Marketing teams should focus their efforts on one of the most tangible areas of improvement: decision-making. Real change happens when different decisions are made. In this article, you will learn how embracing diversity leads to better decisions.

Dig deeper: What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them?

A diverse workforce leads to diverse ideas

I believe that what most companies want when they talk about diversity is actually the diversity of thought that is supported by diversity in the workplace. If the same kinds of people make all the decisions, you will end up with stale or tone-deaf ideas.

Look at what happened when companies started releasing ads early in the pandemic. The following video shows how similar many ads were in structure, tone and messaging.

When an organization lacks diversity of thought, they are bound to look and sound like everyone else. Marketing is supposed to be the creative engine of a company, but it can end up feeling like an echo chamber. AI is only likely to make this worse. What will happen when everyone is asking similar questions to the same chatbot? 

This is where diversity in the workplace can help marketing teams innovate. All teams are sitting on a goldmine of ideas but don’t always see them. Perhaps it is because the idea is inside the head of an intern or someone else whose contribution is overlooked. Many teams don’t have a good way of surfacing ideas democratically.

Instead, many teams are stuck making the same mistakes based on their biases and preferences. Diversity of thoughts and inclusion in decision-making allows everyone to contribute in tangible ways. 

Dig deeper: The business imperative behind inclusion and diversity

Decision-making evolves slowly

Many marketing executives will agree with my description of the status quo above. The next step is taking the necessary steps to change it.

Some diversity advocates push for initiatives that imply significant leadership changes. For most companies, drastic and dramatic ways of making changes will cause more chaos than good. In reality, decision-making evolves slowly over time. Executives have a deep conviction that their job is to make the most critical decisions. That’s what their title and salary reflect.

I always tell executives to expand their expectations to focus on helping their teams make the best decisions possible. They might need to make the final call themselves — for example, on hiring — but they can also work with others to develop and implement ideas.

Executives can start to change how their team makes decisions slowly. They can slowly remove themselves from the day to day and move to more strategic decisions. This will allow a diversity of views to emerge and be heard.

A decision-making matrix for marketing leaders

I created a simple model called the Leadership Decision-Making Matrix based on the work of Victor H. Vroom and Phillip W. Yetton. My model has three types of decisions, and I also created four criteria to determine which one you should choose.

Leaders can make a decision themselves, with others or delegate it completely. There are four factors to consider: 

• Speed.
• Conflict of interest.
• Empowerment.
• Information. 

Every decision presents you with a variety of options. 

Individual decisions

The first option involves making a decision independently. You may need to gather external information from documents or rely on your internal thoughts. In either case, you will weigh all the evidence and decide on your own. Many leaders believe that all their crucial decisions fall under this category, and they bear the weight of their organization every time they make a decision.

Group decisions

The second option is involving others in the decision-making process. You could ask a colleague or team member for their opinion or formally gather a group to discuss the decision. At the end of the discussion, you can decide for yourself or delegate the responsibility to the group.

Group decisions can foster consensus and ensure key opinions are taken into account. However, depending on the nature of the decision, they can also lead to disastrous outcomes.

This approach is where you can start to make diversity real. It’s no longer just you making all the decisions, but you’re letting others have real input. For example, frontline employees in a hotel will typically know the most common issues guests face. If you’re running a hotel but never asked these employees for their opinion, you would make decisions based on incomplete information. 

Delegating decision-making

The third option involves delegating the decision to others. In this scenario, you completely remove yourself from the decision-making process and support whatever decision is made by those appointed to make it. 

Delegation is essential for executives to maintain a healthy work-life balance, although not enough utilize this strategy. It is also crucial to note that delegation can backfire if the people appointed lack the necessary skills or information to make the right decision.

Dig deeper: By the numbers: Diversity and inclusion are good business

Choosing your decision-making approach

Making a decision yourself is the fastest, while delegating is often the slowest. Speed can be just as important as getting a decision right. Executives who are overwhelmed tend to make slower decisions as you can imagine.

You can deliberately empower your team members by involving them. Executives must groom the next generation of leaders. You have to give them real power. Allowing them to make certain decisions is one step in that direction.

For others to make decisions — in a group or by themselves — they need the necessary information. Netflix has taken this idea to an extreme by allowing unprecedented access to company information. It’s up to you to decide the level, but it needs to be enough to make important decisions.

Based on these factors, you can decide how to start letting go of decisions. I once worked with a CEO who would micromanage everybody, including myself. He was constantly bouncing between teams and making all the decisions for his team. He was the bottleneck in his company and was overworked.

Diversity of thought means having a diverse team and allowing all group members to have input into decision-making. This is how diversity becomes tangible instead of just well-meaning words on a wall.

Making diversity work for your marketing team

The political nature of some diversity initiatives shouldn’t turn off marketing teams. Focus on tangible ways where you can make diversity work. 

Decisions are the juncture where real change happens. You can debate things, write mantras on a wall and take people through all kinds of training, but if they are making the same decisions as in the past, something isn’t working. Focus on using decisions to realize the value of diversity on your marketing team. 

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“IWD 2023 is a great opportunity for businesses to reflect on the progress they have made with their diversity and inclusion initiatives, and how far they still have to go,” says Lauren Wetzel, chief operating officer of InfoSum, a data collaboration platform vendor. 

So, we thought we’d take Wetzel’s suggestion and look at the status of gender equality in martech. 

Martech is the intersection of two sectors with very different gender profiles. Women held 47.8% of all marketing jobs in the U.S. in 2021, which is 1.7 percentage points higher than they do in the general workforce. In stark contrast, women held just 26.7% of tech jobs in the U.S. that year.

Martech crosses business sectors. Because martech is a function and not a standalone business sector, it is probably impossible to figure out its gender profile. However, our 2022 Salary and Career Survey does offer some martech-specific data: 

• Women earn an average of 30% less than men in martech jobs at all levels. That’s worse than the overall IT sector, where women earn an average of 28.9% less than men, according to the U.S. Census. 
• Men hold 56% of director-or-above roles.
• 29% of men were promoted in the last six months, compared to 24% of women

However, martech practitioners tend to see it as looking more like tech than marketing. This means that the number of women employed in the field is falling.  

“Mass layoffs have been hitting the tech industry hard recently, but it appears to be affecting women more than men,” says Alex Theriault, data and customer solutions expert and GM, Spherical at Lotame. “Research has found that women are 65% more likely to lose their jobs during these ongoing layoffs, which is especially difficult since they make up disproportionately less of the tech workforce.”

This comes after the pandemic, which took a significant toll on the number of women in tech.

Gender diversity in tech leadership fell from 86% in 2020 to 59% in 2021, according to a BCG study of the pandemic’s impact on female leaders in technology. This is likely in part because of pandemic-related caregiving which fell heavier on women. Some 44% of women reported spending well over 20 hours per week on caregiving as compared to 33% of men.

Women doing more at work. That split is nearly identical to who took on more duties at work during that time: 43% of women versus 33% of men, according to a TrustRadius report. It’s no wonder 57% of women felt more burnt out at work than before the pandemic, according to the report. Only 36% of men said they felt this way. 

Additionally, a study by BuiltIn found:

• 39% of women view gender bias as a primary reason for not being offered a promotion.
• 66% of women report there is no clear path forward for them in their career at their current companies.

These are all reasons why 20% of women in tech are thinking of quitting. 

Why we care. This is bad for business. The more gender and racial diversity a company has at all levels, the better it performs. This has been shown in a huge number of studies.

• Companies with the highest number of women on top management teams have a 35% higher return on equity and 34% higher total return to shareholders than companies with the lowest number. (Catalyst)
• Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to yield higher revenue, while gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to yield higher revenue. (McKinsey)
• The top 100 Fortune 500 companies have more diverse boards than the other 400 companies on the list. (Forbes)
• High growth brands (annual revenue increase of at least 10%) are 1.9x more likely to have diversity-and-inclusion related talent objectives than negative growth brands (Deloitte)

What can be done? There are concrete steps for companies can take to help women succeed in the workplace. These include:

• Formal mentorship programs for women and for women of color
• Emergency backup child care services
• Sharing diversity metrics outside the organization
• Setting numeric goals for race/ethnicity/gender representation in senior management
• Training managers in facilitating conversations around diversity issues
• Training managers on how to make sure promotions are fair and equitable

These are all things being done by top performing companies, according to McKinsey.

“Another important way to empower women in the workplace is to encourage more cross-pollination within departments,” says Alex Theriault. “Within certain organizations, certain divisions lean towards one gender over another — for example, marketing or customer support leans female, while engineering leans male. Jobs or departments that lean male receive higher pay than those that lean female, and yet teams that buck gender norms and are more diverse are more likely to perform better.”

Fortunately, women can turn to organizations outside of work which are already creating change in business.

“The martech industry is changing before our eyes and with that the shape of leadership,” says Gabrielle Turyan, director of product marketing at Digital Remedy, a digital media solutions company. “Pivotal organizations like SheRunsIt and inter-organizational mentor groups are paving the way for women like myself to have a seat at the table.” 

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We like to think of algorithms as sets of rules without bias or intent. In themselves, that’s exactly what they are. They don’t have opinions. But those rules are built on the suppositions and values of their creator. That’s one way bias gets into AI. The other and perhaps more important way is through the data it is trained on. 

Dig deeper: Bard and ChatGPT will ultimately make the search experience better

For example, facial recognition systems are trained on sets of images of mostly lighter-skinned people. As a result they are notoriously bad at recognizing darker-skinned people. In one instance, 28 members of Congress, disproportionately people of color, were incorrectly matched with mugshot images. The failure of attempts to correct this has led some companies, most notably Microsoft, to stop selling these systems to police departments. 

ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and other AI-powered chatbots are autoregressive language models using deep learning to produce text. That learning is trained on a huge data set, possibly encompassing everything posted on the internet during a given time period — a data set riddled with error, disinformation and, of course, bias.

Only as good as the data it gets

“If you give it access to the internet, it inherently has whatever bias exists,” says Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of The Marketing AI Institute. “It’s just a mirror on humanity in many ways.”

The builders of these systems are aware of this.

“In [ChatGPT creator] OpenAI’s disclosures and disclaimers they say negative sentiment is more closely associated with African American female names than any other name set within there,” says Christopher Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist at TrustInsights.ai. “So if you have any kind of fully automated black box sentiment modeling and you’re judging people’s first names, if Letitia gets a lower score than Laura, you have a problem. You are reinforcing these biases.”

OpenAI’s best practices documents also says, “From hallucinating inaccurate information, to offensive outputs, to bias, and much more, language models may not be suitable for every use case without significant modifications.”

What’s a marketer to do?

Mitigating bias is essential for marketers who want to work with the best possible data. Eliminating it will forever be a moving target, a goal to pursue but not necessarily achieve. 

“What marketers and martech companies should be thinking is, ‘How do we apply this on the training data that goes in so that the model has fewer biases to start with that we have to mitigate later?’” says Christopher Penn. “Don’t put garbage in, you don’t have to filter garbage out.”

There are tools to help eliminate bias. Here are five of the best known:

• What-If from Google is an open source tool to help detect the existence of bias in a model by manipulating data points, generating plots and specifying criteria to test if changes impact the end result.
• AI Fairness 360 from IBM is an open-source toolkit to detect and eliminate bias in machine learning models.
• Fairlearn from Microsoft designed to help with navigating trade-offs between fairness and model performance.
• Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) created by researcher Marco Tulio Ribeiro lets users manipulate different components of a model to better understand and be able to point out the source of bias if one exists.
• FairML from MIT’s Julius Adebayo is an end-to-end toolbox for auditing predictive models by quantifying the relative significance of the model’s inputs. 

“They are good when you know what you’re looking for,” says Penn. “They are less good when you’re not sure what’s in the box.”

Judging inputs is the easy part

For example, he says, with AI Fairness 360, you can give it a series of loan decisions and a list of protected classes — age, gender, race, etc. It can then identify any biases in the training data or in the model and sound an alarm when the model starts to drift in a direction that’s biased. 

“When you’re doing generation it’s a lot harder to do that, particularly if you’re doing copy or imagery,” Penn says. “The tools that exist right now are mainly meant for tabular rectangular data with clear outcomes that you’re trying to mitigate against.”

The systems that generate content, like ChatGPT and Bard, are incredibly computing-intensive. Adding additional safeguards against bias will have a significant impact on their performance. This adds to the already difficult task of building them, so don’t expect any resolution soon. 

Can’t afford to wait

Because of brand risk, marketers can’t afford to sit around and wait for the models to fix themselves. The mitigation they need to be doing for AI-generated content is constantly asking what could go wrong. The best people to be asking that are from the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“Organizations give a lot of lip service to DEI initiatives,” says Penn, “but this is where DEI actually can shine. [Have the] diversity team … inspect the outputs of the models and say, ‘This is not OK or this is OK.’ And then have that be built into processes, like DEI has given this its stamp of approval.”

How companies define and mitigate against bias in all these systems will be significant markers of its culture.

“Each organization is going to have to develop their own principles about how they develop and use this technology,” says Paul Roetzer. “And I don’t know how else it’s solved other than at that subjective level of ‘this is what we deem bias to be and we will, or will not, use tools that allow this to happen.”

The post How bias in AI can damage marketing data and what you can do about it appeared first on MarTech.

Why we care. Diversity at all levels of a company is a major indicator of company success and productivity. The benefits of diversity and inclusion can be seen in stock and revenue performance, hiring and retention and customer acquisition and loyalty. A diverse marketing organization aids access to diverse markets.

Some 29.1% of those surveyed in the marketing/advertising industry this year identified as African American/Black, Asian, Hispanic/ Latino, American Indian/Alaskan Native and/or Native Hawaiian/ Pacific Islander. That’s up 1.9% from last year’s 27.2% and up 3% from 26% in 2018, the first year the ANA conducted the survey. 

Dig deeper: By the numbers: Diversity and inclusion are good business

Specifically, the industry is 7.2% African American/Black,10.2% Asian, and 10.9% Hispanic/ Latino. African American/Black and Hispanic/Latino both increased notably from last year (6.6% and 8.9% respectively) However, as the report notes, “representation for both is still significantly lower than their proportion of the U.S. population (at 12.1% and 18.7%, respectively).”

While the number of Asians declined to 10.2% from 11.7% last year, it is still significantly higher than its proportion of the U.S. population (5.9%). 

African American/Black people make up 10.7% of the admin/clerical workers in the industry and only 5% of those in senior leadership positions. For Hispanics the decline is even steeper, going from 15.5% to 8.2%. This trend is reversed for Asians who make up 9.8% of the admin/clerical workers and 11.1% of those in senior positions.

The report notes that while more effort is needed to increase diversity, what we’re seeing now is a reflection of demographic changes and current diversity initiatives. “[This] is not a surprise given that the younger U.S. population skews more multicultural than the older U.S. population and also because corporate America’s efforts to diversify the talent pipeline have shown progress.”

Dig deeper: What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them?

Gender inequality. In terms of gender, the industry continues to be overwhelmingly female, with women making up 67.5% of the workforce. Unfortunately, this number also declines the more senior the position is. While men are 32.4% of marketing/advertising organizations, they have 44.2% of the senior level positions.

Methodology. For the survey, the ANA asked member company individuals who create accounts to voluntarily and anonymously answer questions to identify their gender and ethnicity. For the three-year period between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2022, 32,623 marketers responded to the gender question and 29,194 to the ethnicity question. The respondent base consists of client-side marketer members and marketing solutions provider members. In the 2021 report, 31,790 marketers responded to the gender question and 28,862 to the ethnicity question.

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So what went wrong?

To Dr. Brian Cugelman, a senior behavioral scientist at the Toronto-based Behavioral Design Academy, “what went wrong” here is a good example of a “backfire” — an ad campaign that delivers an unintended consequence, sometimes bad. Learning from failure is a good thing, but that won’t work if a mistake is swept under the rug.

Cugelman had to approach marketers who made mistakes in order to document and study them. He could get the data, provided the marketers were not named, he said. Nobody wants to admit they made a mistake, especially if they work in an office with a blame culture. That made researching marketing backfires a challenge.

Enter the Matrix

“From my experience, people often believe that they can design addictive technologies by simply gamifying their app, or layering on some social pressure,” Cugelman wrote in his article, “How Psychology Can Damage Your Web Sites, Apps and Digital Marketing”. “Without doubt, these principles can work in the right context, but the problem is that without practical or scholarly experience, professionals risk misunderstanding the conditions that can influence the effectiveness of these principles; how different principles combine; or how things can go dreadfully wrong.”

A campaign can have a positive or negative outcome and have intended and unintended consequences. Brands expect campaigns to produce intended, positive outcomes. Campaigns can also produce unintended, positive outcomes. But the worry comes with the unintended negative outcome — the backfire — which can have low to high likelihood of happening, with minor to major severity.

A backfire can take several forms. Simply copying a method without understanding it can produce a mediocre message that wanes over time. Or it can mean overselling a benefit while hiding the drawbacks in the fine print. It can cause people to reject or oppose the ad’s message. It can open a brand to ridicule and parody. It can be the wrong message sent to the wrong audience.

For a more detailed analysis of backfires, check out “Persuasive backfiring: when behavior change interventions trigger unintended negative outcomes”, co-written by Cugelman with Dr. Agnis Stibe of MIT Media Lab.

Dig deeper: How marketers can use cognitive biases to influence customer decisions

Tinder for the backfire

Misunderstandings and misperceptions are fuel for backfires. It comes down to how a person interprets a message, Cugelman noted. Again: “Messages often backfire because they go to the wrong audience.”

For example, take a high-end product that relies on social status as part of its pitch. Social status can be part of a social dominance hierarchy, so sending such “a message to the wrong tribe” can come across as a put-down, he explained. One does not try to sell high-end sports cars to hippies.

Bad data can be a starting point for bad messaging. “Unless you are working from your own database, you will be depending on third-party data,” Cugelman said. Data secured from other sources may not always be clean. “[Data] will not tell you the soul of the individual.” He said. Demographics can help tailor a message. Psychographic data is okay, but marketers don’t know what to do with it. “There is a constant struggle for data worth analyzing.” He said.

Data alone will not prevent backfires. There is no “either/or” choice between data and creativity, which Cugelman labeled as a false dichotomy. “You need a little bit of both.” Data will give you an understanding of parameters, while “creative thinking fills in the gaps,” he said.

“Assume misinterpretation always happens,” Cugelman added. “You can go out with some egg on your face. It’s acceptable.”

Sweeping it under the rug

You can’t learn from a marketing backfire if it does not happen. Here culture can affect the likelihood of a backfire, in different ways and at different levels.

The most direct way is a deficient office culture or corporate culture. In a setting where mistakes are penalized or stigmatized, marketing backfires are simply swept under the rug. “Normal people have done their share of marketing mistakes,” said Cugelman. But mistakes will never lead to “lessons learned” if they are covered up. “If you have a blame culture, you will always have problems.” He said.

For example, a marketing agency that fosters a “cowboy culture” that does not promote psychological safety will probably suffer backfires that go unreported, Cugelman noted. Learning from mistakes will be easier in an office culture that does promote psychological safety, has a flat hierarchy, and does not elevate the manager’s opinion or knowledge above all others in the room.

Then there is diversity, but again, this has more than one meaning. Here Cugelman flagged neuro-diversity — staffing with people with predispositions differing from the norm.

He also gave the example of trypophobia — a fear of many small holes or bumps tightly spaced together. (This new anxiety disorder was spotted as a recent Internet trend.) Show an ad promoting an Aero Chocolate Bar or an iPhone (with its closely spaced camera lenses) to a person on the team with this phobia, and their reaction can flag a potential backfire.

 “You can’t feel an emotion if you do not have the predisposition,” Cugelman said. “In some cases, managers should go out and build psychologically diverse teams.”

Dig deeper: How anthropology can drive insights from your customer data

Marketing has its risks

Marketers can’t prevent backfires altogether. But they can mitigate the risk of one happening. Cugelman outlines some helpful approaches:

• Make sure your team has psychological safety, so they are free to speak if they have any concerns about a campaign.
• Conduct a post-mortem of the campaign, to see what can be improved. Be willing to talk about the problems. Discuss the backfire — figure out what is not working and double-down on what is.
• Develop hypotheses and test them with data. “There is no better antidote to the cowboy culture,” he said.
• Pivot. If you are not achieving success with an approach, do something else. In the past, this has actually been stigmatized.

In the end, marketing is an iterative process of continuous improvement. But only a safe office culture, and a willingness to learn from when things go wrong, can allow a firm or a team to go down that path — and at least temper the backfire problem.

The post How marketing campaigns can go wrong appeared first on MarTech.

That consumer group is people with disabilities. More than a quarter (26%) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Their annual disposable income is nearly $500 billion. In the U.K. 22% of the total population have a disability. They and their families are a $288 billion market, according to We Are Purple, a U.K. non-profit supporting people with disabilities. Globally, disabled people, on their own, have $1.15 trillion in annual disposable income, according to the same report. 

Connecting with them requires implementing accessible marketing. That’s when products, services, media and marketing are consciously designed so everyone (including people with disabilities or impairments) can experience them. 

Dig deeper: Inclusive marketing resources to strengthen your brand’s messaging

Optimizing your digital marketing this way is a win/win, says Anastasia Leng, founder & CEO of CreativeX, a provider of a creative data platform for brands. 

“It has both performance and brand benefits,” says Leng, who is visually impaired. “For the cynical marketers who aren’t convinced of the value of making their ads accessible for social inclusion reasons, think of it this way: Providing alt text, adding subtitles, checking ads for contrast, and ensuring a minimum text size for readability will make your content more readable, digestible and accessible to everyone, especially on mobile devices.”

Different types of obstacles

She says making inaccessible ads is like putting up physical hurdles to get into a brick-and-mortar store. “Most consumers are spoiled for choice and will simply go somewhere else when presented with hurdles to … actually engage with the message of your content,” she adds.

The statistics back her up. Some 43% of people with disabilities said accessibility issues quite often force them to abandon an online shopping attempt without buying, according to the U.K.’s Business Disability Forum.

If the moral and monetary arguments aren’t enough, consider the legal one. Businesses whose websites aren’t accessible to people with disabilities can be sued under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

The ADA, the DOJ and You

“One in four Americans have some form of disability, and then you project that out to the world and we’re talking about billions of people,” says John Hendricks, CEO and founder of ERGO, an email content automation provider. “And, strangely enough, corporate America has not gotten on board with this stuff. Amazon, Hulu, Burger King, and others have been sued for digital violations of the ADA.”

And what makes a website inaccessible to people with disabilities? According to the Department of Justice it includes:

• Poor color contrast.
• Reliance on color to provide information.
• Lack of text alternatives, or alt-text, on images.
• No captions on videos.
• Inaccessible online forms.
• Mouse-only navigation rather than keyboard navigation.

Fortunately, a lot of marketers get it. Nearly 70% believe providing accessibility is important to executing successful marketing campaigns, according to a study by Capterra, an online marketplace vendor. Also, 83% say their company is doing more to provide accessibility in digital marketing than it did in the past.

As the report notes, “Compliance is not the main focus among marketers. Companies appear to be driven ultimately by the need to better serve customers.” It’s certainly not concern about lawsuits. Half of marketers in the survey said there’s no U.S. law requiring website accessibility. 

Not all impairments are equal

For the most part companies are focused on making changes to accommodate physical impairments rather than cognitive ones. Marketers say they are more likely to provide visual (66%) and hearing (56%) accessibility features than ones for people with learning issues such ADHD and dyslexia. That’s because they incorrectly believe that more people have the former than the latter.

While some accessibility features overlap for all these groups — high contrast text and alt tags for example, optimizing for cognitive issues requires more focus on design simplicity and consistency. This includes:

• Have a clean, well-organized, uniform look.
• Avoid clutter; include sufficient white space.
• Avoid too many choices, or too much information on one screen.
• Avoid lengthy scrolling; provide links to additional content.
• Provide easy-to-find and clearly identified buttons and links.
• Standardize navigation controls; be consistent.
• Avoid large blocks of text.
• Use clear language and short sentences.

Different types of accessibility

As Anastasia Leng points out, design improvements aren’t the entire story here.

“Content accessibility should be thought of in two ways: an emotional one and a practical one,” she says. “Emotionally, we want to see people in ads that look like us, live like us, behave like us — this is typically described as the representation issue. Practically speaking, we must be able to engage with a piece of content by being able to see it, hear it, or interpret it.”

It’s also important to note that providing an accessible online experience is going to be more important as time passes. As the Congressional Budget Office notes, the U.S. population is “projected to become older, on average, as growth in the number of people age 65 or older outpaces that of younger age groups.” And an older population is a more impaired one.

“When we turn 50 the amount of light that hits the back of our eyes drops by 50% no matter what,” says John Hendricks. “That’s without any sort of congenital or other type of disability. So we’re not just talking about a small subset of people.”

Eventually, impairment comes to us all.

The post Optimizing the online experience for disabilities improves it for all customers appeared first on MarTech.

However, there is a solution. 

Crystal Crump is managing director of company relations at LaunchCode, a St. Louis-based non-profit. It provides marginalized individuals with the advanced tech skills needed for a successful career.

“You don’t necessarily need to have a four-year computer science degree to be successful in technology,” says Crump. “About 50% of the people in our program have a bachelor’s degree, but it’s non-computer science related. What we’ve found is you don’t need that. You can be successful as long as you have the will, the determination, the aptitude.”

Dig deeper: What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them?

How it works. LaunchCode, which also has centers in Kansas City, Mo., and Philadelphia, combines computer science courses with a paid apprenticeship program. Because it’s a free, part-time program, people can get the training while still at their full-time jobs. This makes it accessible to a lot of people who would otherwise be unable to get this kind of training. Also, the apprenticeships – which frequently lead to job offers – provide soft skills and familiarity with corporate culture in general.

“Our programs reduce barriers for individuals to obtain these tech skills and get the training and then get connected to employers who are willing and ready to give them an opportunity,” says Crump. 

Helping employers. The organization also works with employers, helping them see the value of candidates who don’t fit 100% of a job description. Crump describes this as “hiring for skills and potential.” In 2021, 132 employers hired LaunchCode graduates, a 12% increase over the previous year. The companies that hired the most graduates last year include Microsoft, Boeing, Accenture, Comcast and Cigna. 

“What we found is our skills-based, job-focused education and training provides the foundational skills for people that have the passion, drive and aptitude to be successful,” she says.

Filling many different roles. LaunchCode graduates aren’t only software engineers. They’ve also been hired as data and business analysts, quality assurance and testing, program or project management of software development. “And they also have roles bringing together the business and technical needs for applications,” says Crump. “We have individuals that are job ready right now because of LaunchCode’s on-going education schedule.”

The organization was started in 2013 by Jim McKelvey, a St. Louis native and co-founder of Square – best known for its phone-based point-of-sale systems. He had originally tried to build a development shop for the company in St. Louis, but couldn’t find the talent he needed and wound up going to California. Following Square’s successful launch, he decided to do something about that and founded LaunchCode.

The organization is committed to recruiting and enrolling people from historically marginalized communities. To that end, they are constantly re-evaluating their procedures and outcomes. 

A report by The Brookings Institution found that, following admission policy changes, LaunchCode “admitted more Black students, female students, and students with fewer hours of prior coding experience.” The proportion of Black students increased 16 percentage points to 37%; female students and students with less than five hours of prior coding experience each increased seven percentage points to 46% and 47% respectively.

And, thanks to the growing trend of remote work, this talent pool is available to companies everywhere.

“We are working with employers in regions outside of where we have existing operations,” says Crump, “to see if there is a need for this sort of a program in their area. And so we’ve done engagements in Wisconsin and Charlotte, NC. And also in some other underserved communities to help grow talent in those areas. We are always looking to talk with companies that want to diversify their workforce and make an impact on their surrounding communities.”

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Additionally, 48% of B2B buyers say they’re “much more likely to” buy from these firms, compared to 29% of consumers. There’s a big gender gap on this among the B2B population, but not the one you might expect: 57% of men are in the “much more likely” group, compared to  35% of women, according to the American Marketing Association-New York “Future of Marketing” study. 

Dig deeper: What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them?

These folks are more than willing to put the company’s money behind this: 73% say they don’t mind if it costs them more. We’re not talking just a slight increase, either. Some 38% would pay prices more than 10% higher and 17% would be OK with an additional 25% or more. This is a considerable difference from the general public where the numbers are 23% and 10% respectively.

Furthermore, the bigger the purchase, the more buyers who respond strongly to brand purpose. Only 35% of those whose last purchase was under $10,000, are in the more likely to buy group. That group expands to 54% of those who spent between $10,000 and $100,000, and 62% of those whose last buy was over $100,000.

Most important issues

The most important issues for buyers:

• Being a good employer (34%).
• Corporate citizenship (27%).
• Sustainability and environmental protection (24%).
• Racial equality (23%).
• Workplace diversity (23%).
• Protecting voting and democracy (22%).
• Women’s rights (15%).
• Criminal justice reform (13%).
• LGBTQ+ issues (10%).

Workplace diversity is considerably more important to B2B buyers than the general public (23% to 15%). 

While the current group of B2B buyers looks like it usually has, that’s very likely to change. Right now the average corporate buyer is mostly under 40 (65%) and male (60%). However, women make up 53% of the under-30s (as well as 56% of the over-50s). They’re also in the majority at companies with fewer than 50 workers (59%) and those with more than 5,000 (54%). 

Why we care. The title of the study is “The new B2B: Omni-channel, tech-friendly and woke.” However one cares to define that last word, it is not one usually associated with B2B. That’s very important for focusing marketing and for the world at large. For marketers it means making sales and the C-suite understand that all of the business’s actions have an impact on the bottom line. For the rest of us it means there’s a powerful market force pushing for greater corporate responsibility.

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It’s not a nice thing to have, it’s a necessity. Many studies have shown that more diverse organizations out-perform less diverse ones. 

Having a culture of diversity and inclusion is an outcome of policies and procedures that empower, encourage and provide support to members of groups who have received little to none of that before. It focuses on outcomes, not intent. In this situation, actions must come before words. 

Marketing is all about trust. In fact, 46% of customers will pay more for products and services from brands they trust, according to a Salsify survey. With such a focus on trust-building, you also must represent diversity in your ads and promotions. Why? Nearly 60% of customers will trust you more if you use inclusive ads, according to a Facebook advertising study.

However, it’s essential to note that just adding people of different ethnic backgrounds to your content will not accomplish this. The “faces and festivals” approach, where marketing includes different faces and makes a big deal of particular holidays (Juneteenth, Cinco de Mayo, Ramadan, Pride, etc.) is a recipe for disaster. It all but guarantees gaffes that will cause problems with the audience being targeted. Avoiding that requires having a diverse team.

Consumers want advertisements and promotions that represent them and their needs and interests. They don’t just take that at face value. They look for proof that representation is authentic and get angry if they believe it isn’t.

This is an introduction to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for marketing organizations. It explains basic concepts and suggests steps you can take.

What are diversity, equity and inclusion

Diversity in marketing content and in the workplace are directly related, but take different forms. In content, it means portraying people of different ages, abilities, ethnicities, genders, sexuality identities, religions and other demographic characteristics. In the organization, it is actively seeking out and recruiting people from marginalized communities. It is creating a team that reflects both the society at large and the audiences you want to reach. 

Inclusion means policies and behaviors that ensure people from marginalized groups are heard and they and their contributions are given the consideration and respect they have usually been denied. Just having them on the staff isn’t enough.

Equity means giving these people the support they need — training, mentorship, etc. — to advance in the organization. It requires understanding why the organization has failed to do this in the past and making sure it doesn’t do it again.

Benefits of diversity and inclusion in marketing

Increased audience engagement and trust

• Nearly two-thirds (60%) of consumers find the topic of diversity and inclusion to be important, according to Quantilope. This is highest among parents with children 2-12 (78%), African-Americans (80%) and younger generations (76% of Gen Z and 72% of millennials compared to just 46% of boomers). 
• Some 62% of people said that their perception of the brand’s service and products was influenced by their diversity, according to an Adobe survey. Lack of diversity will cost you sales: 53% of African-Americans, 40% of Hispanics and 58% of LGBTQ+ stopped using a brand because of representation issues. 
• 59% of people say they are more loyal to brands that stand for diversity and inclusion in online advertising, according to Facebook Advertising. 

Better revenue

• Companies with higher than average employee diversity have higher innovation revenues, according to a Harvard Business Review study. 
• The top 100 Fortune 500 companies have more diverse boards than the other 400 companies on the list.
• Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to yield higher revenue, while gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to yield higher revenue, according to a McKinsey study. 
• High growth brands (annual revenue increase of at least 10%) are 1.9x more likely to have diversity-and-inclusion related talent objectives than negative growth brands, according to Deloitte.

Attracting new customers

• 64% consumers are more likely to consider, or even purchase, a product after seeing an ad that they considered to be diverse or inclusive, according to a Google study. This percentage is higher among specific consumer groups including Hispanic (85%), Black (79%), Asian/Pacific Islander (79%), LGBTQ (85%), millennial (77%) and teen (76%) consumers. 
• In more than 90% of the simulations run by Facebook, diverse representation was the best strategy for ad recall lift, according to Facebook Advertising.
• Some 70% of younger millennials are more likely to choose one brand over another if that brand demonstrates inclusion and diversity in terms of its promotions and offers, 66% in terms of their in-store experience. and 68% in their product range. According to the Accenture Holiday Shopping survey.

 Employee acquisition and retention

• Some 57% of employees and 67% of job seekers consider diversity an important element of their workplace, according to Glassdoor.
• When employees perceive their organization as committed to diversity and inclusion and they actually feel included, they are 80% more likely to rank their employer as high performing, according to Deloitte.

Steps you can take 

Changing an organization is difficult. Even more so when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity. A lot of people feel threatened by the idea of diversity and inclusion, let alone its implementation. They may seek to sabotage efforts around this. They may say they are for it while fighting against it. Avoid arguments involving morality and beliefs. Stick to the business case and arm yourself with facts. You are fighting for both your company and your community. 

Here are some steps you can take.

Analyze the situation. Hire people/consultants from marginalized groups to help. They can see better than you can what you are doing right and wrong. You almost certainly do not see all the challenges and obstacles that people different from you face every day.

Develop policies and procedures. Embedding DEI principles within the organization will build trust with employees from groups that have heard a lot of promises and seen few actions.

Listen more than you talk. Pay attention to who isn’t speaking much (or at all) at meetings. Encourage them by calling out their contributions and successes. Tell them one-on-one that you’d like to hear more from them. In meetings be aware of people interrupting or talking over them or doing other things that push them into the background. That is when you must speak up.

Educate yourself and your team. Education and training are vital to diversity and inclusion efforts, but it’s not a one-and-done situation. These efforts must be ongoing in order to educate new employees and reinforce these principals across the organization.

Test and measure. One of the truths of business is we measure the things that matter. Develop metrics and pay attention to them. Test to see if you’re getting the outcomes you want. If not, then try new policies and metrics.

Read next

• The business imperative behind inclusion and diversity: How to manage, enrich and diversify your talent portfolio.
• New solutions support workplace diversity and inclusion: Knockri is boosting racial and gender diversity in recruitment. KeepWOL is gamifying DEI training.
• How inclusion can lead to diversity in marketing and communications: Inclusion and diversity consultant Dr. Lauren Tucker explains why inclusion comes first.
• Diversity and inclusion are good business: Diversity and inclusion improve stock and revenue performance, hiring and retention and customer acquisition and loyalty.
• Actionable ways to drive diversity in your marketing organization: How to stop paying lip service to diversity and create meaningful change in the marketing and advertising industry.

The post What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them? appeared first on MarTech.

While this seems pretty obvious, it obviously isn’t easy to accomplish. One reason: Many marketing leaders were trained in archaic productivity techniques, such as meeting madness can kill enthusiasm and creativity and/or non-stop daily nagging via Slack. (That’s if they were trained at all.)

I’ve also seen lots of my clients implode due to a lack of focus on productivity measures – not only with their own marketing departments but with their entire staff. This is a major downfall for agencies  – because of their lack of productive habits, they failed internally and lost a client. 

Old habits die hard, especially when productivity comes into play. Managers learn managing from their own experience of being managed. That makes it easy to pick up bad habits and to not know there are, in fact, best practices when it comes to increasing productivity.

So whether you’re leading a team of writers, SEOs, or social media influencers, these 21 productivity hacks will help your agency succeed.

And the more you repeat good habits, the stronger you can build on these, making you and your staff outrageously productive. 

1. Know the role

In two decades of working with hundreds of agencies and companies, one of the most common problems I’ve come across is not understanding roles.  

Undefined roles and responsibilities cause things to fall through the cracks because no one knows who is responsible for them. On the flip side, well-defined roles rein in managers’ natural impulse to give the most work to their most productive staff. Doing this creates bitter resentments in your best people.

That’s why it’s essential to define your work processes and clearly delegate roles and responsibilities. This needs to include even minute details like who takes notes at meetings, who schedules them and all other types of grunt work.  

2. Leverage your team’s strengths 

In order to assign these now well-defined roles, you have to understand what each person is good at. This can mean looking at skills and not just job titles. Say there’s someone in SEO who is really good at communicating, consider making them responsible for client relations. 

It’s very, very rare for an organization to have all the skills it needs. Outsource your weaknesses. Hiring freelancers or white labeling services is a great way to fill labor gaps without overwhelming your team or hiring new individuals. 

Your job as a leader is to put these individuals in the best position possible to succeed.

Capitalize on your team’s strengths. Delegate the rest. 

3. Incentivize productivity

Even if responsibilities are assigned fairly, some employees may feel like they are taking on more than their share. Therefore, to prevent any sort of hostility and to incentivize greater production, it makes sense to tie compensation to productivity. 

There is no better work incentive than basing pay on performance. If that’s not possible (and even if it is) give workers the freedom and flexibility to work on their schedule (including remotely). If you don’t trust your employees to do their jobs if you can’t see them, then you’re the problem – not them.

4. Is this meeting necessary?

Meetings take up big chunks of time and interrupt people’s momentum. That said, there are some meetings that have to happen. That’s the key here: Make sure you only have meetings that are absolutely necessary. Also, make sure that only people who have to be there go to them.

Cut out wasteful meetings, but make the most of the meetings you do need. If you need to tell everyone something ask yourself if it can be done via email or Slack instead.

Here are some guidelines to make your meetings as productive as possible:

• Set a strict time limit (I keep meetings under 20 minutes as much as possible).
• Create a plan beforehand to keep the discussion on point.
• Share the agenda to prepare questions and remarks ahead of time.
• Explain important topics as thoroughly as possible to avoid doing the same later.
• Ask a colleague you trust for feedback on how well you run meetings: You may find out you’re doing a great job of it or that there’s something you’ve overlooked or both. 

5. Structure your day strategically 

Do you tend to be more productive in the morning, even without a cup of coffee? That’s the case for most people, who have energy levels which naturally spike after waking due to circadian rhythms and cortisol levels. However, there are plenty of people – especially those with attention deficit disorder (ADD) – whose most productive time is in the afternoon. There’s no right or wrong to this, it’s just how your body operates.

I’m a morning person, so I try to schedule tasks which need the most focus, like writing and strategy planning, for then. Be aware of your body rhythms and schedule around that. Perform essential tasks when you’re most alert and mindless tasks for when you’re crashing a little bit. This can significantly improve productivity without the need for a couple of espressos to stay focused.

6. Block hours and prioritize tasks daily

To follow up on this, it’s important to plan your day ahead of time. In fact, I like to take time on the weekend or early Monday to block off time for tasks throughout the week to keep my schedule on track. 

By using a project management software or Google Sheets, you can track progress throughout the week, spend extra time working on tasks when you’re falling behind on, and even gain a little hustle trying to beat the clock on tasks where you are falling behind. 

For example, blocking off time for something like looking at emails is a great way to reduce distractions and condense tasks into a small, manageable chunk of time without being overwhelmed.

I check my email only three times a day on my “creative” days, which are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and about seven times or so Tuesday and Thursday when I plan the bulk of my meetings and more administrative work.

7. Daily breaks

Of course, don’t forget to block off downtime throughout your day and week for breaks. While breaks seem unproductive they are anything but. Taking 15 minutes here or there will actually make you more productive throughout the day overall. 

Not only do breaks make you more productive, they make you more alert and a better decision-maker.

For example, a famous study of Israeli judges found that judges who took two breaks in the day prior to granting detainees parole were more likely to grant parole. On the other hand, judges who had not taken breaks typically chose the safest or most simplistic answer of just denying detainees parole altogether. 

In addition, this study from Stanford showed that writers and other creatives who were stuck with writer’s block benefited tremendously from taking walks to clear the mind. 

I also cease all work duties at 6 p.m. every Wednesday, and spend alone time either in the woods hiking, riding motorcycles, or in my office reading with a glass or two of wine.

I shut off completely, and reset myself for the rest of the week’s duties. This means no computers or checking work emails or social media from my phone. I also do the same thing for all Sunday, which is mostly spent with family to recharge. 

Be sure your team members are also taking breaks and doing what they need to stay sharp.

8. Prioritize well-being 

The more mental clarity your team has daily, the sharper the focus and productivity.

While you don’t need an entire yoga studio or massage center like those found at Google headquarters, some tips to improve mental clarity and reduce stress throughout the day include:

• Giving people adequate breaks (including lunch).
• Giving staff flexible work hours or remote options.
• Providing stand up desks to boost productivity.
• Blocking off time for meditation.
• Providing healthy snacks.
• Creating a calm environment.
• Acknowledge the outside events – pandemics, etc. – that have an impact on us all; pretending they don’t is bad for your mental health.

9. Reduce distractions

Creating a calm environment involves reducing distractions. Whether you have an open office layout, cubicles, or are remote, there are a few ways to reduce distractions throughout the day, which will help your team focus:

• Keeping any music at a reasonable volume.
• Blocking off time for breaks.
• Providing areas for recreation and relaxation separate from work.
• Training staff to avoid online distractions, such as looking at emails, Slack messages, or social media.

10. ZERO multitasking

Humans can’t actually multitask. We think we can, but we can’t. Computers multitask because they can allocate parts of their processing capability to different tasks. Humans can’t do that. We can only focus on one thing at a time. What we usually mean by multitasking is focusing on one thing for a moment, then on another and another, etc.

Focusing on one thing at a time is actually one of the hardest things for a human to do. Try five minutes of meditation – sitting still and doing nothing – and you’ll understand this.  Also, a ScienceDirect study found that college students who multitasked during homework and class assignments took longer to complete their homework and had a worse GPA.  

Train staff and yourself to focus on single tasks, even if it means blocking off points of the day for communication, like email and Slack. 

11. Create project management sheets

One way to help your staff’s productivity is giving them the proper tools and training they need. For example, project management software and calendar apps have led the way as a resource for individuals to plan out tasks in advance, set due dates and block off time to complete tasks. 

If you’re looking to save money, I also like to set up simple project management spreadsheets with tasks, checkboxes once a task is complete, due dates, and employee signatures to track and assign tasks. These tools also provide a transparent view of staff members’ productivity and help you identify distractions or tasks they struggle to complete. 

Other tools to consider: Semrush for general keyword research, backlink audits, and topic research. In addition, my team also uses Grammarly to cut down on editing times and provide clients with a polished finished product. 

12. Explain projects thoroughly

Furthermore, there is no better way to set your staff up for success than by explaining tasks thoroughly to avoid confusion. Many employees struggle to ask questions at work when they are confused about a task. To prevent confusion and anxiety, give detailed explanations – verbally and written – and hands-on teaching to help staff master tasks quickly. 

13. Trust factor

Transitioning a little bit from individual productivity hacks, the culture you create at your company will be a massive determinant of success and productivity. This article from Harvard Business Review outlines the importance of building a high-trust culture and how it boosts productivity:

“Employees in high-trust organizations are more productive, have more energy at work, collaborate better with their colleagues, and stay with their employers longer than people working at low-trust companies. They also suffer less chronic stress and are happier with their lives, and these factors fuel stronger performance.”

If employees are motivated to come to work and feel happy at their job, they are more likely to work harder and contribute as much as they can to improve their workplace. Contrast this to toxic work environments where individuals are most likely to slack, gossip and complain, often not fearing if they will get fired or let go. 

14. Diversify

As many studies have shown, a diverse group of people with different backgrounds and opinions contributes to knowledge sharing, boosting productivity and the efficacy of projects. And, since most employees demand diversity in the workplace, this improves your overall culture and the well-being of your employees. Again, happier employees are more productive ones. 

15. Gratitude for all

I’m a big proponent of positive reinforcement and its efficacy in forming positive habits. While discipline is effective at curbing bad habits, rewarding productive members with gratitude is a great way to reinforce positive habits, improving productivity. 

16. Constructive feedback

Discipline for the sake of discipline is rarely effective. Rather, if you want to curb unproductive habits at work, you need to provide constructive feedback with solutions for employees to improve their habits. For example, if I come back to you and say this article is poorly written without any feedback, how are you supposed to address my specific criticisms or improve?

Make feedback constructive and a learning process. 

17. Authenticity

As previously stated, high-trust cultures tend to be more productive. Well, one way to build trust is to be authentic, open and honest with employees. Building trust with your employees and establishing a positive company culture starts with your actions. Admit your mistakes, give credit to others. Being genuine and transparent with employees cultivates trust, builds their confidence and boosts their productivity.

18. Establish vision

A major part of building trust is transparency and being on the same page as employees. Establishing a shared vision for company growth and branding is a great way to build trust across your organization and also make employees feel like they are a part of your agency, not that they just work for it. Actualizing your company’s vision will require tons of hard work, which is where proper time management and productivity hacks come into play. 

19. Set realistic goals

To bring your vision to life and improve the productivity of your employees, you need to set goals.

Goal setting can increase employees’ productivity by 11 to 25 times. Most importantly, big goal setting has a huge impact. That’s because when employees feel they are working for something, they are more committed to seeing it through. Even in an immediate sense, goal setting makes you one step closer to your goal just by setting expectations and tracking progress. 

2O. Challenge employees with stretch goals

Stretch goals are high-risk, high-reward goals that require a lot of effort and creative problem-solving. While wellness and proper guidance are all nice ways to boost employee productivity and happiness, sometimes it takes adversity to see what employees are made of.

So challenge leading team members with ambitious tasks to push them out of their comfort zones. Not only will employees learn more through this, but they may even come close to reaching these goals, thus improving your agency’s efficiency.

Build a culture and train employees on good habits that lead to better business outcomes

Reinforcing these habits through continued education and guidance forms long-lasting habits that will help make your agency operate the leanest possible. And lean means higher profit margins, which equates to a sustainable business. 

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