Using customer insight to improve product/market fit?
Building a brand from scratch...
I have worked on over 20 branding projects – from start-ups to government institutions.
And in every case, we needed to know the environment of the brand, the shareholders, the stakeholders, the key influencers and key beneficiaries. I needed to know who will be affected by change and what change in selected part of environment I want to achieve.
With brand building at the beginning - there is nothing.
I have a piece of paper and a pen.
For past couple of years I strived to work in 3 steps.
Target (aim of the action)
Tool (defining and choosing the best tool)
Action (don't think - act)
So if my aim is to:
Achieve product/market fit with my brand I have to:
Know my product and know the target market
and then implement that knowledge.
So everything starts with blank piece of paper on which we have to organize the knowledge that we have…
Optimise your content by understanding the power of the brain
Sharing long-form content across social media channels in formats including video, infographics, blogs and other media is becoming more of an 'art', as companies are understanding the importance of 'humanising the brand' to reach higher levels of engagement.
This art or skill is through 'storytelling' and it's been around for years. Only last year, Hubspot announced that it 'would be the biggest business skill over the next 5 years'.
Creating content is becoming more of a 'science', taking into consideration how the brain processes information - did you know that 'the brain processing images 60% faster than words'?
Expert members can learn more in our new guide to Brand Storytelling which will give you a structure and examples for creating brand stories.
[si_guide_block id="50995" title="Resource download – Brand Storytelling" description="Our new resource from Brand Psychologist Jonathan Gabay."/]
Take a look at Onespot's infographic which explores this…
Examples of creating powerful online value propositions
Today’s customers are experiencing an information avalanche with social requests, blog posts, real-time updates, news outbreaks etc fuelled by companies eager for our attention. Using digital channels to interact with their audience but not adapting their strategy of pushing messages out and expecting an instantaneous return on investment by measuring their digital channels as they measured their offline channel.
Brands are clambering on the digital band wagon but using the same techniques they used in a bygone era of broadcasting their message through buying up media space (Radio, TV, ad impressions) but it is no longer working: appealing to the masses means appealing to no one – rather, brands need to spend more time to get to know their audience and know what motivates their audience.
There requires a change in approach and change in tactic, brands need to be asking the question: Am I…
How agencies and other B2B service businesses can avoid a fatal trap
I've been following Ian Lurie of digital agency Portent, Inc for a few years now, enjoying learning from the type of actionable insights around content marketing, SEO and broader Digital Marketing Strategy that I aspire to. So, I was intrigued to see what One Trick Ponies Get Shot was about - particularly since his new book offers the type of contrarian thinking that is all too rare in our Internet marketing echo-chamber. Certainly packed full of original thinking and advice which can change your approach as this interview shows.
Our interview is directly relevant to agencies owners and new biz dev folk, but his analysis will resonate with many and is also relevant for other types of professional B2B service businesses. Thanks for the interview Ian - I like your…
Maps for reviewing the range of insights tools to improve digital marketing
We love tools for managing digital marketing as I think many working in marketing today do... When I'm talking at conferences I often see most pens to paper when I'm recommending the many freemium tools to gain insight to improve results from marketing.
Sharing advice on selecting and using these tools to get better results from digital marketing was one of the drivers behind setting up Smart Insights and we'll soon be launching a marketplace to feature these tools - get in touch if you'd like to be featured in our new directory.
However, the range of tools to gain insight is daunting and this has been highlighted again by the new Gartner Digital Marketing Transit Map - newly updated for Spring 2015.
It's a great complement…
...at least not as well as the 14 or 15 year old Digital Natives...
This Ofcom research on the Digital Day sheds some interesting behavioural insight on how children and Youth audiences engage with digital activity compared to adults. These are the 'Digital Natives' which give us a future view of how digital media will be used.
Over half of children's time is spent communicating via text, instant and photo messaging - this contrasts to 1/4 of the time spent by adults. In terms of social networking sites, 11-15 year olds spend twice as much time as adults.
So, when it comes to .. how much time do 11-15 year olds spend on media and communication activities? Certainly, the differences in time spent on Email and Text between adults and younger audiences is dramatic.
As mentioned earlier,…
Brian Clifton and Avinash Kaushik on Customising Google Analytics to improve Digital Marketing
Successful Analytics is the title of a new book by Brian Clifton who you may know as the author of the Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. Brian wrote this after his time as the first Head of Web Analytics at Google EMEA.
I'm keen to help businesses better manage their use of analytics to improve Digital Marketing. since I have found when training and consulting that many are missing the opportunity make the most of the insights available from their analytics. Although most businesses now use Google Analytics, or an equivalent to tag their sites to measure their online marketing, it's often not the customised for their business to get the most from reviewing the analytics. Brian's books focus on how to customise Google Analytics for a business, from a technical point-of-view (in the first book) and from a process and team standpoint (in…
Simon Swan interviews David Edmunson-Bird about teaching Digital Marketing in Higher Education
In this interview Simon Swan talked to David Edmunson-Bird about the opportunities and challenges of teaching Digital Marketing in Higher Education.
David, AKA @Groovegenerator, is a Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing and Enterprise and Associate Director at Manchester Metropolitan University and has worked for leading companies including BT. He has been involved in the teaching and training of Digital Business since 2004 and was active in setting up the BA (Hons) in Digital Media/Marketing and MSc in Digital Marketing, some of the first and best regarded Digital Marketing qualifications in the UK.
Q1. MMU seem to have been an early adopter in grasping the opportunity to create recognised digital qualifications, do you see this as a necessary in helping to drive awareness for MMU and…
Why the marketing hare beats the tortoise
Traditional marketing has been turned on its head by increasingly disruptive technology and the connected customer. It’s not enough to plan campaigns and follow best practices anymore; as a marketer you have to be agile.
Why is that? Because the connected customer, your customer, people just like you, is ‘always on’. You don’t have a small window in their day to try to reach them anymore, as they’re switching from screen to screen, device to device, which such limited spans for attention, you have to be able to keep up.
To be a customer centric business today means that you as a marketer need to be able to think, and act, in real-time.
As a result, marketing professionals are faced with a new age of engagement - an age in which a series of targeted short-term promotions or messages are beginning to outperform more traditional long-term “integrated campaigns”.…
How many businesses have achieved a single view of their customers and prospects?
This new research reviews how successful businesses have been in creating a single view of their customers. It suggests it's becoming more difficult to gain full visibility of the path to purchase with today's omnichannel consumer experience and that businesses are still facing many challenges around data and the system infrastructure to support this. Marketers are aware of the importance of trying to move towards a fuller 360 degree view of their consumers, to capture and maintain information at every touchpoint throughout the buying cycle, and how a one-to-one personalised relationship marketing approach can generate return.
This global online survey from Signal, across 17 verticals. delves into these challenges which businesses are facing in the 'cross-channel world' and reviews how many businesses are adopting a single viewpoint of their customers.
How many businesses have a single view of their customer?
The survey identifies that although nearly half have…
