 Can you believe it's almost over? I've met so many amazing folks so far, and the other speakers have been so good. I had to spend some time practicing in my hotel room yesterday, which I never do. So I had to miss some good talks. I'm really excited to be here today talking about empathy. It's one of my favorite performance topics. And yes, you heard me right. I did say performance. It's this idea, I think we all know, I know everyone here knows that empathy makes you a great person. It's good for the world. It makes you a better marketer, but it also drives top performers. And I know everyone in this room wants to be a top performer and is a top performer. Ironically enough, I first got turned on to the power of empathy and a drive performance when I did marketing in the TV business after college. And I noticed some other speakers started with a funny story, so I'm going to have a little side note here. I continued doing TV in the marketing after college while I was in law school, did it on the side. And I was working on a black HBO show. I can't even tell you this promotional video I was working on. You can Google it right now if you want. Call me Fitz. Profanity is art. Here I am in the oldest law school in the Commonwealth in contracts class, which is the stodgiest, most conservative of all law classes, still based on like 1800s case law. It's kind of crazy. And this video goes off in the middle of class. It was like Google this video. This is a somewhat swearing friendly conference. The whole goal of the show was to be as creative as swearing and insults as you could be. So I couldn't, that professor, hated me the rest of my law career. So the lesson learned. Even right now, always make sure your volume on your computer is muted. Always. So let's get into a few examples about what I mean about empathy driving performance. Leo, is there any other Leo? Does he need a last name? Slept outside in minus 40 degrees in an animal caucus for his filming of the Reverend in northern Alberta. I'm Canadian, and I don't even go up there, let alone sleep outside. Ray Jamie Fox glued his eyes shut to play Ray Charles and Ray. Natalie Portman trained as a ballerina for an entire year before filming the Black Swan. And Daniel Day Lewis lived wheelchair bound, both before and during shooting of my left foot. What do all these performances have in common? Other than, yes, of course, they were great movies. You might guess. Leo, and Natalie, and Jamie, and Daniel. Yes, I know them by first name. I can call them by first name. All won the top performance accolade of their career for these performances, a best acting Oscar. And that's the power of empathy to drive top performance. So sometimes empathy is confused with sympathy. So just to set the matter straight, empathy is about walking miles in your customers and your clients, your audiences, and your users' shoes. Literally walking miles. That's what these actors did to be top performers. So you might be thinking, well, Ashley, this idea of empathy and top performance sounds fantastic. But you know, I've gotten away. I'm an introvert. I don't like the sounds of this. Somehow I just know you're going to tell me I have to talk to customers. And I just don't like the idea of that. I've gotten along just fine without it. See, this is me practicing empathy. And I say that's cool. I completely understand where you're coming from. But I think we all know things have changed. Marketing and growth is getting harder. And there's a fundamental shift that's happened. And to put it in perspective, whether or not we acknowledge this change, it's happened for many markets. So to put it in perspective, I'm just going to break down the last 70 years or so of sales and marketing performance into four eras. So back in the 1950s, marketing and sales performance was really sales driven. Sales drove performance. Think of the classic door-to-door salesman. Then we had the Andreper era of advertising. Advertising drove performance. And I think we all think those are obvious. And that's true. But here's the not-so-obvious. We also don't live in the product-driven era anymore either. Where product and metrics-driven marketing alone was enough to be a top performer. Today, we live in a customer-driven world thanks to advances in technology and historically low barriers to entry for most markets. Customers today have all the power in most markets. It's no longer buyer beware. It's seller beware. And in this world, you need to be using empathy and customer insight to be a top performer. So as you can probably guess, we're all about performance. We're not actors, although we're trying to perfect our craft. But what you guys want to drive are the big 3Cs, clicks, conversions, and currency. And I'm going to show you here today how you're going to do that with empathy-driven marketing. So here's some data. I know we love data. I love data. And this is also great for getting buy-in. So this was a study done in 2017 by Price Intelligently, a great company. And what they found out was that in just 10 hours a month of customer conversations in a research capacity, just 10 hours a month drove 30% more annual revenue growth compared to the companies that did not. 30%. That's massive. That's a metric that makes bosses and clients and investors very, very happy. And this stat, if anyone wants to get buy-in, whether it be clients or bosses, to do some of the things we're going to talk about, I'm going to impress the sense of urgency on you. Otherwise, I know some of this empathy stuff can kind of be put away as a nice to do later, and that's a big mistake. So we're going to get into some tactical stuff, too. Don't worry. But this study, look at it. So let's look at an example of empathy and action. So hypothetically, let's pretend you're running marketing or doing SEO for a software company that helps people with anxiety and depression. So what might you do? Well, you might search keywords and build an SEO strategy and a content strategy, and all your marketing around people who suffer from anxiety. Does that seem reasonable? I think that's what most people would do. It seems fair. But what you're going to let analytics will never tell you is that your customers, even though they came up as direct or social, they almost all came for another reason. In fact, you have the entirely wrong market, and you'd be stuck in optimization hell. I think we know that. We've felt this before, and you just don't know why, so you just keep trying to fix it. And nothing's ever getting to quite where you needed to go. Let's compare this in contrast with an empathy-driven approach. So back to those 10 hours of customer conversations and some other strategies that we'll get into, you might have discovered that almost every single one of your paying customers came because a loved one found you and begged them to try it. In fact, you might find out that most of your people don't suffer or didn't even know they suffered from anxiety at all. And I chose this example specifically because statistically speaking, everyone in this room is more than likely not to suffer from some form of anxiety. It goes along with top performance. So what would have happened under an empathy-driven approach? Well, you would have discovered that your target market is actually loved ones, not sufferers. And what do you think that's going to do to your cost for conversion? It's going to go down. You're going to find out your best long-term content strategy. Stephanie talked about picking better performing content and how to do it. You're going to discover that educating people, that they have anxiety in the first place and that's really what's going on, that's your best long-term content strategy. What do you think is going to happen to your cost per conversion? It's going to go down. Things are just going to feel easier. We all want to feel easier. And lastly, you're going to be playing in a less competitive ballgame because your competitors couldn't be bothered to do a little bit of the hard work. And we all know what that means for SEO and everything else these days. Whether we've forgotten it or not, I'm not sure. But business and marketing has always been and will always be human to human. And because of we live in a customer-driven economy and most markets, software, e-commerce, consumer packaged goods, it really is a must-have today. So for three reasons. One, buyers have all the power today. Access information has given buyers unprecedented power. Yet according to a study done by Edelman a few years ago, only 51% of your buyers, customers, clients feel you do a good job asking about their needs. 51%. And only 10% think you do a good job at all. And this isn't on the slide, but there was an adjacent study and it found only that 6% of executives, so people like you in this room think they do a good job at that. Those are some pretty scary numbers. So let's look at another data-driven example. I know we love data. So I work in product a lot. So this is a product example, but it applies equally well to marketing. So this is the result of a customer survey that was done of you folks, internal employees, execs, managers, about what they thought they were building for the customer. See how it's up and to the right? You can probably guess where I'm going with this. This is what their customer said. They actually want and need. See how it's down and to the left? Completely, completely different. This is like a holy crap moment. And that's why companies that have embraced and acknowledged the shift to the customer-driven economy are the company's winning. Companies like the 3As. Yes, I love alliterations. Airbnb, Apple, and Amazon. OK, point number two. Performance ROI on tools and tactics is declining. We may not have said this, but I think you feel this. Channel and tactical effectiveness is decaying increasingly rapidly. This is a little out of date. It was done a few years ago, but it's still just as true. Our tools, not to pick on Mar-Tech, but we are at a marketing conference, are changing increasingly fast. But us, humans, homosapiens, we don't change over weeks and months and years. Do we change over millennia? So what do you think you're going to get a better performance investment from? Learning how to build empathy-driven, human-driven strategies? Probably. In fact, I can tell you absolutely. We're in Seattle. A Bezos reference seems appropriate. He's famous for saying, focus on things that don't change. The most important question he never gets asked is, what's not going to change in the next 10 years? Your market might change, but humans aren't going to change. And learning how to market to humans, that's a performance investment that's going to last. As the talk is called, tools change fast. People don't. And Google agrees. So maybe you guys are all user-intended out. I've heard it so many times. It's so important. I counted five speakers on Monday who talked about the importance of user intent. It is critical. So if you couple everything those speakers told you, which was gold, with some empathy-driven techniques, you were literally off to the races. Point number three. And this is one thing to take away from today, take away this. Empathy is going to help you stay relevant. And this is a bold claim, I know. But our world is getting more automated, whether we like it or not. And it's happening at a dizzying rate. But the last thing to ever be automated will be empathy and creativity, if ever. Most of the stuff that we do in our day-to-day lives will be automated and taken over. It's just a question of when, not if. It's why, and for a lot of other reasons, empathy will be one of the career skills, defining career skills, for the 21st century. So protect your career, stay relevant, learn how to do this now, and you're gonna be ahead of the curve. Okay, so I promised to get into some tactical stuff. So I've got you hopefully all stoked on empathy so it doesn't get pushed to the back burner as some nice to have. So now I'm gonna teach you how to actually do some of this stuff. And I promise, even for the shyest introverts in here, I have a few things you're gonna like. Okay, the easiest way to think about empathy is as a muscle. You have to build it. You have to maintain it. And then of course you can flex it, which is performance, and it can always get bigger. So we're gonna go through four muscle building tips. The first one, shocker. Talk to your customers in a research capacity monthly. Remember the 10 hours a month or more and 30% more annual revenue growth? We're getting at this now. It's the closest thing you're ever gonna get to being a mind reader. And with empathy, you're really trying to understand pains and dreams and fears. Yeah, fluffy stuff, I get it, but it's immensely powerful. And I'm gonna give you some concrete questions. However, this is an objection I often get when I talk about this. Well, Ashley, I'm the customer. I get this, I can empathize, it's me. But I have to say, remember, you aren't, you may be the customer, but you're not the customer. One, there's how many of them and how many of you? One, and two, your level of knowledge is so far greater than the average customer that you're never gonna be an accurate parameter. It's great if you are the customer, you can empathize easier, but does not get you a jury selection. Okay, concrete questions, I'm gonna give you five. The first one's my favorite for building empathy. Get people to walk you through a day in their life. That's it. And whether you're B2B or B2C or B2TheMoon, I don't care. Get them to ask about their weekday and weekend. And as bonus bait to get you to do this, I promise you, you will uncover hidden growth opportunities, keywords to target, different audiences, partnership opportunities, ad targeting options, I promise. Two, get them to walk you through how they use you today, understand that experience. And whether that's your content, because content's a product or your product. Dig into the challenges and problems that you saw. This is so critical. Four, find out how they made the decision to use you. Again, whether this is your content or your product. Just find out those motivations. It's so powerful. And lastly, if you're a marketer, you gotta try to get people to the promised land. What it is they're trying to achieve when their problem is solved. So you need to understand what that is. And I don't have time to go into this, but if you take those five questions I gave you and couple it with a Toyota 5WISE framework, just Google it, you'll have these slides. You will be good, because the goal is you need to follow up with each one of these questions about three to five times. Okay, so here are the questions on the slide. If anyone wants to take a picture, I know they can be a good Twitter content. And in the meantime, I'm gonna tell you an answer to a question I often get. And this question is, well, actually this sounds great, but who do I talk to? I have so many clients and customers and audience members. And it's a loaded question, but when in doubt, always reverse engineer your best customers, clients, users, audience members. You can almost never go wrong doing that. Empathy building tip number two, culture. Oh boy, some of the fluffy alarm bells are going off in a few of your heads, I know it. But stay with me. You might also be thinking you're an individual, what can I do? Well, the answer is you can do plenty. Make it your goal to improve your culture next week. Doesn't matter who you are. Post a customer journey on a wall. Get a customer or client in for a lunch and learn. Get some of the insight you're gleaming for all your user intent work in Slack. It really is that simple. In second, we're all measured on numbers. Every single one of us, whether we like it or not. So one of your numbers should be a customer driven metric. NPS is a great place to start and when most people are familiar with. If you're not familiar with NPS, it asks a question like this. If it does a score, it's a predictor of customer value and predictor of future growth. And then it asks a follow-up question, why? If you need buy-in to take NPS more seriously or implement it, tell them that some of the smartest investors in the world in Silicon Valley will not invest in companies that have NPS scores of less than 50. That's how powerful it is today. And a note of caution, you can skew your NPS data very easily if you ask it at the wrong milestones or the wrong cadence. Don't have time to go into that, but just be careful. You can talk about it with me after. And here's the hack that I know all the introverts in the room are gonna love. Any of the NPS software, Delighted, Medalia, there's a million options. Almost all of them have a good NPS integration with Slack. So automatically have the open-ended question posted to Slack. It's a fantastic empathy treat because it creates constant customer client exposure. And do not create an NPS-specific channel. It will never get checked. I promise you, I've tried it, it does not work and I've seen it fail a thousand times. It has to go to one-year key channels. Empathy building tip number three. Automatic empathy loops. Who doesn't like the sound of an automatic empathy loop? It usually gets people pretty excited. So again, big topic, but one quick pro tip. All you have to do is create a VIP or insider program. Can be as simple as a Facebook group. That's it. It's gonna drive more loyalty, more word of mouth, but more importantly, give you a ready and willing group of people to talk to. And as a bonus, Adobe Spark did this. Of course, it drove empathy with their team and helped them build better products and do better marketing. But their insider group also drove 27% more engagement within the product. Tip number four. Walk in your customer's shoes. So you need to be auditing your own flows. We have flows for days. Organic flows, content flows, PPC flows, signup flows. Put it in your calendar once a month, audit your own flows. You've built your empathy muscles a bit. Put in your calendar, go through the perspective of your user. I had a lot of examples of this done, this not done, which I had to cut for the tight timeline and I know I'm at warp speed, but an hour every month. And then once you've done that, I'm gonna give you your new marketing crack. I'm not sure how many of you are doing user testing right now. There's a faulty misconception that it's just for product. In fact, it's just as good for marketers, if not better. And it's your new secret weapon. Because after you've done your own flows yourself, you're gonna get three to five user testing videos. You're gonna have data in 24 hours or less. It's gonna cost you a couple hundred dollars. Usability Hub, usertesting.com are great options. And of course, this can be adapted for any flow you want. You can also user test your competitor's websites. Their signup flows. Oh, this is just so much fun. And basically anything you want, you can have people do multiple websites, so you can get them to start on Google. And this is the power of user testing. You're gonna give them tasks. They're gonna give you written or verbal responses. So I'm just gonna quickly go through this flow. It's a very basic one, but you can adapt it to a lot of things. Give them context. Get them to do something that you want them to do. In this case, use Google. Then get them to find a place to do the thing you want them to do. Then get them to go through the final CTA. And get them to tell you why they wouldn't do the final CTA. That's it. It's an immensely powerful tool. I just did a tutorial with copy hackers on user testing. You can Google that. That might be helpful. And here's our muscle building strategies. Even if you just do one of them, I promise you you'll see the difference in your performance. And when it comes to flexing the muscles after you've spent some time doing this, which again, I know some of you in this room just don't wanna do, you get to see the power in your performance. Bringing it back to our earlier empathy example, you're gonna be targeting the right market. So you're gonna have better copy, better converting websites and landing pages. You're gonna know what keywords to target. You're targeting if your PPC costs are gonna be so much better, which means your costs are gonna go down. Of course, you're gonna understand user intent. You're gonna have some marketing nirvana-ness without necessarily knowing why. It's not all easy. It's never easy. It was easy, everyone be a top performer, but this is really gonna help you boost your performance. And lastly, it's also an arbitrage opportunity because a lot of people haven't embraced this change yet. Daniel Day Lewis, who's one of the most actors known for empathy in Hollywood, has won, and are tied, for the most number of best acting Oscars in history. Because their competitors and his competitors can't be bothered to do the hard work. He'll be forced to, but for right now, it's arbitrage. It's also the ultimate performance enhancer. Jamie Foxx's role in Ray made him a huge star. And Leo, it took five nominations for him to finally get the top performance award for the reverend. That's because empathy can drive top performance. In his case, it's best actor, Oscar. In our case, it's clicks, conversions, and currency. And of course, I had to end with another Hollywood reference. It's better for you. It's better for your companies. It's better for the world. Thank you.