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What Makes a Good Marketing Manager?

July 7, 2020 No Comments

By Chris Porteous.

How to direct teams toward commercial and creative success in marketing.

Many marketing professionals aspire to become excellent marketing managers who can direct entire teams toward commercial and creative success. Despite the allure of becoming a marketing manager, however, it’s an immensely difficult position to master. Many marketing specialists do quite well when producing content or conducting research but lack the skills and experience needed to be good marketing managers. Business owners and marketing gurus are thus left grappling with the question of what makes a good marketing manager so great, and how to avoid making mistakes that stymie the whole team’s progress.

Here’s a review of what it takes to become a good marketing manager, and what techniques to avoid if you want your team to remain successful over the long term.

Know your role as a marketing manager

If you’re a marketing manager or are angling to become one, there’s a good chance that you possess some experience working in the lower rungs of the marketing hierarchy. Producing content, making pitches, and conducting research are all things that some marketing managers can involve themselves with, but at the end of the day, you’ll ultimately be shying away from these tasks to focus more on the overall management of your marketing community. This is because your role isn’t to be a creative guru who produces excellent copy or shapes the media narrative, but rather to be the excellent team leader who steers others toward success while preventing burnout, inter-team disputes, and costly over budgeting.

There are best practices to follow, but understand that much of this will be learning as you go. This is because excellent marketing managers can’t be churned out in a factory-like procession, but must instead cut their teeth by personally involving themselves in the nitty-gritty of running a marketing operation. Much of your work will likely involve budgeting, so upping your financial literacy is strongly recommended if you seek to become a marketing manager one day.

Not all marketing managers are financial geniuses, but those managers who want to churn out a marketing strategy that works need a comprehensive understanding of money in a way that other marketing specialists don’t. You’ll also need to become adept at explaining complex topics to your subordinates, as they may not possess the industry experience or level of education that you possess as a manager. Time and time again, good marketing managers make time for their team members and ensure that nobody is left behind. Otherwise, the entire marketing plan quickly falls apart.

The ins and outs of leading a team

If you have little to no experience leading a team, becoming a marketing manager can be an incredibly intimidating experience. This is because exceptional marketing managers understand how to set a clear vision for their team before enabling their individual team members to fulfil that vision in the most effective way possible. Sometimes, a subordinate will have a plan or approach that you yourself could not implement, and in this situation being an excellent marketing manager entails supporting them as they work to implement that plan in a way that only they can.

You should also know that leading a team necessitates taking responsibility for your failures. If the marketing manager is the person in charge, then they’re also the person who needs to take the blame when something goes wrong. Sometimes, marketing managers suffer because they’re totally unfamiliar with the common mistakes of the position. Reading up on those errors is a sure-fire way to avoid them in your own future. Many senior marketing managers feel threatened by the presence of other seasoned professionals, for example, and only hire largely unqualified candidates to ensure they remain the top dog. By depriving your team of the expertise you need, you’re acting as a bad manager.

Good marketing managers also know when to let an unproductive employee go. If your organization is failing to achieve its marketing goals, there’s a very good chance that your current team isn’t sufficiently streamlined. Lackluster content producers need to be replaced by savvy marketing managers who understand how to find replacements that can get the job done. Relying on freelancers and third parties can help you keep your budget under control, but full-time content specialists are even better in terms of the materials they churn out.

Fail to make the difficult decisions about hiring and firing as a marketing manager, and you’ll never rise high up the ranks of the industry.

Learning how to implement change

One of the most important elements of any marketing manager’s commercial success is whether or not they can implement change. Many people can recognize the need for change, but relatively few of them can actually implement it. This is because change is inherently disruptive and threatens the status quo, which in turn entrenches itself. Good marketing managers are those professionals who know how to implement team-wide changes without disrupting individual team members.

Sometimes, you won’t be able to count on the help of your team when implementing changes. This is because your content specialists and other team members may be preoccupied elsewhere, forcing you to grapple with change alone. Target Marketing has done an excellent review of how to go about implementing marketing changes in such a scenario. Marketing is ever-changing, and those managers who don’t become masterful implementers of innovation will quickly find themselves obsolete and replaced.

Sometimes, the changes you’ll be implementing have nothing to do with your team and everything to do with convincing a client to adjust their marketing strategy. In this scenario, you’ll need to rely on your mastery of finance to argue that certain changes are needed from a budgetary perspective. Elsewhere, you’ll need to potently argue that certain changes simply must be fostered if you intend to reach a target audience with a message that will resonate. Oftentimes, clients will be hesitant to implement sweeping changes that undo previous work or imperil past investments, but your job as a manager is to cut through this doubt and force through painful yet necessary innovations.

You need to take responsibility

Finally, good marketing managers need to take responsibility for their failures. This is the marketing industry – it is inevitable that you’re going to fail, as even consumers don’t always know what they want to buy. If you react to failure by melting down, blaming your team, and refusing to foster much-needed changes, you’ll continue to wallow in obscurity at the bottom of the industry. Real marketing professionals take responsibility for their failures, identify what caused a given marketing strategy to backfire, and come up with plans to do better in the future.

If this sounds difficult, that’s because it is. Being a marketing manager isn’t easy, and involves constantly reassessing your strategy to identify and expunge any flaws you find. Marketing managers can produce powerful results when they follow this playbook, though, and will soon find themselves in hot demand if they capably steer their teams toward the finish line in a timely fashion while remaining under budget. Want to become a great marketing manager? Start by improving yourself before pivoting to a position of team leadership, and you’ll be masterfully implementing marketing plans in no time.

Feature Image Credit: Morsa Images | Getty Images

By Chris Porteous

Chris Porteous is CEO of Grey Smoke Media/My SEO Sucks, which builds sales funnels and marketing workflow solutions for businesses across North America.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

In News

Coca-Cola eyes streaming, real-time content production in marketing restart

June 30, 2020 No Comments

By Dianna Christie

Dive Brief:

Coca-Cola will restart its marketing efforts soon after pressing pause during coronavirus lockdowns, according to a WARC report.
The brand plans for a new focus on agility and flexibility as it — and consumers — emerges from the pandemic. Real-time content production and streaming will also get a bigger focus in the beverage giant’s marketing plans in the months ahead, when Coca-Cola expects to adjust spending based on the current moment, per WARC.
The company had kept up its social engagement during lockdown but had pulled other forms of advertising during the pause. “The decision to be dark is not sustainable in the longer term and especially now that our customers are going back to being active,” Barbara Sala, Coke’s CEE strategic connection and media director, said at the IAB Europe Interact conference this week.

Dive Insight:

As restaurants and bars closed up shop and concerts and sporting events were canceled during the early stages of the pandemic, Coca-Cola downshifted its advertising. The brand turned its focus from out-of-home, billboards and TV to smaller digital and streaming options to connect with people looking for entertainment at home.

Now that world is slowly beginning to reopen, Coca-Cola is forging a new way forward that includes digital efforts similar to those the brand explored and employed during the pandemic.

Sala said during the conference that lockdowns showed how “digital has been very much able to, immediately and in real time, reach our consumers in many different forms … and some of them really astonished me.”

During the early days of stay-at-home orders, Coca-Cola signed on as the exclusive launch partner to BeApp, a new music streaming platform that integrates gamified and social media elements into the virtual concert-viewing experience. Coke Studio Sessions has featured a number of high-profile artists such as Katy Perry, Miguel, Steve Aoki and the cast of the musical “Hamilton.” This experimental push could signal some of the campaigns that could come as the beverage giant pushes forward.

But Coca-Cola won’t be the only company rethinking digital strategy post-coronavirus. Chief rival PepsiCo also cut back on nonessential ad spend during lockdowns in favor of consumer activations that tapped into what was becoming popular during the pandemic. This included integrations with actor John Krasinki’s feel-good “Some Good News,” a YouTube hit that recently sold to ViacomCBS and a Tostitos Facebook livestream where Bill Murray and Guy Fieri competed to make the best nachos.

Feature Image Credit: Marc Fulgar / Unsplash

By Dianna Christie

Sourced from MARKETINGDIVE

In News

Seven creative exercises to help you create even when you’re remote

June 23, 2020 No Comments

By Danny Bluestone

So you’re working from home, spending too much time on Zoom calls, feeling a bit frustrated and that normal creative business – design workshops, ideation sessions, design sprints – has had to pause. Time to think again. As someone who leads a remote-first agency that specialises in service design and UX as well as web application development, I know first hand that creativity and collaboration don’t just happen in person.

And I can unequivocally state that running design sprints and collaborating with clients is entirely possible, even when you’re 100% remote. It’s just different. A strong design process helps alongside a ‘design thinking’ mentality. So do the right tools and professional experience. But we all need a little fun, too, to create those creative sparks, so here are six exercises that we use with our clients to inspire our design process. See our seven creative exercises that we have been using before and during the pandemic to successfully deliver products and services to clients.

Goal visualisation

A good one to start with, usually at our kick-off workshop, is goal visualisation. In this, each participant takes a moment to think about the difference the project could make.

You can do this in lots of ways – sketching, keywords, bulleted lists or an inspiring piece of writing (I haven’t yet seen it done in interpretative dance, but that day may come). It shows each person’s perspective on what the project should achieve and helps get people excited about the project.

Stinky Fish

Great name, great exercise, especially for your kick-off workshop. In the Stinky Fish exercise, participants share any risks about going ahead with a project. (The idea is that if they’re not aired now, they might fester and become, you guessed it, stinky!)

Stinky Fish is a great way to confront any obstacles or concerns, bring them out into the open and address them. (It’s also an opportunity to check if there is indeed a good reason not to proceed.)

Crazy Eights

Crazy Eights is a fun, fast exercise that gets participants to sketch eight ideas in eight minutes. All they need is a piece of paper (that you can later hold up to your webcam) and a pen (if you’re doing this remotely, something bold, like a Sharpie, shows up well on-screen). Divide your sheet of paper into eight boxes, start the timer – and go!

Because of the time constraint, Crazy Eights is an excellent way to get people to capture their ideas without hesitation. There isn’t time for self-editing or shyness – it encourages everyone in the room to get stuck in right away!

Sketching exercises

Lots of people think they can’t draw and might find sketching intimidating. But everyone can, certainly well enough for UX design workshops. Sketching exercises are fun and by sharing their sketches onscreen with tools like Miro, reluctant participants can gain confidence in bringing their ideas to life whilst creating documentation that will help drive the project forward.

Ideas pitching

Ideas pitching gives each participant a chance to pitch their concepts and designs to the rest of the group. Participants can then vote on the best elements (using show of hands voting if you’re on Zoom), or converge solutions together or in pairs in Zoom breakout rooms.

Replay

And the last one is really handy too – a Replay exercise runs through the key goals from your kick-off workshop, or refreshes your team on the personas and scenarios that have been developed. It’s a fun and quick way to bring everyone up to speed, or to ensure they’re back on the same page – we often use it at the start of a workshop.

Remote working tools

Now that you have the seven excercises its time to ‘tool-up’! You can collaborate effectively, even if you’re working remotely, with a pen and a few sheets of paper. But there are more sophisticated tools, too. At Cyber-Duck, we use whiteboard apps like Miro and Mural to collate digital post-it notes, perform card sorting and more. Tools like Sketch Cloud and Invision help us walk clients through design prototypes and get feedback, while Airtable makes sharing research data easy. (Get a full rundown of all our favourite tools in our remote-first design sprints white paper – it’s free.)

Conclusion

We’ve successfully storyboarded, mapped personas, and developed service design blueprints, all remotely, all in collaboration with clients. That’s why I can reassure you, from a company that’s worked remote-first for some years now, that remote creative collaboration isn’t just possible – it can be really effective. You just need to have proven process, the right tools – and a good idea of what you’re doing.

By Danny Bluestone

Danny Bluestone, co-founder, Cyber-Duck

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Brands can turn the tide during coronavirus by building new consumer journeys

June 16, 2020 No Comments

By Shawn Lim

Brands need to focus on hyper-localisation by connecting with consumers where they are, as Covid-19 has dramatically changed consumer behaviour and altered the path-to-purchase, according to Facebook and Boston Consulting Group.

According to a new report called ‘Turn the Tide’, released by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, the use of micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage. This is because countries are being divided into different zones, with distinct restrictions due to the pandemic, so they need to build social connections despite social distancing, by engaging with consumers in their context

To cope with pandemic lockdown, which has caused significant disruption for communities and businesses, people are spending more time on social media platforms. This means brands have an opportunity to build stronger dialogues and deeper connections with users.

The aim of the guide, according to Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, is to guide brands to adapt to the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Nimisha Jain, the managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, says: “We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours as 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialling up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by two-three years, to name a few.”

“These aren’t just temporary surges, and many will last longer and become more defining traits. Our analysis reveals that only one in six companies emerged stronger in past crises. Players who show the agility to reinvent their value propositions, go-to-market plans and business models to address these demand shifts, will be the ones that set themselves apart from the pack.”

In addition, the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

For example, brands can bring alive experiences through virtual launches and product demos as people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life. Facebook said it is already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers, with brands now thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.

Heeru Dingra, the chief executive officer at WATConsult tells The Drum the agency has modified its planning and strategy around the new consumer journeys, urging its clients to follow a simple mantra of ‘solve, serve and sell’.

She explains brands should focus on solving the problems their consumers face, serve their purpose and the result thereof could be the sale of services or products. She notes a lot of brands have understood this concept and have already started altering their approach to fit this mantra.

“We leveraged the power of gaming and re-created one of the most iconic games of all time, Ludo, for our client Tata Motors. Titled #SafetyFirst Ludo, this version aims to spread awareness about the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” she says.

She also calls out work by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance called #CareWillOvercome, which salutes frontline workers, while a #ReconnectWithStarbucks campaign turned the act of baristas calling out people’s names into a digital phenomenon.

She adds: “These examples summarize how we integrated the need of the hour that is to maintain social distancing, continue to concentrate on personal hygiene and at the same time have our heartfelt appreciation for the ones who have been fighting for us day and night, into our brand approach in some way. This helps to amplify the brand message while being sensitive to the current situation, serving the purpose of extending the required communication and increasing as well as sustaining brand recall.”

The report also advised brands to look at their media mix models to drive growth by aligning to new media landscapes. According to the report, when brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they need to understand incremental outcomes, as well as cross-platform efficiency.

This would increase the need for digital measurement standards, such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen, which Facebook said it had piloted last year.

Gautam Mehra, the chief data officer for South Asia and chief executive officer of programmatic at Dentsu Aegis Network observes the importance of moving away from traditional marketing metrics to real business metrics that can be measured and improved on an ongoing basis.

“With the impetus of commerce, CRM and digital transformation, I think, every company will now have a direct-to-consumer line of business and will want to bring themselves closer to the consumer, and rely less on the intermediaries,” he explains.

While most brands are dealing with huge change across many aspects of business, focusing on the changing customer journey is a good place for marketing to focus attention.

Feature Image Credit: the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

By Shawn Lim

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How To Market ‘Unsexy’ Products: 15 Effective Methods

June 12, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from Forbes

The holy grail of the agency world is finding a product that “sells itself.” Unfortunately, even the most amazing products in the world don’t sell themselves. The ones that are decidedly “unsexy” by comparison might prove an even more difficult challenge.

Necessary products don’t have the same appeal as sleek, well-crafted and innovative products. So how does an agency market a less-than-exciting product? Fifteen industry leaders from Forbes Agency Council give their own opinions on the methods that an agency can adopt to market even the most “unsexy” items and make them worthy of an audience’s purchase.

1. Make It Simple And Helpful

Those “unsexy” products and services are likely necessary and often confusing. If you can make it simple and be helpful for your audience, they’ll remember you. Answer their questions without selling. Have robust, easy-to-use troubleshooting and Q&As. – Donna Robinson, Nina Hale – Digital Marketing Agency

2. Use Clever Positioning

I love when someone creates a brand from a commodity. Cutie mandarins and Yeti coolers are two great examples of genius branders transforming the ordinary into extraordinary with clever positioning and creative execution! – Daniel O’Connell, Brand Definition

3. Showcase Uses To Intended Audience

“Unsexy” products are only unsexy if you don’t need them. If you are a business owner whose livelihood depends on an unsexy product like accounting software, well, it seems pretty darn sexy to you. The best way to get this business owner’s attention is to know more than anyone else about the unsexy product they need and show them how to make better use of it. – Jeff Bradford, the Bradford Group

4. Create A Brand Story And Personality

You need to create a brand story and personality for the firm. For example, instead of defining your accounting firm as “Boston Business Tax Accountants,” you can identify a core value or differentiating edge and use that to rebrand or recreate messaging. An example outcome could be “Boston Tax Samurais” with an entire theme related to slicing down costs and taxes through wording and imagery. – Zamir Javer, Jumpfactor

5. Get Your Timing Right

The marketer’s challenge is to be the ultimate matchmaker by discovering the audience who will find the product or service alluring. That’s where intent data comes into play. Intent data can be your marketing team’s best friend and help them create information and messages that are highly personalized and delivered to the right prospects at the right time — when they need your unsexy product. – Melissa Chang, PureB2B

6. Advertise It Through Sexy People

Most of the time, you need a certain image for people to stop scrolling through their feeds and wait to see the content. Make use of influencer marketing and roll in some good looking people to promote your services and use those pictures on your ad and email campaigns, as well. A sexy campaign can make a lot of difference in your leads campaign. – Vishal Jain, Sunshy Group Of Companies

7. Challenge The Obvious

Everyone needs “unsexy” products in their life to satisfy a need, so it’s imperative to identify an insight about the target audience that your product is uniquely able to satisfy. A compelling insight enables your product to connect with customers in a meaningful, even emotional, way. Spend the time and challenge the obvious to stand out from the competition. What could be sexier than that? – Edward Hoffman, Padilla

8. Bring Back The Soaps

Bring back the soap opera. Cliffhangers, great characters, mystery and intrigue were all used to sell soap. People are looking for brands to entertain them, especially now. – Kaaren Whitney-Vernon, Shaftesbury

9. Humanize Your Brand

Humanize your product by giving it a personality. Focus on being playful and relatable on your social media channels. Give your product a personality that is fun to engage with. Share authentic stories that let your audience experience the personality behind the brand. Your consumers will associate the emotions they feel when engaging with your content with the value they receive from your product. – Benjamin Collins, Laughing Samurai

10. Bring The Laughs

Find a common everyday life problem and offer a solution via your product in a funny way, and people will gravitate toward your product. It’s a flawless plan. Think of the best-selling toilet spray who made jokes about having to use the bathroom at your new partner’s house or in the office — everyone can relate, and they’ve sold millions of bottles. Voila! – Sophie Bowman, Brand Branding PR

11. Utilize Client Testimonials

Instead of focusing on the product or service itself, revolve your campaign around the benefits that the product or service brings to the end user. For example, utilize client testimonials. Focus on highlighting the benefits, and create clean and concise creatives and copy for your campaign. The product or service most likely solves an important problem and should be positioned in that way. – Jonathan Durante, Expandify Marketing Inc

12. Make It Unique, Compelling And Believable

Campaigns are successful if they can position a brand as unique (from competitors), compelling (tap into emotion, solve a problem) and believable (faith it will deliver). It might be through humor, empathy, pride, fear or any other human emotion, but it must check all three boxes to truly succeed. – Sara Steever, Paulsen

13. Tap Into The Behavior Of Your Audience

Certain brands scream, “Creativity, start your engine!” However, many others can’t seem to get to the starting line. When faced with the challenge of creating success for a brand that seems to lack anything to latch onto, examine the behaviors of the people that use the product and why. Then, increase the ability of new audiences to adopt those same behaviors. – Roger Hurni, Off Madison Ave

14. Understand Your Clients’ Psychology

Subjective labels like “unsexy” can be challenging to any marketer. Putting the user first and understanding their psychology can reveal the attributes of a product or service that might appeal to those users and lead to effective results. Looking outside the competition and removing those industry-specific blinders can generate a lot of creative ideas on how to bring those attributes to life. – Tripp Donnelly, REQ

15. Focus On Attainable Results

In the end, we all want to see results. When creating campaigns for “unsexy” topics, we focus on the most important result that the product or service delivers, whether it’s revenue, new customers or ROI. In our experience, results get attention. It’s that simple. – Paula Chiocchi, Outward Media, Inc.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

ActionIQ: ‘Marketing Clouds Thrive On Noise In The CDP Space’

June 11, 2020 No Comments

By Allison Schiff

This is the fifth in AdExchanger’s “Meet the CDPs” series. Read previous interviews with mParticle, Acquia-owned AgilOne, Amperity and Segment.

COVID-19 threw a wrench into best-laid marketing plans. But marketers are learning to adapt, said Tasso Argyros, CEO and co-founder of customer data platform ActionIQ.

“All of our clients have been forced to rethink their entire marketing and customer experience strategy,” Argyros said. “And they all need new data, analytics and orchestration capabilities to enable these strategies.”

Still, it’s a bit like building railroad tracks while the train is coming. Clients are trying to acclimate while determining which changes to their business could be permanent.

Despite the question marks, brands can use this unanticipated disruption “as an opportunity to position themselves to come out of this stronger,” said Argyros, who founded ActionIQ in 2014 after selling his previous company, Aster Data, to Teradata.

ActionIQ’s clients include Gap Inc., Saks Fifth Avenue, Michael Kors, Pandora, Verizon and The New York Times. The company raised a $32 million Series C in January, and more than $80 million total. Around half of ActionIQ’s roughly 100 employees are focused either on engineering or R&D.

Argyros spoke with AdExchanger.

AdExchanger: What does it mean to be a CDP in the age of coronavirus?

TASSO ARGYROS: Companies are now trying to execute new campaigns and use cases with limited budgets and resources. For example, if you are a multichannel retailer, you need to migrate your store-only shoppers to ecom, or else you could lose that cohort for good.

I expect coronavirus to accelerate a lot of the business transformation initiatives that were leading people to work with CDPs in the first place.

Did you start out as a CDP from Day One?

It’s a tricky question, because you have to rewrite history a bit in order to answer it. The vision was always to do something really interesting and cool around customer data, and we were doing it before the term existed. But if you were to ask me about how we differentiate, I’d say the main way is in how we’re able to invest data with more scale and complexity than other vendors out there.

Can you elaborate on that?

You don’t have to transform your data or build customer or profile attributes beforehand. You just load in whatever data you want and we build profiles on the fly. Other CDPs have tables with key customer attributes, but we hold every customer interaction. It sounds like an esoteric point, but it makes a huge difference, because it allows you to be agile. Business teams can be completely self-sufficient and iterate in a matter of days rather than a matter of months.

How long does it take to onboard a new customer?

We promise to have the system up and running in three months and that the customer will see strong ROI in six months. We try to come in with strategic solutions and services to help identify low-hanging fruit, use cases and channels that could be incremental. When we push those out, it provides early value and derisks the deployment in a short period of time.

Who is your typical customer?

We focus on the enterprise level, including both B2B and B2C. Our typical customer has revenues of around $1 billion and up. We mostly sell to the CMO, although IT is often closely involved.

What data sources do you most commonly connect?

It’s mainly very large-scale data lakes, such as Google BigQuery and Amazon Redshift, and data warehouses, such as Teradata and Oracle. We can plug into any internal data source and pull in massive amounts of data which allows us to deploy quickly without having to rely on consulting or IT resources. We’re also connected to ad systems – Segment, for example, or a tag manager such as Tealium, are sources of clickstream data for us – and to ESP sources of email response data.

Will the marketing clouds deliver on their promise of providing CDPs?

The marketing clouds announcing CDP capabilities last year was the best marketing we could not afford to have done ourselves. But the marketing clouds are mostly trying to sell legacy software and present it as a CDP. Sometimes they try to sell email software as a CDP or their DMP as a CDP.

Once you’re in an RFP scenario, though, it’s easy to tell the difference. They don’t really have a product. The question then becomes, when will they have one? They say they’re building it, but when was the last time either Adobe or Salesforce built a successful product in house? Everything has been done through acquisition.

But marketers are still attracted to the marketing clouds, because they’re used to working with them.

The marketing clouds thrive on noise in the CDP space. It’s strategic for them to create more confusion, and they have the marketing dollars to do it. One of the values we offer is that we don’t force customers to be locked into any one specific marketing cloud vendor. We give them the channel freedom to plug and play the solutions they choose to work with.

Does the eventual loss of third-party cookies impact the CDP space?

The role of the DMP will be reduced to the point where we can implement almost all of the functionality of a DMP without much additional cost. The consolidation of the DMP inside of a CDP is an opportunity to simplify the marketing stack and save customers some budget.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

By Allison Schiff

Sourced from ad exchanger

In News

How To Pivot Your 2021 Marketing Strategy For A Post-COVID World

June 10, 2020 No Comments

By Rodney Laws.

It’s hard to imagine a post-COVID world right now. No one can be sure when we’ll get back to normal and what normal will look like. Trying to plan for the future feels fruitless, and yet it will feel like everything is happening at once, so you need to be prepared.

For business owners and marketing departments, this presents the challenge of how to approach advertising in a post-COVID world. Have the fundamentals changed, and what is a safe promotional route to go down? Here’s how you can pivot your strategy ready for a new world.

Be content cautious

As the reality of coronavirus and lockdown measures started to set in, a new type of marketing content cropped up on our televisions and social media feeds.

Suddenly sentimental, coronavirus-themed content was in every other ad you saw. This uplifting content generally focused on people’s sacrifices throughout the crisis, how we’re all in this together, and what businesses are doing for you in your time of need. For many, this content provides assurance and shows companies understand what people need most.

The question for marketers once this crisis is over, or at least starting to wind down, is how do you move on from this content, and will coronavirus-tinged content still be appropriate? As people assess the full impact of the virus is it right to use their situation to push them towards purchases, if it ever was?

To pivot your content direction post-COVID you need to be aware of the genuine concerns people will have in regards to making coronavirus your focus. You need to balance the fine line of being aware of the current circumstances without appearing to take advantage of them.

Creating media that captures the public mood and shows appreciation for their feelings can really grab attention and cut through the mass of competition of social media channels. People don’t mind being advertised to if they think the brand genuinely has their best interests at heart. That involves offering something back, even if it’s just a message of support.

You should also look to create content that is genuinely informative. Try and educate people within your specialism on the common coronavirus issues. Slipping in a bit of promotional while doing so is fine, as you’re providing a service. People will want to set up good social distancing measures at work, so suggest creative ways to do so. It may not directly result in conversions, but it’ll build up goodwill with your brand.

The most successful post-COVID content will likely look a lot like the best campaigns we’ve seen throughout the campaign. Let shareable content filmed through Zoom calls inspire you and make sure not to misjudge people’s emotions.

Consider your finances

It’s safe to say most people are expecting things to get a little bit tighter financially after coronavirus.

As if the toil of the virus alone isn’t bad enough, it has also led to significant economic turmoil across the world. With many businesses operating on a much stricter budget — if any budget at all — the money is unlikely to be there for extravagant marketing campaigns. Just like you can’t act like your audience has money to burn, you need to operate securely yourself.

It’s important your marketing starts slowly and tries to avoid as many costly mistakes as possible. Ideally, you can look to follow the example set by small businesses. You don’t need to start from scratch, but approaching your marketing expenses in the way a startup or entrepreneur would will help you make low-investment risks when it comes to pivoting your strategy. These businesses rarely operate with a high-risk, high-reward mentality, which can be a great guide through this tricky period.

Your first campaign after the coronavirus pandemic doesn’t need to be an all-time-great homerun in advertising, but it can’t be something you bet the immediate future of the company on. Businesses are going to be judged not just by how they responded to the outbreak, but how they continue to respond throughout the recovery.

Think small scale with your marketing. Extravagant short films about the bravery of people throughout the crisis may be great, uplifting content, but they can be costly to produce. Whereas taking a more subtle, low-key approach within the budget constraints of a smaller business can help you show support, while accomplishing the long-term promotion and converting goals of your marketing.

Focus on localization

All future marketing strategies in a post-COVID world need to take into consideration the rate at which recovery is happening not just across the world, but in individual countries.

Universal advertising will be irrelevant in the days immediately after the virus. Different messages will mean different things to unique audience. You cannot make content that looks to celebrate defeating the virus available to a region that is still suffering significantly. It is insensitive and will tarnish the respectability and perceived competency of your brand.

Either try and keep your content more general or be hyper-specific in your location. If you want to run an after-COVID paid social campaign, for example, make sure you’re only targeting areas where recovery has been successful and you’re ready to pause it should the worst happen.

While celebrating national success may sound like a great opportunity to balance showing appreciation with brand exposure, this can, especially online, backfire pretty dramatically if you’re not hyper-specific in your execution.

Stick with online services

Despite it feeling like we’re all scratching at the walls looking for an escape from lockdown, it won’t be as simple as everyone rushing back into normal life once it’s lifted.

Not only will there be significant social distancing measures in place, but people’s attitudes and outlook will have changed. People have not just considered what they value, but there will be a residual fear of the virus.

Online services, be it video chat allowing you to talk to your family or an ecommerce store that can keep you stock up throughout lockdown, have shown their worth throughout this pandemic. With people reluctant to dive into normality once again, there will still be a need for these businesses.

All of this is to say you shouldn’t abandon any online services you’ve developed just yet. It’ll be wise to continue promoting these products and services even after coronavirus. Forced exposure to them has only increased interest from the average consumer and business.

Take Zoom as an example. People may be sick of video chats by the time this is all over, but businesses will still find practical uses in it as we return to normality, now aware of a tool that allows them to better connect with business partners abroad and open people up to new types of remote working options.

Likewise, many businesses may stick with remote working for the foreseeable future. This allows you to tweak your marketing, rather than fully pivot it, to just reflect the usefulness of your products and services, rather than play into the whole lockdown and remote working narrative. You don’t need to fully re-think your strategy straight away.

Consider scheduling changes

With efforts to return to normality likely to be slow, you need to consider how you’re going to schedule your content and try and capture attention online.

Before COVID, you were able to research when people were most likely online to try and capture their attention in the most effective way. Numerous studies had been conducted across all the major social platforms, showing when someone was most likely be susceptible to a Facebook video, Twitter Poll or Instagram influencer story.

A lot of these results were determined by pre-COVID schedules. People would commute to and from work roughly at the same time. They’d relax on the couch and browse social media for a bit most evenings. They may be more likely to buy something at a weekend when they have time to sit down and consider the item. That’s all out the window now, and may not be back for a while.

Likewise, people are also going to be spending more time catching up with loved ones if they do choose to go out. There are arguments to suggest that coronavirus could be the end of abject consumerism, and that marketers will have to be more creative in their efforts to draw people away from personal connections and back to social platforms to witness content and advertising.

To acclimatize to the new reality of your customer base you need to either conduct new audience research or find new avenues to reach your base in. A post-COVID strategy will be reflective of new lifestyles, slowly easing itself back into traditional timings. Consider experimenting with new approaches in your advertising, such as Google paid campaigns that can catch search audiences looking for something specific, rather than casting a wide net across social media.

Marketing in a post-COVID world will be challenging, there’s no doubt about that. It won’t be an impossible task though. It will require more audience research and tactile reading of public mood than ever before. Be prepared to backtrack at points and be cautious when taking risks.

Feature Image Credit: Unsplash

By Rodney Laws

Rodney Laws has more than a decade of experience providing marketing advice to online entrepreneurs and businesses. He’s set up and marketed his own businesses and consulted on crafting campaigns for established companies. See what Rodney can do to help you or your business by heading over to EcommercePlatforms.io and visiting @EcomPlatformsio for even more news and views on marketing as an ecommerce brand.

In News

SEO Expert Guide for Successful Marketing

June 10, 2020 No Comments

By Abhishek Kumar.

What do you desire when you set up a website or blog? It would mostly be to sell a product or idea or provide solutions to the pain points of those you visit your site. The digital space has come up with numerous techniques and tools that can help you to attract the audience whose needs match your offerings. One of the most popular techniques that businesses operating online use is search engine optimization (SEO). There are various nuances to SEO and its power to attract traffic to your site, but the one will look at in this article is search intent.

What is search intent?

This is where the entire online transaction process begins. Search intent, also known as keyword intent, is the reason that drives a person to enter their need/query in search engines to know more. The need/query maybe for some information, or a desire to buy something. When you enter the query/search keyword in the search engine, it fetches a list of top-ranked site options for the seeker to cruise through. The intent initiates the search that eventually is present in the first few search engine results pages (SERP).

How does this work?

In order to increase the traffic on your site to drive your sales revenue, you must ensure that you are among the top search results. If you base your content or optimize your website with the search intent at the center, you may succeed in getting into the SERPs. Performing comprehensive research to find the pain points of your target audience that you can solve with your offerings is critical. Once you know what your target audience wants, you can arrive at numerous keywords that they can use to search for a solution. Optimizing your site with such keywords will help you be in the first few pages of the SERPs.

How to optimize your site with search intent in mind?

As optimizing your site based on search intent is a great place to start your SEO journey, it is helpful to follow the steps listed below

1) Find strong keywords which express search intent:

One of the best ways to do this is to check and record the top-ranking pages. Thereafter, see if you can strongly confirm the search intent for your niche. Once you have a list of these keywords, track their search history for a span of at least 3 to 6 months. There are tools you can find that can help you do the trend tracking. Tracking is critical in this process since Google ranking keeps changing as the search intent changes with time. If the ranking history has stabilized or is subject to very marginal changes, you can resolve that the search intent keywords are strong and usable.

What if the ranking history is subject to immense fluctuation? In that case, you are to deduce that Google results have still not zeroed-in on what your audience’s intent is. As the search intent is unclear, it would not be wise to base your SEO optimization on the underlying keywords.

Finding strong keywords that stem from your audience’s search intent will give you a shot at immense success during optimization.

2) Content streamlining for effective targeting:

There 4 aspects to content you need to look at and work on in SEO optimizing through search intent.

Style: The ranking history and top-ranking pages are the reference point for you to help decide on a content style. If the top pages carry results that are predominantly in the form of videos, it is the right strategy for you to create and upload videos. If you find more static pictures, focus on uploads high-quality pictures to drive traffic. In other words, follow the trend to reach the first SERP.
Type: This refers to the place where you plug-in your call to action (CTA) and product information, testimonials, etc. It is effective if your content type is a landing page to which all your email and social media marketing redirect to. It can also be a blog post or product/category page.
Format: These are important to improve traffic and increase the dwell time of the visitors. This is especially important in the case of blog posts. Using certain blog types such as ‘how-to’, listicles, common mistakes, #1 posts, among others act as magnets that attract prospects.
Proposition: When you search for a keyword (use the ones you have found during search intent determination), you will find numerous proposition dimensions in the SERP. Take into consideration all the varied angles and develop a proposition that is unique and magnetic.

3) Use SERP to gain insights:

When you look for a keyword, Google will list out ‘people also search for’, ‘related sites’, and the like. Paying attention to these can help you strategize better. Various keyword research tools available on the web can help you gain such insights.

By following these 3 steps after successfully determining viable keywords based on search intent, will help you savor success. With these steps, you find yourself a place in the SERP and thereby attract large traffic thereby generating pursuable leads.

By Abhishek Kumar

Experienced Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the internet industry. Skilled in Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEO Content Writing, Mobile Marketing, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), and Content Marketing. Strong business development professional with a Bachelor of Technology – BTech focused in Computer Engineering from Lovely Professional University.

Sourced from Promotion World

In News

How to Make a Great Marketing Campaign

June 9, 2020 No Comments

Sourced from appPicker

Every successful marketer would want to create a marketing campaign that would bring about the company’s desired results. Alas, every marketing campaign, no matter how well formulated is never devoid of challenges. Add in the fact that budgetary constraints is also another factor that complicates the entire process. The good news is that it is indeed possible to be able to do more even on a meagre budget. You just have to determine the best approach that will help make your marketing campaign entirely successful. Below are some tips that have been proven helpful in making a marketing campaign work to your company’s favour.

Invest on a perfect platform.

No matter how good you think your marketing campaign is but if you are not using the right platform for it chances are high that your efforts will only be in vain. If you truly want to make your campaigns reap the expected results, invest in the best marketing platform that has been known to work wonders in turning everything into a successful campaign. Never let your precious time be wasted on manually sending emails to your targeted audience. Let the power of automation send those emails to the right people, at the right time.

Be more specific.

If you think you can do it on a granular approach, then the better your marketing campaign would be. This way, you will be able to target your most specific audience and then design all your marketing efforts in a way that pleases every persona in your target market. Make sure that your created content, planned events and promotions will most likely engage every persona that fits your company’s target audience. Do not forget to harness the benefits of data capture as well so it would be easier for you to remarket later as you need to come up with future marketing campaigns.

Never settle for mediocre content.

Instead, always opt for an evergreen content that is classified high-value to your target audience. Although this may sometimes depend on the budget that has been earmarked for a specific marketing campaign but in most cases a greater amount of budget is usually set aside for content distribution rather than for content creation. However, if you want your marketing campaign to have increased organic growth then invest more into the creation of high-quality content.

Test and analyse.

Testing your promotional activities can be quite costly and time-consuming. However, if it is part of your first-ever marketing campaign you will realize that it will be more cost-effective if you consider testing your promotions to focus groups before declaring an official launch. This is when you have to make use of feedback and surveys. Afterwards, study the results and carefully analyse the efficiency of your campaign. If you need to hire an expert to help you analyse the results, then do so.

The best marketing campaign allows your brand to be known to its target market. Otherwise, your start-up business will only remain the best kept-secret in town – literally. Luckily, you have many ways to prevent such a thing from happening. Follow the tips mentioned in this article and be prepared to get blown away by the results.

Sourced from appPicker

In Uncategorized

What Marketing Executives Wished They’d Known When They First Started Their Careers

June 8, 2020 No Comments

By Kimberly A. Whitler

I was recently asked some thought-provoking, career related questions by somebody entering the workforce. It made me pause. While I could provide one point of view, I thought it might be helpful to ask a number of executive leaders the same set of questions. Below is Part One in a series designed to provide insight and advice to aspiring C-level growth engineers (i.e., marketers).

What do you wish you knew when you first started your career?

Katie Borger, Vice President of Marketing of Boston Pizza Restaurants

Being “right” isn’t enough. Everyone has to believe you … whether it’s your guests, your stakeholders, your internal team, etc. No matter how good your idea or your point is, building advocacy, trust and ultimately respect will be the smarter play.

Brooke Budke, Vice President of Marketing of TITLE Boxing Club

The more you grow yourself, the more you will grow in the company. Many young professionals are led to believe it’s the company’s job to grow and develop its employees. I believe it’s your job to become obsessed with your own personal development.

Kathy Collins, Chief Marketing Officer of Massage Envy

Everything will be okay if you work hard, respect the people around you and love what you do. Work for companies with a strong culture and a clear vision. Above everything else, be a good person and things will work out.

Amy Halford, Global Chief Marketing Officer of Self Esteem Brands

I loved school. I loved learning and testing my learning. I really liked getting an A. One-hundred percent was always my target. That kind of thinking spilled into my early career, and I would apply the lens, “if I’m not 100 percent, then I’m not ready for X,” or, “if my experience and skills don’t match 100 percent, then I’m not a fit.” I could have been braver.

Eric Keshin, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Great Harvest Bread Company

Marketing is as much a “science” as an “art.” Relying strictly on opinions to persuade others can be a dead end. Relying on data / results and applying judgment to that is the better way to go.

Rebecca Miller, Chief Marketing Officer of Smoothie King

When I first started working, I had my entire career path and timeline all mapped out, but I wish I had been more open to change and trying new things from the start. You never know what doors will open by being receptive to new opportunities.

Christine Pescatore, Director of Marketing of Venture X

I wish I knew that you can plan your career to a certain extent, but experiences, external forces and your personal life can drive you to opportunities you would never have expected. My role now at Venture X, a coworking space franchise, didn’t exist when I started my career!

Derek Panfil, former Chief Merchandising and Marketing Officer of Pet Supplies Plus

When I started my career, I thought my career progression would be linear, and that is far from the case. It has had ups, downs, successes, and failures. What I would tell all those just beginning their career: be prepared to handle the ups and downs that you will encounter on your journey, and those that succeed do not let setbacks deter their overall passion to do great things.

Bill Zinke, Senior Vice President of Marketing of BELFOR Franchise Group

You can’t fast track experience. Every success, failure, good or bad decision has made me a better marketer and leader. I wish I’d known how important company culture is. Job-seekers typically focus on a job’s responsibilities and growth potential, but forget about finding a company with a positive, people-centric environment.

Mandy Nowels, Vice President of Marketing & Ecommerce of The Spice and Tea Exchange

Probably how important it is to understand how to motivate and communicate with people. No matter how good you are at your trade, the biggest opportunities for advancement lie in being able to manage more people. Quite often, your growth is determined by how effective and efficient your team is. You can fine tune your craft with yourself and your team every day, but companies want to promote people who motivate others towards the company’s goals and mission.

Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler

Note: The titles, positions, and company affiliations may have changed since the insight was generated.

Feature Image Credit: Wish came true, GETTY

By Kimberly A. Whitler

As a former General Manager and CMO, who worked for nearly 20 years before getting a PhD and working as an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, I conduct research that focuses on helping the C-suite (and aspiring C-level marketers) better understand, develop, and lead marketing excellence.

Sourced from Forbes