What I thought class would be about:
- Brand-building principles
- Entrepreneurial thinking for start-ups or small business
- Digital marketing is here to stay
- Retrospective on how brands grew and maintained staying power
What I actually learned:
- Google Ads are just as powerful as an ad created by an advertising agency
- Hands-on branding (Google Ads, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blogging)
- Why having a mindset for Digital Marketing is crucial for business transformation
- Why it’s important to see and be prepared for industry trends, no matter what sector you are currently employed in (automation, machine learning, AI, quantum computing)
- The power of data
- Write you own ad copy
- Select the keywords you’d like your ad to target
- Set a daily maximum budget
- Choose your campaign’s start and end date
- Turn on your ad
A small business owner (SBO) can create effective ads in minutes that deliver results that can be seen directly in the app. This information is power for the SBO, where at the click of a button, the campaign can be tweaked based on the trends being reported on. Genius.
YouTube
For content creators, uploading video content is simple and YT makes it easy to incorporate a channel into the overall marketing plan. OLV marketing helps build trust and establish the channel (and by extension, the biz) as having authority. This, in turn, makes it easier to connect to and engage with customers because they recognize you’re coming from a place of authority.
For users who do not like to read, videos contain information that provides them access to “inside information.” Most content creators are kind and want others to benefit from their experience. User have access to a wide variety of content that is both entertaining and educational and is easily found thanks in large part to the partnership with Google and their expertise in search. And it is FREE.
Facebook and Instagram
On Facebook, video ads are the highest performing ad units "because they encourage users to stop and pay attention to the content." The best ads are those with a hook in the first 5-8 seconds that trigger the click to 'learn more' and ultimately to convert to a sale/close the deal. Instagram is the most popular platform for brands who engage in influencer marketing. And like any relationship, requires an investment of time to develop content, build trust, and provide value. "After seeing posts with product information on the platform, 87% took a specific action, like following a brand, visiting its retail store, or making a purchase." That's exactly what a business seeks!
Blogging
If/when the time is right, I will start blogging for the business I want to start. It would help me start to shape content for a website. A blog could help keep my audience engaged and provide first-hand knowledge about what they find interesting and want to hear more about. This would help build my brand and solidify my standing as a thought leader. When the content is meaningful, it will build trust with my audience.
Perhaps if I branch out to YouTube with a channel to upload videos that tie to my blog (and vice versa), I could determine where I should focus the bulk of my time and energy—where there is the interest and need.
Digital Marketing
A leader’s task is not simply "to adapt"; it is to be adaptive. Digital transformation is not a goal that one achieves; it is the means to achieve one’s goals. A digital mindset is a set of attitudes and behaviors that enable people and organizations to see how data, algorithms, and AI open up new possibilities and to chart a path for success in a business landscape increasingly dominated by data-intensive and intelligent technologies.
To accelerate adoption of radical, digital change, there must be a shift in shared values, norms, attitudes, and behaviors. Examples: a major reorg, acquisition, resource reallocation, hiring a digital transformation czar reporting to the CEO or phasing out a legacy system
Automation involves an entire category of technologies that provide activity or work without human involvement—example, a water wheel. The benefits include:
- Lower operating costs
- Improved worker safety
- Faster ROI
- Ability to be more competitive
- Increased production output
- Consistent and improved part-production and quality
- Smaller environmental footprint
- Better planning
- Reduce need for outsourcing
- Optimal utilization of floor space
- Easy integration
- Maximize labor
- Increase productivity & efficiency
- Increase system versatility
"Though automation could result in the elimination of 73 million jobs, it’s also predicted to create 58 million new jobs. While a net loss of 15 million isn’t exactly cause for celebration, it does seem more manageable than roughly half of country’s jobs disappearing."
Machine Learning is one of the most disruptive technologies of our generation. Algorithms are written to build models which can be used to make predictions so that machines can analyze data. This learning benefits from the human intervention that helps improve results. Deep Learning, a subset of Machine Learning, uses a complex layer of algorithms to arrive at model that were built to resolve challenges that regular ole machine learning could never do, removing the need for programmers to fix any issues related to inaccurate predictions. It’s a slower process but they become smarter over time by using more data than a machine learning model would. Example, instead of asking your Echo Dot, “Alexa, turn on the light”, Deep Learning would do the same simply by uttering, “It’s dark out here” and a gadget would provide light.
Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning and deep learning are the means with which one would execute artificial intelligence because AI is a programmed “rule” that makes a device respond in a particular manner, based on a pre-defined situation. Simply put: it’s a bunch of “if-else” statements of code that trigger a process to find an option that delivers an expected outcome. AI involves a machine exhibiting and practicing something similar to what we describe as human thinking. Siri, Alexa, chatbots are digital AI assistants.
Quantum Computing
"Quantum computing is a rapidly-emerging technology that harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics to solve problems too complex for classical computers. Quantum algorithms take a new approach to complex problems -- creating multi-dimensional spaces where the patterns linking individual data points emerge. Classical computers cannot create these computational spaces, so they cannot find these patterns.
Quantum computers are elegant machines, smaller and requiring less energy than supercomputers. An IBM Quantum processor is a wafer not much bigger than the one found in a laptop. And a quantum hardware system is about the size of a car, made up mostly of cooling systems to keep the superconducting processor at its ultra-cold operational temperature. A classical processor uses bits to perform its operations. A quantum computer uses qubits (CUE-bits) to run multidimensional quantum algorithms."
Harnessing the Power of Data
The role of data is to empower business leaders to make decisions based on facts, trends and statistical numbers. But with so much information out there, business leaders must be able to sift through the noise, and get the right information, so that they can make the best decisions about strategy and growth. Data can transform business:
- Companies expect that data and analytics will soon be the most critical factor in determining competitive differentiation.
- The returns on current data and analytics initiatives, so far, are large, and they are expected to grow dramatically.
- The enormity of the task at hand is mirrored in the myriad obstacles that challenge firms.
- With the help of proper organizational approaches and integrated tools, firms have the ability to harness the power of data like never before.
After reading “A Call to Action on Data Fluency”, I would counter with these two articles:
- Harvard Business Review’s Collaborative Intelligence: Humans and AI Are Joining Forces by James Wilson and Paul Daugherty, https://hbr.org/2018/07/collaborative-intelligence-humans-and-ai-are-joining-forces
- Harvard Business Review’s Robots Need Us More Than We Need Them by James Wilson and Paul Daugherty, https://hbr.org/2022/03/robots-need-us-more-than-we-need-them
In place of typical textbooks, MBA 6101 required the following three books to be read and blogged about and I summarize below my key takeaways from each:
- In order to scale faster and more fearlessly, you must think big. Think category. What is the minimal viable category you are entering?
- Growth thrives at the intersection of technology and humanity
- To be strategic, you have to make mind space for yourself, to carve out one or two hours a day to think. Architect the outcome.
- It’s not a sprint, but a marathon so focus on the journey
- Create believers
- Stay close to your “why?”
- Be better tomorrow than you were yesterday. Continuously improve. Stay curious
- Grit, grit, grit
This book was written by an ex-Burnetter and it reflects all the tenets that work, proven by almost 100 years’ worth of work, yet is scaled & laid out in such a way as to not overwhelm the reader (who is likely a small business owner).
- Ensure a quality product or service
- Focus on innovation once previous bullet is established
- Solve problems in order to succeed
- Deliver speed and flexibility to market
- Start with a core idea and apply it consistently
- Positioning is the key to marketing
- Commit to your marketing plan and invest in it (paid, owned and earned)
- Research, test, measure, and recalibrate
The better data that a business has, the more profitable you can be, when you are armed with the power that comes from data.
Think of artificial intelligence as the brain behind either hardware or software...it is increasing automation...and is poised to increase in [its] impact [to the world].
- Adapting is a "good" response to AI, where one should learn more and pay attention to what's going on and the trends or patterns being seen.
- Adopting is a "better" response to AI, where one is adopting AI-related tools & platforms, becoming more actively involved in managing AI.
- Adept is a "best" response to AI, where one is adept at getting directly involved with developing AI or learning how to code and/or work with related data.
There are plenty of opportunities to be optimistic, if a society invests enough in its citizens.
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