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More Brands Are Losing Touch With Their Customers. Do These 4 Things to Make Sure Yours Isn’t One of Them.

July 4, 2023 No Comments

Despite the growth of online marketing and digital sales tactics, more brands are struggling to connect with their customers and target audiences. To reunite with them, they need to do these things.

With the world becoming more hyperconnected following the mainstream adoption of the online ecosystem, more brands are struggling than ever before to connect with their customers. Changing economic conditions, a shifting consumer perspective and evolving technology have driven a wedge between brands and their target audience.

The multi-facet and blossoming digital landscape has allowed businesses and brands to have a plethora of information and consumer data at their disposal, allowing them to create more personalized online experiences and cater to a digitally-centric marketplace.

However, at the same time these technologies have brought more attention to the importance of customer preference, the same systems have simultaneously created a disconnect among brands and consumers.

The path to disconnection

The strategies that once helped marketers reach their audience are no longer working as effectively as they once did. Nearly 30% of marketers experience average-to-no returns on their online and digital marketing investments.

Even with seemingly limitless access to consumer information, different research shows that 68.6% of businesses have little understanding of how their customers think and how to cater to these evolving needs.

Although technology is at the crux of the disconnection crisis, other leading factors, including hybrid and remote working models, have also led to greater feelings of less engagement among teams and customers.

In a 2022 State of Remote Work Report, nearly 52% of employees that started working remotely due to the pandemic are feeling less connected with their coworkers. Efforts to get employees back into the office during recent years have been met with hostility, as the majority of workers now favor increased autonomy and flexibility in their day-to-day work lives.

The disconnection between brands and customers, as well as brands and technology, have fueled stagnant growth for online representation — shrinking the bottom line performance of businesses.

While multiple other challenges can present themselves to business owners and entrepreneurs, reconnecting with customers in a digitally-centered world has posed far greater problems than many would have imagined.

Reuniting the brand and the consumer

Managing several customer retention strategies over different platforms requires not only the know-how on how to manage all of these systems but also requires a large team of clued-up professionals that know how to efficiently execute these strategies without fail.

While this doesn’t seem impossible, seemingly out of reach for smaller business ventures and startups, leveraging key strategies that ensure ongoing brand development and message delivery can become an effective tool through which marketers can narrow the divide between brands and customers.

Meet customers where they are

An effective growth strategy starts by building awareness of where customers are and refocusing on the overall customer connection through these channels.

Often brands look at customers through the viewpoint of management, hoping to deliver a marketing message from every angle possible. Unfortunately, these strategies create a further breach between the two, making it harder for brands to see growing message engagement.

Overwhelming consumers with targeted ads, emails, blog posts and online content has led to an increase in digital fatigue. Start by focusing on a growth strategy that looks to enrich the customer’s online journey, and use these channels to foster more purposeful connections.

Have a data-driven approach

Paradoxically, data can be a key ingredient in the marketing growth strategy that can help bring the brand back into the peripheral view of the client.

Using data ensures that businesses have a clear understanding of where to find their target audience, and how to effectively deliver their branding message. Consider where customers often start their online journey, track their online activity, and what their preferences are in terms of social media platforms and other digital channels.

A report by BrightEdge Research found that 68% of online interaction starts through search engines. Using these metrics in combination with customer activity already starts creating a clear picture of how data can create a more proactive marketing approach, without having to overwhelm audiences.

Evolve beyond CRM technologies

Instead of managing customers through outdated CRM technologies, try to instead focus on how to structure a platform that can offer marketers better flexibility and scalability. Building a central, yet consistent customer experience requires businesses to migrate their data away from siloed databases.

Evolving beyond the familiar does however require substantial financial input, especially in the case of utilizing shared cloud-based data platforms.

Building more fluid connections between marketing techniques, sales and customer feedback ensures that brands can deliver high-quality messaging, but at the same time improve their overall customer engagement.

More consumers than ever before value things such as speed, convenience, knowledgeable help and on-demand customer service following a report that found 80% of American consumers now consider these important elements as part of a positive customer experience journey.

Adopting ways to break down different silos within the business, and integrating these efforts onto one advanced platform gives businesses the technological edge above their competitors.

Improve purchasing channels

Now more than ever, it’s important for brands to step up to the plate and create purchasing channels that cater to their target audience and help improve the overall online experience by improving backend sales systems such as fast, safe and reliable checkout features on ecommerce platforms.

Not only do online stores need to be more customer-oriented in terms of finalizing purchases and minimizing the possibility of cart abandonment, but there should be substantial efforts directed toward creating mobile-friendly experiences.

A growing number of internet users have reported using shopping applications on smartphones and/or tablets, with research showing that 69.4% of online consumers now prefer these methods as opposed to ordinary websites.

Taking the time to properly integrate these features into the digital marketing strategy might seem a bit far off during the early stages of business development. Yet, these are the consumer trends that are reshaping the way brands can connect with their audiences and further grow their digital impression.

Now is the time to stay connected

Building a marketing growth strategy that ensures the effective delivery of brand messages requires businesses to be more agile and adaptable in a fast-changing digital ecosystem.

With consumers constantly evolving and trends rapidly changing, being united with loyal customers means that brands need to have a better understanding of where to find their customers online, but also how to construct an online experience without overwhelming them at the same time.

Finding a balance means that businesses and marketing teams need to be more open to trying new methods, but at the same time, develop strategies that are unique to their clientele, brand and online presence.

By Pierre Raymond

Entrepreneur Leadership Network Contributor, Founder of OTOS. Pierre Raymond is a bilingual project consultant/business analyst with over 20 years of experience in financial services and data management IT solutions.

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

Finding your niche: should every brand be targeting narrower audiences?

February 17, 2023 No Comments

By Sam Anderson

Some brands have had recent success by narrowing their audience pool: one-day-a-week dating app Thursday, or no-January-sign-ups gym Equinox. Should more brands follow suit? We asked six marketers.

Nitin Sinha, vice president, head of paid media, Laundry Service

‘Brands that want to connect with generation Z need to be authentic.’ We’ve heard this repeated often enough to know that it’s exercised in a wide variety of ways: good, bad, and ugly.

One of these ways is something we might call ‘anti-targeting’: turning away potential customers in favour of unequivocally establishing your brand positioning. My favourite example is REI shutting down on Black Friday, asking customers instead to #OptOutside.

REI likely projected that the long-term revenue impact from #OptOutside would outweigh the short-term loss. But I like to think that the idea originated from a simpler place: REI encouraging its customers and employees to avoid Black Friday chaos.

Authenticity through marketing can be a paradox. How do you show that yours is the real thing? It’s not easy. Smart brands put their money where their proverbial mouths are.

Lavinea Morris, head of planning, EMEA, M&C Saatchi Performance

Targeting niche audiences can make sense but only if its data-driven and not assumptive. If used correctly, it can be an effective part of your marketing mix, driving performance by up-weighting activity toward your most valuable customers. For brands who are willing to consider lifetime value and return on ad spend over customer acquisition cost, it can make your spend stretch much further and build long-term success.

The problem emerges when you become so obsessed with these audience groups that you miss out on opportunities with new customers. When you don’t balance niche with broader targeting testing, you will oversaturate your existing audience base and eventually stagnate your growth and bottom line. Niche targeting may be tempting but you have to think about the impact on your marketing priorities.

Becky Simms, co-founder and chief executive officer, Reflect Digital

Humans are complex systems, and ultimately every ad or marketing campaign is a human. Niche audience groups and targeting rely on truly understanding your market, their motivations, needs and drivers.

Behavioural nudges are a fantastic toolkit for marketers looking to target niche audiences. One such nudge is the ‘self-reference effect’, which demonstrates that people are more likely to remember information that is more relevant to them. Therefore, if an ad is hyper-specific to a user’s interests or behaviour, it can lead to ‘unexpectancy’ (pairing interest with an unexpected third party) and can cause cognitive strain. This cognitive strain helps with memorability and brand recall.

Nudges with niche audiences are a great way to increase the potential for engagement, immediately and later down the line.

Helen Androlia, director of strategy, Canada, Momentum Worldwide

While advertising is usually thought of as ‘mass’, I believe that we have always been niche to a degree. Some of the biggest brands in the world aren’t speaking to ‘everyone’ but to a specific target audience that is clearly realized. Whole Foods and the affluent, health-conscious consumer, for instance, or Square and its focus on small business.

As mainstream social media struggles to keep users, younger consumers especially are spending more time in closed, interest-based communities. Many Canadians – in Toronto especially – are also using platforms outside of North America to connect with friends and families overseas. Leveraging these channels means you can have more focused conversations and interactions.

Ultimately, most brand experiences are about space and place, from social to shopper to out-of-home. While you may not speak to everyone when you go niche, you can be sure that who you are speaking to really hears what you have to say.

Carli Pring, marketing manager, Tug

Should marketers be targeting ever-nicher audiences? Yes and no. There’s no right or wrong answer, but there is a need for a strong marketing strategy. Niche audience marketing can be an effective way for brands to target specific groups who are more likely to be interested in their products or services. It can also be a more efficient use of marketing efforts and have a higher return on investment. However, while it’s important to find a core demographic, reaching out to a new or a sizable target market can also pay off.

In 1998, Netflix was a direct-to-consumer DVD service designed and limited to ‘hardcore’ movie fans. Now, it’s a subscription service that allows consumers to access movies and TV shows, streaming from all devices, with cartoons to original TV shows (including the likes of Wednesday) targeting a diverse audience demographic.

That’s not to say that niche marketing isn’t effective. Axe (or Lynx in some markets), the Unilever body fragrance has been advertising products to pique the interest of young males since 1983, with core messaging around the brand’s property of seduction. Recently promoting the new limited-edition Lynx AI with British rapper Aitch, the brand has remained consistent throughout the years with its niche target audience, remaining the go-to smell of male adolescence.

Feature Image Credit: Brady Bellini via Unsplash

By Sam Anderson

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How can brands defy recession? By increasing marketing budgets

February 8, 2023 No Comments

By Nathan Ulery

In 2023, the looming recession hangs heavy in the air while departments analyse row after row of resources, projects, talent, business development initiatives, and future campaigns.

The knee-jerk reaction for any chief financial officer prepping for economic disruption is to find the line item under ‘marketing’ and start cutting from there. But as chief operating officer at my agency, I decided to not let fear of uncertainty guide our organization. I gave the directive to increase our marketing budget for 2023. I believe that by harnessing the power of marketing and allocating that increased spending wisely, brands will defy the recession.

Making marketing a priority during a recession

One needn’t search far to find data showing how much better brands that increased their marketing spend during a recession fare compared with those brands that cut back or eliminate it. An Analytic Partners report found that 60% of brands that increased media spend in the last recession saw a greater return on investment; those that spent more on paid advertising saw a 17% increase in incremental sales.

With competitors making cuts, the marketing environment shifts, offering more real estate for advertising. Brands can leverage the availability and lower ad costs to increase awareness. Maintaining your share of voice in the marketplace is much easier (and cheaper) than trying to earn it back. Take it from the marketers at Reckitt Benckiser, which launched a campaign amid the 2008 recession. “Reckitt Benckiser actually grew revenues by 8% and profits by 14%, when most of its rivals were reporting profit declines of 10% or more. They viewed advertising as an investment rather than an expense.”

But it’s not enough to simply increase (or maintain) a marketing budget during a recession. Brands must look to use that marketing spend wisely and allocate it to programs that will drive results. Here are four areas that will prove ROI.

1. Brand building

This is especially important in the B2B world. There has never been a better time to create and celebrate a brand purpose. Usually, a field that was dominated by B2C brands like Apple, last year’s FutureBrand Index (an annual perception study of PwC’s Top 100 companies based on brand perception) ranked four B2B brands in its top five. Maintaining a focus on brand building supports long-term sales through ongoing awareness and perception.

2. Customer retention and loyalty programs

Generating new business leads is always important for the growth of any brand. But customer experience can play a major role in strengthening customer retention – another source of demand through cross-sell and up-sell opportunities. As an added bonus, loyalty programs help increase brand trust and develop reliable customer data.

3. Digital transformation

Recession or none, digital transformation will keep on with its steady (and speedy) growth. To keep pace with B2B buyers’ demands, businesses will need to invest in e-commerce solutions, personalization and strong martech stacks to meet buyers at every step of their journey.

4. Talent acquisition and retention

Finding and keeping talent on board is key to surviving any recession. Marketing can play a major role by using existing marketing channels and strategies to recruit and re-recruit. Businesses need to think about how to best engage with the talent through channels, platforms and messages. Marketing can help create campaigns that attract qualified talent. Once that talent is found, retaining that talent is supported by living the brand values and purpose at every stage of the employee’s journey. Invest in training programs that provide up-skilling and professional development.

Recessions do end. Times can be uncertain, but we’ve weathered recessions before and even navigated a global pandemic. Investing in a brand’s growth for the long term requires an investment in brand awareness and strategic allocation of funds. If done thoughtfully, business leaders can experience a recession as a tailwind, instead of a headwind.

Feature Image Credit: Ibrahim Rifath via Unsplash

By Nathan Ulery

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Forrester: Brands Shouldn’t Bail on Twitter Altogether

January 30, 2023 No Comments

By David Cohen

The research firm suggests treating the beleaguered platform like an emerging channel

A new report from Forrester, “Twitter Isn’t Canceled; It’s Downgraded,” stresses that Twitter is far more relevant to users than advertisers and provides suggestions on how marketers should treat the platform moving forward.

Forrester data reveals that 22% of online adults in the U.S. used Twitter weekly in 2022, well behind Facebook (63%) and Instagram (40%).

The company said in the introduction to its report, “Twitter ranks highly on the cultural relevancy scale but low on the advertiser priority list. It’s where news breaks, politicians debate, activists organize and niche communities meet. And despite Twitter users threatening to leave the platform, application downloads are up since Elon Musk took over. No other social media platform—not even Reddit, Mastodon or Hive—can replace Twitter for consumers.”

Principal analyst Kelsey Chickering delved further into the advertising side in a blog post, writing, “The advertising community has given Twitter more oxygen than it deserves since Elon Musk took over. The reality is that Twitter has never been a critical media channel in the overall media mix, comprising just 1.3% of 2022 digital ad spend based on Forrester’s 2022 Advertising Forecast, U.S. Why? The ad experience on Twitter has never quite caught up with other ‘legacy’ social media platforms such as Meta’s family of apps. According to media buyers and social media strategists who spoke with Forrester, Twitter doesn’t quite deliver on lower-funnel performance.”

Forrester said in the report that advertising executives it spoke with believe Twitter’s direct-response ad products pale in comparison to those from Meta when it comes to meeting lower-funnel media goals, and they only rely on Twitter for mid- to upper-funnel media goals like awareness and consideration.

Advertisers also told Forrester Twitter’s targeting and personalization capabilities are less mature than those of other social media platforms.

Forrester suggested that marketers treat Twitter as an emerging channel within the advertising maturity spectrum, breaking out that spectrum as follows:

Always on:

Meta: Ad formats for every part of the customer lifecycle and proven performance

Campaign-dependent:

Pinterest: Original Pin formats still useful but finding its way in video and commerce
Snap: Leader in augmented reality and advanced in providing creative resources to brands
LinkedIn: Top channel to capture consumers when they’re in a business mindset

Test and learn:

Reddit: Rising star in advertising capabilities and advanced in brand safety
TikTok: Social media’s darling but hard to succeed without creator partnerships
Twitter: Unevolved ad experience and growing brand safety concerns, but still offers a unique experience for live updates and news

The research firm added that marketers should consider the following questions when planning for the remainder of 2023:

Will my brand consistently appear in a space that complies with our safety guidelines? Forrester noted that Twitter’s policy on brand safety and moderation is a moving target at best, suggesting that as these policies change, brands should evaluate them against their own overall digital media brand safety guidelines.
To what degree is my target audience spending significant time on Twitter? Forrester said even if an advertiser’s target audience loved Twitter before, they may be shopping around, so brands should determine if their time on Twitter is growing or waning and whether they’ve transferred that time to other platforms.
What share of social media spend has Twitter historically held on my media plan? If Twitter hasn’t taken up a large portion of a company’s media spend to date, the dollars are probably easily absorbed elsewhere.
What material impact has Twitter had on our business results? Forrester believes advertisers should look at whether they have seen a dip in brand health metrics or sales after shifting their Twitter budget to other channels.
Does Twitter deliver an ad or user experience that’s not available on other platforms? Forrester suggests keeping a pulse on Twitter’s changing ad experience and whether other channels can deliver on a brand’s goals and audience.

Chickering wrote in the blog post, “Advertisers such as Chevrolet and Chipotle paused their Twitter spend for fear of appearing beside extremist, racist and inflammatory content. The Washington Post found ads for over 40 advertisers on white nationalist Twitter pages recently reinstated by Musk. At the same time, not every major advertiser has decided that Twitter is unsafe. Amazon continues to run paid media on the platform. Musk also introduced a ‘flash sale’ in an attempt to lure lost advertisers back.”

She suggested that brands that are not comfortable with Twitter in its current state under Musk:

Refrain from posting any brand content to Twitter. Direct social media teams’ efforts to other channels that meet brand safety requirements.
Monitor and respond to customer-service-related questions. If customers are reaching out for help or have questions about products, continue responding in order to ensure a positive customer experience.
Listen for relevant cultural trends or product feedback. As usage continues on the platform, use social listening tools to find out what trends are popping and how consumers are talking about your company’s category to inform your marketing strategy.
Test other social media channels. Twitter has downshifted into a social media startup rather than an established platform. Roll your previously dedicated Twitter dollars into a pool of test dollars for channels including TikTok, Reddit and Snapchat.

Finally, Forrester shared the reasons cited in a survey last November of 101 adults in the U.S. who stopped using Twitter or planned to do so in the next month:

31% found content on the platform to be too hateful
29% said there were too many bots or fake accounts
28% found content on the platform to be too political
21% didn’t like the amount of misinformation being spread
21% thought the platform’s moderation process was too strict
18% felt they needed to stop for their mental health
17% don’t support Musk as Twitter’s new owner and CEO

Feature Image Credit: tanyamcclure/iStock

By David Cohen

David Cohen is editor of Adweek’s Social Pro Daily.

Sourced from ADWEEK

In News

The Brand That Had Customer Loyalty Destroyed

October 14, 2022 No Comments

By Douglas A. McIntyre

Brand value and loyalty studies have become a major part of the American marketing industry. Several of these studies involve brand value. Interbrand is the best known of these. It considers 100 brands, based on its own mix of criteria. Not surprisingly, tech brands such as Apple and Microsoft are in the lead with brands worth well into the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Another take on brands is based on reputation. Among the most well known of these is the Axios/Harris study, which ranks 100 companies on reputation. Grocery, retail and food brands tend to be near the top, with Trader Joe’s in first place. The Trump Organization is at the bottom.

Still another cut at brand research is the Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders, another list of 100. Its yardsticks are the companies that have the “best-practice guidelines for creating and nurturing customer loyalty.” The study covered 1,624 brands in 142 categories.

One of the points of the study is that brand reputation results have moved back to “normal” after some distortion over the COVID-19 pandemic’s first two years. Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president, commented: “The significant re-distribution of loyalty identified in the 2022 loyalty rankings are leading indicators of what a return-to-normalcy marketplace will look like.”

The study looks at brand loyalty rank and how much this has changed year over year by brand. The top brands on the loyalty rank list are Apple and Amazon, which typically rank high in all the brand studies. They were followed by Domino’s and Disney+. Although still considered a brand to which people are loyal, Tesla was at the bottom of the list.

In terms of brands that gained and lost the most in the study, State Farm rose 25 places on the list. MSNBC was second, rising 19 places.

The brand that lost the most ground was Purell, which dropped by 52 places. Clorox fell by 41. The only reasonable explanation is that when the COVID-19 pandemic was at its worst, these were products people used to protect themselves from the spread of the virus.

By Douglas A. McIntyre

Sourced from 24/7 Wall St

In News

It’s Time for Brands to Find Their Voice Again

May 27, 2022 No Comments

By John Long

Three ways to rediscover a critical brand asset

So many brands today sound exactly the same. And that’s because the advertising industry has mostly abandoned one of the most powerful assets a brand can have: a distinctive brand voice. Pick up almost any brand style guide, turn to the tone voice section, and I bet you’ll find some variation of these attributes:

FRIENDLY
OPTIMISTIC
CLEAR
HELPFUL
GENUINE

All that’s missing from this insipid list is “useless.” Who would intentionally craft a brand that’s rude, pessimistic and phony?

Another “tone of voice” steer that pops up a lot in brand guidelines is this classic:

“We’re like that trusted, smart friend who always gives you great advice.”

Sorry, that’s not a brand voice—that’s a content strategy.

Everyone speaking in the same CLEAR and OPTIMISTIC tone giving HELPFUL, FRIENDLY ADVICE is making the work less effective. As Amy Kean observed, to their detriment, brands are all parroting the same vapid marketing speak. And this mind-numbing sea of sameness is obviously the opposite of what strong brands do. Because how a brand sounds is just as important as how it looks.

But there are a few brands that still understand how effective a tool brand voice is. And they’re getting noticed for it. Take Oatly.

It's Time for Brands to Find Their Voice Again

Oatly is milk made from oats—it’s a bit of an oddball product. So they leaned into that weirdness and struck an irreverent, playful, somewhat sarcastic tone. And it’s worked. Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, it certainly stands out. And it’s pretty hard to argue with these results.

Now I’ll toot my own horn a bit—or I should say, David Abbott’s.

When I was leading creative at The Economist Group, I was determined to bring back AMV’s great “white out of red” campaign in social and digital. I couldn’t think of a reason why the iconic brand voice Abbott created for the brand—distinctly British, witty, and confident—wouldn’t work just as well as Instagram posts or banner ads. And sure enough, it did.

So how does one avoid the robotic pablum that’s taken over the industry and create a fresh brand voice? Here are three things to try.

A former ECD of mine, Cameron Day, had a particularly ingenious method. To create a brand voice, he combined two familiar, but distinct, personalities. A good example of this is the brand Cam came up with for a gourmet grocery store: “Dr. Seuss meets Dr. Frasier Crane.” So imagine a person who is deeply knowledgeable about fine foods—but delivers it with a dash of whimsy. Here’s what that sounded like. Delicious, yes?

Let’s go back to that helpful friend, the one always giving you good advice. To give that imaginary confidant a real voice, you have to ask yourself questions such as:
Is your friend a man or a woman?
Is she from New York or New Orleans?
How old is she?
Does she have a sense of humour? And is it the smart kind or a bit juvenile?

In other words, you have to imagine an actual person. Brands are like people, and what makes people memorable and likable works for brands, too.

Replace that milquetoast tone of voice list with attributes that will give the voice some real character. And keep the list to two or three, not five. Doesn’t a brand that strives to be “irreverent, playful, and sarcastic” immediately seem more impactful than a brand that’s just “clear, friendly, and genuine”? Of course, you can’t just force random attributes on a brand. You have to unearth something about it that makes the voice seem inevitable. This is harder for some brands, to be sure—especially in certain categories—but it’s worth the effort.

Finally, I’d argue that brand voice is especially important in an era in which the business is more and more reliant on stock photography. If everyone is using the same pool of imagery, one way to stand apart from the pack is to give your brand a unique voice. Don’t settle for FRIENDLY.

By John Long of HS Ad

Sourced from Muse by CLIO

In News

Ownit helps brands sell products, at the point of discovery, with one click

March 28, 2022 No Comments

By Christine Hall

We’ve all seen a product on social media that looks interesting, so you click the “shop now” button and are taken over to a new site. But wait, you weren’t finished on the social media site, and when you go back, everything has refreshed.

Ownit unveiled a checkout experience today, after testing with 10 companies, that gives direct-to-consumer brands a way to sell their products without that interruption. Its technology connects social, commerce and payment options at the point of discovery so consumers can buy in one tap via an “Ownit Connected Checkout link.”

From the link, consumers go to a web page interface on top of the app and can make purchase choices from their favourite commerce site, including Shopify and Amazon, and pay with Apple Pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay or PayPal — features not often available because some social media sites don’t often play well with certain payment options, Ownit co-founder and CEO Payman Nejati told TechCrunch.

Nejati started San Francisco-based Ownit less than a year ago with Evan Shiue and Joel Tan, and all three have vast experience in checkout. This is Nejati’s fifth startup, and most of his experience is in grocery checkout, while Shiue has a background in autonomous checkout at Standard Cognition and Walmart, and Tan in conversational checkout with Amazon’s Alexa.

The global pandemic was the driver for many people to start an e-commerce brand, and while many tools enable them to start easily, Nejati says the right tools haven’t been there to help those companies grow as easily. In addition, brands still deal with challenges, like cart abandonment rates of 75%.

Needless to say, they’ve thought a lot about what’s going on at the point of purchase, even going so far as to boast that customers will double sales conversion or pay nothing. They knew they were on to something as they saw checkout companies like Bolt, Checkout.com and Rapyd collectively raising over $3 billion investments in the past 18 months.

Image Credits: Ownit

“We knew checkouts at the point of purchase will explode, but we wonder if the user was going to the storefront, and is the company investing in sending them there from another platform, like social media,” Nejati added. “At the same time, the new iOS was making those costs unbearable. So we thought, what if you don’t have to go there, but we could capture someone at the point of discovery — that was the lightbulb moment.”

Proving that checkout continues to be a hot area for investors, Ownit itself announced initial funding Monday, an $8 million seed round from Caffeinated Capital, SciFi VC, GGV Capital, Abstract Ventures and a group of angel investors that include founders and executives of companies including Meta, Pinterest, Honey, Product Hunt, Standard Cognition and Anycart.

Nejati explained Ownit is like the “Plaid of e-commerce;” what it is doing is a “heavy tech lift,” involving connecting people, merchants and payment options seamlessly. The ultimate goal being to become the merchant of record by going after capital to get everything squared away correctly from the beginning versus taking shortcuts that make it difficult to scale.

As such, the new capital will be deployed into what Shiue called “the three Cs”: conversion, which he considers “the North Star for its brands;” customer onboarding; and connections to deepen the three pillars of its tool suite of social, commerce and payment platform relationships.

The company has 11 employees currently and Shiue expects to be at 30 by the end of the year.

Among Ownit’s 10 early beta customers are consumer packaged goods companies, cosmetics and nutrition. Customers were encouraged to test sales through Shopify versus through Ownit, and Shiue said initial results have been positive, showing campaigns saw an average of two times the conversion lift via text marketing and three times conversion via email marketing.

Feature Image Credit: Ownit

By Christine Hall

Sourced from TechCrunch

In News

Great Brands Respect Their Customers: 3 Rules to Keeping it Authentic

February 22, 2022 No Comments

By Andrew Konya

Brands invest millions of dollars in creating an external identity that reflects their mission, values and product. A good brand identity is instantly recognizable, reliable and clear on what your company stands for. That doesn’t make it strong or lasting.

Having a strong, durable brand comes from brand authenticity. Today’s consumers view their spending cash almost like a psychological investment, and want to believe in what they consume. In fact, recent reports show that 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands they like and support.

What It Takes to Create an Authentic Brand Identity

Creating a genuine and impactful brand goes beyond a visually appealing social media account, or a funny Super Bowl commercial. It’s about connecting with consumers on a deeper level and taking actions to live out your brand’s values or support issues that matter. Great brands now honour their customers.

We’ve seen brands do this well. Patagonia recently shared why it doesn’t use the word “sustainable” in its marketing. The decision stems from an awareness that, despite its best efforts, the company is still part of the climate change problem. Ben and Jerry’s is another example. Historically known for taking an unapologetic stance on social issues, its co-founders were arrested for activism work in 2016. By putting themselves on the line, leadership at Ben and Jerry’s showed their support of social issues is unwavering. These choices aren’t made for publicity — they’re the result of years of groundwork aimed at building a trusting, transparent relationship with consumers and honouring the issues that matter most to those who purchase their products. At the end of the day, consumers want to trust and be proud of the brands they support.

Cultivating an authentic brand identity doesn’t happen overnight — it requires time, consistency and empathy. Here are a few key takeaways and simple strategies for getting brand authenticity right.

Start With Your Internal Culture, Then Work Your Way Out

Brand authenticity starts with building a positive internal culture that’s rooted in transparency. Make sure all employees — whether they are in a corporate office, a store location or a distribution centre — feel supported, engaged and heard.

Increasing transparency can take several forms, one of which is having frequent, open conversations with employees. By creating this space, you’re not only giving room for people to express their concerns and values, you’re also building community among your staff. Another way to positively impact internal culture is by incorporating employee feedback into your overall mission, asking your employees questions like: What social issues matter most to you? Are there any organizations you wish we were supporting? Incorporate this feedback into your overall mission and day to day activities, and your employees will feel more empowered and supported by your brand. They are your best advocates, and shape your brand every day through their actions.

To take this a step further, identify and acknowledge the weak spots in your company culture. Employees who feel overworked and burnt out won’t be putting their best foot forward. Likewise, companies lacking policies to foster connection among remote employees may find their staff disengaged and unmotivated. It’s important to remember that employees are a brand’s number one asset, and that they are people first and workers second. Address the pain points and make an active effort to increase everyone’s sense of belonging within the organization. By empowering employees, they’ll organically spread your message to potential customers, driving business value for the company as a whole.

Talk Less, Act More

According to consumers, brand authenticity is less about overt messaging, and more about communicating through mission and action. Today’s consumers are spending consciously and increasingly seeking out brands that actively support causes that align with their own personal values.

Evaluate your corporate spending to ensure the organizations and causes you support align with your brand’s values. Don’t assume people won’t notice where your corporate dollars are being spent. The past two years we’ve seen people hold businesses more accountable than ever. Don’t just attach your name to every trending movement or cause, and stay out of conversations where your brand is irrelevant. Instead, facilitate open conversations with your consumers to eliminate the guessing from your efforts, and find opportunities to leverage your brand’s resources within your community.

There’s ways to do this well — for example, during a disaster in 2017, Budweiser began canning water instead of beer to aid hurricane victims, using its resources in a moment of need. It’s since continued this practice, developing a partnership with the Red Cross to provide support when it’s needed.

Integrity Counts, in Good Times and Bad

Make sure your brand voice is clear, genuine and consistent 100% of the time. Customers are increasingly sensitive to inauthentic branding, so avoid using emotional manipulation techniques in your marketing.

Similarly, own your mistakes. It’s almost guaranteed that your brand will not get it right every single time — no one does. Consumers will take notice of these moments, but they’ll likely be paying even closer attention to how you respond, and whether you learn. We recognize authenticity in humans through traits like honesty and humility. By owning any missteps and learning from them, people will recognize the authenticity in your brand, too. Of course, do your best to keep these moments far and few in between. And be sure to make things right with individual customers when needed. After all, how you correct a problem or mistake is just as important (if not more important) than the issue itself.

These three strategies are a stepping stone to creating an authentic brand consumers know and love. Having a strong, genuine identity builds trust and loyalty, which ultimately drives repeat purchases and leads to lifelong customer relationships. Authenticity is not created overnight — it takes years of consistency to establish yourself as a reliable, reputable, household favourite. But once you put in the time and effort, you’ll create a strong customer base of fierce brand advocates who align with your mission and spread goodwill alongside your brand.

Feature Image Credit: Eduardo Soares | unsplash

By Andrew Konya

Andrew Konya is the CEO and co-founder of Remesh, an agile market research platform that sparks meaningful conversations between decision-makers and the populations they serve, transforming the way organizations operate and driving more informed, empathetic choices. He began his career as a theoretical physicist at Kent State University, applying machine learning and supercomputing to understand emergent phenomena in complex systems.

Sourced from CMS Wire

In News

How Brands Can Enter the Metaverse

January 24, 2022 No Comments

By Janet Balis

There are quite a few people who believe that the latest paradigm shift for the internet is already well underway: the metaverse, they say, is almost here. When companies investing in a space and the media declare a moment, it’s reasonable to take a beat and see whether the reality can live up to the hype. But, if this is the “meta” moment — that is, if it offers something that people really want — it is safe to assume that a lot of companies are wondering what the metaverse really is and whether they should be a part of it. For brands thinking about how to navigate this new frontier, even knowing where to start can be daunting.

The basic idea of the metaverse isn’t complicated. Put simply, the metaverse includes any digital experience on the internet that is persistent, immersive, three-dimensional (3D), and virtual, as in, not happening in the physical world. Metaverse experiences offer us the opportunity to play, work, connect or buy (and just to make things extra fun, the things we buy can be real or virtual). It is also perhaps a misnomer to say “the metaverse” as if it were a monolithic, connected, or even interoperable universe, because it is not. Each entity that creates a virtual world does so with its own access, membership, monetization rights, and formats of creative expression, so the business and technical specifications vary widely. The metaverse refers more to the concept across these individual worlds and experiences and the acknowledgement that we are entering into a more substantive, immersive landscape than ever before.

A handful of businesses are already shaping the landscape, with entertainment and gaming companies leading the way. Major console and PC gaming titles, such as Fortnite, from Epic Games, have normalized playing and socializing with people in virtual settings. Newer gaming platforms, such as Roblox, allow people to create and play across immersive worlds created, and often monetized, by users. Decentraland is an entire 3D virtual world owned by its users, allowing them to create virtual structures — from theme parks to galleries — and then charge users to visit them, all powered by Ethereum blockchain technology. Other companies, such as MetaVRse and Unity, are creating engines to power brand and gaming studios and accelerate development of AR and VR content creation.

The immersive environment of the metaverse isn’t just an opportunity for consumer-facing companies, however. From training future surgeons to rolling out product demos to retail employees, there are plenty of business applications. For example, the leadership of tech company Nvidia believes that investing in metaverse simulations of such things as manufacturing and logistics will reduce waste and accelerate better business solutions. And Microsoft is positioning its cloud services to be the fabric of the metaverse, using its Mesh platform to enable avatars and immersive spaces to thread into the collaboration environments, such as Teams, over time. With post-Covid hybrid or remote working environments, many of these more creative virtual business experiences are likely to become even more relevant to how companies connect to their people and to their customers.

For companies still waiting on the side-lines, it is important for each brand to find its place and balance the risk-reward equation. Doing so requires grasping what is possible, and the companies that are leaning in fast can both offer inspiration and act as test cases. For example, there are plenty of brands taking full advantage of the gaming part of the metaverse with branded experiences that are essentially virtual and immersive sponsorships. While Nike is a highly established brand, it is certainly leading the charge at the assertive end of the metaverse spectrum, filing for patents for virtual goods and the opportunity to build virtual retail environments to sell those goods, as reported by CNBC. More recently, they acquired a company called RTFKT that creates virtual sneakers and collectibles for the metaverse.

The commercial applications of the metaverse are even further heightened by the new behaviours that are surging around buying products and services directly from social experiences, also known as “social commerce.” Social commerce is becoming a larger percentage of U.S. e-commerce over time and is projected to be $36 billion in 2021 alone, following growth patterns like those in China.

In response, the social media landscape is keen to capitalize on the intersection of where people connect and buy not only in a traditional internet context, but also in a 3D, immersive metaverse. Virtual showrooms, fashion shows, and dressing rooms suddenly have the potential to shift from fringe experimentation to mass adoption. And people aren’t just selling physical goods — in fact, Sotheby’s recently announced its own metaverse gallery for curated virtual art, housed in Decentraland. New business models for influencers, virtual goods — including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are one-of-a-kind creations traded and secured on a blockchain — and commerce on physical goods purchased in virtual worlds will all emerge in importance as capabilities scale.

Brands should always be in a test-and-learn mode, and the digital landscape in particular requires intellectual curiosity. The metaverse is potentially the next iteration of how humans use the internet to connect, communicate and transact — sitting on the side-lines too long is not likely to be an option.

Here’s what brands can do right now:

Pick your targets.

Think about how much your target audiences/customers are spending time in the metaverse and calibrate your speed of attack appropriately — brands focusing on younger demographics, for example, probably don’t have the luxury of sitting out the metaverse for long. Who are your target demographics, and what behaviors are trending with your current and prospective consumers right now that are indicators of how fast to move into the metaverse?

Watch the competition.

Start talking about moments when peer companies do things in the metaverse — like a showcase at a leadership meeting just to get the conversation going across the executive team. So much of the space can be intimidating, particularly when seemingly indecipherable concepts, such as NFTs or blockchain, are involved. Can you create a champion for these topics to bring approachable, tangible examples to every meeting?

Look for applications.

See whether the metaverse gives you opportunities as a company to not only try new things, but also to accelerate your purpose or long-term goals like sustainability, which is well suited to many applications of the metaverse. Almost every CMO already has made, or will soon make, a public commitment to sustainability-related ESGs, and they will soon be measurable. What can you pilot in the metaverse that allows you to test more sustainable approaches to serving your customers?

Plan your entrance.

Ask your agency team to begin formulating a point of view on how your brand should show up in the metaverse and when it might make sense. Holding companies and independent agencies are both keenly watching mass media behaviours and emerging trends, so it’s a great opportunity to ask them what they are seeing across their client portfolio. What tests could they put in place to enable you to get your brand exposed to the metaverse comfortably?

Keep your balance.

If you are already in it, prepare for the fact that all new spaces present risk and reward; manage accordingly, knowing that it may be super-unpredictable and lacking in standards. The good news is that the recent pandemic made us all way more agile than ever before. To state the epically obvious, there will be experiments that fail. Second Life offered the promise of the metaverse years ago and did not take hold, but the risk for the brands that participated was not significant or long term. So, if this is the right time, it’s important to consider how to be there.

***

Most importantly, people in brand marketing or leadership roles should start thinking about how to unleash their creativity and their storytelling. If the creative palette expands dimensions in the metaverse, we should be excited to create experiences at any point in the customer journey, from acquisition, to engagement, to transaction, to customer support, which have the potential to be both spectacular and stickier than before. And, someday, we will likely want to move from real to virtual worlds seamlessly. That will be the next frontier.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Ernst & Young LLP or any other member firm of the global EY organization.

Feature Image Credit: Artur Debat/Getty Images

By Janet Balis

Janet Balis leads EY’s consulting professionals in the Americas focused on the customer agenda and revenue growth, including commercial excellence, customer experience and product innovation and also leads EY’s CMO practice. She has also served as a partner at Betaworks, publisher of The Huffington Post, and EVP Media Sales and Marketing at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Balis is on the global board of the Mobile Marketing Association and the International Television Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she is also an advisor to the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. You can follow her on Twitter: @digitalstrategy.

Sourced from Harvard Business Review

In News

Branding’s Perfect 10 – The PR Afterthought

January 17, 2022 No Comments

By Glenn Matchett

When considering the future of branding and brands, it is important to properly understand that Communications is now a fractured, complex, and diverse discipline. The challenge for a PR and brand team – and, indeed, for an entire business – is to get everyone working as one. The overarching task is to impart and nurture genuine empathy and understanding for what a brand stands for, along with the overall business goals. The next step is to plan on how that gets communicated effectively to the outside world.

In Communications, working in silos doesn’t cut it anymore. It requires complex, interwoven, and often co-dependent messaging played across advertising, branding, packaging, PR, digital, customer service, and more. Symbiotic, interlocked, and constantly evolving, there is no solitary lens for PR. Instead, there is a brand kaleidoscope that acts as an ever-changing window into how a brand is perceived through the entirety of its communications.

Social media perfectly illustrates how interlocked communications channels can be for brands. A misplaced tweet or a tone-deaf post can quickly catch fire as a PR disaster that can lose customers or have a negative commercial impact on a business. When Dulux became the sponsor of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club this year, one of the first things the paint brand’s social media manager did was engage in some Twitter banter about the club’s lack of trophies. This quite quickly whipped up into a PR storm about how a new commercial partner was making a major faux pax by denigrating its new partner. There were questions asked about the suitability of the partnership and it has resulted in the commercial relationship getting off to an unsteady start.

With an improved lens on PR, the brand would have anticipated the potential problem here. In a future, more perfect world, PR fails can be mitigated by ensuring those who are in charge of social media are adequately briefed and aware of the power of social as a communications channel.

In a future world, this sort of mistakes would be stopped at the source because companies would understand how interlocked all their messaging is with the perception of their brand. A misjudged post on social media has the potential to be just as damaging as Gerald Ratner’s quip in 1991, that the jewellery he sold was “total crap”. His tongue-in-cheek remark in front of the Institute of Directors promptly wiped £500 million from the jeweller’s valuation and nearly took the company to the wall. Reflecting on the incident in 2021, Ratner tweeted, “It is 30 years today when I made ‘that’ speech. It seems like yesterday. I wish it was tomorrow. I would cancel it.” A PR blunder can have a lasting impact. Lessons for the future are often gleaned from what has happened in the past.

In a perfect future vision, PR would always have a board-level seat at any business – helping inform and shape decisions as they are made. PR is not an afterthought. PR is not the red phone to ring in a panic when the shit is about to hit the fan further down the line. Nor is it a cherry to stick on top of a cake with a positive business announcement or new launch. It is not enough to position PR and marketing at the end of a business process. That does not work anymore and brands who do it will often come unstuck or fail to properly connect with their customers.

Another great example from the world of football this year is the abortive launch of ‘The Super League’. As the breakaway scandal unfolded, it was revealed that the organizers only decided to appoint an agency to look after PR on the day of the announcement. What they fundamentally misunderstood is that PR cannot be an afterthought. It’s not about managing a few negative headlines with the belief that today’s newspapers will be tomorrow’s chip papers. PR is vital to monitor the pulse of a brand or an idea. It is about fully understanding and communicating effectively with your customers.

PR is a pre-emptive tool that is as much about anticipation as it is about activation. Like the tip of an iceberg, with PR there is much more to it beneath the surface than you end up seeing in public. As soon as the tsunami of negative responses hit, The Super League brand was dead in the water. If the clubs had effectively engaged PR earlier in their process they would have realized the whole shebang was a bad idea a lot sooner. This whole episode serves as a lesson on why engaging with PR early is a necessity for any brand.

In recent years, technology has seen brands become more and more efficient in how they target their audience. Data-driven intelligence hoovered up from our online activities means that advertisers often seem to know us better than we know ourselves. In the early days of this tracking technology, this was hailed as new nirvana. We’d be served better because we’d get shown what we want rather than things that weren’t relevant and of interest to us. We were heading to a perfect world of branding and advertising. With minimum wastage for advertisers, you would only see the products you’re interested in.

More recently, however, that dream has turned somewhat sour. The dystopian vision in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report, of being relentlessly targeted with ads, looms larger like a tangible reality. Documentaries like Coded Bias, The Great Hack, and The Social Dilemma each portray a dark and damaging heart at the center of this technology, purely focused on milking and manipulating consumers for all that they are worth.

From a PR point of view, consumers are waking up to how their data is being used and brands need to be mindful of this. Customers don’t like it and the resulting bad PR for their brands may be commercially damaging. From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications. Privacy controls will be placed back into the hands of the customer and, as a result, the PR wildfire that is burning about privacy and data may start to recede. We’ve already seen this come to light with Apple’s new privacy feature, intended to put the brakes on the sharing of customer data across multiple sites. By preventing the targeting that is the bread and butter of many brands online, its introduction may be a catalyst for a dramatic change in the entire online advertising industry.

From a brand perspective, we may end up shifting in a different direction, with more organic, transparent, and authentic connections being a prerequisite of brand communications.

Brands need to continue to adapt and change in step with the world in which we live. Many cultural commentators believed that, after COVID-19, the consumer’s relationship with brands might change dramatically. Our values would shift away from a disposable, frivolous culture and brands would need to follow. The jury is still out on whether this will, in fact, come to pass. If the queues at the UK’s high-street stores, when the lockdown was lifted in April, is any barometer of a new consumer consciousness, it may not, in fact, be the case at all. The hunger to spend on a wide range of goods still appeared to be firmly intact.

It is fair to say though that brands continue to become more socially aware. As part of a brand strategy, CSR is often now firmly embedded into many companies. However, CSR is only really effective when it is integrated properly and not just used as a PR badge to appease a target market or drive sales.

In the future, unpicking the relationship between CSR and PR will be a great step forward for brands. If you consider a brand like Dove, which has ‘body positivity’ at the heart of its brand purpose, you can see how powerful this can be – not just part of a marketing strategy but an entire business philosophy. It’s not just a PR badge adopted in order to shift their products.

In summary, I feel that it is worth addressing the elephant in the room.

“What is the perfect future version of branding and brands?”

Well, there isn’t one, of course. We live in an imperfect world and nothing ever stays still. When Brandingmag launched, 10 years ago, the world was a very different place. Fast forward 10 years from today and I expect, fuelled by technology, that change will be even greater. PR, as a profession, continues to evolve and it is now part of a larger, more integrated, communications ecosystem. The days of fluffy ‘Ab Fab’ PR – with boozy lunches and ‘it’s not what you know, it’s who you know’ dynamics of doing your job – are long gone. The future vision for perfect PR and brands is to refine and adapt to the broader, interlinked way in which communications operates. It’s also imperative for PR to be positioned at the heart of every business operation. Perfect? No, it will never be perfect, but that’s what keeps the craft of communications such an engaging challenge.

By Glenn Matchett

Sourced from Brandingmag