We take a look at the power of personalization in retail. How it helps you deliver unique customer experiences and a boost to retail sales
Great customer experience is about putting the customer at the centre of everything you do. It’s about giving them what they want quickly and making them feel special in the process.
But when you’re faced with thousands of customers, it can be hard to put your best intentions into practice. Personalisation changes this.
Does personalization in retail matter?
Personalization tends to be seen as a buzzword. People tell you it’s important without sharing the facts. But there’s hard proof that personalization counts when it comes to sales.
Remember the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign with people’s names plastered across the packaging? This personal approach was credited with growing Coke’s sales for the first time in 10 years.
The research shows Coke’s experience isn’t an isolated one. 75% of consumers are…
These days, social media is non-negotiable as far as marketing is concerned. You simply cannot ignore the power of social media with the number of worldwide users expected to hit three billion by 2021
If you aren’t already leveraging social media tools to acquire more customers, then you’re missing out on millions of prospects. They help you to engage your target audience in a more personal way. And social media is the ideal place to increase your brand’s exposure, generate more leads, and even service customers.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. If it were, everybody would be doing it, and doing it well. It takes a certain level of planning and tact to get the most out of social media marketing. Hopefully, these tricks will help you with your customer acquisition strategy on social…
Content marketing is a complex, highly competitive marketing practice, so it’s important to be strategic if you want to succeed
Over years of blogging and working with content marketing, I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Important lessons that I definitely wished I knew about when I started. In this blog post, I’m going to share top essential content marketing practices that you might not be leveraging:
Strategize and plan your content marketing
Research your content and perform keyword research
Focus more on evergreen content
The future is in personalization: create audience personas
Use your analytics to optimise your content
Strategize and plan your content marketing
How much thought do you really put into your strategy? Are you:
Setting objectives for your content?
Creating content with your objectives in mind?
Creating content based on market research?
Using an editorial calendar to plan and strategize your content?
Creating a content marketing strategy helps in several ways:…
Five ways to improve the earned media potential of your Instagram content
With over 800 million active monthly users worldwide (over 20 million of which are from the UK) engaging with over 4.2 billion posts every day, Instagram is a social media phenomenon. It is one of the fastest growing and influential platforms of all time, with some estimating that ad revenue could hit $10 billion by 2019. The power of imagery, pictures and video to tell stories and communicate has grown exponentially over the last decade and Instagram (along with Pinterest and parent company Facebook) has a profound impact on popular culture.
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For the last few years, there has been much talk and…
Why social media is a must-use tool in conjunction with your call centre’s customer service efforts
In the past, social media was a separate customer service tool and even an entirely separate department to the call centre. They were seen as two different entities with two different goals; social media used to create brand awareness and call centres used to provide customer service. But more and more companies are becoming aware of the benefits of integrating social media into their daily customer service activities to improve business process management overall.
Research shows that today, customers prefer using social media for customer service rather than picking up the traditional phone and making a phone-call. One in three social media users prefer customer service through social channels, and customers will spend between 20-40% more with companies who engage with them through social media. Combining social media and customer service clearly makes for…
Quora can be an incredibly valuable content marketing tool
In fact, Quora can help with multiple common content marketing goals, such as getting more traffic or boosting your industry authority – plus, it’s an extremely tool for research. But, more on that in a bit. In this blog post, I’m going to show you how to use Quora as part of your content marketing strategy.
What is Quora and why should you be bothered?
Quora is, as they put it, “a place to share knowledge and better understand the world”. In other words, it’s a place where anyone can ask and answer questions about pretty much any topic you can think of.
People use Quora to ask for advice for their personal and professional lives, to get recommendations for products and services, to ask for strangers’ opinions on different subjects (both personal and professional), and much more.
And, of course, people also use Quora…
Examples of social media workflow to review and respond to online comments about a brand
A while ago, I received this question by email, it describes a common concern of managing brand reputation given the growth in consumer comments in social media:
"I would be interested in any case studies or examples of controlling social media discussions, especially in a case of negative flow".
The questioner went on to explain that in her case, in the health sector, and many health and looks treatments etc. create a lot of social media input. Experiences, questions, complaints etc. Also, in some cases, competitors are creating negative posts. She explains that example is where companies have faced non-satisfied customers that are creating a lot of noise in social media.
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Example flowcharts for managing…
Four ways to tell a story in 6 seconds
In an increasingly mobile-first environment, audiences’ attention is at a premium. Brands are constantly looking for new ways to achieve cut-through and platforms such as YouTube, Google and Twitter are designing new formats to align with consumers’ evolving viewing habits.
With mobile as the dominant medium now, user expectations towards advertising have changed. Whilst it will always be important to create great content to make an impact and keep people watching, it’s nevertheless important to acknowledge that content is consumed in different places and contexts, sometimes at home in front of a television and at other times on-the-go, via a mobile device.
As a result of these shifting consumption patterns, in 2016 YouTube introduced the 6-second Bumper ad format for brands looking to deliver messages quickly and efficiently to consumers who are likely to be watching one-off pieces of video content in shorter sessions,…
Daunting, time-consuming and expensive. Or is it?
Doing any form of research doesn't always need to be so costly, here are five options to help you recruit participants for surveys.
I've also produced an article on how to get B2B survey responses, the focus of this post is helping you to find B2C participants for your research.
We all know that one of the hardest parts of doing any research is often something which is undervalued and that's finding respondents to take part. More importantly getting the right respondents for your research is even harder.
Research is essential to help get insight into a variety of business functions. and luckily the word of market research is maturing which means that there are loads of tools available that can help you. I've put together a list below of some of the most reliable places to find respondents for B2C research including surveys, focus groups, depth interviews…
These are what some of the biggest websites looked like 20 years ago and you won't believe it...
Since the World Wide Web was invented in 1990 designers and web developers have been constantly working to improve its original clunky basic text design into a simple, fast and eye-catching user experience.
Check out some of these amazing web design transformations from the past 20 years!
1. Smart Insights
Smart Insights is only 8 years old, but we wanted to highlight the design transformations we've gone through. The site originally started as a blog as seen on the home page in 2010. It's evolved into a marketing publisher - keeping its roots in content, but now offering premium services and elearning for members.
2010
2015
2018
2. YouTube
YouTube…
