Creative and Production

Finding the Sweet Spot in Ad Personalization

Phillip Nones Advertising, Creative and Production, Direct Marketing, Marketing Communications , , , ,

Marketing and advertising professionals know that personalization can be a very useful part of promotional strategies.  But doing personalization the right way has its challenges as well.

Those of us “of a certain age” remember when personalization first began to be used in promo campaigns.  Too often it was a joke – or carried out in such a way that it actually did more harm than good.

Probably the worst cases were when direct mail pieces would incorporate a person’s name inside the customer communications.  Often, the resulting piece was über-awkward – particularly if the name was misspelled or otherwise not presented how the recipient would normally be addressed; how many marketers know their customers’ nicknames?

Even worse was when mistake was repeated multiple places in the same promo piece – magnifying the problem to the level of farce.

Things are more sophisticated these days, and it’s pretty clear that targeted, relevant marketing works much better.  But after nearly 25 years of personalization and microtargeting in the digital realm, things have reached the level of diminishing returns:  ROI in deeper personalization declines as the efforts get more granular.

The more microtargeting that happens, the harder it becomes to find a large enough number of targets for each highly personalized ad.  At the same time, development costs increase even as the returns diminish, because creating a higher volume of microtargeted promotions aimed at highly specialized niche groups means that more effort has to go into ad creative, copywriting and production.

Of course, Facebook and Google have developed sophisticated ways to target advertising to the most lucrative prospects, to the degree that it’s often easier and more cost-effective to rely on those resources rather than undertaking personalization efforts in-house.  But there’s another potential issue with a relentless pursuit of personalization in advertising.  Engaging in it too much has the potential of creating a backlash, with some customers finding the practice overly intrusive – even creepy.

Ad retargeting is a particularly obnoxious practice – the digital equivalent of a salesperson following you around the store trying to get you to purchase an item you may have merely glanced at in passing interest.

Pushback is also manifesting itself in regulations such as CDPR (general data protection regulation), which aims to protect consumer data and how it’s used by making it more difficult to collect and store this kind of data.  Google has added fuel to the fire by ending support for third-party cookies – yet another barrier to obtaining worthwhile granular data.

All of this means that while personalization that increases relevancy remains a valuable marketing tool, it hasn’t turned out to be the silver bullet that some might have hoped.  Instead, it’s creating a good a balance between data and creativity that makes for the most successful campaigns.

How the psychology of color “colors” the effectiveness of websites.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Branding, Creative and Production, Marketing, Marketing Research, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , , ,

As one of the five senses, sight is usually mentioned first. And little wonder, if we consider what an integral part of our life’s experience is based on what we see.

Color is a huge part of that — and it goes beyond “sight” as well. We use color not only to pinpoint a place on the visible spectrum, but also to describe intangible factors such as emotions and character traits.

Ever wonder why people talk about “orchestral color”? This seeming contradiction in terms is actually one of the fundamental ways we can “see” music in our minds as well as hear it in our ears. The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin went so far as to associate individual colors on the visual spectrum with specific musical chords; the colors themselves are written into the score for his last orchestral piece, his Fifth Symphony (Prometheus: The Poem of Fire), composed in 1910.

Alexander Scriabin

Recognizing the importance of color and its impact on how humans think and behave, marketers and branding specialists have long made use of the power of color in advertising and design. This continues today in the digital world of websites and other electronic media, where the choice of colors has measurable impact on website engagement and conversions.

Marketing and design specialist Raj Vardhman has compiled a number of interesting facts about the “psychology of color” and its impact on viewer engagement:

  • It takes approximately 90 seconds for a viewer to make a quick product assessment — and two-thirds of this judgment is based on color.
  • Color is a key reason for selecting a particular product. For instance, two-thirds of shoppers won’t purchase a large appliance if it isn’t available in their preferred color.
  • The classic notion of “pink for girls” and “blue for boys” turns out to be generally true (despite the penchant for choosing yellow when a family doesn’t want to “channel” their newborn towards a particular gender identity). Bold colors or shades of blue, black and darker green are preferred by most men, whereas more women prefer soft colors or tints of purple, pink, rose and lighter green.

Furthermore, attitudinal studies show that main color groups convey certain characteristics:

  • Red embodies life, excitement and boldness. It’s used often in iconic consumer brands, but also to announce clearance sales.
  • Blue telegraphs productivity, tranquility and trust. Is it any wonder that blue colors are the hands-down favorite among commercial/industrial product brands?
  • Green evokes growth, nature and harmony. Its use has been growing in recent decades.
  • Yellow personifies joy, intellect and energy. It’s employed by brands to evoke cheerful, sunny feelings.
  • Purple suggests wealth and royalty. It’s no accident that “royal purple” has been with us since Renaissance times.
  • Black projects authority, power and elegance. Not surprisingly, it’s the most popular choice for marketing luxury products. But it can be highly effective in promoting technology products as well.
  • White and silver communicate perfection and pristine clarity. These colors are also popular with technology products, but are used very often in healthcare-related products and services.

These time-honored color characteristics are very much in play in the world of websites. Such aspects are a factor in nine out of ten visitors to a website — half of whom report that they won’t return to a website based on the site’s lack of aesthetics, not just its functionality.

As well, the colors of call-to-action buttons are significant, as studies show that red, orange and green CTA buttons are the best ones for conversions (but only if they stand out from the rest of the content on the screen).

More fundamentally, what this means for website designers is that despite the desire to be “different” or “distinct” from others in the marketplace, many attitudes about color are so fundamental, that to fly in the face of them could well be a risky endeavor.

“Wake me when it’s over”: Corporate podcasting goes over like a zinc zeppelin with employee audiences.

Phillip Nones Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Employment, Human Resources, Media, Publishing , , , , , ,

Just because podcasts have become a popular means of communication in a broader sense doesn’t mean that they’re the slam-dunk tactic to successfully achieve every kind of communications objective. Still, that’s what an increasing number of large corporations have decided to do.

And yet … an article by writers Austen Hufford and Patrick McGroarty that appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal paints a picture of what many of us have suspected all along about podcasts that are produced by corporations for their employees and other “stakeholders.”

These self-important testaments to “corporate whatever” have as much impact as the printed memos of yore – you know, the ones with sky-high BS-meter ratings – had.

Which is to say … not much.

Invariably, podcast topics are ones which next to no one in the employee trenches cares anything about. As a result, corporate podcast open stats are abysmal – running between 10% and 15% if they’re lucky.

And the paltry open rates alone don’t tell the entire story. How many people are tuning them out after just a minute or two of listening, once it becomes clear that it’s yet another yawner of a topic that senior leadership deems “important” and that corporate communications departments try mightily but unsuccessfully to bring alive.

More often than not, the production values of these corporate podcasts have all the pizzazz of a cold mashed potato sandwich. Consider this breathless declaration by PR director Lindsay Colker in a December 18th Netflix podcast:

“I think that Netflix has taught me so much more than information about a job. The person that I was, coming into Netflix, is an entirely different person than the person I am now.”

This response, posted by a Netflix employee on the Apple iTunes store site, is all-too-predictable:

“Hard to follow, boring and dry hosts, and tooooo long.”

Or this recent American Airlines podcast that covered the company’s three major strategic objectives for 2019. After company president Robert Isom described the strategies for the podcast audience, host Ron DeFeo, an American Airlines communications vice president exclaimed, “That’s awesome!”

Employee reaction was far different. Here’s one response from an American Airlines pilot:

“How about you tell me why I should listen to this? A healthy employee doesn’t live and breathe their job 24/7, and the last thing they’re going to do after being on a plane for 12 hours is listen to a podcast.”

Ouch.

Perhaps because of this kind employee pushback, one company, Huntington Ingalls Industries, permits its workers to count the time they spend listening to the company’s podcast on their time sheets.

One suspects that absolutely every HII employee is posting 15 minutes on their timesheets each time a podcast is released – whether or not they’re actually listening to it. (That may also explain why each HII podcast is strictly limited to just 15 minutes in length …)

Every company interviewed by the writers of The Wall Street Journal story admitted that engagement levels with their corporate podcasts are disappointing.  PPG Industries’ response is illustrative.  With only a few hundred listeners tuning in each month out of a total employee base of more than 47,000 workers, “We have a ways to go,” admits Mark Silvey, PPG’s director of corporate communications.

What do you think? Will corporations find themselves riding a wave of success with their podcasting?  Or are they swimming upstream against the triple currents of apathy, ennui, and snark? Will corporate podcasting become tomorrow’s “obvious tactic” or end up being yesterday’s “glorious failure”? Feel free to share your perspectives with other readers.

Music industry mashup: Streaming audio sets the pace.

Phillip Nones Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , ,

… while digital downloads fade and physical music media sales hold steady.

The music industry revenue reports issued annually by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) are always interesting to look at, because they chronicle the big trends in how people are consuming their music.

The 2018 RIAA report is particularly enlightening, as it finds that streaming audio now accounts for three-fourths of all U.S. music industry revenue. With more than 50 million Americans subscribing to at least one streaming service, those revenue stats certainly make sense.

Moreover, the RIAA report states that 2018 revenues from streaming music platforms amounted to nearly $7.5 billion. That compares to just $1.1 billion (~11%) for digital downloads and $1.2 billion (~12%) for physical media sales.

Equally significant, streaming revenues account for nearly all of the revenue growth experienced across the entire industry – and the growth is dramatic. Streaming revenues jumped ~30% between 2017 and 2018, whereas growth in the other segments was essentially flat.

Within the streaming segment, all three major sectors – premium subscriptions, ad-supported on-demand streaming, and streaming radio – experienced revenue growth.  But paid subscriptions continue to comprise the biggest chunk of revenue; they make up ~73% of all streaming revenues, or $5.4 million.

Ad-supported on-demand streaming is also proving to be quite popular with users, but while revenues grew by some 15% in 2018 to reach $760 million, it’s pretty clear that ad-supported streaming audio services lag behind in terms of generating revenues. Ad-supported streaming may account for more than one-third of all streaming activity … but only ~8% of streaming revenues.

The third segment — radio streaming services – looks to be a particularly bright spot. These services are evolving nicely, passing the $1 billion mare in revenues in 2018 for the first time.

But the main takeaway is this:  Streaming audio now represents the “mainstream” while digital downloads are going the way of the cassette tape in an earlier era. And physical media (CDs, vinyl) have stabilized to a degree that many observers might not have anticipated happening just a few years ago.

More information from the 2018 RIAA report can be viewed here.

What are your own personal music consumption preferences? Feel free to share your thoughts with other readers here.

KISS and tell: Testing the notion that the world’s strong brands are “simple” ones.

Phillip Nones Branding, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production , , , , , , ,

When you think of strong brands, the notion of their “simplicity” might seem a bit surprising. And yet this is the contention of Siegel+Gale, a leading brand strategy firm.

S+G has gathered together its research findings in an annual ranking it calls the World’s Simplest Brands.  These are the brands that deliver best on their promise with simple, clear, intuitive experiences.

Howard Belk, the company’s CEO and chief creative officer, explains it this way:

“World’s Simplest Brands quantifies the substantial monetary value of investing in simplifying.  Now in its eighth year, our study reaffirms an increasing demand for transparent, direct, simple experiences that make peoples’ lives easier … the data prove that simplicity pays.”

In order to research brand simplicity, S+G queried ~15,000 people living in nine countries (the United States, India, China and Japan plus several European and Middle Eastern nations) to evaluate well-known brands and industries on their perceived simplicity.

Among the findings in its most recent annual evaluation, S+G reports that political, economic and cultural uncertainty coupled with shifting customer expectations are contributing to a heightened desire for simplicity.

The value of simplicity manifests itself in a number of ways; two key ones are:

  • A clear majority of people (~64%) are more likely to recommend a brand that delivers simple experiences.
  • A majority of the survey respondents (~55%) report that they are willing to pay more for simpler experiences.

S+G calculates that companies which fail to provide simple brand experiences forego nearly $100 billion in sales revenues collectively.

Based on its research, S+G ranks the Top 10 World’s Simplest Brands, as well as a Top 10 ranking for brands in the United States. Netflix, ALDI and Google top the worldwide rankings:

  • #1. Netflix
  • #2. ALDI
  • #3. Google
  • #4. Lidl
  • #5. Carrefour
  • #6. McDonald’s
  • #7. Trivago
  • #8. Spotify
  • #9. Uniqlo
  • #10. Subway

Explaining how several of the key brands made it to the pinnacle, S+G reported the following:

  • Netflix achieved top spot for the first time, thanks to its ease of experience allowing users to stream, pause and resume viewing without commercials or commitments.
  • ALDI scores well because they surpass big-box competitors with their clear communications, affordable prices, and premium private-label products.

U.S. Brand Simplicity Rankings are Different

Not surprisingly, S+G’s Top 10 list of the simplest brands looks different from a purely American perspective, with just four brands ranking in the Top 10 on both the USA and world lists. Here are the top-performing brands based on just American respondents:

  • #1. Lyft
  • #2. Spotify
  • #3. Amazon
  • #4. Costco Wholesale
  • #5. Subway
  • #6. Google
  • #7. McDonald’s
  • #8. KFC
  • #9. Southwest Airlines
  • #10 Zappos

What’s also interesting is what kinds of brands aren’t showing up on the Top Ten lists. News and social media industry participants aren’t ranking well – think platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and broadcast networks like CNN, NBC and ABC.

Also failing to show up are brands operating in industries that are steeped in complexity – fields like car rental services, insurance services and the worst one of all, TV/cable and other telecommunications brands.

The S+G report concludes by stating companies and brands “benefit greatly by keeping it simple for customers … or [they] suffer the consequences.” Moreover, companies that are operating in highly competitive marketplaces can cut through and rise to the top based on their brand simplicity.

More information about the Siegel+Gale research findings can be accessed here.

What about you?  Which brands would you classify as particularly noteworthy in their simplicity appeal? Please share your thoughtss with other readers.

The disappearing attention spans of consumers.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales , , , , , , ,

Today I was talking with one of my company’s longtime clients about how much of a challenge it is to attract the attention of people in target marketing campaigns.

Her view is that it’s become progressively more difficult over the past dozen years or so.

Empirical research bears this out, too. Using data from a variety of sources including Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Facebook and Google, Statistic Brain Research Institute‘s Attention Span Statistics show that the average attention span for an “event” on one of these platforms was 8.25 seconds in 2015.

Compare that to 15 years earlier, when the average attention span for similar events was 12.0 seconds.

That’s a reduction in attention span time of nearly one-third.

Considering Internet browsing statistics more specifically, an analysis of ~60,000 web page views found these behaviors:

  • Percent of page views that lasted more than 10 minutes: ~4%
  • % of page views that lasted fewer than 4 seconds: ~17%
  • % of words read on web pages that contain ~100 words or less: ~49%
  • % of words read on an average web page (around ~600 words): ~28%

The same study discovered what surely must be an important reason why attention spans have been contracting. How’s this tidy statistic:  The average number of times per hour that an office worker checks his or her e-mail inbox is … 30 times.

Stats like the ones above help explain why my client – and so many others just like her – are finding it harder than ever to attract and engage their prospects.

Fortunately, factors like good content and good design can help surmount these difficulties. It’s just that marketers have to try harder than ever to achieve a level of engagement that used to come so easily.

More results from the Statistic Brain Research Institute study can be found here.

E-Mail Marketing: On the Subject of Subject Lines …

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Sales , , , , ,

emWith groaning inboxes, is it any wonder why so many e-mail messages get ignored by their recipients?

Indeed, with it costing so little to send an e-mail – especially when compared to the “bad old days” of postal mail – it’s too irresistible for marketers and others to deploy hundreds or thousands of e-mail missives at a pop, even if the resulting engagement levels are so paltry.

And therein lies the problem: The “value” of such e-mails diminish to the point where recipients have a very good idea of their (lack of) worthiness without needing to open them.

In such an environment, what’s the the likelihood of something important inadvertently slipping through the cracks? Not so great.  And so users go on their merry way, hitting the delete key with abandon.

Faced with these realities, anything senders can do to improve the odds of their e-mails being opened is worth considering.

As it turns out, some of those odds can be improved by focusing on the e-mail’s subject line.

We know this from research conducted recently by e-mail platform provider Yesware. As reported this week in Fast Company, Yesware’s data scientists took a look at ~115 million e-mails of all kinds, gathered over the course of a 12-month period, to see how open rate dynamics might be affected positively or negatively by differences in the subject line.

ywThe Yesware analysis was carried by analyzing most- and least-used words and formats to determine which ones appeared to be more effective at “juicing” open rates.

As the benchmark, the overall e-mail open rate observed across all 115 million e-mails was 51.9% and the overall reply rate was about 29.8%. But underneath those averages are some differences that can be useful for marketers as they consider how to construct different subject lines for better impact and recipient engagement.

The findings from Yesware’s subject line analysis point to several practices that should be avoided:

Subject line personalization actually works against e-mail engagement.

It may seem counterintuitive, but adding personalization to an e-mail subject turns out to suppress the open rate from 51.9% to 48.1% — and the reply rate goes down even more dramatically from 29.8% to 21.2%.

Yesware surmises that this seemingly clever but now overused technique bears telltale signs of a sales solicitation. No one likes to be fooled for long … and every time one of these “personalized” missives hits the inbox, the recipient likely recalls the very first time he or she expected to open a personal e-mail based on such a subject line – only to be duped.

“First time, shame on you; second time, shame on me.”

Turning your subject line into a question … is a questionable practice.

Using a question mark in a subject line may seem like a good way to add extra curiosity or interest to an e-mail, but it turns out to be a significant turnoff for many recipients. In fact, Yesware found that when a question mark is used in the subject line, the open rate drops a full 10 percentage points (from 51.9% to 41.6%) – and the reply rate also craters (dropping to 18.4%).

It may be that turning a subject line into a question has the effect of reducing the power of the message. Yesware data engineer Anna Holschuh notes that posing a question is “asking a lot of an already-busy, stressed-out professional.  You’re asking them to do work without providing value up front.”

On the other hand, two subject line practices have been shown to improve e-mail open rates – at least to a degree:

Include numbers in the subject line.

Subject lines that contain “hard” numbers appear to improve the e-mail open rate slightly. Yesware found that open rates in such cases were 53.2% compared to 51.9% and the reply rate improved as well (to 32%).  Using precise numbers – the more specific the better – can add an extra measure of credibility to the e-mail, which is a plus in today’s data-rich environment.

Use title case rather than sentence case.

Similarly, Yesware has found that the “authority” conveyed by using title case (initial caps on the key words) in e-mail subject lines helps them perform better than when using the more informal sentence case structure.

The difference? Open rates that have title case subject lines came in at 54.3%, whereas when using sentence case in the subject line resulted in open rates at just 47.6%.

Similarly, reply rates were 32.3% for e-mails with subject lines using title case compared to 25.7% for e-mails where the subject line was sentence case — an even more substantial difference.

Generally speaking, e-mail marketing succeeds or fails at the margins, which is why it’s so important to “calibrate” things like subject lines for maximum advantage. The Yesware analysis demonstrates how those tweaks can add up to measurable performance improvements.

Digital display advertising: (Still) looking like the weakest online promo tactic.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Creative and Production, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , , , ,

untitledI’ve blogged before about the lack of engagement with online banner advertising, and as time goes on … the picture doesn’t change much at all.

When you break it down, online banner advertising is a bust on several levels:

 

  • As of the most recent stats, clickthrough rates on online banner advertising are running about 0.08%. That translates to fewer than one click for every 1,000 times the ad is served.

 

  • Based on current pricing for online banner ads, that one click might be costing anywhere from $5 to $10 (and it might have even been an accidental click).

 

Despite these “inconvenient truths,” nearly two-thirds of digital ad spending continues to go to online banner advertising based on a “cost per impression” pricing model. Why?

One answer is that it’s an easy way to advertise a product or service. Simply supply ad creative to the publisher and let it be served online.

Another may be that advertisers consider banner advertising to be a basic component of any promotional campaign: prepare a mix of direct marketing, some search engine marketing, some print advertising and some digital display advertising, and you’re off to the races.

A third reason — related to the one above and I suspect one big reason why so much digital display advertising persists in the B-to-B realm in particular — is that publishers who offer a suite of promo tactics as part of a specially priced integrated program always throw in digital display advertising as part of the mix. It becomes the default option for advertisers as they approve bundled programs and the discount rates that come along with them.

Here’s a suggestion for advertisers going forward: Push back a bit and ask publishers to come up with alternative program options that don’t include digital display advertising.  The revised program might not look as promising at first blush, but then remember the stats above and you may well see the attributes of the alternative program in a more positive light.

Bing Plays the Bouncer Role in a Big Way

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Creative and Production, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing, Sales , , , , , ,

untitledMicrosoft Bing has just released stats chronicling its efforts to do its part to keep the Internet a safe space. Its 2015 statistics are nothing short of breathtaking.

Bing did its part by rejecting a total of 250 million ad impressions … banning ~150,000 advertisements … and blocking around 50,000 websites outright.

It didn’t stop there. Bing also reports that it blocked more than 3 million pages and 30 million ads due to spam and misleading content.

What were some of the reasons behind the blocking? Here are a few clues as to where Bing’s efforts were strongest (although I don’t doubt that there are some others that Bing is keeping closer to its vest so as not to raise any alarms):

  • Healthcare/pharma phishing attacks: ~2,000 advertisers and ~800,000 ads blocked in 2015
  • Selling of counterfeit goods: 7,000 advertisers and 700,000+ ads blocked
  • Tech support scams: ~25,000 websites and ~15 million ads blocked
  • Trademark infringement factors: ~50 million ad placements rejected

Bing doesn’t say exactly how it identifies such a ginormous amount of fraudulent or otherwise nefarious advertising, except to report that the company has improved its handling of many aspects based on clues ranging from toll-free numbers analysis to dead links analysis.

According to Neha Garg, a program manager of ad quality at Bing:

“There have even been times our machine learning algorithms have flagged accounts that look innocent at first glance … but on close examination we find malicious intent. The back-end machinery runs 24/7 and used hundreds of attributes to look for patterns which help spot suspicious ads among billions of genuine ones.”

We’re thankful to Bing and Google for all that they do to control the incidence of advertising that carries malicious malware that could potentially cause many other problems above and beyond the mere “irritation factor.”

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, isn’t there?

What people dislike most about B-to-B websites …

Phillip Nones Branding, Business, Content Creation and Content Management, Creative and Production, Marketing Communications , , , , , , , , , , ,

Too many business-to-business websites remain the “poor stepchildren” of the online world even after all these years.

btob websitesSo much attention is devoted to all the great ways retailers and other companies in consumer markets are delighting their customers online.

And it stands to reason:  Those sites are often intrinsically more interesting to focus on and talk about.

Plus, the companies that run those sites go the extra mile to attract and engage their viewers.  After all, consumers can easily click away to another online resource that offers a more compelling and satisfying experience.

Or, as veteran marketing specialist Denison ‘Denny’ Hatch likes to say, “You’re just one mouse-click away from oblivion.”

By comparison, buyers in the B-to-B sphere often have to slog through some pretty awful website navigation and content to find what they’re seeking.  But because their mission is bigger than merely viewing a website for the fun of it, they’ll put up with the substandard online experience anyway.

But this isn’t to say that people are particularly happy about it.

Through my company’s longstanding involvement with the B-to-B marketing world, I’ve encountered plenty of the “deficiencies” that keep business sites from connecting with their audiences in a more fulfilling way.

Sometimes the problems we see are unique to a particular site … but more often, it’s the “SOS” we see across many of them (if you’ll pardon the scatological acronym).

Broadly speaking, issues of website deficiency fall into five categories:

  • They run too slowly.
  • They look like something from the web world’s Neanderthal era.
  • They make it too difficult for people to locate what they’re seeking on the site.
  • Worse yet, they actually lack the information visitors need.
  • They look horrible when viewed on a mobile device — and navigation is no better.

Fortunately, each of these problems can be addressed – often without having to do a total teardown and rebuild.

But corporate inertia can (and often does) get in the way.

Sometimes big changes like Google’s recent “Mobilegeddon” mobile-friendly directives come along that nudge companies into action.  In times like that, it’s often when other needed adjustments and improvements get dealt with as well.

But then things can easily revert back to near-stasis mode until the next big external pressure point comes down the pike and stares people in the face.

Some of this pattern of behavior is a consequence of the commonly held (if erroneous) view that B-to-B websites aren’t ones that need continual attention and updating.

I’d love for more people to reject that notion — if for SEO relevance issues alone.  But after nearly three decades of working with B-to-B clients, I’m pretty much resigned to the fact that there’ll always be some of that dynamic at work.  It just comes with the territory.