a look at “7 Ways IoT Is Changing Retail in 2018” to learn more.

7. IoT will become more mobile-friendly.

In the early days of IoT, many devices were built primarily for desktop. In 2018 we’ll see a shift towards mobile-first and mobile-friendly IoT products. Since mobile now takes the lead over desktop, it makes sense for developers to begin creating more mobile-first IoT devices.

As IoT grows into the mobile space, we’re going to see consumer behavior change. Soon, consumers will expect a supplementary IoT experience from their favorite brands, such as in-store personalized discounts. To deepen your customer’s loyalty to your brand as IoT becomes increasingly popular, you’ll want to make sure your business is able to offer IoT solutions or integrations. 

On the final day of my brother’s visit to Boston last week, we decided to cap off his vacation with a visit to the best seafood restaurant in the city. With a quick Google search — one that pleasantly kept me on the results page instead of forcing me to click on links — we were able to enjoy the best meal of the entire week.

Nowadays, finding places on Google is incredibly fast and easy. The search engine gives you all the information you need without making you visit a store’s website, crowning Google as the top tool for discovering and vetting almost any type of merchant.

In fact, 82% of people find information about local businesses on search engines, which demonstrates that one of the best ways to promote your brand is by customizing your business’ information on Google with a free Google My Business profile, like the one pictured below.

Since Google My Business profiles are free, it’s logical to assume that Google would try to monetize the surging popularity of local search by selling ad space on a company’s branded keyword search results.

But Google actually decided to do the opposite — they gave every company with a Google My Business account access to a tool that lets them advertise on their branded keyword search results for free. It’s called Google Posts.

What are Google Posts?

A Google Post is content that promotes a business’ announcement, offer, event, or product update on their branded keyword search results. Depending on the nature of your customers’ search query and your content, your Google Post will either show up on Google’s search or map results.

Picture Credit: Search Engine Land

When crafting your Google Posts, you’ll have ample opportunity to grab your audience’s attention. You can describe your offer, product, or event in up to 300 words, upload an image, video, or GIF, and add call-to-actions to prompt product purchases, reservations, and newsletter signups. Your audience can share your Google Posts on social media too.

 Picture Credit: Search Engine Land

Google Posts also has an analytics feature, which shows you how many impressions and clicks your posts get. This might seem like a limited amount of metrics, but they ultimately provide enough information to help you grasp which Google Posts resonated with your audience and which ones did not.

To make sure your business is constantly publishing fresh content on their search results, Google sets a seven day life span on each of your Google Posts. The only posts that won’t expire after seven days are ones promoting events, but they’ll disappear after the events end.

Google Posts: An SMB Marketer’s Dream Come True?

Originally launched as “Candidate Cards” in 2016, Google Posts would only show up in relevant search queries for political candidates who wanted to promote their brand on the search engine.

A few months later, Google decided to roll them out to a select group of small businesses. And by July 2017, the search engine made Google Posts available to every business with a Google My Business account.

Giving every business the opportunity to use Google Posts levels the playing field in the digital marketing space. SMBs without much SEO expertise are now able to leverage the massive reach of local search to grow their business.

For example, PatientPop, a healthcare practice growth platform with under 400 employees, generated an 11% increase in appointment bookings this year just by optimizing their Google Posts.

But even though new distribution tactics like Google Posts are incredibly innovative, they still aren’t able to pull average content out of the abyss of mediocrity.

If your content isn’t engaging, regardless of the strength of your marketing strategy, it won’t produce results. Crafting captivating content is the only way you’ll attract your audience’s attention and gain their trust. To effectively connect with people and inspire action using Google Posts, here are three copywriting tips you can follow.

3 Copywriting Tips for Crafting Captivating Google Posts

1. Craft headlines that appeal to people’s self-interest or give news.

With only 58 characters to spare in your title, you must get to the point of your offer. But to get people to click, you also need to clearly communicate your offer’s value, benefits, and relevance. How do you grab someone’s attention with such a little room to work with?

According to John Caples, one of the most successful copywriters of the 20th century, headlines that strictly focus on appealing to people’s self-interest or giving news are scientifically proven to be the best way to capture attention. And there are certain words and phrases that can pull your customers in and prompt them to read the rest of your copy. Here’s a list of them to help you craft sharp headlines void of any fluff.

2. Publish Google Posts that are clear, concise, and compelling.

Even though you technically have up to 1,500 characters to describe your offer, only the first 100 characters show up in Google’s knowledge panel.

To immediately hook people and persuade them to click on your offer or read the rest of your description, try sticking to one message per Google Post. Spotlighting your offer’s main benefit or feature, especially in the first 100 characters, will make it easy for your customers to understand its value and increase the likelihood of their click-through.

Another way to boost your Google Post click-through rate is by leveraging the scarcity principle. People value objects and experiences that are rare — having something that most people want, but can’t have, boosts our self-worth and sense of power.

And since each Google Post has a seven day lifespan, you can also align your offer’s deadline with your post’s expiration date and use words and phrases that evoke a sense of urgency, like “Exclusive offer” or “Limited availability”. These psychology-backed tactics will skyrocket your offer’s perceived scarcity and, in turn, its consumer demand.

3. Use a large, high-quality visual to make your Google Post stand out.

On a website that’s dominated by text, vivid visuals are refreshing and eye-catching. But supplementing your copy with a standard stock photo or amateur iPhone picture won’t grab anyone’s attention. Vibrant photos will make your Google Post stand out — the brain is programmed to respond to striking visuals — so make sure you take photos or record videos with good framing, lighting, and a decent camera.

You also want your visual to take up most of the space on your post, so make sure your photos have the minimum image resolution of 720 pixels by 520 pixels.

Content marketing without good content is just marketing.

As a free and relatively easy way to leverage the popularity of local search, Google Posts might seem like a cheat code for marketers. But when countless brands are fighting for a limited amount of attention, you must resist the urge of leaping onto the latest, hottest marketing trend before considering how you’ll create content that’s actually worthwhile.

There’s already enough mediocre content saturating our industry. To stand out from the crowd of brands hollering the same exact message, crafting compelling content should be your highest priority. Marketing comes after. 

As a direct response copywriter, I specialize in making readers take a specific action. I write a variety of copy, including articles, landing pages, sales emails, and job advertisements.

So, you can believe me when I show you how to write an eye-catching job description that attracts the brilliant people you want working for you.

In fact, I’ve written hundreds of job ads over my career. One of my first gigs was for a big employment website, where I created several ads a day. Ads that had one ultimate purpose: to compel readers to hit the “APPLY NOW” button.

My job was to make people want to press that button. My words were supposed to make them feel excited about the prospect of being in the role they were reading about.

If I could do that, consistently, I was lightning in a bottle.

This article will walk you through an approach to job descriptions that allowed me to double my conversion rate of visitors-to-applications in less than a year. Keep reading to learn the strategies and best practices I used to grip candidates, exciting them enough to take action.

You want to write a job ad that consistently drives candidates to fill out an application. Of course, you also want qualified applicants — people that meet your requirements. To get them, you need them to read the entire job description before deciding if this position is a match for what they’re looking for.

Before candidates settle into your ad, they’re first going to scan it. And if it’s not formatted using big, bold, clear, and concise subheads to make the scanning process effortless, they’ll move on.

The easier your job ad is to scan, the more likely it is to garner (and hold) readers’ attention — attention that ultimately leads to action.

Here’s how to attract the right people to your open position:

1. Study your target candidate.

You might’ve heard that people buy on emotion first, and then rationalize their purchases using logic.

Applying for a job, in that sense, is a lot like making a purchase. Pressing the “APPLY NOW” button is an emotionally charged decision.

When writing your job ad, tap into those emotions by learning everything you can about your target candidate (i.e., the person you want to be interviewing). What are his or her professional goals and aspirations? What makes him or her happy?

Example

Create a target candidate persona, or a composite of your ideal employee. (Download these buyer persona templates to get started.) Use the information you find to make potent promises that your target candidate wants to hear and, more importantly, you know you can keep.

Are you hiring for a role in content marketing? Consider aspects of your existing marketing team that you want to see reflected in your new hire. What are your current employees’ career goals? What do they enjoy most about the company? Which areas of expertise do they lack that your candidate can provide?

These are all valuable pieces of information that can help you draft a corresponding job description and ensure your potential candidates would be a fit at your organization — both culturally and professionally.

2. Optimize the job title with the keywords that candidate is using.

Every day, the job hunt leads millions of people to search millions of keywords. This makes SEO very important to the recruitment process, especially when writing job ads.

In your quest to be unique and desired, don’t make up a new, creative name for an established role. In other words, don’t call your open content marketing position an “Attention Ninja” or “Audience Crafter.”

Example

For a role in content marketing, title your job exactly what you’re looking for: “Content Producer.” If you’re in the B2B space with clients all over the world, for instance, add a few more adjectives: “Global B2B Content Marketing Coordinator.”

Keep in mind that the experience level of your ideal candidate can change the words they use when looking for jobs online. If you’re hiring for a mid-level content marketer, for example, consider words like “strategist,” “specialist,” or even “manager.” Is the content you produce part of a much larger digital marketing operation? Include the word “digital” — as in “Digital Content Marketing Specialist” — to put a finer point on all the digital channels you want your applicants to be passionate about.

Post the position under a recognizable, keyword-friendly title, as that’s what candidates will be searching.

3. Start with a company summary.

Open your job ad’s main text copy with a “Company Summary” paragraph. But don’t simply paste your business’s “About Us” boilerplate description into your job listing. Your “Company Summary” should help to put the job for which you’re hiring into context for the applicant.

If your company sells security software, for example, it won’t be enough to simply state your company name, when you were founded, the types of software packages you offer, and where you’re located. Your applicants will want company details that pertain to the team they’d be joining.

Here’s an example of a company summary for a (shamelessly made-up) software developer that’s looking for an awesome content marketing specialist to join the team:

Example

Security Software Co. is a Boston-based software developer that puts today’s most pressing ecommerce security challenges at the heart of its brand. We turn the best cybersecurity technology into trusted solutions for the small online business, and after a decade serving more than 70 clients, we need someone to help us tell the stories that matter most to our customers.

If you summarize your company in a way that resonates with your ideal candidate, you’ll set yourself up to dive right into the job description itself. But don’t be fooled: The best job descriptions can’t simply be packaged into a second paragraph following the Company Summary above.

Describe your open position using subheads, or sections, in this order:

1. Benefits
2. Requirements
3. Responsibilities

Here’s a breakdown of each section along with example paragraphs that, when combined, will form a “Content Marketing Specialist” job description for Security Software Co. — the fictional company we created in the italicized paragraph above.

4. Concisely describe the job’s benefits.

Every ad must start with a concise description, or overview, of the role. It should be snappy and compelling — just be sure to complement the clear, quick explanation of the role with the job’s big-picture benefits as well.

General Electric did a nice job describing the benefits of their roles in the commercial below — part of an amusing series to help the company shift its brand to keep up with today’s digital culture. Listen to how the man in the blue sweater describes his new position:

People inherently want to be part of something bigger than themselves. Appeal to that desire by helping candidates envision the impact of their work.

If you’re hiring a software developer, explain the mark that software will leave on others. Will it help them beat traffic? Will it help them communicate better with their family? Will it help them get clean drinking water every day? Be specific. The more specific you are, the more compelling your message will be.

Here’s how our fictional organization, Security Software Co., might describe the benefits of working as their newest content marketing specialist:

Example

As the Content Marketing Specialist for Security Software Co., you’ll create articles, infographics, and eBooks that build an engaged audience. Your goal will be to drive thousands of people to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn. Your success will expand Security Software’s global reach – helping millions of parents protect their children from online predators – while simultaneously developing your personal brand as a foremost expert in our space.

5. Summarize the benefits package.

Now that you have the candidate’s attention, draw him or her deeper into the ad with a section dedicated to the other benefits: your company’s benefits package — a topic employees care about. But just know, there’s a right and wrong way to write a benefits bullet …

Use examples to help candidates envision the benefit, not just read it on the job ad. Like this:

• The wrong way: “Heated parking garage.”
• The right way: “Arrive and leave work comfortably, thanks to a heated garage.”

Example

At Security Software, we ask a lot of our employees, which is why we give so much in return. In addition to your competitive salary, medical/dental/vision plan, and matching 401(k), we’ll shower you with perks, including:

• Dress: Wear anything you like to the office – and be as comfortable at work as you are in your own living room.
• Flexibility: Two days a week, feel free to skip the commute and hit your deadlines from home.
• Food: Save hundreds of dollars on food each year thanks to our well-stocked, healthy kitchen.
• Location: On the days you are in the office, get here quickly thanks to our highly accessible central location.
• Wellness: Stretch away the stress every morning in our in-house yoga studio.

6. Keep the job’s requirements clear and realistic.

This section will be your ad’s most sterile, so don’t close with it. Stick it in the middle, sandwiched between two sections that highlight promise and opportunity.

Keep your list of requirements only as long as it needs to be. You don’t want to scare great candidates away with trivial prerequisites. You also don’t want to engage and inspire unqualified people with a shortlist.

Example

Not everyone can be a Content Marketing Specialist. To be seriously considered for this role, please have the following in regard to:

• Experience: At least 3 years in a similar role with comparable goals and responsibilities (security and/or software background, preferred)
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in English, Marketing, Communications, or a similar field, preferred
• Skills: You must be an excellent writer, someone who understands how to frame a message in a clear, concise, and compelling way. You must also understand the mechanics of an efficient, effective Marketing Automation campaign (HubSpot experience, preferred).
• Characteristics: This is an autonomous position, so you should be self-sufficient and self-motivated. It’s also a creative role, so you must be able to gracefully receive criticism and feedback about your work.

7. Use strong verbs to describe the job’s responsibilities.

Responsibilities are the job. They’re the work, and the paycheck. But responsibilities can also generate excitement and promise in a passionate candidate.

Begin each bullet point of your job responsibilities with a unique yet fitting verb. For example, the role doesn’t “manage” people; it “shapes” them. The role doesn’t “oversee” projects; it “enables” their success. See the difference? One word can offer a fresh perspective, altering the reader’s frame of mind.

Example

As Security Software’s sole Content Marketer, you’ll meet the initiative’s strategic needs on your own, experimenting, learning, and adjusting as you go. Throughout your journey to grow our brand’s audience and reach, you’ll be responsible for:

• Sculpting informative, entertaining, digestible articles that audiences can’t stop reading.
• Designing beautiful, rich infographics that are as engaging as they are shareable.
• Publishing easy-to-skim, value-driven eBooks for download in exchange for business-email addresses.
• Crafting persuasive, laser-focused landing pages that compel your target audience to take one valuable action.
• Purchasing targeted ad spend on well-performing social media platforms.
• Pulling prospects through each stage of our marketing funnel, gradually warming them up for a productive conversation with sales.

The Final Product

Here’s what our example job ad for Security Software Co. looks like when stitched together:

Content Marketing Specialist

Security Software Co. is a Boston-based software developer that puts today’s most pressing ecommerce security challenges at the heart of its brand. We turn the best cybersecurity technology into trusted solutions for the small online business, and after a decade serving more than 70 clients, we need someone to help us tell the stories that matter most to our customers.

OVERVIEW:

As the Content Marketing Specialist for Security Software Co., you’ll create articles, infographics, and eBooks that build an engaged audience. Your goal will be to drive thousands of people to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn. Your success will expand Security Software’s global reach – helping millions of parents protect their children from online predators – while simultaneously developing your personal brand as a foremost expert in our space.

BENEFITS:

At Security Software, we ask a lot of our employees, which is why we give so much in return. In addition to your competitive salary, medical/dental/vision plan, and matching 401(k), we’ll shower you with perks, including:

• Dress: Wear anything you like to the office – and be as comfortable at work as you are in your own living room.
• Flexibility: Two days a week, feel free to skip the commute and hit your deadlines from home.
• Food: Save hundreds of dollars on food each year thanks to our well-stocked, healthy kitchen.
• Location: On the days you are in the office, get here quickly thanks to our highly accessible central location.
• Wellness: Stretch away the stress every morning in our in-house yoga studio.

REQUIREMENTS:

Not everyone can be a Content Marketing Specialist. To be seriously considered for this role, please have the following in regard to:

• Experience: At least 3 years in a similar role with comparable goals and responsibilities (security and/or software background, preferred).
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in English, Marketing, Communications, or a similar field, preferred.
• Skills: You must be an excellent writer, someone who understands how to frame a message in a clear, concise, and compelling way. You must also understand the mechanics of an efficient, effective Marketing Automation campaign (HubSpot experience, preferred).
• Characteristics: This is an autonomous position, so you should be self-sufficient and self-motivated. It’s also a creative role, so you have to be able to graceful receive criticism and feedback about your work.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

As Security Software’s sole Content Marketer, you’ll meet the initiative’s strategic needs on your own, experimenting, learning, and adjusting as you go. Along your journey to grow our brand’s audience and reach, you’ll be responsible for:

• Sculpting informative, entertaining, digestible articles that audiences can’t stop reading.
• Designing beautiful, rich infographics that are as engaging as they are shareable.
• Publishing easy-to-skim, value-driven eBooks for download in exchange for business-email addresses.
• Crafting persuasive, laser-focused landing pages that compel your target audience to take one valuable action.
• Purchasing targeted ad spend on well-performing social media platforms.
• Pulling prospects through each stage of our marketing funnel, gradually warming them up for a productive conversation with sales.

APPLY NOW

This ad, for all intents and purposes, is a generic example. It’s designed to illustrate, at a high level, the techniques that make candidates feel something when they read a job ad.

Nonetheless, it’s important to first use your knowledge of the role for which you’re hiring to create an accurate ad — one that reflects your company’s culture and specific needs.

Good luck — although something tells me you have this one in the bag.