Engagious/Focus Pointe Global Swing Voter Project turned to eastern Iowa for May’s research, meeting with swing voters in online focus groups.

︎ For the complete report, go here.   

︎ For video clips, go here.

What’s on their minds? Coronavirus, of course. They say it will be their number one voting issue in November. It’s on our minds, too; and we wanted to know how the pandemic is influencing their thoughts about the presidential race:

• Six of the eight are very likely to vote for Trump again.

• They don’t blame President Trump for the situation we’re in, and for the most part they think he’s doing a decent job in an unprecedented situation. At the same time they are less confident in his leadership, saying they think he’s delegating too much power to the governors.

• Unemployment is high, but they’re not going to hold it against the president. Unless the pandemic intensity recedes, and unemployment doesn’t.

• Trump brought us a great economy once, they said; he can do it again.

• Are they worse off than before COVID-19? Yes. Are they better off than four years ago? Yes. For now, at least, respondents seem to be mentally bracketing the COVID-19 economy.

• That said, they’re more worried about their financial health than their physical health.

• The two respondents who said they are likely to vote for Vice President Biden want him to bring a new outlook to COVID-19. Though the group as a whole is not at all familiar with what Biden plans to do about COVID-19,

• Not one of the respondents feels that Biden’s choice of running mate would affect their vote.

• The six likely to vote for Trump cited Biden negatives: behavior with women, outbursts on the campaign trail, dishonesty, his length of time in government, doubts about his mental acuity.

• Reopening restaurants, bars and theaters? Respondents support a local approach, with slight support for protestors who demand that their governors allow them to reopen their businesses (but please, wear a mask).

• They’re somewhat uncomfortable with Chinese ownership of Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork processor with packing plants in Iowa. (Iowa is America’s top pork producer).

*All Respondents voted for Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016.

This high-security platform for web conferencing is used by fewer than 1% of all accounts. ZoomGov was specifically designed to serve sensitive areas of the US Government. We use this same technology for all our online qual research: online focus groups, virtual IDIs and online dial groups.

Why we use it – Using the same encryption as the Pentagon gives peace-of-mind to our clients. In addition, the video and audio quality is far superior.

How is this different from the standard, commercial web conferencing – ZoomGov is built on a different technology platform, GovCloud, which is used by US intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, the CDC, and many more. ZoomGov is also compliant with FedRAMP, HIPAA, & Dept of Defense security guidelines. 

Why it’s good for our clients – Through us, our clients can confidently and securely conduct any form of online research—including for projects which require a high level of security or confidentiality.

• • • • • Sensitive advocacy and political message testing
        • High-profile litigation and jury research
        • Patient healthcare research interviews
        • Pre-release media research (movies, TV pilots, CEO speeches)
        • Testing of sensitive or copyrighted materials

This robust level of security and encryption is your safeguard. It ensures clients and stakeholders that the important content you are testing will remain under your control.

Do you use the commercial version of Zoom? We have some best practices for you to ensure you are leveraging their security features. Check it out here➤

About FedRAMP

FedRamp is the security standard required across the US government for sensitive information.

It is required by the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, the CDC, intelligence agencies and the Justice Department.

Learn more about FedRAMP security and encryption compliance.

About Amazon GovCloud

AWS GovCloud  https://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/?whats-new-ess.sort-by=item.additionalFields.postDateTime&whats-new-ess.sort-order=desc

Learn More:

➠FedRAMP compliance for online research https://blog.zoom.us/wordpress/2019/05/07/zoom-achieves-fedramp-moderate-authorization/

➠HIPAA compliance for online research tools https://zoom.us/docs/doc/Zoom-hipaa.pdf

➠DoD SRG (Security Requirements Guide) https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/dod/

➠Zoom security whitepaper https://zoom.us/docs/doc/Zoom-Security-White-Paper.pdf

Meaningful conversations lead to meaningful work. Scratch that. Meaningful conversations with the right people lead to meaningful work. You can talk all day to a rock and it won’t get you anywhere (except maybe the crazy house). So, what makes a conversation meaningful? How do you make sure you’re talking to ideal clients and not rocks? How do you provide them with helpful information instead of annoying them to tears? Let’s dive in.

Creating powerful buyer personas doesn’t only shape your marketing strategy, but if utilized correctly, buyer personas can change the way you do business. Consider this your guide to building detailed buyer personas that drive meaningful conversations that lead to meaningful sales.

WHAT: What’s a Persona?

A buyer persona (aka ideal client persona, aka avatar) is a representation of your ideal customer. Don’t get this confused with basic demographics or a target audience. Personas are semi-fictional characters with stories based on detailed research of your actual customers. Unlike simple demographic information, personas look deeper at your target audience to uncover the needs and wants of your most ideal buyer.

Let’s do that over with different words: Who is your unicorn? If someone were to waltz in your front door to give your business, who would make you do a double take? Your unicorn isn’t just any client, it’s the most ideal customer you can imagine.

WHY: The Power of the Persona 

Buyer personas reflect your best customer relationships – relationships that generate the most revenue over the longest period and sustain a partnership where you can create your best work. Think about your best customers. How do they communicate? What are their persistent and emerging challenges? How can your services provide meaningful solutions they can understand and value? Now, it’s totally possible that you don’t have an ideal client yet. Don’t panic! Just think about who can provide you with the opportunity to do your best work? These are the clients that you are trying to understand when creating your personas.

Let’s go back and flip-flop that first scenario really quick. Have you ever been in a conversation that could have been meaningful, except the person you’re talking with won’t stop yammering about something that’s of no interest to you? Not much better than the conversation with the rock, is it? To create content that is meaningful, you must first know who you’re creating the content for. That’s why at Little Bird, before we ever begin brainstorming content ideas, we spend a good amount of time defining ideal buyer personas.

The value of buyer personas exceeds marketing. Their purpose can and should be utilized across your entire organization. Sales departments can use them to focus on training and learn how to best sell to qualified leads. Management can use them to decide which industry events to attend. It even benefits new hires during onboarding to better help them understand the clients that they will soon be working with. Lastly, they are an integral part of creating and maintaining a customer-centric organization.

By orienting your team around your ideal persona, you assure that your entire organization is working together to reach the right client and serve them well.

With good personas, your organization will have insights into questions like:

• What pains are you solving for your clients?
• What form of content is meaningful to your ideal client?
• How do your potential clients want to engage with you?

HOW: Understanding Your Ideal Client

Whether you’re presenting at an industry event, posting on social media or developing a downloadable resource, these tips can be used to reach your persona in a meaningful way:

Stop Focusing on the Outliers

The minute I start talking about buyer personas and knowing your audience, there’s always at least one person who chimes in with, “But, I have this one client that ___________.” You can fill in the blank, but some of my favorites include “…is allergic to electricity,” and “…doesn’t know the difference between a rumba and a tango.”

When it comes to personas, don’t let your outliers be your disqualifiers. While they may exist, they aren’t going to be the bulk of your work. When you’re building personas and crafting content to reach them, don’t let the outliers stress you out. Get focused on where you can reach the most people in the most meaningful way.

Ask the Right Questions

In order to get the information you need to understand your persona(s), you need to ask the right questions. While you can start with the basic, “Walk me through a day in their life,” you need to push beyond that. Consider the first things they do when they wake up, where they are going to get lunch, and what they plan to do after leaving the office.

It doesn’t stop there. Really try to get inside your customers’ minds. What are they thinking about when lying in bed at night? What are their greatest personal life challenges? What achievements make them most proud? 

No matter what industry, there are obvious questions that need to be answered and other important questions that will bring your personas to life. Start with the basic info and work your way into questions that will offer you more insight into what it’s like to be the customer.

Truthfully, you need a mix of both general and open-ended questions. The general questions get you basic information that is fundamental to understanding your customers. The open-ended questions will offer the information you need to understand and create a story for your buyer personas.

Here’s our go-to list:

• Who do they answer to at work?
• Who are they trying to impress?
• What does a day in their life look like?
• How do they source their news?
• What keeps them up on Sunday night?
• What gets them up on Monday morning?
• How do they measure success?
• Where are their eyeballs most of the day?
• Who are they most likely to ask for help from?
• What are they afraid to admit?

The Perfect Persona

Meet Marketing Mathew – he’s a sample of what a completed persona would look like. Notice the details, name and narrative.

WHAT’S NEXT?

You’ve heard it said, “Always Be Closing.” It’s the ABC’s of sales. I prefer ABH – Always Be Helping. More than a marketing agency, at Little Bird Marketing, I like to say that we’re a sleep improvement agency. If our clients can sleep easier at night knowing that their marketing problems are being solved, we’ve done our job. Our due diligence truly attracting the RIGHT client means the relationship is that much smoother as we partner for mutual success.

STAY TRUE

With a well-crafted persona (or three) in hand, your content and business will be structured around solving problems for people who are excited to have you on their side! Your new mantra before you create anything, “Is this helpful?”

Now it’s your turn!

For more on how to build buyer personas from scratch or effectively implement the ones you’ve already created, download Little Bird’s free guide to creating the perfect persona. 

Researchers at Ohio State found that when they gave people accurate statistics on a controversial issue, their memories adjusted the stats to match their own beliefs.

When they passed on these misremembered stats, the information grew more and more different as it was passed from person to person.

Like a game of telephone. But it’s not our hearing that warps the message, it’s our brain.

Memory isn’t a recording device; memory is more like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, and pieces mixed in from other puzzles, according to the researchers.

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20191225/facts-are-misremembered-to-fit-personal-biases-ohio-state-study-finds

Retailers have one objective this cyber week—to get you to spend as much money in their retail/online stores as possible.  To achieve this objective, retailers use behavioral science, or the study of human behavior, to influence your spending decisions. How are retailers able to do this?

Create a sense of urgency

People are looking for good deals and the limited-time nature of retailers’ discounts creates a sense of urgency for them. We may be told that the big sale is ending soon. Or that there is a limited supply of an item that we are interested in.  This works because nobody likes to miss out on an opportunity to save money—and that’s why time-limited discounts work. It is human nature to seek pleasure (discounts) and avoid pain (missing out on discounts).

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward the Brain’s Reward Center.”  -Camelia Kuhnen

Elicit positive feelings of excitement

“Holiday Shopping Ads Are Geared Toward Brain’s Reward Center,”  says Camelia Kuhnen, a behavioral economist at the University of North Carolina. These offers appeal to both the “fear anxiety center” and the “reward center”—the part that’s a trigger when we’re happy, says

Kuhnen.  She argues that our “happy-frenzied” state drives us to strongly prefer immediate rewards and take on more financial risk. Sales, coupons, and markdowns—valid only for a short period of time—help to build excitement in our “reward center”. And thus, retail sales soar.

“FREE!” Effectively frames the “gains” for consumers

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, has written about the psychology of gains and losses. This subject directly applies to how retailers are using behavioral science. Aron Ezra, the CEO of OfferCraft gives a very simple example to demonstrate.

Scenario 1: Sales associate #1 is selling $60 pants and then attempts to up-sell the customer on a $15 belt.

Scenario 2: Sales associate #2 sells the pants at $75 and presents the belt as a free gift.

Not surprisingly, the “free gift with purchase” will help enterprising sales associate #2 move a lot more belts than his counterpart. Why? Kahneman says that psychologically, we feel losses twice as acutely as we feel gains. A free thank-you gift would be viewed as a gain for the consumer; passing up a free gift will feel like a loss. We like receiving gifts. It feels good—and retailers know this.

This is just a brief list of all the ways we can be influenced–even when we are looking for it. Before you hit that ‘Buy’ button during cyber week, ask yourself how they nabbed you.

In Edina we met with 11 swing voters: four who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, and Hillary Clinton in 2016; and seven who voted for Barack Obama in 2012, and Donald Trump in 2016.

If you’ve been following this project you already know that we’re traveling to swing voters each month, leading up to the 2020 election. What are these voters thinking about? How are they feeling about things political? What moves them?

We’re uncovering fascinating findings, one of which is that “Midwest swing voter” is a different flavor in each of the states we’ve visited so far: Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Minnesota. (It’s news for coastal Americans, that is. If you live in the Midwest, you know that already.)

They’d like to be able to vote for a Democrat in the center. They don’t want radical proposals or pipe dreams.

How does President Trump make them feel?
confident
embarrassed
happy
disgusted

What’s top of mind for our Edina swing voters?
health care—it’s not affordable, and too many people can’t get it
immigration/wall—they’re glad someone is doing something about it
global warming
lower taxes
student loans

Assault weapons ban?
Respondents were mixed on conceal-carry, but unanimously in favor of an assault weapons ban (no discussion of how broadly or narrowly the term would be defined).

Is climate change a thing?
You betcha.

There’s more. Go here for clips and the full report.

Next month the team heads back to Wisconsin.

Fierce competition and restricted access to the O.R. continues to increase the importance of clear and consistent messaging of your healthcare products’ most impactful benefits. These efforts aren’t easy but are critical to framing your value proposition for multiple influencers and decision-makers.

With copious experience testing concepts from fuzzy front end to launch and training hundreds of marketing and R&D partners in healthcare and other verticals, I offer many ideas for starting and optimizing your work.

Regardless of which NPD process you follow, once you’ve empathized with your target and identified a solution to a key unmet need, you need to clearly articulate a benefit statement to guide you through screening, development, and commercialization of one or more concepts.

The benefit statement is the primary advantage of your product or service, or THE CUSTOMER PROMISE, i.e., What’s in it for them?

A great benefit statement must be:

Crafting strong benefit statements requires time and effort, often by a multi-functional team. However, some of the key benefits to your organization include:

Improved efficiency in getting the right products to market – weak solutions fail faster while solid ideas avoid rework delays.
Stronger internal alignment – improved communication enables multiple functions to understand the end goal and work together.
Easier planning for a smooth launch – increased confidence in forecasting of sales, production, and support required.

All these benefits ladder up to efficiency of time and work, which results in WINNING in the marketplace.

Just as one unmet need can spawn multiple solutions, each solution may produce multiple benefits.  It’s critical to understand which of these benefits matter the most, and for whom, to know where to focus your messaging strategy and communications spend.  A solid market research strategy can help you here. (Let’s talk!)

As you work on your benefit statement, you’ll want to consider these options of how to position your benefit.

Below I’ve provided healthcare examples of each of these options to get you started*:

Proven higher quality – Anthem® wellness programs make the most of your employee’s benefits. Empowered employees make smarter lifestyle choices for a happier, more productive workforce. It improves company culture and can lower costs, too. On average, care management programs were able to reduce costs by $2,044 per each engaged employee.¹

New level of benefit – Sysmex WAM is an enterprise-wide software solution that will take your laboratory to the next level in system optimization to improve productivity, reduce clinical errors and support a sustainable paperless environment. Sysmex WAM is the only software solution that is adaptable to your changing environment to help you control your future.²

Category superiority –  The ECHELON CIRCULAR Powered Stapler is designed to reduce leaks without compromising perfusion – resulting in 61% fewer leaks at the staple line compared to the Medtronic DST Series EEA Stapler.³

Solve a paradox – Utilize a greater range of motion than the human hand or leading laparoscopic staplers with SureForm 60.⁴ 

Tap into trends –  Halo Clinical Communication Platform helps protect patients from delays in care and clinicians from alert fatigue and burnout by unifying clinical communication across the community on a single platform.⁵

Address category negative – The MEDIVATORS line of disposable infection control products like irrigation tubing and single-use valves eliminate the need for very difficult manual cleaning and disinfection thus reducing infection risk and increasing patient safety.⁶

Unique new benefit – By providing stable pneumoperitoneum, constant smoke evacuation, and valve-free access to the abdominal cavity, the AirSeal® System reduces procedural time, costs, and hassles in ways that conventional insufflators, trocars, and filtered tubing systems simply cannot do.⁷

New secondary benefit –  The Centrella® Smart+ bed helps meet the changing needs of healthcare facilities and delivers elevated care through patient safety and patient satisfaction.⁸

After optimizing your benefit statement, you’ll need to strengthen it with one or more compelling proof points or reasons to believe, which may include claims, testimonials, recommendations, and other approaches.

Gina Derickson, Research Director, Engagious | gina.derickson@engagious.com

* Examples were taken from the listed websites. All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners. All company, product and service names used in this article are for identification purposes only. Use of these names, trademarks and brands does not imply endorsement.
Sources:
1  http://www.anthem.com/employer/health-and-wellness/
2  http://www.sysmex.com/us/en/Products/InformationSystems/Pages/Sysmex-WAM-System.aspx
3   http://www.jnjmedicaldevices.com/en-US/product/echelon-circular-powered-stapler
4  http://www.intuitive.com/en-us/products-and-services/da-vinci/stapling/sureform-60
5  http://www.halocommunications.com/halo/
6  http://www.cantelmedical.com/medivators
7  http://www.conmed.com/en/hybrid-product-landing-pages/airseal
8  http://www.hillrom.com/en-us/products/smart-beds-and-surfaces/centrella-smart-bed/

Here are my Top 10 recommendations for How to Hire a Messaging Agency.

Do Your Homework: Keep a running list of agencies and campaigns that impress you.
At least you will have a starting place.

Be Honest with Yourself: How much bandwidth can you commit to managing an outside team?
Know this going into it.

Get Specific: Every agency has a specialty.
Know what you need (advocacy messaging? advertising messaging?) and find the right match.

Find the Right Size: Make sure the agency’s size matches your expectations. You don’t want to be the smallest client, making it easy to relegate your projects to the B-Team.

Go With Experience: If you are looking for a real partner, find a team that has related experience in your field. If you need messaging for B2B, find a team that has done B2B.

Secure Top Talent: Know who will be managing your account. That individual is your lifeline– and can sink a project if they are not strong or experienced enough.

Know Your Status: Know who their big clients are and what % of their bandwidth they occupy. You don’t want to be playing second fiddle to them for the duration.

Be Smart With Money: It’s a major factor and often an agency will cut a deal on the first job. But know that going in so you can prepare
for future projects.

Trust Your Gut: At the end of the day you are choosing a group of humans that you need to work with. Are they switched on? Do they have that sparkle in their eye?

Pull The Trigger: Your final decision will likely involve a leap of faith. If you’ve been diligent, odds are good you will end up with a partner you can work with.

In the end, your success depends a lot on your own preparation. I have faith in you; You can do this! We’re with you all the way.

If you need help with brand messaging or customer insights, we’ve got those chops. So put a check mark in our “been there, done that” column and give us a shout. Happy to talk through whatever you need.

See more of my blog posts here.

In Warren we met July 8 with twelve swing voters—nine who voted for Obama in 2012, and Trump in 2016; and three who voted for Romney in 2012, and Clinton in 2016.

We talked about the weather, and their families (we’re polite, after all). We asked them what they’re looking for in a leader; what issues are important to them; what they thought of President Trump and the Democrats in the hunt for his job. We showed them clips of the recent Democratic debates and asked them to rate with dials how much they liked what was said.

They’re concerned about immigration, health care prices, and retirement. They think the economy is growing, but they wouldn’t describe it as booming. We heard, again, that issues that are important to the 24-hour news stations (like impeachment) aren’t really important to them.

It’s all interesting—read the whole report here—and we’re grateful, as always, to the respondents for letting us take a look under the hood.

Some highlights:

On immigration: They want to take care of struggling Americans first. “I don’t want to be a jerk,” said one female Obama-Trump voter. “I feel terrible for those people, but there are people here in this country that are struggling to survive.”

On Trump: They said they don’t like it. But they like that he speaks his mind, and that he’s getting things done, or trying to. So they’re sticking with him. All nine Trump voters, and one Clinton voter, said they would vote for Trump over Clinton if there were a presidential election between them tomorrow.

On Democratic presidential hopefuls: The current crop doesn’t excite them. They couldn’t identify pictures of most of them; nor could they say much about them. They’d like for Oprah to run.

On the Democratic debate: They didn’t watch much of it. Of the parts we showed them they said the candidates’ positions are too liberal, and would make these voters more likely to vote for Trump.

On large corporations: They don’t believe large corporations care about America’s best interests. As one respondent said, “I’ve been in a lot of meetings where we decide where we put the plants—Korea, China, places like that—and America’s best interest was [never considered].”

On tariffs: They support them, especially on cars and car parts made in other countries. They want to protect American jobs and American wealth.

On climate change: It’s not a top five issue for a little more than half of them (“many other issues matter more to me”), but it wouldn’t cause them to vote against (or for) someone who is vocal about addressing it.

These voters cited a common reason for swinging: a desire for change.

Our eight Erie participants all voted for Obama in 2012, and then switched to Trump in 2016. They voted for Obama because they wanted expanded health care, more fairness, and something different from George W. Bush.

“I didn’t like Bush at all, I thought he did a terrible job,” said one respondent, “and I had hopes that Obama would do better.”

When the change didn’t come after four years of Obama, these change voters . . . stuck with Obama. “In the first four years I thought it was just a leftover from Bush, so I thought, he’s going to make a difference, he’s going to continue doing more things. Which in fact I do not think he did.”

By 2016 they were ready for another change. Trump was different, they said. He wasn’t a typical politician. He wasn’t going to be a pushover with leaders of other nations. He’s willing to be an American, and he wants to take care of America first.

Are they ready to swing to a new partner in 2020? Not really.

“I’m an issue voter,” a respondent said, “and I don’t see it meriting change at this point. When I changed my vote, I gave him eight years.”

Aren’t they tired of Trump’s antics? Not really.

“Sensation sells,” said one. “And there are changes that are happening,” added another: Jobs. Record low unemployment. Rising wages. Good changes in the economy.

But they would like for someone to take away his Twitter account.

Erie swing voters told us their top issues were the economy (they want jobs to come back from Mexico and China), health care, immigration (still waiting for The Wall), education (it really needs improvement, and abortion (they mostly favor restrictions).

They generally like what Trump has done on their top issues, and they’re willing to give him four more years to enact all the changes he promised.

Erie’s part of the Rust Belt, hard hit by the loss of manufacturing jobs. So we asked these voters what they thought of Trump’s trade deal renegotiations and tariffs.

Respondents said they’re hopeful that his trade policy will bring back jobs. It’s too early to tell if it’s working, but they’re willing to wait.

“It kind of sucks while you’re budgeting, but when you buy the car it feels good,” one respondent said. “It’s going to hurt short term, but in the long run it’s going to be better.”

Our voters said they care about climate change and pollution—“We need to take it seriously”—but it’s not a top-five issue.

Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were the most recognizable faces on the Democratic side, with Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, and Kamala Harris rounding out the top tier.

What advice do they have for Democrats considering impeachment? “If you want him out you have to beat him. He’s the best-looking food on the buffet. You’ve got to put out something that’s better.”

Did we leave you wanting more? For video, scores, and a great time the full report, go here.