Image Source: opensource.com

If you’re not creating content, you don’t exist on the internet. Tweets, images, blog posts, comments, your Facebook posts – these are all content. Marketers know that when done correctly, content marketing can be a valuable marketing channel. As I wrote previously:

“Content marketing” refers to creating information (content) that has value to others. The creator of the content ultimately wants to sell a product or service to prospective buyers who benefit from the content, but the goal of content marketing is rarely to sell directly. Instead, the goal of content marketing is to encourage people to read and perhaps engage with the content, and to begin developing a relationship with the person or entity that created that content.

There are many terrific guides about content marketing, including this one from Kissmetrics. But before you rush to share another image or write your next blog post, consider this: content marketing can have many serious legal consequences. If done improperly, marketers can violate copyright law and expose themselves, their employers, and their clients to substantial legal risk, money damages and embarrassment.

I created this guide to help marketers understand the basics of copyright law. I know a bit about the subject: I received my law degree 21 years ago. Before founding crowdSPRING, I was a trial attorney focusing on complex commercial and intellectual property litigation.

If you have a question that isn’t answered below, please leave a comment and I’ll consider revising the guide to include your question (and an answer).

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a form of legal protection provided to those who create original works. Under the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act, the copyright owner has the exclusive right to reproduce, adapt, distribute, publicly perform and publicly display the work. Any or all of these rights can be licensed, sold or donated to another party. You do not need to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office for it to be automatically protected by copyright law (registration does have benefits – see “What can you do if someone else is using your content?” Q&A below).

Let’s take a look at these rights in more detail.

The copyright owner has the right to reproduction. This gives the copyright owner control over who can or cannot reproduce their work. If someone copied this guide and pasted it on their own site without my permission, that would violate my copyright.

The copyright owner has the right to derivation. This gives the copyright owner control over who can or cannot make derivative works. If you take a screenshot of  part of an image, or translate this post into another language and publish it without permission,that would violate my copyright.

The copyright owner has the right to distribution. This gives the copyright owner control over who can or cannot share their work, including sale, import/export, and commercial trade. If you share this guide as part of an eBook, for example, without permission,that would violate my copyright.

The copyright owner has the right to public display. This gives the copyright owner control over who can or cannot post their works publicly, including online. If you share someone else’s work without permission in public, including online, that would be a copyright violation.

The copyright owner has the right to sell, transfer, or license their rights. This gives the copyright owner the right to legally appoint someone else as the copyright holder or to grant someone else permission to use the work.

Copyright laws around the world can differ in significant ways. Most countries are signatories to various international treaties and agreements governing copyright protection, such as the Berne Convention. Under the Berne Convention, if your work is protected by copyright in your own country, then your work is protected by copyright in every other country that signed the Berne Copyright Convention.

What does Copyright protect?

Copyright protects works such as image, writing, software code, photographs, poetry, movies, music, video games, videos, plays, paintings, sheet music, recorded music performances, novels, sculptures, photographs, choreography, and architectural designs.

To be protected by copyright, a work must be original and “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” This means that the work must exist in physical form. A tangible medium includes paper (even a napkin or cardboard will do) and digital storage.

The work must also be the result of at least some creative effort by the author. For example, simply listing people’s phone numbers in a phone book’s white pages isn’t sufficiently creative (and as you’ll read below, you can’t protect facts).

Does Copyright protect ideas?

No. Copyright doesn’t protect an idea, system or process. You would need to obtain patent protection for those.

For example, if your small business is creating software programs, you would generally be unable to protect under copyright law the algorithms, methods, systems, ideas or functions of software. Your code, however, is protected – nobody can sell or distribute your code without your permission. Allowing people to copyright ideas would thwart the purpose of copyright law (to encourage people to create new work).

Copyright also does not protect facts (regardless of how long it took to uncover such facts). For example, anyone is free to use information included in a book about the discovery of America or about how a television works, if they express that information using their own words.

Does a work have to be registered for it to be copyrighted?

No. Many marketers mistakenly believe that because an image was found on Google, Bing or another search engine or if it doesn’t have a copyright symbol, it’s probably not copyrighted. This is dangerous. If you didn’t take the photo yourself, it doesn’t belong to you and you may not have the right to use it.

Nor can you confirm whether a work is protected by copyright by checking whether that work is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. That’s not how copyright law works. The moment an author creates an image, writes a story, creates a new song, they automatically have a copyright to that work. Nothing else needs to be done to have a copyright in a work (this is different from trademarks and patents, which do require the owner to register the work and to pay a registration fee). On the other hand, you do need to register a work with the Copyright Office in order to enforce your copyright in a court of law in the U.S.

How Long Does a Copyright Last?

All works published in the United States before 1923 are in the public domain (which means you can use such works freely). According to the U.S. Copyright Office:

The term of copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors. To determine the length of copyright protection for a particular work, consult chapter 3 of the Copyright Act (title 17 of the United States Code). More information on the term of copyright can be found in Circular 15a, Duration of Copyright, and Circular 1, Copyright Basics.

What is a “Work-Made-For-Hire”?

The phrase “work-for-hire” comes from U.S. copyright law. It refers to the original work of an employee or independent contractor/consultant, within the scope of their job or assignment (copyright ownership automatically belongs to the employer).

Remember that the author of an original work owns the copyright to that work. When a company hires an independent contractor (to write a blog post, create a video, develop software, etc.), the parties need to determine what rights will transfer from the contractor to the company. If the parties want the work by the independent contractor to be work-for-hire – in which case full rights would transfer to the client, they must specifically state so in a written agreement (more about this in my free ebook – Contracts For Designers Who Hate Contracts) and the work must fall within one of nine categories :

1. A contribution to a collective work (such as a magazine, an anthology or an encyclopedia)
2. A work that is part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work (such as a website or multimedia project)
3. A translation
4. A supplement prepared as an adjunct to a work created by another author (a foreword, an appendix, or charts)
5. A compilation (a new arrangement of pre-existing works, such as a catalog or book containing different posts)
6. An instructional text (literary, pictorial or graphic)
7. A test
8. Answer material for a test
9. An atlas

If the work doesn’t fit into one of the nine categories, or the parties don’t execute a written document specifying that the work is “work-for-hire”, it’s not work-for-hire. In that case, the contractor would continue to own the copyright for the work. That’s one reason why every project on crowdSPRING is protected by a customized legal agreement that includes work-for-hire provisions.

What is “Fair Use”?

The “fair use” section of the Copyright Act places limitations and exceptions on an owner’s copyright in the form of commentary, news reporting, teaching, archiving, academic research, and search engines. According to the U.S. Copyright Office:

Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by permitting the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. Section 107 of the Copyright Act provides the statutory framework for determining whether something is a fair use and identifies certain types of uses—such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research—as examples of activities that may qualify as fair use.  Section 107 calls for consideration of the following four factors in evaluating a question of fair use:

Whether or not something is “fair use” is largely up to the courts. The U.S. Copyright Office maintains a comprehensive index of federal cases dealing with fair-use.

There is a four-part test typically used to determine if use is fair use. Ask yourself these four questions before you deem your use of someone else’s work to be fair use:

• What is the purpose and character of the use of the work?
• What is the nature of the copyrighted work?
• What part of the work was used compared to the whole?
• What is the effect of the use of the work on the potential value or market of the original copyrighted work?

To learn more about fair use, read this guide from Stanford.

What is “copyright infringement”?

Copyright infringement is the unauthorized use of copyrighted works. This happens when content (including writing or images) are taken from Google, another post or article (or from pretty much anywhere) and used without permission from the original author. In such cases, the copyright holder can sue the person or organization who used the content without permission.

Copyright infringement occurs whenever someone makes copies or commercially exploits a work without the copyright owner’s permission.

Some marketers mistakenly believe that as long as they change someone else’s work by 20 percent, they avoid copyright infringement. This is plainly untrue. There is no 20 percent rule. Infringement is not a mathematical calculation. The standard for infringement is whether the second work is “substantially similar” to the original work.

“Substantially similar” means that an average person viewing the two works would recognize that the “artistic expression” in one was copied from the other. “Artistic expression” means the specific artistic choices and details that go into a work, such as how the work is composed and rendered, but not general concepts such as subject matter or similar artistic style.

Here are some examples of infringement:

• A marketer copies someone else’s blog post or article and changes 25 percent of it.
• A marketer uses someone else’s image in their blog post or article (even if you give credit to that person) without permission.
• An illustrator makes a drawing from a photograph. Photographs are fully protected as copyrighted works. If you copy the artistic expression of a photograph, e.g., the choice of subject matter, lighting, point of view, composition, etc., you have infringed the copyright in the photograph.
• A marketing campaign uses slogans, images and page designs similar to those used by someone else.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative commons is a licensing scheme created to permit creators to have some control over how their material is used, while still offering the works freely to the general public. Some restrictions on a creative commons license include a simple attribution link for any taken images or a stipulation that the image not be used for commercial purposes. Read creative commons licenses carefully before using the material in your marketing campaign. You can find creative commons images on Flickr or by searching the Creative Commons site.

Be careful. If you use an image or creative work with a Creative Commons license on it, the person who applied for that license might not actually be the copyright owner. That means the Creative Commons license is meaningless and you could be infringing on the real owner’s copyright if you use it in your marketing.

Can you use a copyrighted work with the permission from the owner?

Yes. If you secure written permission from the copyright holder, you can use the copyrighted work. When in doubt, always ask.

Can you use a copyrighted work with the permission from the owner if you make no money from your blog?

No. Using someone else’s work without permission is copyright infringement, whether you make money from it or not. Such use might, however, influence whether what you did is considered “fair use” by a court, or how much money the court awards in damages.

Can you safely use an image from a search engine?

No. You shouldn’t use a random image you find online unless the copyright owner has given you written permission to do so (or has licensed such content for use under, for example, a Creative Commons license), or unless you’ve purchased the content. Even if you don’t make money on your site, using someone else’s content without permission violates copyright law.

You can specifically search for images that can be used commercially. For example, Google’s advanced image search lets you specify usage rights, including looking solely for images available for commercial use. You can do the same on Bing.

What if you downloaded the image from a  site that said the image was free to use?

Copyright infringement is a “strict liability” offense. If you use someone else’s copyrighted work without permission, you’re liable (even if you thought it was OK to use it). You might be able to shift liability to the site you got the image from, but you’ll still have to show up in court if the owner sues.

Can you safely use an image from a stock photo site?

It depends. You need to carefully review the site’s license terms.

Can you safely use an image from a public domain repository?

Yes. Works that exist in the public domain once had copyrights but those copyrights have expired or have been forfeited. You can get public domain images through a public domain repository.

Does copyright law protect only works created by U.S. citizens?

No. U.S. copyright law protect works created by U.S. citizens and also protects, as a result of an international copyright agreement that the U.S. joined in 1989 – the Berne Convention – works protected by copyright laws in over 100 other countries around the world.

How long does copyright protection last?

The answer depends on the country. The following map gives you a general sense of copyright protections around the world.

Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_copyright-terms.jpg

What is the CAN-SPAM Act?

Most experienced marketers know that email marketing is a powerful and inexpensive way to run promotions and stay fresh in customers’ minds. Not all marketers understand the many pitfalls of email marketing, however. For example, some marketers buy third-party email lists, send promotional content people don’t want to read, and do so at a frequency that many consider spamming. This is a sure way to get on a blacklist, and also might violate the CAN-SPAM act.

The CAN-SPAM Act, signed into law in 2003, established national standards in the United States for sending commercial e-mail. There are a few key clauses in that Act that you should pay particular attention to:

1. Unsubscribing: All emails must have a visible and easy to use “unsubscribe” link or button, and all requests must be honored within 10 days. What’s more, opt-out lists can be used only for actually opting out users, not to further spam them.

I have a particular pet peeve with companies that require me to enter my email to unsubscribe from an email list. I always mark such emails as spam. Make unsubscribing as easy as possible. It seems counter-intuitive, but in the long run, will always be the better approach.

2. Content: All form lines must be accurate, and subject lines must reflect the content inside the email. You can’t send an email with the title “10 Tips To Market Better” but have the email loaded solely with Viagra links. Businesses also must include a legitimate address or PO Box. Additionally, if the content is for adults, the message must be clearly labeled to reflect this.

3. Sending Behavior: Email marketing messages can’t be sent through an open relay, nor can they be sent to a harvested address or contain a false header.

What can you do if someone else is using your content?

First, consider registering your creative works with the US Copyright Office. It might not be worth it for you to register every single blog post, but consider registering the works you’ve put a lot of time and effort into, like whitepapers, infographics, videos, or even very thorough well-researched articles. You could even register a group of blog posts as a compilation.

Registration will give you additional benefits in the event someone uses your work without permission. One big benefit: you can sue them. Another, if you register a creative work within three months of publication: you can sue for “statutory damages,” meaning you don’t have to prove that you actually lost a specific amount of money as the result of someone else’s using your work, which is tough for most people to prove.

Next, contact the person using your work and ask him or her to stop. That’s typically my first step, since so many people genuinely have no idea that what they’re doing is illegal.

You can also send a more formal “cease and desist” letter detailing their unauthorized use and demanding that they take down any infringing content or you’ll be forced to sue them.

If the infringement happens on Facebook or Twitter, report the infringer to that site.

What if you have a question that isn’t answered in this guide?

If you have a question that isn’t answered in this guide, please leave a comment and I’ll consider revising the guide to include your question (and an answer).

Please remember that legal information is not the same as legal advice. This post may not address all relevant business or legal issues that are unique to your situation and you should always seek legal advice from a licensed attorney.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this clothing project.

Let us start the slow clap for rudyy. Check out more great work on rudyy’s profile page.

Nicely done, rudyy, nicely done!

Image Source: Flickr

Marketing has long been a space dominated by conversations about demographics. Ask someone in the field to describe their target audience, and the most consistent elements will be rather general and ubiquitous delineations we apply to people: gender, age, income, career, and the like. This information is, undoubtedly, important, if only because data on such groups and their behavior is far more readily available. And at the end of the day, some customization is better than none.

But when it comes to design, demographics can fall woefully short in terms of generating meaningful insights. Not every 30-something woman making a healthy living as an accountant feels and thinks the same way, and while design is most certainly an element of a platform or application’s function, it’s also a form of psychological influence via the aesthetic. Demographics, unfortunately, don’t tell us much about psychology — not reliably, at least.

The psychology of a 30 year old female accountant with six kids, a strict Catholic upbringing, recent losses in the family, and an underwater mortgage is going to be different than that of a 30 year old female accountant who has never married, owns her condo outright, subscribes to pluralism, and is a proponent of marijuana legalization. On paper, they’re part of the same group. In life, they have very, very, very different motivations, preferences, pain points, and perceptions of reward.

In theory, one could get intensely granular on demographics and try to come up with a rudimentary psychological profile for the buyer. But in order for that to occur in most cases, one would have to focus in myopic fashion on a sliver of an audience, which isn’t very useful when you need to design something for use by your entire audience.

No, if you want your design to really resonate with your audience, ditch the demographics in favor of psychographics.

While demographics looks at relatively static and quantifiable characteristics, psychographics pay attention to the behaviors, interests, attitudes, and lifestyles of the individuals in question. The goal is not to determine who someone is, but how they are. And given that a user experience is, at the end of the day, how someone interacts with your brand via a specific medium, understanding how they typically behave and make decisions is of much greater value than what buckets they might fall into on a census.

There is, however, a reason that psychographics are not widely utilized in marketing, at least not in a systematic fashion: the data is notoriously difficult to collect. Site usage data reflects what happened, but not why. Questionnaires and surveys can be a challenge to construct in a way that provides answers you need, especially since you might not know what you need until it’s staring you in the face. And when you try to decipher this information, your own assumptions can taint the interpretation, leading to faulty conclusions.

The only way leveraging psychographics in your UX design attempts works is if you commit to making UX design a process instead of a destination. That idea might be off-putting to some at first, but those who have been in the game long enough know that this framework is the one most likely to yield a consistently positive user experience anyway. Products change, services morph, trends swell and ebb. If your approach to UX design is “one and done”, your results won’t be durable anyway.

So how can you start using psychographics in your UX planning and design?

1. Start at the source: your customers. Though it will likely take time and research, craft a survey that gets to the emotional and environmental triggers behind their decisions. Ask questions about what their biggest concerns are, what they like best about what you have to offer, what they think could be improved, under what circumstances they find themselves in need of what you have to offer. Ask questions that aren’t obvious, like what they like to do for fun, what sort of music they listen to, what their favorite TV show is. Learn about them as people instead of just as customers, and you’ll be in a better position to cater to their needs and wants.

2. Take it a step further and get in touch directly. Ask your most loyal customers if you can get on the phone with them for a while, offering a discount or a gift in return for their time. Not only is this a fantastic segueway to securing a testimonial for your brand, but it gives you a chance to get to know the people who love you most on a personal level. But don’t build yourself an echo chamber. Consider reaching out to people who were not happy with your brand but otherwise fit your target demos. Sometimes their feedback can be the most valuable.

3. Layer this feedback with data on site usage to get clarity on the “why” behind the “what.” For instance, let’s say you’re a SaaS company, and you have a five page registration process. Registration tends to drop off after the third page. Your assumption might be that the registration process is too long or contains too many clicks. But if you receive feedback during your outreach indicating discomfort with disclosing specific bits of information, you know how to truncate it in order to yield better results while still collecting valuable data from the registrants. Context matters, particularly when you’re trying to use data to guide UX design for websites and applications.

4. Keep that feedback loop going. Every single customer should receive a request for feedback once money has exchanged hands. That feedback should be consistently reviewed relative to site usage statistics to identify shifts in audience preferences and opportunities for improvement. Targeted outreach should continue on a regularly scheduled basis. Keep striving to learn, and you’ll keep on growing.

5. Look for insight outside of your bubble. There are literally dozens of academic journals publishing research regarding consumer behavior and perceptions relative to marketing activities. While this research might not provide a road map in terms of what to do next, it can help you look at things from a new angle, possibly uncovering solutions you hadn’t yet considered.

6. Test, test, test, test, test, and then test some more. Data can be and often is incomplete or inadequate in terms of drawing firm conclusions about user desires and choices. Before putting all your eggs in one basket, test variations intended to adapt to inferences drawn from available data. This can help you make changes without putting your brand at extreme risk.

You can do better than standard demographics. Supercharge your design approach today by integrating psychographics in a meaningful, enduring manner.

Image Source: Shutterstock

It’s being called the “Golden Age of Podcasting.”

For those who’ve been in love with the medium years, it’s about time. The concept was born in the 1980’s, truly getting its legs with the dawn of the internet. At that point, it was primarily just on demand talk radio. MP3 players changed the game by making content accessible on the go, and contributions from Tristan Louis, Dave Winer, and Adam Curry made the content consistently available via RSS. In 2004, journalist Ben Hammersley referred to the booming medium as “podcasting.” The term stuck, and in 2005, “podcast” was the New Oxford English Dictionary’s “word of the year.”

As Apple and Yahoo! launched platforms which allowed listeners to subscribe to and organize their favorite podcasts, use exploded. Ricky Gervais broke records in 2007 when his show got 260k downloads per episode in its first month. Adam Corrolla set a Guinness World Record in 2011 after his show was downloaded almost 60 million times in a two year time period. By 2013, Apple was boasting more than 1 billion podcast subscribers using their platform. In 2014, Sarah Koenig launched the show Serial, which became a pop culture phenomenon. It topped the charts on iTunes before the first episode ever formally hit the web, and stayed there for three months — long after the first season had ended.

Today, more than 1/3 of Americans say that they have listened to podcasts at some point in their lives, while 25% say they have listened to a podcast in the last month. That’s significant because it indicates truly explosive growth in the medium — a 75% increase since 2013. To put this all in context: the same number of Americans using Twitter are listening to podcasts.

Talk about a MASSIVE audience. Of course it was going to pique the interest of advertisers, who have quickly seen strong results from their initial efforts beyond the “offer code” standard rolls. As Digiday reported:

While podcast advertising is dominated by direct response advertisers, some prominent brands have advertised on podcasts, including Google, Ford, PayPal and HBO. And more should join in, said McCrery, pointing to ad effectiveness studies Podtrac commissioned from independent third parties, including GfK, Future Research Consulting and TNS. Podcast advertising results in 62 percent average unaided ad recall, an 81 percent average increase in product or service awareness, a 187 average increase in usage intent, and a 69 percent average brand favorability rating.

Despite the explosions in podcast visibility and the demonstrated effectiveness of podcast advertising, dollars have been slow to follow. In 2015, brands shelled out roughly $31 million for podcast advertising spots. That’s, frankly, a drop in the bucket relative to traditional radio ad buys, which accounted for $17.6 billion in the same year.

The upside of all that, for brands at least, is that podcasts represent a wild, wild west of advertising, boasting relatively low costs and untold potential performance — or the ever rare low risk/high reward scenario. If you’re looking to reach a new audience, podcast advertising is the way to go right now. Why?

Think about it: these audiences are super engaged. This isn’t a scenario where maybe the radio is just on when you get in the car or the TV is playing in the background or they’re scrolling quickly past a banner ad. These are not passive consumers. These listeners have to actively go out and search out these shows. They have to take an affirmative action by subscribing. And the act of listening to something deliberately in this sense requires paying attention. And with varied ad placement — pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll — you’ve got multiple opportunities to get in front of them.

What’s more, the nature of these ads is very different from nearly any other medium available. In most cases, you’re not responsible for a whole lot of creation. Though some brands (Mailchimp, for instance) will create specific ads for play on podcasts, a lot of times you’ll see the podcast creators developing their own unique and relevant ways of integrating plugs for their advertisers.

Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson, for example, host a comedy show called 2 Dope Queens, and while their plugs for brands like Casper Mattress are always distinct, they are presented as funny banter between two very funny ladies. The No Sleep Podcast, a show featuring eerily told scary stories, recently featured a spot for meal ingredient delivery service Blue Apron that played like another scary story on their episode.

Showrunners have an incentive to create impactful spots on their episodes for their advertisers in most cases, and as a result, brands get a pretty massive bang for their buck in this medium: exposure + audience-tailored creative.

What’s more, podcast advertising offers the ability to seriously tailor your exposure to a relevant audience. While there are shows with very broad audiences, like Serial or 2 Dope Queens, others are much more specific. There are podcasts on almost any topic you can imagine, from business shows hosted by influencers like Tim Ferriss, Pat Flynn, and more to parenting podcasts like The Shameless Mom Academy and Mama Bear Dares. In almost every case, you can find a show whose sizable audience directly aligns with your own — something few other mediums can offer in an engaging manner.

Even better? There are loads of organizations, like Midroll, that have popped up in recent years and can help get you the placements that work best for your goals.

Has your company tried podcast advertising before? What were the results like? Let us know in the comments.

Image Source: Synergy Global

Hiring people is hard. There’s a lot that goes into the decision. From recognizing the need to justifying the costs, sifting through applicants and interviewing standouts, negotiating contracts and onboarding new hires — it’s a complex process with a lot of room for error.

The stakes are even higher for startups. Every penny spent has got to delivery a return, and new hires take a whole lot of pennies. What’s more, those new hires, if they’re worth their salt, are probably going to turn around and ask you to spend even more pennies to make it possible for them to do their job. This is especially true when it comes to marketing and design.

But this is where crowdsourcing can help minimize risk and maximize return.

Wait a minute, you might be thinking. Crowdsourcing as a talent acquisition strategy? Since when?

Since… well, always. There are three distinct ways using crowdsourcing platforms for your creative needs can help you better manage how you scale your team.

1. Temporary talent stop gaps — Let’s face it. Sometimes a startup simply does not have the budget to hire a designer full-time. Sometimes they don’t have the money to hire a traditional freelancer. In these cases, crowdsourcing platforms allow them to fill their design needs at a minimal cost while benefiting from the competition associated with crowd contributions.

2. Longer-term Freelance Relationships — One of the really cool things about creative crowdsourcing platforms is that they are a seriously deep talent pool where you’re exposed to tremendous professionals you might not otherwise have been able to reach with your recruitment efforts or in your own searches for assistance on the web. Once you’ve identified some of those professionals who you really admire, crowdsourcing platforms can allow for one-on-one work with the talent you trust in a secure fashion. No need for you negotiate payment methods or create your own contracts; the platform takes care of all the logistics for you.

3. Employment Auditions — Perhaps one of the most underutilized features of creative crowdsourcing platforms is the leveraging of the talent pool for direct hiring purposes. Not only do these projects let you see the design chops of the participants, but they showcase things like communication skills, receptiveness to criticism, work pace, and more. These are all points of evaluation that can be hard to figure out during a traditional hiring process. Why go through the hassle of posting a job ad and sorting through resumes when you’ve got so many intensely talented folks right in front of you, ready and eager to prove themselves?

In other words, yes, crowdsourcing is a great way to get the creative results that you need. But to only see those benefits is a narrow view of such platforms. It’s also another arrow in your talent management quiver, and one you should use regularly.

Image Source: NY Daily News

We’ve never experienced a U.S. presidential race like the one we’re living through today. To say that this election is unprecedented is an understatement. But while, in this polarized climate, the debates may seem more like a sadistic sideshow than anything resembling productive rhetoric, the debates do offer important lessons for business owners.

Yes, you read that right.

Those of us in the business world may not be arguing about Wikileaks and assault allegations, but we are familiar with the tension that has underscored these high-stakes political squabbles. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that a lot of meetings actually end up becoming debates, because they’re usually used to make decisions from a pool of opposing opinions anyway. And even if they aren’t necessarily relevant to the way you or your company structures meetings, the presidential debates can certainly teach us a lot about the way that we interact with each other in group settings.

With the final presidential debate of the 2016 election cycle in the books, we’re left to reflect upon the aftermath of three contentious, momentous evenings. They resulted in large amounts of memes and Twitter jokes… but not a whole lot of resolution or confidence in the candidates. So what can we learn from these debates that can translate into our work lives?

Listen more, interject less.

While it may be tempting to offer up your opinion or counter an argument when you disagree, it’s usually better to wait until the other person is finished speaking. Then, you can retort with your own ideas and use up your speaking time with persuasion rather than a mini debate over who should be talking.

According to articles by Time and Bustle, Donald Trump interrupted Hillary Clinton a total of 55 times during the first debate, and 17 times during the second debate. On the other hand, Clinton only interrupted Trump 17 times in the first debate, and once in the second debate (though she did interrupt the moderators a few times in the second debate as well). This got a tiny bit better in this last one, with Trump only (only?) interrupting Clinton 37 times, and Clinton interrupting him 9 times. 

Looking at a poll and analysis done by Politico, Clinton won both times of the first two debates according to voters, and initial polling from last night seems to indicate she won again. However, the frustration levels of those watching were higher with both candidates due to the interruptions. And the moderators had to interrupt several times in the second debate both for time and for content management, making the candidates seem less mature. The issue was that every time the candidates would interrupt each other, they weren’t actively listening to each other, which was reflected each time Anderson Cooper or Martha Raddatz had to tell them to take a step back and calm down in Missouri, or how often you could hear Charles Wallace stammering in the background yesterday evening. The interruptions would come off as less mature than the comments themselves– even if they were ridiculously off topic.

LESSON: Though it can be tempting to force your voice above those with whom you disagree and stop them from finishing their thought, that won’t be perceived as powerful. It will be seen as childish. Be better than that.

Be aware of your body language.

Last night was a traditional presidential debate, with podiums and pomp and circumstance. And while many thousands of words could be written about the nonverbals seen on stage in Las Vegas (some have already started), it was the second debate that will be remembered as a cautionary tale regarding body language during public presentations.

The second presidential debate was a town hall debate, which allowed Clinton and Trump to move around the stage and direct their answers to specific people. Town hall debates are meant to be more fluid and natural than speaking at podiums, allowing the candidates to better connect with the audience and undecided voters. But at the second presidential debate, there was a clear difference between the types of body language that Trump and Clinton employed.

Each time Clinton walked towards whomever she was speaking to, Trump would slowly walk up behind her, standing at an unusually close proximity for a town hall debate. In an article for the New York Times, public speaking body language expert Ruth Sherman gave her analysis:

The proximity to Clinton with which he stood behind her at certain points was particularly threatening…This was a conscious assertion of power…He was very distracting while she was speaking — walking around, fidgeting, swaying, leaning on his chair.

The threatening nature of Trump’s body language encouraged viewers to make a deeper connection to his predatory behavior of the then recently released Billy Bush video, which definitely didn’t help his poll numbers. By trying to exert power, Trump did the exact opposite. Instead of trying to tower over Clinton, Trump could have assumed a power pose to signal successful tendencies, or employed one of her techniques.

Much like body language experts suggest, Clinton listened attentively and kept her body “open” and facing the people she was addressing. This made her seem likeable. We can mimick her body language in meetings in order to convey a similar connection, which fosters likeability and interest. Stillness, leaning forward, slow nodding, and patience are all aspects of Clinton’s movements that we can employ– and everything that Trump didn’t do (which hurt him).

LESSON: Be aware of your nonverbals in presentations and group settings. Some experts believe that up to 93% of all communication is nonverbal, so if you’re not deliberate about your body language and movements, you could undermine everything you’re trying to accomplish.
Be nice(r).

Of course the debates are competitive, as is the workplace– but cruelty rarely succeeds over kindness in persuasion. Time and time again, we saw both Clinton and Trump engage in psychological warfare. Psychological warfare is the use of tactics to destroy a person’s morale and willingness to fight. Dr. Isaiah Hankel, author of Black Hole Focus: How Intelligent People Can Create a Powerful Purpose for Their Lives, explains:  

Very often, these people use the power of suggestion and other psychological strategies to throw you off balance. Once you’re off balance, they will seize the opportunity to outmaneuver you.

During the presidential debates, we saw a majority of the psychological being instigated by Trump when he would attack Clinton personally, such as threatening to put her into jail for a resolved case. While Clinton would often take the high road, she would sometimes play into his negative tactics, too, pointing out everything he has done poorly when the question focused on her plans specifically. This may have worked to a marginal point, but scientific research proves that psychological warfare is typically ineffective to influence behavior, meaning those attacks were basically just wasting time. A 2012 study discussed psychological warfare in terms of intense suggestion:

Deliberate and non deliberate suggestions can influence cognitions and behaviors in surprising ways. Sometimes suggestions are helpful and improve our cognitions and behaviors, but at other times they are harmful. Suggestions can create response expectancies: the myriad ways in which we anticipate responding automatically to various situations.

The intense suggestion that Clinton and Trump employed caused them to respond more reactively each time, which was part of the response expectancy that they had created. That’s why it was so great when undecided voter Ken Bone asked the candidates to say something nice about each other. He broke the vicious cycle and served as a reminder that looking for the good in a situation can help kick start or restart creativity, productivity, or simply just shake things up. And we’ve all been in a meeting when we need a Ken Bone, someone to recharge the group and turn everything upside down in order to get out of a rut.

LESSON: Though it might be tempting to strike back when someone turns petty in the next meeting, hold your tongue, count to ten, and respond with a cool head. It’s more likely to get you where you need to go.

The last presidential debate is finally in the books, and many of us, exhausted by the 2016 election cycle, are happy to be done with the circus. But if you’re feeling brave, maybe go back and take another look at them — not for their platforms, but to really study their communication missteps and wins. By watching two people compete for one of the most visible communicator positions in the world, by learning from their mistakes, we can learn how to better handle ourselves in group settings at work without falling into the same traps. And we can learn how to be the person to turn everything around and look through a different perspective… something these debates could use a lot more of.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project.

Let us start the slow clap for JMJ. Check out more great work on JMJ’s profile page.

Nicely done, JMJ, nicely done!

We’ve heard it before. We’ve probably said it before. It’s an all too common and not at all helpful framework for evaluating design:

“I don’t know what I like until I see it.”

Many entrepreneurs feel this way when writing a creative brief for a creative project. For most, it’s difficult to express your visual preferences in words, and even harder when you don’t know what those visual preferences are.

Rather than waiting for the first round of designs to hone in on what you do and don’t like, save valuable time on projects by gathering inspiration from these design showcase websites. With a collection of inspiration and a little guidance, your creative brief will be more dialed in and both you and the designer will be speaking the common language of design.

Here are some great inspiration resources for a variety of design projects:

Graphic Design Project: Dribbble

Dribbble calls itself “show and tell for designers” and their community of over 450,000 designers does that on a daily basis.

Check the “Popular” section for trending designs or get more specific with Dribbble’s search or extensive “Tags” section. To get a better idea of how successful brands utilize design, browse the “Team” section which features designs from Google, Spotify, Mailchimp, and other top companies.

Landing Page Design Project: Lapa

Lapa launched a year ago and has quickly become a favorite destination for landing page design inspiration.  Unlike Dribble, Lapa’s team curates each submission so the focus is on quality more than quantity.

You can sort the landing pages by category, but with a little over 300 landing pages currently featured on the site, it doesn’t hurt to browse through the entire collection. You never know what may speak to you when it comes to looking for design inspiration.

Email Design Project: ReallyGoodEmails

Really Good Emails is just that: a collection of really good emails submitted by designers and customers and reviewed by RGE’s team. Though the team claims they are “quite picky” with the emails they feature, the site has been around for almost 3 years so there is quite a bit of material for drawing inspiration.

Scroll through the new entries for a bit before viewing some of their top categories (we recommend “Welcome” “Transactional” and “Announcement”). If you’re feeling academic, RGE’s blog is a great resource for getting better at sending emails.

Make the inspiration work for you

Once you have collected your inspiration, it’s important to look for some commonalities between the designs you like. Be on the lookout for the following elements of design so that you and the designer are on the same page during the creative process.

It’s a lot easier for a designer to hone in on your preferences when you point out exactly what you like about each design rather than expecting them to decipher it for you:

Color

Why it’s important: Different colors say different things about your brand. Researchers in a widely-cited study titled The Impact of Color on Marketing found that 90% of snap decisions people make about products could be based on color alone. With that in mind, it is key that you have input on the color chosen for your design.

Questions to consider: Are you selecting inspiration with a lot of bright colors or more subdued ones? Are most of the designs you like entirely black and white? Do you find yourself selecting designs with the same color over and over again?

Style

Why it’s important: Your brand’s values are communicated visually through the style selected for a design. When selecting inspiration, make sure that the design expresses values that are core to your brand. Helping designers connect your brand values with visual examples eliminates any confusion during the creative process.

Questions to consider: Does this design “feel” like something your company would create? Are these designs more classic or modern? Feminine or masculine? Do the designs convey a playful tone or a serious one? Are the messages in your favorite designs normally abstract or literal?

You’re on your way

The more rounded out your creative brief, the better the submissions will be. Be sure to include your newly-found inspiration and preferences in the “Any other info” section of your creative brief to help creatives understand your style before they start working on your project. With the right input including inspiration and an understanding of your preferences, creatives can focus all their time developing a standout design for your business.

Now that you are ready to rock your creative brief, start a Design Project to enlist the help of thousands of designers that can help convey your brand’s message. Design projects get 110+ entries on average, making it easy to compare your options and choose the perfect design to help your brand stand out.

When it comes to logo design, the conventional thinking has been to aim for something that represents what you want people to associate with your brand: selecting a conservative font to convey traditional values, choosing specific colors to connect you with certain emotions, opting for modern graphics to frame a company as cutting edge, and so on. We want our designs to establish us as the solution to a problem.

Image Source:EAP Foundation

These assumptions have been tried and tested by time, generating solid results for those who incorporate them into their design strategies. But… you know what they say about what happens when you assume.

One researcher at Kansas University questioned whether this common branding tactic was truly best practice or just a function of habit.

“Coming from a psychology perspective,” says Dr. Noelle Nelson, a professor focusing on marketing and consumer behavior, “we know that it’s not always a sure thing that people are going to take the meaning of any visual design and then apply it where ever we think it should.”

Her recent research focused on how consumers view problem-oriented and solution-oriented designs, what inferences they associate with the designs, and how those inferences get applied. Participants in the study were shown custom made designs for companies coming from different perspectives, and the responses were surprising.

“We found that, in the case of safety-related products, the first reaction a marketer would probably go with would be to design a logo that looks like it means safety. And what people actually do is apply that meaning to their environment, which makes them think that they don’t need the safety products quite as much,” Dr. Nelson explains.

To some end, though, this depends on the company. Consumers pay different levels of attention to brands depending on the space in which they operate. The calculus also differs depending on the age of the brand.

“If there’s room to add information, like in the case of new products and new companies, you’ll want the logo to say something about the brand or the product,” comments Dr. Nelson.

Though these insights are certainly valuable, perhaps one of the most important takeaways from this conversation was that marketers in the private sector should probably pay more attention to research going on in academia, particularly as it relates to psychology.

“A lot of this psychological research already exists. When we apply these principles to our marketing, we can understand why consumers behave a certain way. A little bit more understanding of what consumers are like instead of just what a segment does would be beneficial,” Dr. Nelson insists.

“Marketers don’t think to look in the academic journals first, or they think that because it applies to one small context that it doesn’t have implications for their company. What I would like to see is a little more interaction between the practical side and the academic side so that the research can have a greater impact on what people are doing in their companies.”

In other words, it’s probably time to seek out more than data points.

It brings to mind the old financial disclaimer: past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. So much of our strategic approach and many of the articles we pass around as marketers rely on what data from the past suggests. But with psychological research, we can move past acting based on past performance and really focus on generating future results because we have a better understanding of why that past performance was generated in the first place.

The biggest trend in marketing in 2016 has been the idea of “agile marketing.” Workfront, a project management solution provider, defines it as:

A tactical marketing approach in which teams identify and focus their collective efforts on high value projects, complete those projects cooperatively, measure their impact and then continuously and incrementally improve the results over time.

The idea isn’t new, but the idea of it becoming a mainstream is. And make no mistake; it is. In a survey conducted by Workfront and Marketing Profs, roughly 30% of marketers are already using an agile methodology in their departments.

Image Source: Shutterstock

Still, agile marketing can be intimidating, especially if you’re used to quarterly plans and static budgets. But in no arena is the impact more strenuous than the one already most subjective and onerous: design.

Why?

Though there are a variety of methodologies that can be implemented with agile marketing, there is one approach that sticks out as the favorite. As Marketer Gizmo explains:

When they hear the phrase “agile marketing,” most people think of the Scrum methodology. Featuring sprints, daily standup meetings, and a public “to-do” list known as the Backlog, Scrum is one of the most popular frameworks for implementing departmental agility.

The goal of Scrum is to provide a framework that creates a culture of transparency, inspection, and adaptation while making it easier for team members to produce consistently great products.

Although undeniably useful, Scrum was originally created for software development.

And though there are ways one can adapt Scrum or any other methodologies to fit the needs of their team, even with adaptation, agile marketing presents several risks in terms of design quality.

The whole concept of “sprinting” can create an atmosphere of pressure that leads to substandard work. The idea here is that you’re trying to push the project along at a fast clip — or, as Facebook (used) to put it, “Move fast and break things.” That makes it difficult to generate exemplary, distinctive designs on a consistent basis. If anything, it can lead to design that’s too safe to create significant impact as people reach for what they know.

And though, in theory, those designs can be improved upon as data on the efforts come back to you, speed is still the name of the game, which means brainstorming for fixes can quickly become about small changes, not really moving design to the next level. In the meantime, the impressions have already been made upon the customer, and in some cases, the opportunity there isn’t fully seized because things were rushed.

But as we said earlier, this doesn’t have to be the way things go down. There are two ways that marketers can help themselves out here.

The first is to think hard about the duration of your sprints when it comes to marketing initiatives. Know the limits of your team and where their strengths and weaknesses are, and plan accordingly. Don’t set them up to fail by pushing too hard too fast, because the culture that encourages can hurt you with feelings of discontent and anxiety or by getting you hooked on speed over quality. You can always experiment with shorter sprints as time goes on.

In other words, make sure your team management is agile (in the more conventional sense) as well.

The second is to be willing to extend your experimental inclinations to how you approach design. When you begin a project, it makes sense to complement your team efforts with a crowdsourcing. Using this tactic, you wind up with the design ideas of a team who knows your brand intimately, and dozens of other concepts that can shake your team into thinking boldly. Whether your project calls for well-designed email templates, landing pages that pack a punch in terms of performance, or distinctive promotional products for an upcoming conference initiative, leveraging the crowd can help hedge against the “settling” that can accompany speed.

Agile marketing isn’t going anywhere, and with good reason. The prospect of being able to rapidly respond to an every changing and complex marketplace is an alluring one. Just make sure you’re not sacrificing high quality design in the name of a fad.

Take a deep breath everyone. We’re close to the finish line. The election cycle is almost over.

While that’s probably a deep source relief for many of us, Americans still have one more thing to do… and frankly, they might need a little encouragement to do it.

At crowdSPRING, we believe strongly in the importance of civic engagement. This election has underscored that for us in a really big way. The stakes are high at the federal and state levels, and everyone stands to benefit if voters get off their butts and get to the polls.

That’s where you come in.

We’re launching a very special crowdSPRING project to help get out the vote. Over the course of the next week, we’re asking our creatives to submit their best design ideas encouraging voters to make their voice heard on November 8th. Our only requirements are that the designs be non-partisan and not derogatory. Other than that, the sky is the limit.

But in the spirit of democracy, WE won’t be picking in the winner. Instead, when the first polls open on Election Day, we’ll be posting an album to Facebook containing all eligible designs. Whichever design has the most “likes” by the time the polls close will be selected as the winner in the project, with additional awards given to second and third place.

We can’t wait to see your ideas. Whatchu got?

Click Here to Learn More

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project.

Let us start the slow clap for flinkas. Check out more great work on flinkas’ profile page.

Nicely done, flinkas, nicely done!

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project.

Let us start the slow clap for RobertV. Check out more great work on RobertV’s profile page.

Nicely done, RobertV, nicely done!

Solid design is the key to growing your business. Period. Point Blank. Fin. We could (and probably will) talk until we’re blue in the face on this subject, but we thought it might be helpful to hear it from others as well. So this guest post is the inaugural post in a new series on the crowdSPRING blog highlighting the importance of investing in good design. Why design? The real question is: why not? 

While paperless practices have become more popular over the years, digital technology won’t displace printing in all fields for the foreseeable future. Print jobs can go a long way to further your business, but some people try to save money by avoiding hiring professional designers. Here are a few of the reasons why investing in professional design is key to good print jobs.

Readability

Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of design is ensuring that the intended message reaches the target audience. Designers are trained to create work that is easily readable, and they know how to get key points across effectively. While amateur designers might be able to determine a few key elements of readability, small mistakes are inevitable, and even a minor mistake can lead to current or potential clients or customers missing out on key information. In many cases, simply landing one additional client will more than cover the cost of paying for professional design, making the investment worthwhile.

Capture Attention

Printed material is worthless if it isn’t read, and professional designers know how to capture attention. It’s possible to add some elements to a printed piece without professional experience, but incorporating elements in a cohesive and effective manner requires expertise. Furthermore, it’s important to ensure that attention-grabbing elements don’t interfere with the design’s readability; balancing these two elements is at the core of effective design work. Again, printed pieces are an investment, and the cost of professional work can pay for itself if it leads to more clients or customers.

Professional Impression

When people work with a company, they want to know they’re working with professionals. Investing in professional design shows that your business values professionalism and sends a powerful message to potential clients or customers. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and using a professional designer helps you make it as effective as possible. Investing wisely is key to sustaining and growing your business, and design is no exception.

Avoid Reprinting

After your items have been printed, they can’t be reprinted again without requiring another investment. One of the benefits of professional design is that you can ensure the job is done correctly the first time. It’s easy to make mistakes while designing something for printing, and even small mistakes can make the printed batch effectively worthless. In addition, having to reprint you material leads to a loss of time, which can be especially damaging for time-sensitive events such as sales and promotions. When you pay for professional design, you pay for someone to scrutinize every detail before the job is sent to the printer.

Business owners and managers often try to save a bit of money by doing some of the work themselves. While this can be great for certain tasks, printed material is too important for businesses to avoid hiring professionals. The cost of design work varies, but the investment is worthwhile for businesses of all sizes. Make sure to hire a professional when designing printed material for your business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jessica Kane is a professional writer who has an interest in graphic design, marketing, and printing. She currently writes for 777 Sign, her go to place for Banner stands, custom flags and custom signs printing.

Image Source: Flickr

Maybe it seems a bit early to be talking about the holidays. After all, Halloween was just last week. But realistically, the time to be thinking about how you’re going to capitalize on the time ahead is now. There are more than 25 major religious holidays between November and mid-January every year. Depending on where you live and who your audience is, some of those celebrations may be more prevalent and relevant, but regardless of locale, ’tis the season to make merry, and there’s no reason your brand should be left out of the festivities. How can you join in?

1. The old standby — send specially designed holiday cards to your clients and prospects. It lets them know you’re thinking about them and humanizes your brand by linking it to a very human time of year.

2. Don’t have the physical addresses of your audience? Consider putting together a holiday email blast to send your best wishes digitally. It might not be as personal as a card by snail mail, but it’s still a warm gesture.

3. Stay fresh in the minds of big potential clients by sending them holiday promotional products or samples of your wares in custom holiday packaging to add value and cheer.

4. Consider adding something special to the unboxing experience for your customers by incorporating holiday packaging or small gifts to their shipment. It’ll provide a little boost of joy to the grand unveiling as they open things up, which boosts the odds of them being thoroughly satisfied.

5. Offer holiday-centric promotions. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the week before Christmas, the day after Christmas, and New Years all offer great framing mechanisms for discounts and giveaways, and represent periods of high retail trafficking.

6. Swap out your standard logo for a holiday version. It might just be temporary, but it draws more attention to your brand, makes you memorable, and can bring a smile to your audience’s face.

7. Have a little holiday fun with video. It’s the single most engaging media format out there for social, and a great way to humanize your team. Whether you “elf” yourselves or rewrite a carol or just feature your team members wishing everyone a happy holiday season, it’s a nice way to reach your audience while building your brand equity.

8. Launch a holiday contest to encourage audience interaction with your brand. Ask them to snap pictures of themselves enjoying your product or service while in the holiday spirit and post it to social media with a designated hashtag. Give the recipient of the most likes or retweets a special gift as a reward!

9. Give back this season by donating a portion of your proceeds to an organization in need or offering to match dollar contributions by your customers at checkout to your favorite non-profit.

10. Brainstorm possible campaigns connecting your brand to the themes most frequently associated with the season: merriment, gratitude, love, magic, and family. By linking your brand to such ideas during this time, you get to join in the conversations taking place and keep yourself in the minds of your customers through weeks where they’re probably preoccupied with the holidays.

11. Host a digital holiday party. Ask your audience to tweet images of them celebrating during a designated time, and randomly select folks as winners of special holiday gifts. Join in yourself with pictures of folks in your office celebrating as well.

12. Send your customers branded 2017 calendars before the year is up. Include the traditional holidays, but also mark days important to your brand, encouraging them to head to the site for discounts or purchase tickets to an event.

13. If you’re in the B2B space, skip the traditional box of chocolates. Feed your folks’ sweet tooth by sending branded holiday cookies to their office. It’s something folks will enjoy and remember while those impersonal boxes of chocolates lose brand association in the kitchenette.

How do you plan to leverage the holidays this year? Let us know in the comments! And if you need some design help along the way, we’ve got your back.

We often say that good design helps your business stand out. This isn’t just a hunch, it’s backed by research that has proven the influence that visual appearance has on the decision-making process of customers. According to a widely-cited study on visual appeal, it takes about 50 milliseconds for customers to form an opinion about your design, and in turn, your company. With .05 seconds to make a good impression, selecting the right design for your marketing is often the difference between gaining a new customer or increasing your bounce rate.

One of the major advantages of using crowdSPRING for design is the ability to receive designs from many different perspectives that will speak to your customers in different ways. Though this choice can be empowering for some, for others it can create a difficult decision. If design has such a major impact on the buying process for customers, how can you be sure you picked the right design when only going by your personal preference?

Many times, you can’t. But that’s okay! Using A/B testing, you can leverage multiple designs with your customers to help make sure you are using the perfect design to achieve your marketing goals.

A/B Testing

Most companies with a strong digital marketing presence know not to rely on personal preference when making design decisions. Instead, they utilize A/B testing to deliver variations of designs to their customers and let customer response inform their decisions. The best part? With the right tools, A/B testing is completely seamless for the customers, so companies they can implement the test into their regular marketing activities without missing a beat.

What to Test?

To get started with your own A/B testing, you first need multiple designs. crowdSPRING Design Projects can be set up to award multiple creatives, giving you the opportunity to select as many designs for testing as you’d like.

Two of the best design projects for A/B testing are Email Templates and Landing Pages for a variety of reasons. First, the performance of emails and landing pages is easy to quantify: whereas a logo or illustration is up to interpretation, more clicks on an email or conversions from a landing page cannot be denied.  Second, there are some great tools available that make A/B testing Email Templates and Landing Pages extremely easy.

Email Templates

Marketing Emails are the most effective way to communicate with your customers, and it’s not even close. According to a report by global management firm McKinsey and Company, “E-mail remains a significantly more effective way to acquire customers than social media—nearly 40 times that of Facebook and Twitter combined.”

Though more effective than social media, email requires good design to truly reach its potential for converting customers. Images, placement, and typography all play a role in the effectiveness of an email, so it is important to test what works and what doesn’t with multiple designs.

Most email marketing software allows you to run multiple types of A/B tests including subject lines and send times, but focus only on testing the email’s “content” and keep everything else the same. This will allow you to send 50% of your email list one Email Template, and 50% of your email list the other for an even test. A day after deploying the email, compare metrics like click-through rate (CTR) and conversions to see which template your customers preferred.

Want to dig a little deeper into email A/B testing? Mailchimp has a great guide on using their built-in A/B testing.

Landing Pages

Landing pages allow you to create a custom-tailored experience for your customers based on current marketing campaigns or targeting. According to John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing, “Today, landing pages have simply become a required element in the marketing toolbox for every imaginable business, including local brick and mortar types.”

A/B testing on landing page is a little less straight-forward than splitting your email list in half and sending them two different designs. Landing pages randomly show a variant of the landing page to a customer, who continues to see the same variant of that page on subsequent visits due to cookie tracking. For a fair test, each variant should be given a 50% chance to be shown to customers. According to best practice, over 100 visits to each page is required before making any meaningful assumptions. Once you have enough traffic, compare metrics like click-through rate (CTR), conversions, and bounce rate to see which performed best.

Want to learn more about A/B testing landing pages? Unbounce’s  “What is A/B Testing?” guide is a valuable resource to get you started.

Let The Data Decide

Image courtesy of Mailchimp

At the conclusion of an A/B test, hopefully you feel more confident about which design to continue using for your brand. With a design selected, you can now try A/B testing other elements of your emails and landing pages including messaging, promotions, and pricing to better optimize for your audience. Consider using 1on1 design projects with the winning creative to alter the design for A/B testing, and to create additional marketing materials that align with the winning work.

And just because you found a winner doesn’t mean you should settle for too long. Continue to test new designs to help your brand evolve, using crowdSPRING’s creatives to provide a fresh perspective on your brand and letting data guide your decisions.

You can’t A/B test without some options.  Start a Design Project to enlist the help of thousands of designers that can help convey your brand’s message. Design projects get 110+ entries on average, making it easy to select the perfect options to help your brand stand out.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this book cover project.

Let us start the slow clap for sumit_s. Check out more great work on sumit_s’s profile page.

Nicely done, sumit_s, nicely done!

Solid design is the key to growing your business. Period. Point Blank. Fin. We could (and probably will) talk until we’re blue in the face on this subject, but we thought it might be helpful to hear it from others as well. So this guest post is part of a new series on the crowdSPRING blog highlighting the importance of investing in good design. Why design? The real question is: why not? 

One of the biggest misconceptions of building a company is that a good idea sells itself. In the early days of a company, it’s easy to romanticize the idea that a quality product or service is all that matters. And while it certainly does matter, it’s only a fraction of the picture.

This is not Field of Dreams. You can’t just build something. It’s not enough to be good. You have to look good.

Why? Let’s break it down.

 1. People Appreciate Good Design

Let’s talk about soap. It’s been there for decades and nobody really did anything special until a company called Method came along. All they did to disrupt the entire market of soap was to create a modern brand that people would appreciate. From that, they took over shelf space in major retail stores and became one of the most popular soap brands of 2016.

You shouldn’t be pleasing people with just your product or service, but you need to be getting their attention with design as well. If your competitors are outdated, this is a great way to separate yourself from the competition. Simply use good design and leverage that in your branding and marketing.

 2. Times Are Changing.

As time goes by, the age group that is now relevant for a lot of products has also changed. I look back to all this and I realize that I’m 23 years old and making a lot of decisions on things that I didn’t make a while back. Buying cars, houses, clothes, everyday essentials and so much more is now a responsibility I am accountable for. What I consider acceptable from a branding or design standpoint is very different than what my parents, or my grandparents, for that matter, were okay with.

The same design techniques that worked 20 years ago will not work today because our generation has been exposed to better. As times change, you must adapt. Charles Darwin said it best when he said that it’s not the smartest or the strongest that make it in this world, but rather those who are most willing to change.

 3. Good Design Attracts The Eye.

If your designs are current, modern and impressive, people will just gravitate towards your products. It’s a fact of life. The next time you go to the grocery store, browse a random isle that you never look through and ask yourself which items on the shelves catch your eye first. I guarantee it’ll be the products with phenomenal design, branding and modern packaging.

Creating a successful product, service or website is all about getting eyeballs to it. What if you can spend less money but generate more eye balls just because something looks better than the others? Would you not take the time to invest more upfront to get those kinds of results? That’s the great thing about good design, you don’t have to spend more but you’re automatically able to generate more attention.

 4. People Forget Easily.

The brilliant thing about a great website and a great design is that people will have a hard time forgetting about your brand. People often times like to use visual memories of awesome things they saw to remind themselves of certain products, sites or services when they need it. They may come across something brilliant, but have no need for it at the time but they’ll be able to reflect back to it when they need to.

Be memorable. It’s really that easy. Design helps you add to the complete package of being memorable where people will remember you for the rest of your life. It’s easy to forget about the brand or product that didn’t have something so memorable about it. People can easily forget about it.

 5. It Makes Your Company Look Good.

You can have the best employees, the best services and even the best pricing but it still isn’t the complete package if your design doesn’t match it all. Every business owner I know wants to be the most impressive business on the block. As an entrepreneur, you want to be admired for your greatness and you want to be proud of your work.

Having poor design or mediocre design dampens the image your company gives out to the public. If you have everything else at top-notch standards, why compromise on your design? Spend the extra time, effort and money to create the best possible design!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeet Banerjee is a successful serial entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, and digital marketing consultant. He is the founder of Daily Mondo, Visionary Media Group, and StatFuse, and author of the book Limitless Thinking. Learn more at jeetbanerjee.com.

You’ve got a solid marketing team. You’re working with talented designers. So why aren’t your campaigns yielding the results you want? The answer might be that traditional planning models in our field tend to quash creativity.

Think about it for a second. When you ask your in-house team to come up with collateral in support of a campaign, how is it presented to you? Do you see a rough sketch or a completed design? Are they presenting you with fifteen ideas or one, maybe two?

That might seem like the most efficient way to get things done, but in reality, it’s probably the most efficient way to achieve mediocrity.

A team of researchers in Switzerland recently completed a study examining how presentation of ideas can impact creativity. They were assigned anonymous partners and asked to collaborate via a virtual whiteboard, brainstorming suggestions for improvements to a company’s strategy. They could add their own ideas and elaborate on each other’s suggestions. These suggestions were to be denoted with icons. The icons were the variable in question. Some saw icons that were “sketched” while others saw standard blocks.

It seems like a pretty minor issue, right? The only distinction was whether the bullet points looked professional or not. And yet, as psychologist Dr. Wilma Koutstaal explains for Psychology Today, the differences in contributions from the two groups were striking:

Independent raters who evaluated the feasibility and creativity of the ideas that were generated found significantly greater creativity in the pairs whose icons appeared unfinished and roughly sketched than in pairs whose icons were highly polished and finished.  The partners whose icons were unfinished and sketch-like also significantly more often elaborated on the ideas they produced.

Think about that for a second. If something so seemingly insignificant as the format of a bullet point can impact brainstorming creativity to this extent, how do you think your in-house approach to design is impacting your marketing strategy’s performance?

This is where crowdsourcing design comes into play. Kicking off your campaign planning with a crowdsourced design project helps to hedge against this creativity pitfall. When you start from a place of creative strength, evaluating not only in-house concepts but hundreds of designs from dozens of creative professionals from around the world, you can be confident that you’re moving in the right direction with a fresh, compelling look for your message. The outcome of that one design project can lay the groundwork for the rest of the collateral development for the campaign.

When perusing our galleries here on crowdSPRING, we see some amazing work submitted in the projects. Today, we noticed this gem submitted in this logo project.

Let us start the slow clap for laku. Check out more great work on laku’s profile page.

Nicely done, laku, nicely done!