 Your new post is loading...
Your new post is loading...
With the rise of so many digital options, the marketing landscape has become extremely complex. New buzzwords crop up every day and new tools promise to be the next best technology to drive growth. Despite all of this, the fundamentals of business haven’t changed. In fact, stepping back and reflecting on the basic goals of growth can often get lost when smitten by new powerful data-driven tools, automation rules and new social and digital options. While the tools marketers leverage today are often changing rapidly, what was true in 1950 is still true today when it comes to successful businesses. Every successful business needs new customer trials, proper and quality communication with its customers, and needs to maintain a positive reputation in its community.In a recent survey my company conducted with our client base of thousands of local businesses, we determined that the most successful businesses were focused on these three business fundamentals when making marketing decisions. We spoke with small business owners throughout the country in face-to-face interviews to learn about their time in business, positive and negative factors that influence their companies, marketing and customer loyalty, and more. While some used different tools to accomplish their goals, all were using some form of modern and traditional means to execute their strategies....
If you’ve been in marketing for more than a hot second, you’ve no doubt heard of the Buyer’s Journey. What you might not know is that this journey has dramatically changed in the last decade. 67% of the buyer’s journey is now digital. Today’s buyer is up to 90% of the way through their buying journey before they reach out to the vendor.Interactive content is front and center in this digital shift in the Buyer’s Journey. As companies produce more and more content in order to satisfy today’s self-guided buyer, only the most engaging content will stand out and get noticed. Why does interactive content stand out in the sea of content online today? Because it doesn’t talk at buyers – it talks with them. There are interactive content types for every stage in the Buyer’s Journey: Awareness, Evaluation, and Decision-making. However, it plays an especially important role for both the buyer and the business in the Awareness stage....
Social strategy. Digital strategy. Mobile strategy. Content strategy. Everyday we’re being urged to create a new strategy. But with all the chatter about new channels, it seems we may have lost sight of the concept of an overall Marketing Strategy. And this gap has huge implications for marketing effectiveness. The tactical programs we create need to rest on a single foundation, otherwise we’re just sending dollars out the door. Case in point, the biannual CMO Survey just released by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, the American Marketing Association and Deloitte revealed that “marketers are expected to nearly double their social media spending in the next five years even though most can't show the impact of social on their business.”
Ya’ll as we say here in Texas, social media, direct marketing, public relations, advertising, etc., are not strategies -- these are tactics, and each of these tactics can potentially be deployed to support any number of strategic options. Marketers, I issue you a call to arms, it’s time to get serious about marketing strategy.
Marketing strategy, not a channel or touchpoint or tactic, is how your organization will achieve its mission. It is the critical link between marketing objectives and marketing programs and tactics. Your strategy selection (and just as importantly what is not selected) provides focus and enables your organization to concentrate limited resources on building core competencies that in turn create the sustainable competitive advantage needed to pursue and secure the best revenue opportunities....
Online, everything is a competition. If your website isn’t healthy enough to compete, you lose, which in many cases affects the profitability and viability of your business.
If you want your business to win the online marketing race — or at least place in the top 10 — you have to train for it.
Here is a five-point training regimen that will help you whip your website into shape and be a true contender in online marketing...
Marketers are constantly looking to better understand consumers and ultimately deliver an engaging experience. According to Q4 2015 research, many executives are using revenue metrics to quantify the success of customer efforts.
CMO Council looked at how marketing executives in North America quantify customer engagement success. More than a third of respondents said that revenue metrics, like customer lifetime value, revenues per customer and overall revenue increases, were the primary type of metric they used to measure consumer engagement.
Additionally, 30% of respondents said that campaign metrics, such as clicks, conversions, shares, traffic and web analytics, were the primary type of metrics they used. Fewer marketing executives said they relied on sales enablement metrics, service metrics and finance metrics to measure overall customer engagement success....
While psychology and marketing are two very different fields, that doesn’t mean that learning psychology can’t help you.
In fact, I think it’s one of the most important things a marketer can study.
In this post, I’m going to show you eight different psychological principles and the ways they can affect your sales.
To take it even further, I’m going to show you how you can apply each principle to your business....
What do a newly married couple, a recent college graduate, and an expectant mom all have in common? Yes, this sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, but in actuality, each of these consumers are experiencing life event changes. And when consumers make important life decisions or are in a state of change, these milestones tend to define spending habits.
A newly married couple may be ready to furnish their new home. Or a recent college graduate may be in market for a new vehicle. Whatever the circumstance, marketers can take advantage by sending offers to coincide with these moments.
Life event marketing isn’t new, but if you aren’t implementing this strategy into your marketing plans, it is time to reconsider. Historically, businesses understood the value of marketing based on life events but the most common challenge tended to be finding the data and acting on it while it was still fresh.
After all, if you learn about a newly married couple 3 months after the fact, many of the opportunities will have long passed you by. The world is now faster and data is created and collected instantly. Just as important, data solution providers have become more sophisticated in how they source these life defining moments, allowing marketers to target consumers before the opportunity is lost.
Take a look at some of the ways marketers use life event data to target consumers based on life-changing events....
All too often, e-retailers default to a flash sale when they want to boost limp sales. However, recent research has revealed that discounting can actually be a dangerous practice to your business’ profits, meaning that companies need to get to the root of their sales issues instead of relying on offering discounts.
As it turns out, discounting can cause your customers to devalue your product, and it doesn’t provide any long-term benefits. In fact, discounting can even be a slippery slope for businesses, snowballing until the companies are forced to offer discounts in order to get the same sales numbers they were previously getting. One study found that 81% of hoteliers are discounting more now than they were five years ago, and 75% said this had done damage to their brand.
Instead, e-retailers should step away from slashing prices and analyze what could be holding their sales back. Customers reported that they stopped buying because of shipping costs, not being ready to purchase, slow site speed, and a low-security site. By addressing these issues, you can increase your sales without resorting to discounts. For example, you might offer free shipping for orders over a certain amount, or you could add security logos to your checkout page to increase your customers’ trust in your website....
Customers’ desire for deals has become an obsession. Established companies have responded by slashing prices—and, for many, their brand value. With profit margins squeezed, and new providers popping up to offer low cost products and services, companies have reduced quality and, in some cases, even product safety to make the all-important sale. Risks to consumers, workers and the environment have become very real.
It’s time for companies to re-examine their pricing strategies. They need to understand what their customers notice, value and are willing to pay for and educate customers on the trade-offs of low-cost offerings....
More than 90% of shoppers say price is the top reason they buy an item from a different retailer after visiting a store without making a purchase, according to research from Cognizant. As many as 55% of shoppers leave and go to another retailer’s store if they feel the price of an item is too high.
When it comes to retailers that offer the lowest prices, there are still plenty of reasons consumers can be turned off from making a purchase. Almost half (48%) of shoppers say convenience is the top reason they will not shop at the lowest price retailer. Additionally, 32% of these shoppers prefer loyalty programs at other retailers, while 31% will shop at retailers with a better return policy....
You’re pumping all that content out on social media channels but do you know what is working and not working?
Are your tweets reaching the right audience? Are your Facebook updates driving relevant traffic to your site?And more importantly……
Is this driving revenue for your business?
Every so often it’s useful to take a step back and assess if your strategy is working.
And of course….There are some tools that can help....
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the fast-paced changes occurring in digital marketing, you’re not alone. But you don’t have to enroll in a two-year program or a certificate course just to keep your head above water. There are dozens of marketing experts who are eager to share their knowledge with you – for free.
We’ve compiled a list of our seven favorite ebooks that everyone working in the digital marketing space should read. They range from four page whitepapers to 20+page guides, and they all offer valuable insights from some of the top leaders in the industry.
You’ll notice three particular trends in these ebooks –They emphasize customers, data and content. And that’s no accident – these are the three trends shaping the future of digital marketing.
In no particular order, here are our picks for the top seven ebooks every digital marketer should read....
Altimeter group in 2012 came up with an interesting study and a framework for accessing Content Marketing performance and success. The framework can help analyze your current positioning, what you can do better and help understand who does content marketing well. Here are some details on the framework, that you can use as a ready-hand reference for your own brands.
|
Corporate chief marketing officers (CMO) should also come to appreciate the connection between authority and accountability. That’s according to a new survey conducted by Accenture Strategy that found the CMO is the most likely member of the executive team to be fired when a company fails to hit its growth target. Is this fair? Absolutely — when you ask the CEO. The survey results reveal 50 percent of CEOs view the top marketer as the primary driver of “disruptive growth.” This involves launching products into new areas, expanding service models or increasing revenue through inventive approaches to data. Yet, the more than 800 CMOs who also participated in the same study spend only 37 percent of their time on innovation. The majority of their effort is focused on managing traditional marketing activities....
Marketers spend a lot of time trying to nail down abstract concepts. They're tasked with turning brainstorming sessions and comments sourced during focus groups into campaigns that sum up everything about a brand's identity in a neat, tidy, and most importantly, interesting way.
But what if a consumer could walk into a room and fully experience your brand with all their senses? Pop-up events offer just that -- the chance for consumers to get up close and personal with their favorite companies in a truly immersive setting.
In their simplest form, pop-up events are temporary retail spaces that give companies the opportunity to sell their products in an environment completely designed and controlled by them. Since they're temporary, they offer a relatively low-cost and low-commitment way for companies to take creative risks, generate buzz, and introduce their brands to new audiences.
Consumers love the lure of exclusivity, and brands love the unmatched opportunity for experimentation. To inspire your next branded experience, we've curated a list of 15 innovative and visually stunning pop-up events....
The way I see it, demand generation is the direct opposite of the old-school cold-calling approach. It's the process of turning cold leads into warm leads, then guiding those warm leads down your funnel towards a sales conversation. And for those who fall out of the funnel, it's the process of establishing regular touch points with them until they (a) become customers or (b) tell you to get lost.
What demand generation is not is a campaign. The goal of demand generation is to establish relationships, some of which can go on for months or even years before the prospect is ready to enter a sales conversation....
In this post, I’m going to show you 5 marketing tactics that are effective for most businesses.
The only catch is they can be difficult or scary to do.
I’m going to break them down as much as possible so that you can determine why they might scare you and what you could do to overcome that fear.
This is going to take a lot of honesty on your part, but if you’re willing to give me that, it could have a huge impact on the success of your marketing....
Complacency is not an option in today's marketplace. Changeable buying behavior, channel and technology proliferation, data profusion—these are just a few of the realities marketers face today that necessitate transformation. Whether it's improving on marketing strategies that work or taking an entirely new approach, marketers must shake up their practices in 2016.
Knowing where to start or what's most essential to improve on can seem overwhelming with so many possibilities. So, DMN asked 15 marketing leaders to provide insight into what they think should marketers do differently in 2016 to attract, convert, and retain more customers. Here, their advice....
Marketers are ramping up their technology investments to better understand consumer needs and behaviors. Technologies to power social marketing, digital commerce and marketing analytics are the highest priorities, per July 2015 research.
Gartner surveyed more than 330 organizations in the UK and North America on their 2015 marketing budgets and 2016 expectations. Almost two-thirds of respondents said that social marketing and digital commerce were leading technology investment priorities.
Additionally, 61% of marketers said that marketing analytics were a priority and more than half of respondents were prioritizing tech for customer experience and advertising operations.
Understanding the psychology of consumers at different moments is more effective than just knowing their demographics or interests. Timing is everything in advertising, and mobile can wait for just the right moment to reach consumers.
Here are examples of brands that have successfully used a moments-based approach to mobile advertising....
For much of the past 10 years, business has resembled a game of "catch-up". Each new wave of technological innovation has triggered new customer behaviors and expectations, causing businesses to constantly scramble to figure out how to be relevant. This era of disruption has, as often as not, caught business leaders in general, and marketers in particular, on the back foot. This uncomfortable situation looks like it's finally starting to change.
The Marketing Disruption II research highlighted 5 red flags that marketers need to address to deliver on this promise and become a true engine for growth...
If you’ve noticed fewer window shoppers on the streets lately, it may be because they’re at home window shopping from their couches; that is, they’re discovering and exploring products without necessarily intending to purchase.
For our 2015 US Mobile Landscape report*, Forrester analyzed mobile audience data from our behavioral tracking panel to understand how consumers use smartphones and tablets in 2015. We found that although professionals often group both devices under the “mobile” umbrella, consumers use smartphones and tablets in very different ways.
One notable difference centers on mobile commerce: While smartphone commerce is still struggling to get traction, for tablets it’s already one of the most common activities. In fact, Forrester’s US Mobile Phone And Tablet Commerce Forecast, 2015 To 2020 shows that total tablet retail purchases more than double those made on a smartphone.
Our behavioral data shows that in the first half of 2015, 68% of tablet owners visited a shopping site at least once in a given month — that’s more than the number who visited news/media, TV/video, or even social networking sites! And these tablet shoppers aren’t just visiting Amazon.com. Only about half took to Amazon —the other half visited other online shopping websites that fit their interests, brand preferences, and lifestyle....
The future is exciting, with new technologies opening up ways to understand your customer better than ever before. The ability to stretch the picture of your customer from how they transact to how they interact with you through hundreds of touch-points; the complete journey of seeing, thinking and doing that leads to that final purchase - and repurchase - and where they might abandon is critical to understand, according to a white paper from loyalty specialist Ikano Insight.
In this context the paper, entitled 'The future: Omni-channel or overwhelming?', defines 'omni-channel' as a focus on a seamless approach to the customer experience, using all available customer-facing channels, and argues that how a customer engages with a brand is equally as important as the channel interactions they make - and this is the challenge that omni-channel presents for marketers. 64.180.55.243 This article is copyright 2014 TheWiseMarketer.com.
New technology creates new ways of serving targeted offers to specific points in the customer journey; in-store micro-location offers, and HTML5 dynamic banners serving personalised messages across all devices and browsers mean that the Place and Promotion elements of your marketing mix are more advanced and exciting than ever before....
The press is replete with doubters. A prominent NPR host complained about whether or not he would be able to engage in the famous Oreo “twist, lick, and dunk” ritual.
ABC News even conducted a side-by-side comparison of the two cookies rating them on size, twistability (the thin ones broke 75% more often), dunkability (the thin ones took 18 seconds longer to get appropriately soaked), nutrition (the thin ones fared only slightly better), and taste (the regular ones had more of a nice chocolatey taste), with the original version clearly coming out on top.
On top of that, the new Oreo Thins—albeit the company doesn’t talk about it—comes with a 42% price premium over the regular “double-stuffed” Oreo cookies (i.e., a pack of Oreo Thins weighs 10.1 ounce and is priced at $5.49, a regular Oreo pack weighs 14.3 ounce and is priced at $5.49).
So would people buy the over-priced, under-stuffed new Oreo Thins? We think chances are that many people will; here’s why....
Design is an important part of shaping the user experience, but it's the strategy behind the website that will make it work. Before you start creating design concepts, there are a few fundamental questions to consider first.
Taking the time to discuss these big-picture considerations with your sales, marketing, customer service and leadership teams will ensure everyone is on the same page before you start creating new pages. Here are seven essential questions that should be part of that discussion....
|
No matter the changes in technology, small businesses can benefit from new customer trials, strong communication with loyal customers, and a positive brand image.