Category: Marketing

What You Must Know About Agile Marketing?

July 17, 2017

If you have found it difficult to understand why certain marketing campaigns, despite great analytics and data, don’t actually fare very well in reality, it is probably because these campaigns are not in touch with ground realities. Customers or our target audiences aren’t monolithic forces, and they are not homogeneous, though our data might like us to believe. Each customer or client is an individual, and they are motivated by various internal and external factors to make the purchase decisions that they do. To stay abreast of these disparate individual clients and customers, marketers and decisions makers should abandon the idea of cliched marketing campaigns that run for months, based on data and analytics that a CRM might provide. Agile marketing strategy addresses this issue, and puts individual customers and clients to the forefront. It also reduces the duration of campaign cycles, and ensures that micro-campaigns and hyper-collaborative team efforts bring the flexibility and change required to dynamically evolve our marketing efforts. A little about agile marketing With a focus on end-customer, agile marketing helps teams to work in a highly functional and effective manner, by being iterative, flexible and self-organizing. We must remember that Agile Marketing is not related to Agile Development, and though there may be a bit of inspiration from the way user experience design, agile marketing is an entity that stands on its own. If you wish to bring agile marketing strategies to your team, it is probably better not to use terminologies related to agile software development, as marketing strategies are quite different form software development. Most importantly, developers often follow agile as if it were the New Testament, but marketing teams and CFOs or CMOs need not, and instead, keep evolving their strategies based on changing customer needs and trends. If we look at things in a realistic way, agile marketing is all about suiting marketing strategies to changing trends, technologies, bi-directional conversations, and the unending production of Big Data. In other words, there will soon be a day when we stop calling agile marketing “agile marketing”, and instead, call it just “marketing”.   Here is how agile marketing is usually structured: Agile marketing strategy is often inspired by the Scrum framework, which involves creating lists of priorities. These priorities are taken up by team members or teams in “sprints”. The team or the team member has a very short period of time to complete that marketing exercise, probably 2-4 weeks, instead of 4-6 months in regular marketing campaigns. Teams and members meet each day for short stand-up meetings with the team leader (or the scrum master, if you will), and the various building blocks of the projects (different sprints), are managed to ensure they are right on track, by whoever is overseeing it. At the end of each sprint, a marketing goal or exercise should be completed. At the end of the completion, one reviews the results. Soon after, the next chunk of a marketing strategy is distributed among team members, as different sprints.   Instead of taking it all up as a single and unitary marketing campaign, the agile methodology allows for breaking up of a marketing strategy into sprints, and completing them, discarding them, or altering them based on the results of each sprint. Important values of agile marketing, in simple words Being open to changes in marketing plans As you may have already observed, your customers are not unitary, and belong to diverse demographics and psycho-graphics. It would be foolhardy to reduce an individual to a statistic, and club them under broad categories. Instead, use agile marketing strategy to keep changing your marketing campaigns, as and when your customers’ tastes change. With the proliferation of social media, customers’ tastes, values and needs change almost every other day. Testing and monitoring campaigns rapidly Do not stop at tracking and monitoring customers’ changing needs and trends. Track every sprint that your team undertakes and monitor its success. Each sprint has to teach you something, and should help you move along with your customers. As customers’ trends change every day, you should change your strategy too, just as quickly. Testing opinions and matching them with data Market research and opinion analyses can be taken up as regular sprints, you can match these sprints with the data you have accumulated on your CRM. CRM is quite agile itself, but we tend to look at it as a constant. Using sprints helps you to make sense of your CRM analytics in a more agile manner. Conduct micro-experiments to test larger marketing ideas If you are running a marketing campaign, it has to evolve with your customers. The best way to understand what your customer wants, or how each of one of them is changing every day, is to conduct micro-experiments. These micro-experiments can be tested against your larger marketing ideas, and evolve as you get the results. In fact, these smaller experiments can consist of sprints too. Focusing on individual aspirations, instead of on large markets Agile marketing puts the customer or the client in the center. Marketing strategy itself takes a backseat, and gives more importance to the changing needs and desires of customers. When individual aspirations are given more importance than a monolithic market segment, your marketing strategy is likely to get super-efficient. A radical approach to collaboration Often, collaboration involves various hurdles that exist within hierarchies. An agile marketing framework allows you to collaborate with anybody in your team. Even your most-junior team member will probably be able to communicate with your senior marketing professionals, and your marketing manager may be able to communicate with sales guy better. Of course, as this is a customer-centric model, there will always be collaborations with customers both on social media, and offline, all along the sprints that you undertake. Bringing agile marketing to your work floor To bring agile marketing to your teams, you probably do not have to work too hard. You must remember that this model exists to make things easier, more

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Social Media Is Too Complicated Unless Purposeful

July 6, 2017

Do you recall Uncle Ben, Peter Parker’s uncle, and the father figure in Spider-Man (2002)? Well, if not, we are certain you remember his dialogue — “With great power comes great responsibility”. This oft-quoted line is valid in life as well as in the way social media works today. Presently, social media is one of the most effective digital marketing methods used in businesses. In fact, today, if your business is not on social media, you don’t exist. But then, the power of social media should be used responsibly and also purposefully. In the digital social sphere with the rapid proliferation of social media platforms, let’s admit usage of social media is increasingly getting complex. A new study by Siegel+Gale reported that social networking platforms are becoming too complicated. This, truth be told, is making the job of the digital marketers tough. Despite the fact that it sounds cliché, social media has a lot of power to influence people and their decision. You can directly communicate and engage with your customers, take instant feedback and improve your product and services, increase brand recognition, increase inbound traffic and improve brand loyalty. But then, overuse of social media at times can be detrimental to your business. In simple terms: if overdone, it can have a boomerang impact on your business. If you don’t have a planned social media strategy in place, it can complicate your presence in the online world and may not serve the overall purpose. Santanu Mukherjee, head of Digital Marketing, Indus Net Technologies, admits social media is getting complex. Like most digital marketer, he echoes similar sentiments that “social media is an essential piece in the digital marketing mix today”. He also informs that handling social media is comparatively easier than other digital marketing tools. But he gives a warning too. “We are aware of almost all the social media platforms that can work for our businesses today. We have our presence in most of the social media platforms. However, this is the most confused part. While we feel using social media is simple, we try to overdo it and this is where we go wrong,” he says. Having said that, social media is still, and will for quite a while, remain a dominant tool in the digital marketing mix. Hence, if utilized properly, organizations can continue to reap maximum benefit from it. Mukherjee, who has over 15 years of experience in digital marketing, explains in 3 simple points how to make social media effective and purposeful.   Identify the target audience and the social media platforms that work best for your audience. Establish yourself as a thought leader and built trust Engage your customer and don’t always try to sell   Identify the target audience and the social media platforms that work best for the audience   As indicated by Statista, the number of overall social media users is expected to reach 2.67 billion by 2018. 92% of small businesses admit that social media is imperative for their business. But then again, social media today is filled with noise and wading through this noisy and cluttered world is an uphill task for every digital marketer. If a marketer can rightfully identify the key audience for the business, the job becomes easier. Then he/she can come up with clearly-defined strategies to target the customer behaviour. Mukherjee admits identifying the ideal customer base for the business is the most complicated part of social media. “In social media, you have direct interaction with the audience. So, how you present your brand and business is how you are perceived on the digital medium. Hence, you cannot go beyond the boundary,” he says. But let’s not forget that just because you have access to all the platforms doesn’t mean you will jump on all the platforms. Overuse of social media platforms can jeopardise all the digital marketing efforts. Indus Net Technologies was in charge of the digital branding and sales for Baidyanath, a century-old Indian pharmaceutical firm. Indus Net Technologies studied the target audience and devised an exclusive digital marketing strategy to increase their sales. Baidyanath achieved 253% increase in sales and 20x growth in brand engagement among the target group within a period of three months of engagement, through digital channels like social, content, search and e-commerce marketplaces.   Mukherjee says there are innumerable social media platforms today to promote your brand, products and services. “This makes social media marketing messier. Not all platforms will suit your business purpose. If you have proper digital marketing plans, you can come up with tailor-made content to attract your audience. If you are into B2C branding, then probably Facebook will work better than the other social media platforms,” he says. He goes onto specify that for a B2B section, Twitter and Linkedin play a key role. “After defining the right audience, you need to define the content bucket. If the content is not related to your brand or business, then probably you are misguiding the audiences. This can be catastrophic. In this case, social media is complicated and not serving the purpose,” he says. To know about the most influential brands on Facebook in 2016, click here: goo.gl/LP7HG0   Establish yourself as a thought leader and built trust Another crucial area where social media can come to immense use is establishing your brand or business as a thought leader. In fact, if you can successfully present your brand as a thought leader, it can pave the way for innovative marketing strategies and drive sales too.   If you want your customer to engage with your brand or business online, you need to develop a virtual yet strong and genuine connection with customers. Here, thought leadership can play a significant role. Clients and customers will trust you more, and you can become a useful resource for them. As a thought leader, you can inform your customers and clients the best practices in the industry, showcase your knowledge in a particular subject, offer more customer-centric and

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8 Influencer Marketing Strategies that Work

January 30, 2017

If you are hearing the term ‘influencer marketing’ a number of times these days, there is a reason behind it. It is one of the most popular strategies for companies across the world, according to few surveys conducted. The process of aligning with those who can influence your target audience is what is called influencer marketing. By aligning with people who can initiate action among your target audience, you will stand to gain more prospects, leads and finally customers. However, there is a method to influencer marketing. In this article, let us take a look at 8 useful tips that will help you to kick-start your influencer marketing campaign. Study your audience Before you begin to choose your influencers, start with your own intended audience. Most companies choose to ignore the specificities of their target audience. Use advanced metrics and Big Data to analyze what your audience likes, who might influence them, what their sub-cultures are, which psychographics they belong to, etc. Use this data to create a map which helps you better understand the kind of influencers that will initiate action. After all, the most important goal of influencer marketing is to get those influencers to initiate action in your favor. And for this, you need to start with analyzing your own audience. Choose your influencers wisely Choosing influencers needs to be done very carefully. Begin to identify the kind of content that your influencer publishes on social media and elsewhere. Identify the media through which they communicate and confirm if this aligns with your own audience. Ensure that their location is relevant to your audience. Finally, do not forget to check the quality of their content. Content needs to be professional. If they are tweeting in poor English language, then they are probably not the right influencer for you. Also, ensure that their opinions align with your business strategy. Analyze influencer content Influencer content could be in the form of text, images or videos. Depending on which media they choose to communicate, one of the other forms of content will be more popular. If your prospective influencer is a blogger, then ensure that they consistently blog about industries, products or topics that align with your products or services. It also helps if your influencer is a thought leader in the area of your expertise. Let us say you sell clothes on a small ecommerce website. An example of your perfect influencer would be someone who shops online, and shares selfies on Instagram or Twitter about their recent purchases. If they are blogging about fashion tips, they could be an even better choice. Analyze influencer audience Once you analyze influencer content, ensure that they have enough audience of their own. This way, you will not only gain access to their content but also to their audience, who will most likely be your intended target audience. Look at variables such as gender, the home situation of the audience (do they have children, are they married, etc), geographical data, etc. There are dozens of variables such as these which will help you to identify audience attributes. If your influencer has a very diverse set of audience, it may actually work against you. Your message may spread itself too thin. Manage influencer relationship Once you identify your influencers, begin to build a relationship with them. Start being responsive to their posts and communicate your expectations with them. If they agree, ensure that you compensate them for their efforts adequately. A disgruntled influencer will cause you more harm than the benefits a happy one might provide. Encourage your influencers to tell authentic stories, guide them with your strategy and help them understand the kind of content you expect from them in return for compensation. Ensure that your influencers’ activity is monitored and tracked, not in a creepy way, but to ensure that their stories align with your marketing strategy. Manage content Now that you have influencers and have identified their audience, it is time to start managing the content they produce for you or the way they distribute the content you create. Learn to repurpose the content that your influencers create. If they write a blog that is helpful to sell your product or service, a part of that blog could be published on your website as a testimonial. Of course, you will need to seek your influencers’ permission to repurpose content if they have created it. It is also important that you manage content distribution properly. Make sure you don’t mislead anyone While all this sounds good on paper, when you begin to engage in influencer marketing, things can go quite awry. This is mostly because companies often do not communicate in a transparent manner with their influencers. When this happens, the content strategy may go haywire, the trust may be lost, influencers may feel disgruntled, or worse, influencers may alienate their audience. For this reason alone, you need to be as clear and transparent as possible. Ensure that you do not mislead anyone, neither your audience nor your influencer’s audience. Most importantly, do not mislead your influencers. Measure performance The most important part of influencer marketing is measurement. You need to quantify the results and check if you are getting what you are investing for. Start tracking posts, shares, tweets and the comments that your influencers elicit. Measure the impressions and engagements and make sure that you continuously evolve your strategy. While you are at it, try to also monitor the emotions and sentiments that these posts generate among the audience. Measuring the performance of influencer content will help you to calculate Total Media Value. Even more important, you will be able to track your ROI. As you can see, influencer marketing is a complex and continuous activity that requires your sustained efforts. Without a proper plan, influencer marketing may not work to your advantage. However, when it is done properly, it will help you achieve your business targets quite easily.

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The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist

January 25, 2017

  Five years back, research and advisory firm Gartner had predicted that by 2017, the chief marketing officer (CMO) of an organization will be spending more on technology than the CIO. Today, it’s no secret that there is an increasing influence of technology in marketing. The confluence of marketing and technology (MarTech) has resulted in accelerating client acquisition, enhancing brand awareness, allocating budget for more marketing and technology operations and upgrading customer experience. Over the years, the line between CMOs and CIOs has blurred and a new C -level position has gained popularity: chief marketing technologist (CMT). In simple words: the new hybrid role combines the previous job profiles of CMO and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He must be hands on with marketing and furthermore have knowledge about capabilities and budget of the IT departments. According to a research by Foundation Capital, martech is expected to grow 10X in 10 years (from a $12B Billion dollar market into a $120B industry).  The rising popularity of martech has further augmented the demand of CMTs. An ideal CMT would be a vital business player alongside being a technology leader, who will be involved in data and analytics, planning, content marketing, product development, digital engagement, marketing automation, sales and web mechanics. He should have the vision to drive both technology and marketing in the digital age, thus helping in the agile administration of the business. As per a Harvard Business Review article by Scott Brinker and Gartner Analyst Laura McClellan, the CMT’s job is to align marketing technology with business goals, serve as a liaison to IT, and evaluate and choose technology providers. Here are 4 key roles of a CMT in an organization: To bridge the gap between CMO and CIO To nurture technology in marketing departments To ensure marketing teams aren’t left behind in terms of IT To keep marketing up-to-date with changing technologies. Also, let’s look at four areas chief marketing technologist must be accountable for: Confluence of marketing and technology to achieve business goals Earlier marketing and technology were seen as separate verticals but today they are increasingly overlapping. Today, marketing is reliant on analytics and other forms of business intelligence. The data that is aggregated from various sources, thanks to cloud computing is being analyzed to derive insights. These insights have pushed organizations to strategize their marketing campaigns, both digital and traditional. Automation of processes has only spurred the growth of big data, and with that, the resulting insights from analytical software. In fact, marketing is so dependent on data that it is impossible to visualize a marketing campaign that is not built around analytics. This convergence of marketing and technology require the decisions of someone (read: chief marketing technologist) who has mastery in both the domains at the same time. Easy communication between IT and marketing teams   Marketing departments have often overlooked technical aspects, but the rise of digital marketing has forced most marketers to adopt technology. At this juncture, CMT joins the organization and facilitates more ventures and correspondence between the teams. He is required to identify the current state of tech ecosystem and craft marketing campaigns to drive business. He also streamlines the planning and execution of marketing technology projects and coordinates with the staff of both divisions effectively and keeps an update of their activities. Development of strategic roadmap and budget allocation in marketing technology According to Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey 2015-2016, 33% of marketing budget go to technology. Gartner also reported that nearly 65% of marketing departments are expanding spending plans for service providers that have technology-related offerings. The CMTs is required to amalgamate the technology and marketing budgets for a common vision. CMTs’ leadership abilities coupled with market and competitive intelligence help in improving the infrastructure of the company with the strategic application of technology.  He also allocates money for innovation, which might include experiments with new innovations and techniques. CMTs also develop the strategic roadmap for the companies on where to invest money to engage with the customers.  Fostering technology-positive work culture The multi-layered role of CMT provides marketing professionals with guidance and inspiration. He additionally encourages a work culture that is innovation positive. In this sense, CMTs not only make decisions, but also help foster environments that nurture technology in places where it is not usually welcomed. Here are some Chief Marketing Technologists, who are active on Twitter Nicole Pereira @Nicca619 – Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Technologist, Campaign Creator Eric Hollebone @erichollebone – Chief Marketing Technologist, DemandLab. John Kottcamp @jkottcam – Chief Marketing Technologist, Tahzoo Hitesh Bhatia @hiteshbhatia – Chief Marketing Technologist, CBREX Andrew Epperson @eppand ‏- Chief Marketing Technologist, PBISRewards Steve Glass @Oinkodomeo- Chief Marketing Technologist, Oinkodomeo Rise of Chief Marketing Technologist In the previous C-level hierarchical setups, the CMO took the marketing leadership responsibilities, while the CIO took the technology and IT-related leadership roles. Now, envision a circumstance where a CIO of a company is not effectively connected with the marketing team. Neither is usually in a position to comment on the other’s leadership vision. A CMT acts as a bridge between a CIO and CMO. A CMT’s combined knowledge of marketing and technology help him to weave marketing vision with technical depth. He will ensure that business is aligned with the right variables, and that there are right incentives and accountability overall. A CMT usually has the background in IT management, and also hold specialization in marketing. Most of them might have an undergraduate degree in computer science or in business administration. To whom the CMT reports to will rely on upon individual associations. The CMT coordinates with both technical and marketing teams, but concentrates on making marketers within an organization cultivate an interest and fondness toward technology and IT. According to a study in 2016, globally, 70% of marketing teams have a person dedicated to marketing technology, and in Europe, 66% of marketing teams have an individual devoted to this role. Now, why there is a rise in companies to employ CMTs? Here are 5 reasons why there is an increasing

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Understanding Google’s Mobile Ad Formats for Full HTML Browsers

January 5, 2017

Google mobile ads can be displayed on various mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, or mobile phones with HTML browsers.  Mobile ads also appear within apps on smartphones and tablets. Advertisers should keep in mind that ads be designed for the right device and in the right format.When you create your ad, you have to think about where your customers are most likely to view it. Accordingly, choose the type of ad and format that best suits their needs.   Google AdWords help you to develop multiple types of ads to reach customers through smartphones and tablets search results on mobile web browsers and within mobile apps. And when you have a mobile version of your website, create ads designed specifically for people using mobile devices using the URL for the mobile version of your site.  Then, when a customer clicks your ad, they will go to the best version of your site for their device. The following blog enables you to understand different Google mobile ad formats and how you can use them for full HTML browsers.   Choosing the campaign type When you set up ad campaign, you must choose type of campaign and its sub-type. Campaign type determines where your ads show on Google’s advertising network and what format like text or video. On the other hand, campaign sub type determines how many settings and options are available to use for your campaign to achieve a specific goal. Types of ad campaigns There are three commonly used campaign types Search Network only, Display Network only, and Search Network with Display Select. In Search Network only campaign, your ads can appear throughout sites on Google Search Network. This works by linking your AdWords keywords to the words/ phrases people use to search on Google to show relevant text ads on SERPS. It is useful for advertisers who want to connect with customers right when they are searching their products/ services. In Display Network only campaign, your ads can show throughout Google Display Network by matching search terms in the form of text, image, rich media, video ads; and on websites, YouTube, and mobile apps. It can be used by advertisers who want to increase awareness about their products or related services. In Search Network with Display Select campaign, your ads show on the Google Search Network and relevant placements within the Display Network. This way your ad budget is shared across both networks. Here your ads become visible in Google search results as well as corresponding websites being viewed by visitors.   Mobile ads One can display ads in many different formats on mobiles and tablets.  Test your message with the help of multiple ad formats to understand what drives customers to your website or what gets them to download your app. Nonetheless, it is important to tailor your message to mobile customers irrespective of the format you choose. For displaying a perfect-looking ad on small screen, you need to create mobile-optimized ad with a message, display URL, and landing page specifically for mobiles and tablets. You can do so by selecting “Mobile” checkbox next to the “Device preference” setting.   Moreover, if your ad groups contain ads eligible to appear on all devices, only your mobile preferred ads will appear on mobile phones and tablets.   Types of mobile ads   Text ads     Text ads that use extensions for your location and hours or phone number can help you engage people who are already on the go, and just need to know how to get to your store.  Text ads show above and below Google search results on Search Network.  A standard text ad has three parts: headline text, display URL and description text. Because of high visibility, headline text should include words that people may have entered in their Google search.  Display URL, often shown in green, shows your website address. It gives an idea about your website address.  It may be different from the landing page URL where people land after clicking the ad.  And description text highlights details about your product or service often accompanied by call to action button. Android, iOS, and other devices with full HTML browsers that are capable of executing JavaScript, eligible text ad configuration are Mobile leaderboard (320 x 50), Small square (200 x 200), Square (250 x 250), Medium rectangle (300 x 250), and Large mobile banner (320 x 100).     Image ads     The image ads you upload in AdWords are able to serve naturally and automatically on desktop, mobile websites, and even in apps.  Image ads are visible across Google Display Network of 2 million websites and apps. Use Adwords to get multiple ways to create image ads like Ad Gallery templates, sizeless responsive ads and uploading ads. Custom-made image ads give you maximum control and customization. To fit image ads across the Display Network, you need to use responsive ads.  Responsive ads adjust their size, appearance, and format to fit available ad spaces.  This means that a single responsive ad may appear as a small text ad at one place and a large image ad in another. They can take on native formatting to match the tone and feel of the websites they show on. Typical responsive ads introduced by Google are Lightbox ads. On interaction with Lightbox ads, people can see images or videos within the ad or in an expanded canvas.  These ads incorporate advertiser assets from his YouTube channel, uploaded images or Google Maps. So, when a user hovers over the ad banner, the assets dynamically fill the publisher site, mobile app, and mobile screen.  They are designed to reduce accidental engagements facilitating a better experience for customers and better value for advertisers. Eligible image ad configurations for devices with full HTML browsers are mobile leaderboard ( 320 x 50), small square (200 X 200), square (250 X 250), medium rectangle (300 X 250)       App promotion ads     An app promotion ad is the easiest

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Why Digital Brand Engagement Scores Over Advertising

December 16, 2016

It has been discussed in recent years about the advent of digital engagement and branding. Indeed, social and digital media have helped even the smallest of companies to engage in sophisticated marketing campaigns without burning deep holes in their pockets. Yet, we continue to see smaller and medium sized businesses investing heavily on traditional advertising, without seeing the results they wish to see. Firstly, we need to understand that the market climate has changed completely. People often do not bother to look at ads, even online. Advertisements are seen as intrusive, annoying and extremely pushy, even when it is subtle and in the background. Part of the reason why customers feel so is because advertising has been over-utilized and people feel saturated to marketing messages. However, they are open to genuine marketing communication that seeks to inform about a product or service. This is probably why social and digital campaigns fare better than advertisements, at least for small and medium sized businesses. Larger corporations have the moolah and big budget to take risks with traditional advertisements but a small business might not want to do that. For this reason, it is important to understand that digital and social brand engagement can prove to be a valuable alternative to advertising, especially when one faces cash crunch. Now, let us take a look at some of the advantages that digital branding has over traditional advertising.   Helps in brand activation   Spurring engagement using digital media helps in brand activation. Brand activation can be described as the process of inspiring people to take action by weaving a brand narrative into creative media content. Traditional advertising simply does not have the freedom to do this, and comes with its set of limitations. However, digital brand engagement exercises allow you to spur interaction and inspire people to take desired action.   Positively reinforces desired consumer behavior   Digital media gives you a platform to reinforce individual consumer behaviors, when it is in your favor. For instance, those who write a great review can be suitably rewarded, and even a social post expressing happiness with your product or service can be suitably positively reinforced. Traditional advertising does not provide the flexibility, as visibility of individual consumer reaction is not possible.   Helps build brand loyalty   One of the most important things that a brand needs is lifelong loyalty. Loyalty is something that needs to be nurtured, just like relationships are nurtured. For this to happen, digital and social platforms provide the right situation. You can easily track consumer posts and nurture them individually, so that loyalty is enhanced. In traditional advertising, this is not possible. Everything is planned and individual behavior cannot be nurtured.   Reduces marketing expenditure   Digital marketing and brand engagement is infinitely cheaper than old school advertising. Even online advertising costs more than brand engagement exercises done over social or digital media. For this reason alone, a number of small and medium sized companies prefer to engage target audiences over social and digital media. This also helps them to measure the success of their investment and the ROI. Certainly, this is one of the better ways to reduce expenses.   Easy to measure and quantify   One of the best features of digital marketing exercises is that everything is measurable. There are tools that help to quantify various attributes. This data can be used to create better marketing campaigns that drive engagement. It is also easier to learn what kind of posts and campaigns drive more engagement, so that such communication is given more preference. Once you identify and quantify engagement, it serves as a more useful tool than traditional advertising which does not provide a lot of analytics.   Is future-ready and accessible   Digital brand engagement is usually done on social or digital media. Social media is not only the present but also the future of the way we will do business. This means, digital branding is future-proof and one does not need to worry about being stuck in the past or using outdated techniques. Most importantly, both the target audience and the companies can remain accessible to each other, enabling a two-way communication. This is not possible in traditional advertising as it is a one-way communication.   Makes it easy to receive feedback   One of the most important metrics of engagement is feedback. When people begin to provide feedback about your marketing communication, you will know what you are doing right and what you might be doing wrong. It provides ample opportunities for you to fix things, which is very important. On social and digital media, receiving feedback and responding to them is very easy, unlike in traditional advertising, where it is almost impossible. For SMEs, digital brand engagement is easily the more superior choice As we can see, digital branding makes use of social and digital platforms to connect with the target audience. Digital brand engagement ensures a more organic and impactful communication with the target audience, which in turn helps in building brand loyalty and reinforces desired consumer behavior. Advertising is out of reach for most small and medium sized businesses, whereas digital brand engagement can be a sustainable approach toward being heard and known. Digital brand engagement ensures interaction and reinforcement of a brand narrative, which results in brand activation. This is important to ensure that people feel inspired and not compelled to buy. Moreover, digital engagement helps in positively reinforcing desired behavior and helps in building brand loyalty. In addition, companies can also look forward toward reduced ad spend and focus on measurement and analytics. As digital branding is future-proof, we can rest easy that what we create now will not be irrelevant tomorrow, unlike in traditional advertisements. Last but not the least, digital brand engagement helps in receiving feedback immediately and assists companies to make improvements to their products and services, which is not always possible in advertisements. So, it is quite evident that traditional advertising is too expensive and

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How to Make Digital Marketing More Human

December 12, 2016

We have heard it all before, and seen it all before, how technology has eclipsed our lives. There is almost nothing that cannot be automated today, and word is spreading over that artificial intelligence will soon take over many tasks that humans previously do. While all this reduces human errors and reduces costs, the most important glue that binds society together is missing. Too much technology reduces human interaction, and the lack of human touch can be a cold and dark experience. This is the reason why certain jobs such as those of a nurse, psychotherapist, healer, religious minister or for that matter, even that of a journalist will never be automated. However, the influx of technology in other areas of life has made people weary of automation and technology. With more and more companies investing in digital media and social marketing, questions are being raised about the missing human factor. Thankfully, digital marketing does not automate everything completely. Instead, it retains a human touch while also using technology to our benefit. This is probably why digital marketing is still one of the more human technologies around. In this article, let us take a look at how you can make your digital marketing more human, so that your target audience does not feel alienated or overwhelmed by technology.   Don’t automate everything   While there is technology that helps us to automate almost everything that we do on social media, thanks to artificial intelligence and chatbots, do not do it. Automate only certain posts and hire social media executives to interact personally with audience. This is very important because if people simply keep receiving automated messages, they will lose interest and move ahead. It is important to insert human emotions and interactions in between.   Take time to engage with your audience   Once you have enough audience on social platforms, take time to engage with them. Do not just schedule posts and let the chatbots do all the work. Spend time talking to your loyal followers and recognize or appreciate when they have something positive to say about you. Digital marketing only works when there is ample communication and engagement between you and your followers. This is something that should be borne in mind.   Share posts about your work culture   People often like to see images that depict human actions. If you are having an event in your office, share those pictures. If your CEO meets another CEO, take pictures and upload them on your social profiles. Use these images tactfully so that they are part of the brand narrative. Ensure that you share content and images with respect to your work culture and employees, as that brings a human face to your company.   Customize marketing messages   Marketing messages should not be formulated in a ‘one size fits all’ template. Instead, explore buyer personas of your target audience and come up with a different marketing message for each demographic. Explore and study different demographics and psycho-graphics of your target audience. Everyone is not the same and the same marketing message will not appeal to everyone. When you customize your messages to suit individual tastes, you will come across as a more human-oriented company.   Do not try to sell constantly   While automating and technology are mostly to blame for the lack of human interactions, aggressive marketing messages can also seem too business-like, and may put off your audience. Do not try to sell all the time. Instead, share informative blog posts that help your audience to understand something unique about your product or service. Try to engage with your audience and seek personal opinions about your products and services.   Answer questions and ask questions   There is nothing that is more ego-boosting than being asked for advices or when one is asked questions. Even if you know something, try and ask questions to your followers, as long as you do not come across as misinformed. Similarly always try to answer questions that people leave online, if you feel that person may be a possible prospect. All this helps in showing that you have a human side to you and that you are not just aggressively marketing your products and services.   Invite and reward loyal customers at offline events   Another strategy to show your human face is to actually meet your target audience offline. Select people who have engaged with you online, and invite them for a retreat or an event organized offline. This will provide you with ample time and opportunity to interact with your loyal customers. Most importantly, this can prove to be an important photo-op session so that the very same photos can be shared online again, as part of your digital marketing strategy.   Remember important life events   Always remember to wish your target audience when their birthdays or marriage anniversaries arrive. Even if you do not have that data on your system, sometimes people voluntarily share these messages online. When they do, use this as an opportunity to build rapport and wish them. It does not have to be just birthdays or marriage anniversaries. You could also wish your target audience when they graduate, get a new job, give birth to a child, or when their pet’s birthday is celebrated. Stay human, start interacting and engaging It is being increasingly noticed that people are not happy with the way we are pushing technology on them. While digital marketing is a great way to drive home our marketing messages, there is an important need to keep things human. Do not try to automate everything and find time to engage your audience. Begin to share posts about your office culture and show that you have a human side to you. Also, don’t sell or market aggressively and instead, customize your marketing messages. Help people to find answers to their queries and also seek their help when you need some information. Reward your loyal customers and remember their

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Why Brand Activation that Fosters Engagement Is Important and How to Do It?

December 9, 2016

Every brand needs to have a compelling story behind it to support itself. Without a narrative, a brand is all but marketing noise to the target audience. If you want your target audience to take you seriously, you will need to support your brand with a story that touches the hearts and souls of your target audience. When you combine this narrative in a visual manner with personal interaction, the brand comes to life. This process is known as brand activation. What is brand activation? Brand activation integrates different media, communication platforms and creative tools to stimulate interest, trial and loyalty. So far, we have only focused on advertising, which communicates the existence of a product or a service to the audience. It may also persuade the buyer to purchase or to be informed. However, brand activation stimulates the act of buying. It encourages, pushes, cajoles and inspires the buying process. It is for this reason that brands need to have a compelling story that strikes the note with your target audience emotionally and cognitively. When a brand is thus activated using various forms of media and a solid creative basis, people will begin to find you relevant, convincing and important. Why is it important? Brand activation that fosters engagement helps in: Boosting brand loyalty Fulfilling buyer needs Appealing to senses Satisfying market needs and demands Enhances sales However, the goal of brand activation shouldn’t necessarily be focused on the buying process like most authorities and academics would tell you. Instead, it should focus on fostering engagement. In this article, let us take a look at how we can activate a brand to foster engagement. What a good brand activation routine looks like A good brand activation program follows a multi-channel approach. You will need to combine social, digital and real life engagement in order to activate emotions and behaviors that are desired. In other words, brand activation ensures that certain behaviors and emotions are activated each time a prospect encounters your brand. To ensure that this happens, you will probably need to create inspiring content, events, activities and other experiences which inspire the customers to act. All this requires you to study consumer behavior closely and personalize the entire experience. It is important to remember that brand activation does not follow a format, and you will probably have to create your own model to chart success in these kinds of programs. However, you can follow certain general rules that help in creating brand activation that foster engagement. The more you make these branding experiences interactive, the higher your chances of creating an engaging experience that translates to brand loyalty. Thus, you will have to focus on making experiences interactive and tie these experiences with your brand’s story. Support your brand with a compelling story The most important aspect of any brand activation exercise is to connect with the target audience. This can only happen when you create a compelling story with which your target audience can relate. In other words, make your products or services accessible. This helps the target audience to interact with your content, events and experiences. Tie all these together with your brand, and ensure that you reinforce desired behavior. The story should act as a glue to connect the target audience with your behavior, so that it activates longing, desire, inspiration and other positive emotions. Use social and digital tools to enhance Engagement One simply cannot look away from social media, if one were to enhance engagement. It is then no wonder that social media and digital platforms are an integral part of brand activation. Infuse the story or the narrative into your social posts and digital marketing campaigns, so that there is always a shadow of your brand in everything that you communicate. Whenever there is engagement, allude to your brand narrative directly or indirectly. Inspire, nurture and influence your audience Your brand activation exercises should be first and foremost inspiring. They should inspire your target audience to take interest, try and then keep coming back for more. Secondly, nurture those who show interest in your branding exercises. Continuous activation leads to hard-wiring of a particular behavior, and this is neuroscience. So, nurture those who engage so that they become hardwired to respond to your brand narrative positively. Thirdly, influence your audience with expertise and quality. Weave these qualities into your brand narrative and ensure that you reinforce engagement when it happens. Create experiences, not just branding exercises Brand activation is inherently tied to branding exercises, both online and offline. However, remember to create experiences that take the brand narrative into account. Always remember that the purpose of the brand activation is to promote or inspire a desired behavior while pairing your brand narrative with something positive. For this to happen, create experiences that are unique and that which are tied to your brand narrative. Use every creative media to weave the story with events, content and experiences, so that there is more engagement. Make brand activation a part of your overall marketing strategy Brand activation is not a onetime exercise. It needs to be an ongoing and year-round activity whose success is measured and analyzed. For this reason, you will need to start quantifying your brand activation exercises. Analyze the success, growth and goals that are met with the help of brand activation. Accordingly, make changes to the strategy so that there is more engagement. Focus on engagement Indeed, the focus of any brand activation strategy should involve engagement. Engagement is one of the most important ingredients of brand activation. Your target audience needs to engage with your brand narrative when they are exposed to visual, sensory, auditory or other forms of stimuli. Only when they feel inspired to act and engage, and then take action will your branding activation be successful. So, always bear in mind that along with creating a compelling story, you should also focus on boosting engagement.

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Learn Marketing Tactics to Build Lifelong Loyalty

December 8, 2016

Marketing a product or service isn’t easy. It takes a lot of effort to keep the interest alive. When companies and businesses are at it, they spend a lot of money to sustain that interest among people, and also to generate curiosity and retain possible customers. Yet, many businesses often forget a crucial part of the whole marketing exercise. This usually involves ensuring that your existing customers remain loyal for a lifetime. It is difficult to build lifelong loyalty but when you manage to do this, you will have created a valuable source of word-of-mouth marketing. Loyal customers often go out of their way to promote your product or service, even without any extraneous benefits. This is mostly a psychological phenomenon. The very fact that your product or service makes them happy is enough for them to promote or recommend your services and products. What we need to remember here is the word ‘happy’. Happiness or contentment with a product or service will ensure that a person remains faithful to a product or service for a lifetime. In this article, let us take a look at how we can build lifetime loyalty and which marketing tactics help to ensure this. Get personal One of the best ways to build loyalty is by getting personal. What we really mean by this is, you should personalize your marketing message to suit your target audience. Firstly, identify buyer personas. Create content that is targeted at buyer persona and tweak it each time you send these messages out to different people. Personalizing marketing communication drastically helps in connecting with a customer emotionally. Personalizing messages also helps customers to feel valued, and they will remain customers even when a competitor targets them. Use positive reinforcements A positive reinforcement is defined as anything that is given or introduced to reinforce a desired behavior. Your loyal customers’ desired behavior is to purchase again, write great feedback or simply have a good opinion about your product or service. If you recognize someone doing this, reward them with whatever your company can afford to. This is a positive reinforcement and it makes it likely that the desired behavior happens again. Bundle your products and services In order to make sure that your customers and clients come back again, try to bundle your products and services in a personalized manner. Your customer may not need a product at a particular time but if you understand his or her needs and club a couple of products or services together, you might end up making more sales, and also build loyalty. Provide a unique experience One of the most important characteristics of a good brand that has many lifelong customers is that it provides a unique experience. In fact, identify what kind of experience you want your customers to have. Once you identify that, you will be able to provide valuable experience which your target audience will cherish. This helps to build lasting loyalty. It helps to invest both time and money in identifying personalized experience that different demographic groups might want to enjoy. Feature your customers regularly Often, businesses forget to give attention to their customers. You need to remember that sustaining and nurturing a customer for a lifetime is similar to nurturing a spousal relationship. This means, you need to provide constant attention. If you feature your loyal customers in events, blogs, or marketing communication, they will be happen with the attention they receive and chances are likely that lifelong loyalty is built. Always be available This might sound a little preposterous but in order to remain in someone’s memory, you need to be around. Human memory is quite fallible and they often forget if something is not within their sight. If you want to remain in your customer’s memory, you will have to show up often. This means, you will need to communicate with your clients and customers as often as possible, and also be available when they want to contact you. Automating your customer service and adopting chatbots or AI could be a good start too. Train your employees well Building brand loyalty is not just a marketing exercise. It also seeps into human resource departments. This is probably why you should consider training your employees to provide customer engagement. This should be part of the program right from the induction period. This ensures that your employees carry your branding’s essence along with them, and ensure that customers feel a sense of harmony in your messages and the way your employees treat them. Seek customer advice One of the ways to get attention from someone is by asking for their advice. It usually boosts their ego and they feel important. If you ask your customers for advice regarding how you can improve your product or service, they will probably feel that you are giving them the attention they deserve. This is usually a good thing because this helps them to cultivate loyalty toward your brand. Your feedback forms can have a couple of questions that explicitly seeks for your customers’ advice and suggestions. However, you will need to use these advices and suggestions to actually convert them into lifelong loyal customers. Nurturing lifelong brand evangelists As we can see, it is quite difficult to turn customers into lifelong loyal brand evangelists. However, this is possible when you combine a mix of psychological and marketing tactics. Firstly, begin to use personalized messages and target your audience individually. Use positives reinforcements to encourage desired behavior and offer products and services in a customized bundle. Focus on creating unique brand-centric experiences that cannot be replicated by competitors. Start featuring your customers in your content and be available when they have something to share or ask. Train your employees to soak in these aspects and seek advice from your customers. All this will help in nurturing the relationship your customers have with your brand, and helps in converting them into lifelong brand evangelists.

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When Google Trounced Apple to Become the Most Valuable Company

November 25, 2016

    It’s been a while since we read that Google passed Apple to become the world’s most valuable company. Google’s parent company Alphabet overtook Apple in May, with respect to market capitalization. However, Apple is back at the top, with a market capitalization of $568 billion. Google’s market capitalization of $547 isn’t far behind. It holds the second place now. What is really revealing is that Facebook is now the 5th most valued company in the world, after Microsoft & Amazon. What does this tell us? The fact that a social networking company is one of the biggest 5 is a revealing trend. What it is also revealing is that Apple’s business is kind of slinking. Its iPhones are not generating as much money as they used to do previously, and it is left wondering if it should focus on its Macs or its iPads. Google’s business isn’t doing very well, especially when it comes to its ad business. The reasons could be many, but at the moment, what we need to notice is, Google and Apple continue to remain at the top, while Facebook is slowly clawing its way to the top. Microsoft is falling, and Amazon has plateaued. It tells us where we are in the world of technology. With both Apple and Google being the traditional tech companies, that have focused on mobile development, is it soon enough to say that the mobile bubble getting ready to burst? Not really! On the contrary, mobile usage is plateauing, and the market is becoming more and more mature. With maximum people having access to tools that get them online (such as mobile devices), it is only for Facebook to see an upward surge, which focuses on its social platform and ads. Similarly, more people are buying online, which leads us to believe that mobile is keeping Amazon’s growth at a steady pace. While there do not seem to be any disruptions coming our way, the trend clearly is towards the social. Social platforms have long been seen as the next big thing, and now they are getting their due respect, and Facebook’s case is just an example of the trend. On the other hand, both Google and Apple are struggling to retain their coveted places, which show us that previous business models may soon change, and they may need to innovate in order to stay at their top forms. Looking forward Both Google and Apple might begin to focus on not just their mobile businesses, but also their social side of their business. For example, Google may invest more on making algorithms social-search friendly, whereas, Apple is likely to focus on Apple Music’s inherent social capabilities. Music is the next big untapped source of social revolution and Apple is certainly well equipped to handle that. We need to wait and watch how these older companies will handle this situation, while social networking companies continue to see the growth that we all expected.

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