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Gavin Austin - Rebels with a Cause How Marcomm & Techcomm United at Salesforce to Create Trailhead
- 1. Rebels with a Cause How Marcomm & Techcomm United at Salesforce to Create Trailhead Gavin Austin Principal Technical Writer @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 2. Forward-looking statements Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This presentation may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. If any such uncertainties materialize or if any of the assumptions proves incorrect, the results of salesforce.com, inc. could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements we make. All statements other than statements of historical fact could be deemed forward-looking, including any projections of product or service availability, subscriber growth, earnings, revenues, or other financial items and any statements regarding strategies or plans of management for future operations, statements of belief, any statements concerning new, planned, or upgraded services or technology developments and customer contracts or use of our services. The risks and uncertainties referred to above include – but are not limited to – risks associated with developing and delivering new functionality for our service, new products and services, our new business model, our past operating losses, possible fluctuations in our operating results and rate of growth, interruptions or delays in our Web hosting, breach of our security measures, the outcome of any litigation, risks associated with completed and any possible mergers and acquisitions, the immature market in which we operate, our relatively limited operating history, our ability to expand, retain, and motivate our employees and manage our growth, new releases of our service and successful customer deployment, our limited history reselling non-salesforce.com products, and utilization and selling to larger enterprise customers. Further information on potential factors that could affect the financial results of salesforce.com, inc. is included in our annual report on Form 10-K for the most recent fiscal year and in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the most recent fiscal quarter. These documents and others containing important disclosures are available on the SEC Filings section of the Investor Information section of our Web site. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other presentations, press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase our services should make the purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com, inc. assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements. @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 3. Agenda • Content combat • Trailhead to the rescue • Victory for teams & customers @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 4. Takeaways • Customers are collateral damage(d) • Accidents can make awesome assets • Metrics move monumental mountains @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 5. 1. Content Combat @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 7. BUSINESS IS LIKE A WAR WITHOUT BULLETS Phil Knight Co-founder, Nike @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 8. The Problem with Marcomm… • Content is inaccurate! • Changes terms on a whim! • Doesn’t understand the product! • Doesn’t care about customer service! • Gets all the praise, resources, and visibility! @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 9. IN CONTENT MARKETING… THE ASSET IS THE AUDIENCE —NOT THE CONTENT Robert Rose Author, Content Marketing Strategist @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 10. The Problem with Techcomm… • Content is boring! • Avoids risk and changes! • Doesn’t understand the business! • Doesn’t care about sales or prospects! • Whines too much, complains a lot, and is never happy! @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 11. THE GOAL OF TECH COMM IS TO ENABLE CORRECT ACTION Mark Baker Author, Technical Writer @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 12. Complete Content Confusion for Customers Marcom m E-books Techcomm @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18 Online Help Whitepapers API Guides Social Media User Assistance UI Text Graphics & Videos Websites Quick Start Guides “WTF!?” Customers
- 13. THE PURPOSE OF BUSINESS IS TO CREATE A CUSTOMER Peter Drucker Author, Management Consultant @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 14. 2. Trailhead to the Rescue @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 15. ACCIDENTS CAN MAKE AWESOME ASSETS @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 16. WHAT IF WE MAKE TECHNICAL CONTENT WEIRD & “FUN-GAGING”? @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 17. Welcome Customers with Mascots & Characters @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 18. Customers Choose What & When to Learn @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 19. Creative Projects to Encourage Learning @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 20. Earn Badges & Skills to Share & Show Off @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 21. TRAILHEAD IS PART OF AN OVERALL CONTENT STRATEGY FOR MARCOMM & TECHCOMM @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 22. 3. Victory for Teams & Customers @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 23. METRICS MOVE MONUMENTAL MOUNTAINS @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 24. Stats on the Salesforce Economy • 3.3 million new jobs by 2022 • $859 billion new business revenue 2022 • Currently 1 million learners on Trailhead • Currently 10 million badges earned on Trailhead • 1 out of 4 Trailblazers has a new high-paying job • 25% of learners got a raise or promotion with Trailhead @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 25. Economics Created a Trailblazer Community @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 26. “Storyhelping” Metrics Shaped our Brand @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 27. WE CREATE CONTENT THAT TRAILBLAZERS ASK FOR @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 28. WHY DOES TRAILHEAD WORK? EARN A BADGE TO FIND OUT! @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
- 29. Takeaways • Customers are collateral damage(d) • Accidents can make awesome assets • Metrics move monumental mountains @GavinAustinSays #LavaCon18
Editor's Notes
- Who here is Marcomm? Who here is Techcomm? About me, what Salesforce is, speak for 30 min, Q&A at end
- Before I begin, a piece of content from the lawyers at Salesforce, who I like to keep gainfully employed. Salesforce is a publicly-traded company and make all your future purchasing decisions based on what’s currently available.
- What we’ll take about today follows this plot
- I like to begin every preso with the takeaways first.
- Whether you’re marcomm or techcomm, we’re damaging our customers, their experience. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room between our two disciplines, shall we? No one here is innocent
- Can you relate to this? Marcomm not invite you to meetings. Techcomm doesn’t understand the business. We all write content. Different content. But we can’t we all get along? Why are there these silos between us, our tools, our words and sentences? Let’s air our dirty laundry, like Agile retrospective meeting, or group therapy, and examine the problems of marcomm as seen by techcomm, and the problems with techcomm as seen by marcomm.
- Marcomm, these are some of the problems we have with you, says techcomm. Do the techcomm folks in the room agree?
- But perhaps techcomm, instead of just being mad, needs to better understand the purpose/goal of marketing, which is put forth beautifully by Robert Rose.
- And now techcomm, these are the problems we have with you, says marcomm. Marcomm folks in the room, do you agree?
- But perhaps marcomm, instead of just being mad, needs to better understand the purpose/goal of techcomm, which is put forth perfectly by Mark Baker. Every Page is Page One: Topic-based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web and Structured Writing: Rhetoric and Process https://everypageispageone.com/2014/02/10/the-goal-of-tech-comm-is-to-enable-correct-action/
- Whether we’re marcomm or techcomm, we need to admit that we’re creating complete customer confusion with content, even though we should all be on the same team at our companies. You as a customer probably don’t care who made what piece of content from what tool, you just need to find your answer or learn something. You have what Robert Rose calls a “job to be done,” and you want to do it as easily as possible without wasting time searching for it. As customers, we’re all like, WTF?!
- As Peter Drucker famously mentions in the Practice of Management… And are we really creating customers, or our customers collateral damage in our quest to do for them what WE think is right? In our quest to meet dispirit and different bonus goals?
- Now we’ll talk about how Trailhead came to the rescue at Salesforce of this internal battle between marcomm and techcomm.
- First, I want to remind you of the takeaway that accidents make awesome assets. Frankly, Trailhead, our wildly successful e-learning platform, almost never happened. It was an accident.
- It started with a question by a developer marketer named Josh Birk. And more people started adding ideas to it, such as a person named Chris Duarte. We wanted to take a risk and write about CRM and developer content that was unusual, weird, different, and had a new voice & tone from our “business casual” voice & tone. This new style, we called “fun-gaging.”
- What if we added characters, who we call Salesforcelandians? And these characters guide customers through they’re learning journey or learning ”trail”? Get it… What if we wrote with contractions and added minor jokes and didn’t take things too seriously?
- And customers could see a slick dashboard to choose what they want to learn, at their own pace? And once they completed learning modules, that include a mix of marcomm business story, with techcomm instructional content, they earned badges through good ol’ gamification?
- What if to help them retrain the content they learn, we pieced together playful learning projects toke build a communication uplink to mars with Salesforce… Or build a space to help them learn things beyond tech, like cultivating equality at work, or the Drucker Business Essentials courses?
- What if we helped each person create an online profile/resume where they could show the world what they’ve learned from the badges. Maybe it could help them with their careers?
- It is not replacing all of our content; you don’t want to take the time to complete a module if you need to solve an immediate business problem: online help, knowledge articles, will do that. Arguably, all of this content—form Marcomm & Techcomm was already there, just packaged together with some humor, characters, and fun. Trailhead is an online learning platform with self-paced, bit-sized content with a gamification element.
- Now, let’s talk about why marcomm and techcomm united at Salesforce to create Trailhead—how it’s been a victory for both and especially our customers.
- And it all came about with the third takeaway, about how convincing metrics, inside and outside our organization.
- Let me share some of these stats metrics The IDC reports that demand for Salesforce-skilled people will create 3.3 million jobs in the Salesforce ecosystem by 2022. "1 in 4 learners found a new job with Trailhead and 25% of learners got a raise or promotion with Trailhead." - Nucleus Research: The Real Economic Impact of Trailhead
- The economic impact, career impact, of learning Salesforce, coupled with the “fun-gaging” aspect of Trailhead, led to this new brand/customer identity called the Trailblazer. Organically, people helped each other learn online, comment on Twitter, start user groups all over the world, have Salesforce Saturdays online, working with each other to further their education and careers. Hoodies, golden hoodies. Ethos of helping people advance in this new economy, the 4th industrial revolution.
- “storyhelping” term from Robert Rose, helping people accomplish new things with their careers, the overwhelming ask for more Trailhead and how much they love it, shaped our company. Our annual user conference, Dreamforce, which attracts 180,000 people, is all about Trailhead. The themes and motifs have taken over. This call for more and more Trailhead is what organically help marcomm and techomm come together with clear message of giving our customers the content they want, no matter who internally creates it: marcomm or techcomm.
- Do you? It’s not hard for us to determine what to create or create, because our Trailblazer community lets us know on Twitter, IdeaExchange, Trailblazer Community site, and Salesforce user groups. These spring up organically, partially fostered by the playfulness, approachability of Trailhead and how it’s shaped our brand. And it’s united our tools internally. Techomm creates XML/DITA, and we built a tool called Trailboss that lets marcomm write and convert their content to Trailhead too. We have Scrum/planning meetings that include both teams now. It’s clear we can be more successful for our customers together than apart.
- Check it out for yourselves! See how it can work for your business.
- I like to begin every preso with the takeaways first.