Ideas to keep your marketing aligned with future customer expectations
For many companies, 2020 acts as a symbolic deadline, with many strategic plans working towards that date. Everyone is convinced that the face of marketing and entrepreneurship will have changed profoundly by the time 2020 rolls around. Based on my discussions with experts, literature and my personal vision and experiences with customers, I have compiled an overview of what marketing 2020 might look like.
Get ready for Marketing 2020 from steven van belleghem
This blog post summarizes the main elements of the presentation.
The 2020 Consumer
To develop the marketing philosophy of the future we also need to understand the 2020 consumer. Three factors will continue to influence consumer behavior:
1. Full adoption of new technologies:…
What are the most common, most heinous online marketing mistakes?
More people are doing marketing badly according to Seth Godin’s recent post.
It got me thinking that with the Content Marketing Avalanche, more people are now also doing online marketing badly. It’s inevitable with the need to reach customers across more and more touchpoints across paid, owned and earned media.
So what are the most common mistakes. Here are 10 I see all the time, from more strategic to practical, in the economic, inimitable Godin style…
Not having a strategy for digital channels - here’s 10 reasons you do.
Not setting goals, not measuring or optimising site performance .
Thinking that online success is about following the latest shiny marketing tools like Vine or Instagram video when it’s all about building a brand online.
Creating product-centred, not…
Ideas on integrating social media into a marketing campaign
While a campaign focused on social media can add a new dimension to a campaign, large "big bang" investments in social media within a campaign may not always be possible.
But if you build in social media from the outset there will always be opportunities to integrate smaller elements of social media marketing into the framework of an existing marketing campaign that has already been approved and underway. ‘Socialising’ a marketing campaign can be an effective way of reaching new audiences and generating conversation around your brand on the back of larger-scale paid media activity.
Why use social media?
One of the first questions to ask at the outset is why social media marketing would be relevant or necessary for the campaign and how it could add value. What could social media achieve that other aspects of the campaign (advertising, PR, experiential) couldn't?
Some of the…
CXM vs UX - an introduction
The children’s TV programme Barney may not be the first place you would think to go to for business advice. But watching an episode last weekend (with my 3 year old cousin I must add) I did start thinking about Customer Experience Management (CXM), the new marketing phrase currently doing the rounds.
Barney and his cronies were singing a song about how 'everyone is special' and telling the audience 'you’re important' and 'you’re the only one like you'. I sat there with my cousin, (who was by now not sitting but instead jumping on the sofa with excitement) thinking that Barney had inadvertently done what many experts have managed to make a mess of in recent months, and that is define CXM without any marketing hyperbole or ridiculous buzz words.
CXM is essentially understanding that everyone is different…
Research on charity adoption of digital marketing to support fundraising and campaigning
We've just been alerted to this research on the Use of Digital Marketing by Charities. We thought we would share it since although not brand new we have many members who are not-for-profit organisations in the UK and worldwide who may not have seen it and can benchmark their approaches and challenges.
Lasa researched over 300 charities across the UK were surveyed to find out how advanced they are with digital marketing and it's use to support fundraising and income generation, including the impact on the sector by not adopting digital channels.
55% felt digital has to be a 'core competency' for all staff but over half needed training to fully embrace it's full potential
These were two of the key findings - first, the majority see big potential improvements are possible.
…
What’s New in Marketing? June 2013
Did you see the new Digital Marketing Map produced by analyst Gartner? It summarises the range of digital marketing channels and tools available to reach and interact with our audiences online.
It’s an impressive visual and it’s useful for a top-level gap analysis of range of digital tools available against those we do and should use, but we wonder whether our interest in tools can distract from getting the marketing fundamentals which we feature in our Strategy and Planning section.
Strategy and planning
Customer segmentation strategy - we asked Jo Taylor to outline 10 tests that your customer segmentation strategy is effective.
The Future of Brand Marketing - Dan Bosomworth summarised major changes in the way we should plan brand marketing prompted by Paul Adams, author of Grouped. He continues this brand strategy theme asking what we can learn from…
5 ways to innovate for the collaborative economy: examples
Social media marketing is increasingly ubiquitous for most brands, and if not, it is on the radar. We are on our way to mass adoption among businesses. Early adopter brands are now focused on social business. I am certainly talking to a lot of companies about how they can bring more of the outside world back into the business, restructure and be more connected to customers, employees and stakeholders. It seems that the eventual evolution of social media is as a communications channel inside and out.
As I talk and work with companies, we see a wide range in the level of adoption and innovation in using social media. Our Social Media Innovation S-Curve, similar to the Gartner Hype Cycle, shows the maturity of process and innovation we see in different companies. Where do you lie?
…
Making your brand promises matter
"Move from [product] differentiation to actually making a difference" Umair Haque, the director of the Havas Media Labs and Harvard Business Review blogger
Earning your way into a consumer's heart is something that we know is important. Helping consumers feel something positive is the goal, convincing someone of purchase can only be an easier win as a result, surely?
The case for this being important, I think we'd agree, has never been as strong, when so much of marketing success hinges on forming connections with consumers, earning even seconds of their valuable time.
This at a time when despite the billions of £/$'s spent on marketing, Haque's latest report states that consumers just don't care - 73% of people don't care if the brands in their life disappeared tomorrow. Ouch, and yet so obvious. If consumers are that indifferent, then we have to make them feel, we have to…
Improve efficiency and effectivness through IMM
As marketers, we know that integration across media, channels and campaigns is important, but it's not discussed as often as practices and examples of individual channels. So I thought it would be interesting to summarise this talk by Lorna Loney, Senior Applications Consultant for Teradata Applications (Aprimo). She gave an insightful presentation at Connect2013 in London, on 'Integrated marketing management, you can also download her full presentation here on Integrated Marketing Management.
The focus of her presentation was on how poor internal structures, systems, processes and a lack of integration across the organisation can impact the customer experience and marketing/business performance. This diagram shows the nature of the challenge.
Marketing challenges
From her experience, she has seen many marketing challenges which include:
inefficient and manual processes
poor internal audit trails
poor performance management
lack of processes to manage problems and
lack of…
Changing your mindset to make yourself more valuable
Back in 2012, I wrote a blog post, Time to create your own future, it referred to the gradual cultural change facing our global economy, in part due to the recent global recession but also moving away from the Industrial era and moving towards a more globally connected economy.
It questioned how many more of us are beginning to change our working culture, how more of us are taking charge of our own destiny, or, even working for organisations, how you can change your mindset to make yourself more indispensable?.
Godin's reference to PERL
In the book Linchpin '"How to drive your career and create a remarkable future", Godin refers to a system used by corporations synonymous within the industrial era and a system that still…
