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Making Customer Engagement The Common Scorecard For Growth

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By Stephen Diorio

Using big data and analytics to create better incentives for sales, marketing and service teams

Steve Lucas, the new CEO of iCIMS, a business that makes software that helps companies recruit talent, is set on doubling sales over the next 18-24 months. He’s done it before as the CEO of Marketo, where he doubled the revenue and tripled the value of the firm to $4.75B in 24 months.

One of the reasons he’s very likely to succeed is he understands how to lead sales and marketing transformation in an engagement economy where customers are channel agnostic and non-linear buyer behavior has blurred the lines between sales, marketing, and customer success functions.

In his book, Engage to Win: A Blueprint for Success in the Engagement Economy, Lucas explains how to grow a business in a market where changing customer buying behavior defies traditional notions of a linear “lock-step” customer journey and makes CRM based on customer, lead, and account ownership an outdated management concept. A key lesson from the book is that growing a business in the engagement economy will require teamwork, customer stewardship, and a highly orchestrated stream of never-ending customer engagement.

“I view my role as CEO as being the firm’s Chief Engagement Officer,” reports Steve Lucas. “My job is orchestrating the customer experience across many touchpoints and functions. This means developing a real-world strategy for customer engagement, which is something they don’t teach in business schools yet because it is different from a traditional marketing or sales approach. Executing a customer engagement strategy involves creating a vocabulary, culture, measurement system and model for orchestrating the engagement of sales, marketing and services with all the key customer stakeholders in ways that resonate and deliver a superior customer experience.”

Many organizations are putting a single leader in charge of marketing, sales, and service to gain more coordinated control over the entire customer journey. To succeed, this new breed of “CXO” will need a better set of financial incentives for these disparate groups to work together. A key success factor in this new growth equation is to create a common scorecard for customer success based on unified customer engagement metrics that provide go-to-market teams more incentives to work together. The holy grail is to create a common set of financially valid and data-driven incentives where the ultimate scorecard for marketing and sales is firm value, future profits and revenue growth.

Growth oriented investors like Vista Equity Partners  (which owns iCIMS) and the Rock Ventures Family of Companies understand and exploit this new buying reality. These market leaders are generating outsized returns on the companies in their investment portfolios because they are mastering the science of growth by actively working with their leadership teams to help them apply advanced analytics to transform their go-to-market culture, processes, and incentives.

“One key to winning in the engagement economy is to develop a universal customer engagement quality score that defines engagement excellence to all the stakeholders in your organization,” according to Lucas. “That means defining as an organization what a 10 out of 10 looks like in terms of customer advocacy, quality of interaction, content sharing, and other relationship health metrics. And then using advanced analytics to build composite metrics that quantify and track customer engagement quality on a customer and account level”

Putting this scorecard for success into operation involves deriving customer engagement quality metrics from the customer data that exists in CRM, exchange servers, marketing automation, and content management systems. The secret is to develop a set of Key Performance Indicators using advanced analytics that track the behaviors and activities that define team success but ladder up to a common scorecard for winning.

Sports teams have embraced analytics in this regard in recent years and provide a model for sales organizations to follow. Like selling teams – sports teams have many different players that play many different roles in order to win the game. There are nine different positions on a baseball team. 11 in Soccer. And over 25 in the NFL. But there is only one scorecard for success – winning. And everyone on the team works together towards that goal.

For example, winning soccer teams can get all 11 players to work as a team because they all understand what it takes to win – score more goals than the opponent. A revolution in advanced analytics has allowed these teams to break down the performance expectations of each player on the team into discrete KPIs – goals saved, passes made, possessions won, and clean tackles – that help each player understand and measure their contribution to that overall goal. In baseball, advanced analytics have allowed GM’s to structure player contracts with financial incentives based on a coherent set of individual performance metrics – runs created, runs saved, errors avoided, hitting efficiency – that all add up in ways that increase the “win probability” of a team and “wins above a replacement player” for an individual.

Sales and marketing leaders need to push their analytics teams to do the same. They need to use advanced analytics and AI to turn their sales engagement data into a common set of measurements and financial incentives that get sales, marketing and services working as a team towards the goals of growing firm value, customer lifetime value, and profits.

For example, Steve Lucas pushed his team at Marketo to clearly define and quantify what a good client relationship looks like empirically on a scale of one to ten. He kept the bar high on engagement quality. Any account team with a customer engagement score less than 9 had to take a series of actions to improve customer health. In parallel, he created a tightly defined customer persona called an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). He created a vocabulary, criteria, reporting, and most importantly financial incentives for his go to market teams to develop relationships with these “ideal customers”. To enforce this discipline of delivering high quality customer engagement to the highest potential customers, his teams were paid 20% higher commissions when they engaged and developed “ideal” customers. They were paid 20% lower commissions when they spent their energies on less than ideal prospects.

Lucas plans to put the same formula to work at iCIMS once his team defines a vocabulary and metrics that best describe customer engagement quality and the ideal customer profile within their unique business model. “The scorecard for successful customer engagement is different for different business models. What worked at Marketo will be different from what works at iCIMS because it’s a different business. But the principles will be the same”, according to Lucas. “The key is to develop a universal customer engagement quality score that defines engagement excellence for all customer facing employees.”

Unfortunately, advanced engagement-based incentives like this are the exception rather than the rule, even though most go to market leaders have the customer engagement data they need to build them. This is a missed opportunity because traditional measures of marketing and sales performance based on a linear sales process are becoming outdated and dysfunctional. These measurement systems fail to reflect the complex variety of touchpoints, stakeholders, and hand-offs involved in the modern customer buying journey. This creates leakage, friction and conflicting agendas when sales and marketing spend too much energy negotiating credit for lead handoffs and not enough time engaging with customers as a team.

Sales leaders are missing a big opportunity by not using the customer engagement data available to them to create advanced measurement systems.  Most organizations are sitting on top of large amounts of customer engagement data in a variety of Revenue Enablement systems – including CRM, exchange (email and calendar), content management, marketing automation, web sites, social media, customer engagement management systems. And that’s not counting data third party partners (like LinkedIn or D&B).  This information needs to be used to track and inform the right sales behaviors, actions and performance incentives.

“Organizations are going to need to rewire their commercial engines to better reflect the new buying reality where customers are channel agnostic and buyer behavior is non-linear,’ reports Brent Adamson, distinguished Vice President in Gartner’s Sales practice. “It’s a big job. It’s going to be painful because it involves reworking the legacy commercial infrastructure, and creating new roles, processes and metrics. So, getting it right in the next several years is probably a reach. But companies that even start to make progress creating metrics, dashboards and incentives that are a more accurate proxy of the current buying reality are going to have a significant advantage over the competition.” According to Adamson, companies that align their metrics and incentives with customer buying behavior will give them a much more accurate picture of the cost of sales, the opportunity cost of selling time, and how different resources contribute to their commercial organizations in terms of commercial outcomes. This will allow them to make much better decisions about how to allocate people, technology, data and content resources based on what they are contributing to the top line, bottom line and value of the company.

Sales and marketing leaders like Marketo and DHL are taking the first steps to align their metrics and incentives with the activities and behaviors that lead to commercial outcomes, customer lifetime value, and account health. They are using advanced customer engagement analytics and sales AI to create customer engagement metrics to serve as the foundation for performance measurements based on real-time information about sales engagement, deal attractiveness, content usage, and persona-level interactions to provide management a more accurate proxy of the current buying reality.

For example, using advanced customer engagement analytics and sales AI to create measures of customer engagement quality were fundamental to helping DHL transform the way they sell, according to Ton Verleg, the VP Global Sales Development at DHL. “We changed the way we sell and for that you need to be armed with relevant data and insights,” relates Mr. Verleg. “The analytics and AI give us unprecedented visibility into the opportunities and provides actionable next steps for our sales executives to sell with the buyers perspective, helping customers be more successful.”

To help organizations develop more financially valid ways to manage their growth resources, I will be studying how leading organizations are creating a common scorecard for growth and presenting the findings at a Revenue Enablement Forum this summer. Reach out to me to participate in the research, and the forum.

Feature Image Credit: Customer Engagement Metrics, Getty

By Stephen Diorio

Sourced from Forbes

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Food for Thought: Is the return to analogue marketing a thing?

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Do consumers have digital advertising and marketing fatigue? Recently there has been talk of a return to ‘analogue’ marketing, such as snail mail, brochures and face-to-face engagement, and away from digital marketing.

CMO asks marketing experts to discuss their views on the subject, and how they’re striving to strike a balance.

Nikki Clarkson

Chief marketing and communications officer, Southern Cross Austereo

It’s challenging to find evidence consumers have digital fatigue. However, it has been proven many times over that the two single most impactful drivers of campaign effectiveness are reach and highly engaging creative.

Credit: Austereo

Nielsen data proves that getting the creative right and delivering this with maximum reach, can account for over 65 per cent of sales attribution. And reach is everything when it comes to the campaign resonating with as many new and existing audiences as possible.

It’s an incredibly important factor for brand growth and market share. This would point marketers towards high reaching, accredited channels such as TV, radio, video and audio streaming and out-of-home, with independently measured online used alongside these more traditional mass media.

A final consideration on reach and campaign effectiveness is targeting, which is becoming more accessible in all media. In stream addressable advertising in audio for example, delivers hyper targeted mass campaigns. These increasingly sophisticated main media targeting capabilities ensure wastage is minimised and frequency is capped.

Therefore, ‘cut through’ is delivered by impact from great work on a targeted, mass scale. It this approach that will set campaigns up to deliver business results.

Martin Wilkins

Marketing manager, The Tax Institute 

One common mistake many marketers make in a digital-first environment is forgetting to listen to what their customers really want when it comes to authentic, personalised engagement.

Credit: The Tax Institute

We’ve listened to our members and stakeholders and understand digital marketing tactics, such as emails, ads and retargeting aren’t enough, in isolation, to build trust, create an emotional connection, and deliver the experience they expect from an institution such as ours.

For instance, events are a very big part of what we do to enhance engagement and offer our members more relevant and interactive experiences, where they can gain knowledge, insights and feel part of a broader community of like-minded people.

And while we do have a robust digital marketing engine that supports our marketing function, we’ll still invest in printed collateral such as brochures and booklets, and these have an educational look and feel which our audience base expects.

For example, at our upcoming Tax Summit in March, while we have invested heavily in digital marketing and inbound strategy, we also have prepared a traditional, printable brochure, as well as a comprehensive, printed prospectus.

In essence, we believe a strategic ‘hybrid model’ of traditional and digital marketing is appropriate for our particular audience segment. The challenge of course is finding a healthy balance between the two. This means our marketing team is constantly collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, to ensure our marketing mix remains agile, responsive, effective and relevant.

Zane Sabré

Co-founder and managing director, Maison de Sabré

When running a business, it’s important you’re reaching your customers via the channels they already use. Considering more than 73 per cent of households shopped online in 2018, it’s essential for businesses to be online as well.

As online shopping tools and platforms continue to grow more technically sophisticated, the way consumers make online purchases is continuously evolving, meaning the opportunities to reach specific audiences, at the right time, is also increasing.

Credit: Maison de sabre

Offline marketing, such as snail mail, brochures and street hawkers have become dated marketing strategies purely due to their limited reach in today’s digital age. They also limit the opportunity for accurate performance tracking, meaning it can be difficult to know if the time and money spent has paid off.

Credit: Red Havas

However, just as they had largely been deserted, it became apparent that it had left a significant amount of white space for many to capitalise on, representing a full cycle in generating cut-through. Analogue marketing transformed from the disrupted channel to the disruptor.

And it is all based on a simple truth: Physical marketing represents the ability to reflect a multi-sensory experience. Consumers crave the touch and even the smell of a fresh catalogue, with the buzz of rifling through to see the hottest new items to buy. Letters – which once had ‘bad PR’ around their speed of delivery – have had a resurgence. The emotional and nostalgic connection people receive from letters make this innately more personal than an e-mail.

So what was once seen as a one-way channel is now leveraging that very notion to maximise its effectiveness and create one-to-one, somewhat intimate, experiences with consumers to get messaging across. Analogue from its previous definition has now become a ‘progressive’ channel in some ways.

And in a world of personalisation and marketers’ constant quest for uniqueness, it is time to embrace the physical world once more. Except this time, with the helping hand of new technologies, they can explore how they maximise their available real estate in a different – and importantly, far more sustainable way than before to deliver an all-round win-win for marketer and consumer.

Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, follow our regular updates via CMO Australia’s Linkedin company page, or join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia. 

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Sourced from CMO from IDG

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I’m running an agency at 24. Here’s what I do differently

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By MJ Widomska.

I founded my content marketing studio when I was 22. I’d already been a full-time social media freelancer for about three years, and I thought I’d been through it all – highs and lows with clients big and small, stints at advertising agencies, meetings and tedious admin.

In early 2018 projects just kept coming, and I decided it’s time to expand. I thought it wouldn’t be any different, really (big misconception), and I can handle it no matter what (debatable).

As I’m writing this, I’m 24 and my agency is nearing its second birthday. We’re now a team of five residing in a small office in East London – not the biggest enterprise the world has seen, but I wouldn’t have thought it possible two years ago.

I’d always preferred to stay quiet about my age. I believe we should be judged by the quality of our work, and I suspect many people would equate my age with a lack of experience. Or, worse, take it as a sign I could be taken advantage of, offered unpaid – or underpaid – gigs.

Beyond ageism

Ageism in the marketing industry is alive and well. It tends to hit those on the other side of the spectrum than me the most, though. It is an industry where fresh ideas are valued above all, and fresh ideas are often unfairly associated with youth. I don’t want to participate in spreading that mindset.

So, I kept my age to myself, considering it nothing but a liability. But we all grow up in different times and circumstances, and as a result, end up with different worldviews. They are all equally valuable.

One day, as I was talking to a friend, I noticed how surprised he was to find out I supplemented my income in the early days of my career by building websites, designing flyers and creating illustrations.

Indeed, I spent so much time on my laptop in my teens that by the time I was 19, I was a junior social media manager, junior copywriter, junior web developer, junior graphic designer and a junior illustrator rolled into one. That’s because I grew up in precarious times, in a bad economy, with pretty bleak prospects. I knew I had to diversify my skillset from a very young age.

Turns out, growing up in the 2000s and early 2010s brought a lot of valuable lessons.

Seeing the potential in others

I was still a teen when I landed my first freelance gig.

I wouldn’t be where I am now without the clients who took a chance on me (just like Abba). My first client, who had a 19-year-old Eastern European me running all his socials, and who recommended me to other clients. A PR consultant who taught me to stop using emojis in emails (yes, I needed to be told). An agency that kept giving me more responsibilities because they believed I could handle it. Another agency which had me sit in on all the big scary meetings, so I had an opportunity to learn. A client who thought I had potential and allowed me to spread my wings — the same client who believed in me even if I messed up.

I like to extend all of the kindness I received to marketing juniors. When I need help on a project, I’m not overlooking people with little to no relevant experience, no matter their age — I’m looking for someone I could believe in.

Flexible working

The marketing industry is no stranger to flexible working. I don’t believe the future of creative work relies on a rigid eight hour working day.

Therefore, if a 9 to 5 isn’t your thing, I trust you’re able to deliver what’s asked of you within a reasonable timeline. I work with adults, I’m not running a daycare — I don’t need to know where you are as long as the work is done.

Be prepared for everything

Would you like to know how to set Gen Z and millennials apart? Since no one agrees what the exact cut-off year between the two is, follow this handy guide instead:

Have they grown up in the era of economic prosperity, and entered the workforce just before, or during the financial collapse of the late 2000s? Have they been surprised to realise they will most likely be financially worse off than their parents? They’re a millennial.

Has the 2008 crisis marked their childhood or teenage years? Have they grown up in a precarious economy and entered the workforce fully aware that they may never buy a house or expect a traditional career path? They’re Gen Z.

I was 12/13 when the market collapsed. Even though it didn’t affect me directly back then, I was aware something has changed for good. I was a teen when the political upheaval in Europe started, and I was in my late teens when environmental issues became a mainstream issue. Any illusions of a safe world I had as a kid were quickly dispersed. It became apparent that if I follow my mum’s (literature teacher) or my dad’s (radio journalist turned writer) paths, I will never buy a house. Hell, I will probably never buy a house anyway. And I may not be able to retire for a very, very, very long time.

If I live long enough for retirement, that is – given that most climate emergency projections paint a catastrophic view of the 2050s. My earliest retirement year is 2063.

So, my constant need for self-improvement is pretty much fueled by existential anxiety. Can’t think of a better motivation!

Everyone’s time is valuable

I coded websites for a living, so when the time came to let someone else code mine, I wasn’t cutting costs. I know how much of your time and heart goes into building a website.

I used to create illustrations for clients, so I wouldn’t offer the illustrators I commission an unfair deal. I remember how soul-crushing it was to receive negative feedback on your art.

My early freelance experiences in various roles helped me empathise with how valuable everyone’s time is. I’ve met freelancers-turned-agency-owners who charged the clients double the day rate they paid the freelancer. I’ve met people who never freelanced and charged the client triple the day rate while cutting the costs as much as they could.

If I believe a freelancer’s work is worth £500 a day and the client agrees, I’m not going to pay them £250 and pocket the rest. They get the whole thing.

The power of belief

Which brings me to my next point – I have opinions I feel strongly about. I don’t just talk about ethics because I heard that’s what the kids like now: I am the kids in question. If I don’t run my business ethically, I won’t be able to look at myself in the mirror. I genuinely believe that we can all do our part in making the world a better place.

This translates itself to the work I do as well. I want it to be meaningful. I want it to be inclusive.

By MJ Widomska.

MJ Widomska, founder and creative director, YRS TRULY

Sourced from The Drum

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3 Simple Digital Marketing Strategies to Transform Your Business

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By AJ Cassata.

A great product isn’t enough to create a successful business – what turns a business into an empire requires an excellent product combined with exceptional marketing.

Thanks to the Internet, it’s easier now more than ever to get a brand or startup in front of target customers.

With all of the free distribution tools like social media platforms, the playing field is equal now! You don’t need significant media connections or large upfront investment to advertise your brand like you would 40 years ago.

Although marketing & communicating with potential customers has never been easier, most businesses still struggle with this. They never seem to get the traction they want online, while some companies see amazing results from online marketing efforts.

What makes a difference is having the right strategy & approach.

The tools to help your business grow are out there, but you need to know how to use them. You need to understand how these platforms work and how to make them work for your business – and if you don’t, hire someone who does!

Digital marketing strategy development can be a bit overwhelming due to the abundance of options you have. Sometimes it seems like a new social media platform or revolutionary software pops up every day!

For the past five years, I’ve been helping other entrepreneurs scale their business, and I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t across dozens of industries. I’ve created & managed campaigns on tons of different platforms & social media channels. Through all of my experimentation, I’ve learned a lot.

In hopes of simplifying digital marketing while giving some actionable steps you can execute on, I want to layout 3 strategies that work across the board in any industry. These strategies will work regardless of if you’re a brand new startup or a 7-8 figure company.

The 3 Strategies That Work Across The Board

Google Ads
Facebook Advertising
Automation In The Sales Process

To help you understand how these strategies work in a real-world setting, I’ll walk you through how we applied them for one of our clients, a naturopathic medicine clinic in Arizona.

We helped the clinic max out its sales capacity. After implementing the three strategies just mentioned and nothing else, the clinic became so busy to the point where the soonest patients could book an appointment was three weeks. That’s an excellent problem to have, isn’t it?

On average, our online marketing campaigns had resulted in an additional 60-80 new client consultations per month for a Stem Cell Therapy service that’s worth $6000-8000 in revenue to the clinic – and that’s just upfront revenue, that’s not including the life-time value of the client.

Digital marketing can also do more for a business than make money – aside from helping to skyrocket sales of this business, we also lowered costs and helped to streamline operations & patient communications.

Our digital marketing campaigns had become such a stable source of new client acquisition that the clinic was able to stop spending on TV & radio advertising, which saved about $5000 a month in advertising expenses.

Like many companies, the clinic also had an inefficient & unorganized sales process, which cost the staff and the business owner extra time & expense.

By introducing automation to the business & its operations, we were able to organize their client communication process, reduce the work-load for the front-office staff, and alleviate pressure on the whole team. As a result, they could focus more on taking care of the patients, and less time on follow-up and scheduling.

So, let’s dive into these strategies so you can replicate the same success into your business!

Google Pay Per Click Ads

Placing ads on Google is extremely useful, as you can get in front of users with a high intent to purchase your product/service.

You pay to advertise on certain search-terms & phrases that your target customer enters into Google – this means that you get in front of the people that are already searching for the solution your business provides.

This is the low-hanging fruit, and where you should start. When my agency is onboarding a new client, nine times out of 10, we begin by rolling out campaigns on Google. The prospects you’ll find from Google ads are the farthest down the buyers’ journey and the closest to making a decision.

These people are already aware of the problem they have and the solution they need.

In the medical clinic’s case, we bid on terms like “Stem Cell Therapy In Scottsdale.”

Somebody who’s performing that search already knows what Stem Cell Therapy is, and they are likely familiar with what it costs, and they are just looking for the best provider.

A big part of marketing is about being in the right place at the right time, and that’s exactly what Google can do for you.

The beautiful thing about Google Ads is that you only pay when someone clicks – so your marketing dollars are only being spent towards people that are interested in your service or product.

However, you have to watch your costs to remain profitable. Before we were hired, the clinic ran campaigns on Google and was paying about $5 for each click. After we audited the account and performed optimizations, we were able to get the Cost-Per-Click down to between $1.50-$2.00, roughly a 70% decrease in cost!

A few tweaks to your campaigns can make a huge difference, which is why you must know what you are doing before you put your credit card in and start launching ads.

Facebook Pay Per Click Ads

With over 3 billion active users, Facebook is an excellent option for just about any business. Similar to Google, due to the sheer size, you’ll be sure that your target market is on Facebook.

Coming from a marketer’s perspective, I can say that Facebook has the most advanced advertising platform & AI, and when you learn the ins and outs of the ads manager, you can make magic happen to your business.

The benefit of Facebook is the hyper-targeting. Great marketing requires substantial targeting. Think about this – you wouldn’t be able to sell meat to a vegetarian, no matter how good your meat is. Getting your ads placed in front of the right people is arguably an essential part of any marketing campaign.

With Facebook, you can create your hyper-specific audience and hone in on your ideal customer. Facebook allows you to select parameters of who you want to see your ads. For example, you can choose based on demographics like income, age, gender, location, and psychographics like interests & personality.

For our medical clinic client, we were promoting a very niche service – Stem Cell Therapy & Bio-Identical Hormone Therapy. The doctor we worked with did not want us to promote everything his clinic offers; he wanted us to help promote those two services so that he could stand out in his local market as a specialist in those areas.

We were able to run particular ad campaigns to different market segments to promote Stem Cell Therapy, such as athletes, golfers, 60+-year-old men & women, even people who are considering getting a knee replacement. Regenerative Medicine is expensive as well, and to prevent people that couldn’t afford the service from booking consultations, we limited the ads to only show to people in the top 25% of income based on zip codes. This level of targeting just isn’t available with other forms of advertising!

Automation In The Sales Process

Facebook & Google are excellent platforms that help to drive traffic & leads for your business or startup, no matter the industry. However, gaining attention is just the first step! Once you have campaigns running & generating leads, now you have to convert those leads into customers! Leads don’t grow a business, sales do.

The medical clinic we worked with, like most businesses, had a sales process that needed much improvement. Lots of leads were coming in, but the clinic didn’t have enough staff to follow up with new inquires and leads consistently.

So, we implemented two new technologies into the business to solve this problem – email follow up, & an online scheduling system.

Before this client had hired my agency, he was having his front office staff call any leads that came in, to schedule appointments. We decided to eliminate this step – when it comes to your sales process, the more steps you have, the more opportunities there are for your leads to drop-off and lose contact.

We found that most of the leads the clinic was paying to generate, were never even getting in contact to schedule a consultation. The front office staff was too busy to follow up with every single lead coming in, which means the business was wasting money on all of the leads that didn’t convert.

To fix this, we created a funnel that directed all of the incoming leads to an online scheduling system, where the prospects could directly book an appointment with the doctor, instead of waiting for the front office to call and schedule them.

Not only did this take a load off of the staff and help the lead conversion flow, but it also made for better customer experience.

We also implemented automated email follow up, which would email the leads every day for three days after signing up for a consultation, to remind them to schedule online, and remind them to show up on time for their appointment.

As you can see, digital marketing can help your business with more than the front-end process of getting awareness, traffic, & leads. These technologies available to us can help convert your leads into customers, make your entire sales process more efficient, free up-staff time, and improve your customer experience.

In conclusion, digital marketing can seem a little daunting with all of the different strategies we hear experts preach, and with all of the different platforms, it’s hard to know where to even begin. So – keep it simple! For getting traffic, stick to the big two – Google & Facebook. From there, use tools like email marketing, SMS marketing & automated scheduling to help convert the leads into customers!

By automating the marketing and sales process, you free up time to focus on other essential and high-level tasks that your business depends on, such as business development, strategic partnerships & developing your team.

By AJ Cassata

Sourced from TechDay

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How to Determine Your Team’s Marketing Objectives

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By DP Taylor.

Clear and actionable marketing objectives are vital for an organization seeking to improve their sales. This guide will help you understand how to craft a strategy with effective marketing goals.

One of the chief principles of marketing is that you have to understand your target market. But even if you understand your niche, it won’t do much good if you don’t have an effective marketing campaign — and you can’t put one together without first defining your marketing objectives.

But doing so can be intimidating because it requires a fundamental review of your company’s mission and your resources to figure out what are the clear, actionable steps you should be making to market your brand. This is especially important for small business marketing when the company doesn’t already have a strong foothold in the market.

Once you’ve done that, you will find your integrated marketing efforts will be far more effective.

There are a few things to understand about marketing objectives before you get started.

Overview: What is a marketing objective?

A marketing objective is a goal that an organization sets to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace and build a brand.

While there are many types of marketing strategies and varied approaches to creating a marketing plan, a marketing objective in general focuses on laying out a clearly articulated accomplishment that an organization could achieve, such as brand recognition in 10% of target customers or 250 qualified leads per month.

What to consider when determining marketing objectives

While ultimately your marketing objectives are up to you and will be highly dependent on your business, there are four things you must consider when choosing your marketing objectives.

Have a strong company vision in place

To lay out good objectives, you first need a comprehensive company vision that lays out what you’re trying to accomplish as an organization.

Determine what your niche is as a business, and then figure out what you’d have to do to communicate that message to your target audience.

For example, GoPro has successfully built a customer base from young, active customers by putting together an ad campaign spanning many marketing channels that focuses on daring and adventurous feats by people using their equipment. Some of their marketing objectives could be to sponsor a certain number of extreme sports competitions around the globe, or to make deals with X number of social media influencers.

Track the data

Business metrics are vital to your marketing team’s success. You should be able to identify how many leads you are creating, how many influencers you’ve signed up to promote your product, and any other metric that is important to determining whether you met that marketing objective.

Use email marketing software, social media software, or CMS software to track your team’s activities.

In the GoPro example, they likely track views of their many YouTube videos or mentions on social media.

Make objectives specific

A lot of organizations make the mistake of not properly defining objectives. They leave those objectives, like “become more relevant in the IT security sphere” when they should create a more specific, numbers-based goal of “get 20% more leads in the next quarter.”

Going back to the GoPro example, total views of YouTube videos and mentions on social media is something quantifiable, as opposed to “make lots of quality videos on YouTube” or “get involved in the social media conversation.”

Screenshot of GoPro's landing page promoting the Hero8 and Max.

GoPro’s marketing message of adventure is unmistakable the moment you go to their website. Source: GoPro.

How do you set marketing objectives?

Creating a marketing proposal is relatively straightforward, but this is a step that is not to be rushed: you need to involve everyone and craft measurable marketing objectives that fit with your organization’s mission.

Step 1: Review your organizational goals

Every objective, marketing or otherwise, must build toward your overall organizational goals.

Read through your company’s vision and strategy and come up with ideas on what steps you could take that would get you one step closer to realizing the dream that your strategy lays out. If the objective doesn’t move you in that direction, it’s just a distraction and should be discarded.

Tip: If you’re having trouble finding organizational goals, that could be a sign you need to go back a step further and put together a firm and clear vision for the company.

Step 2: Brainstorm with the team

It’s important to not try to do all of this on your own. Set up a meeting with your marketing team to hash these out. They can tell you what is possible and what is not.

Ask everyone to prepare for the meeting by coming up with some of their own objectives, and then go around the room to talk them out and determine what marketing collateral will be necessary to do the job.

Tip: You should also involve your sales team, because they can tell you what kind of output from the marketing team would help them close more deals.

Step 3: Define the objectives

With everyone having weighed in, you should put together an initial list of objectives and then set up a follow-up meeting to go over them. Here you can talk in more granular detail about these objectives, such as whether the time frame is realistic, or whether the right people are assigned to the right tasks.

Tip: Remember, these objectives need to be clear and measurable, nothing vague. Ask yourself, how would I prove that we achieved this objective? If you aren’t able to articulate what success looks like, you need to do more work to define the objective.

Step 4: Create a marketing strategy

Now that you have marketing objectives laid out, it’s time to build a marketing strategy around them. Create a step-by-step process that describes how you will achieve each objective, and in what time frame. It should also identify the stakeholders, and who will be responsible for what.

Tip: Being specific when defining marketing objectives should help you identify clear next steps. Break down the steps as much as possible to create easy actions the team can take to increase the likelihood of achieving the objective.

Step 5: Measure the results and then regroup

Think of the objectives as a cycle rather than a journey to an end goal. Once you’ve completed steps 1-4, you need to measure how you performed on a regular basis, perhaps quarterly, and then get together to talk it through.

What went right? What didn’t? Did we achieve marketing goals? What should we do differently in the next quarter?

Tip: Use software to track important marketing metrics, such as leads and website traffic. Many software options can create detailed reports that can help you spot trends or weaknesses.

Spotify has exploded in popularity by positioning itself as a brand that helps people find new music. Source: Spotify.

Examples of common marketing objectives and KPIs

But what should your objectives look like? Again, that will vary widely based on factors such as your industry, what your overall goals are, and what your target market looks like. However, here are a few common marketing objectives that might help you come up with your own.

Increasing brand recognition

A common goal of marketing campaigns is to increase people’s awareness of your brand. If people don’t know who you are, they will not buy your product or service, so it’s important to know just how many customers in your target market have heard of you.

Improving brand trust/reputation

A corollary to brand recognition is brand trust or reputation. You want customers to not just know who you are, but think of your brand as one they can trust to provide a good experience.

Increasing incoming leads

When it comes to making sales, incoming leads can make or break your organization. It is important for most companies to increase the number of qualified leads coming into their sales funnels.

Increasing website traffic

An increasing percentage of websites these days rely on Internet sales, so increasing website traffic is a common goal for companies hoping to put their products in front of more people. You might focus on digital marketing terms like click-through rate (CTR), cost-per click, and impressions.

Identifying new lead sources

Having all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to marketing is a risky strategy, so it’s important for organizations to identify new sources of qualified leads.

Improving customer service

Customer service is vital to customer retention, and it raises the prospect that those customers will buy other products from you in the future or spread the word about how great you are to other potential customers. As a result, companies often seek to improve their customer service as a marketing strategy.

Defining marketing objectives now will help marketing efforts later

Determining your marketing objectives will help you determine what steps you should be making, such as whether to spend more time on website marketing, account-based marketing, or other types of marketing efforts.

When you properly lay out marketing objectives after spending a sufficient amount of time researching them, you make your marketing more focused and therefore more effective across the board.

That’s why it’s important to schedule time now to, even if it’s just a couple of hours, to get the ball rolling. The sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll see positive results in your company.

By DP Taylor.

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8 Best Digital Marketing Strategies Small Businesses Should Implement

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By Aashirvad Kumar. 

In the last decade, things went from offline to online. People are now searching for clothes on e-commerce websites instead of looking for some stores. Businesses are taking their online presence seriously. Moreover, people are creating millions of dollars through different online services. Here are the eight best digital marketing strategies small businesses should implement.

Running a business or starting your new business?

These days most startups fail because of their narrow visions about marketing. There are hundreds of articles written by various digital marketing experts about different marketing techniques that will help you grow your business.

You’ll need to know about basic digital marketing strategies that will help you grow when you have entered into the internet.

There are basically eight digital marketing strategies for small businesses that should be implemented in order to mark your online presence. But, you’ll want to have a clear vision of your marketing strategies for your new business. Begin here.

Email Marketing

My personal favorite and a great tool to grow your business quickly. Email Marketing is a strategy that has an ROI of 21$ per dollar. Emails are considered dead in the marketing field, but still, email marketing has the potential to give the best results in comparison to other marketing strategies.

You have to very selective while shooting emails to your customers. You can’t attract your customers with a particular mail. You have to run several experiments to find your audiences taste it. Thus, Email Marketing will take time, but once implemented correctly; it will worth every penny.

You can attract your audience through some attractive offers or via some informative pieces of content. But make sure your email good enough to grab your customer’s attention. Avoid using big paragraphs; keep your email content crisp and short.

Social Media Marketing

Another marketing technique that offers you guaranteed results. But the majority of small businesses ignore it as their business is either not related to social media or the want to target user’s available offline.

If you are into the same category, then let me tell you that social media marketing will work as a mouth marketing asset. Thus, if you aren’t the response of offline users, social media can help you grab our customer’s attention indirectly.

Along with this, having good social media handles creates a brand value in the market that will again help you grow your business.

It will give your business some exposure and customers. Social Media Marketing will help you in search engine rankings.

Paid Promotions

It includes PPC (Pay Per Click) Marketing. In paid promotions, you basically pay to get a feature. It could be on social media websites, search engines. But for a new business, it is a tough job to get maximum results at a limited investment, and sadly there isn’t any trick or hack to do so.  You need to practice different promotions so that you can get an idea about which one is giving you the desired results.

If you aren’t good at experiments or don’t have the budget for testing, then you can hire some digital marketing experts. Paid marketers will handle all the paid promotions for you, and they will extract maximum profit from every penny spent.

Search Engine Optimization

If you are running a business that has a website and it can get sales to you then, this is the most import strategy that costs you very less but gives long term results. Since you are not the only one running the business, there would be hundreds and thousands of other people working in your niche.

Through Search Engine Optimization, you can outrank them and can hold the first position on various search engines.

But SEO optimization needs proper skill sets and technical knowledge so that you can compete with others. If you don’t have a good grip about the technical aspects of SEO optimization, then you can hire some SEO experts like Optimise for SEO. These are the experts that will help you rank on the top of search engines.

Content Marketing

It is the most trending marketing strategy that will give your business a quick yet reliable boost. Content Marketing is a strategy in which you are creating useful content for a particular audience and putting it on a platform. Content Marketing increases your business visibility over the internet. It boosts your SEO.  It builds credibility, authority f your business. Thus, content marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies.

Attend Events 

Attending events is not a typical digital marketing technique, but it can help you increase your digital business. All you need to do is to attend the events that are relevant to your field. This way, you will meet with people with a common interest, and it will help you in the next digital marketing technique.

Outreach Like-Minded People

I am assuming that you have contact details like email, phone number, etc. for people that are related to your field. Now, you have to convey a message to then and need to have a conversation describing your products. If the guy found it interesting, then they will surely talk about it on their social media handles or blog.

Reaching out to like-minded people works similarly to paid promotions.

But hey — reaching out is completely free, and it helps you learn from other business ideas. But in this strategy, you need to be very formal and professional while reaching out to people so that you can leave an impression on them.

Offer Freebies

It is a strategy that was implemented by some big brands of the present time, and it worked like charm. In this digital marketing technique, you need to offer something valuable to your users. Offering something useful will get persons or businesses attracted to your business, and as a result, they’ll come to you — as a regular reader and returning customer.

You can check Optimise for SEO as they are offering free SEO audit for a website and in return, they need your mail address so that they can implement the email marketing strategy on you.

Conclusion

These were the best digital marketing strategies that you must try to get the desired results. Though there are hundreds of strategies that work well these 8 are the best among all and yet most efficient.

By Aashirvad Kumar

Aashirvad Kumar is Founder of Tele Trick Mania and SEO Executive at Builds Worth Digital Marketing Agency Pvt. Ltd. He has been blogging since 2016 in the technology niche. He has experience of more than 2.5+ years in Digital Marketing.

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Social Media ROI: How to Measure Your Social Marketing

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Want to improve the return on investment (ROI) of your social media marketing? Are you measuring the right things?

To explore everything you need to know about measuring ROI, I interview Christopher Penn on the Social Media Marketing Podcast.

Christopher is the chief data scientist at Trust Insights. He also hosts the In-Ear Insights podcast. His latest book is AI For Marketers.

Christopher explains how ROI differs from return on ad spend (ROAS) and shares how to calculate ROI properly.

Click HERE to listen to the Podcast

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Sourced from Social Media Examiner

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Overhaul Your SMS Marketing With These 4 Genius Tips

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Text campaigns can pay huge dividends in the new decade.

This year marks the start of a fresh decade, meaning it’s a blank slate, so why not jazz up your marketing mix? What you’ve been doing is getting results, sure, but don’t you want to go farther?

Let’s forget about social media likes and blog impressions. It’s time to get serious about engagement, because that’s what’s going to grow your business. Not all digital strategies, like paid ads or email, are made equally. In fact, one of the most effective digital-marketing strategies going forward is SMS marketing.

Why SMS?

It’s true: SMS marketing earns four times more revenue than email, and it costs much less. Plus, texts have a 98 percent open rate and get three-to-six times more engagement than other marketing campaigns. Still not convinced? Here are the three most important reasons your business needs to use SMS marketing starting now.

1. You’ll stand out.

Instead of competing with other advertisers on Google or Facebook, SMS marketing allows you start a conversation directly with your customer in a distraction-free environment. To be clear, other marketing initiatives, like paid ads or email, aren’t wrong. They have a place in your strategy. The problem is that everyone else has the same idea as you, and businesses bombard customer inboxes multiple times a day. Translation: Performance drops a lot when you’re competing for space in customers’s clogged inboxes.

SMS marketing isn’t as saturated. You don’t have to compete for a customer’s attention. Only interested customers are going to opt-in to your SMS list anyway. They’re giving you a direct line to communicate with them in an exclusive environment that few brands can penetrate.

SMS also makes it easier to sign customers up for your list. Mobile-only popups on your website can auto-populate a customer’s phone number, which means they tap to subscribe, visit their inbox immediately to double opt-in and they’re on your list. It removes a lot of the friction that decimates email-marketing ROI.

Related: Here’s Why SMS Marketing Is the Best Idea Ever

2. You can match customer expectations.

Entrepreneurs often think they’ll bug their customers if they do SMS marketing, but as long as you follow a double opt-in approach (which is the law), you ensure that only interested customers are on your list. And since SMS marketing is consent-based, you’re reaching customers in the most convenient way possible. If they subscribed to get your updates, it means they want to communicate with you this way. Texting isn’t spammier than email. If anything, it gives customers an improved experience that encourages engagement.

3. It’s affordable.

Unless you’re buying a list, email marketing is pretty affordable. Because of that, many entrepreneurs shy away from SMS marketing because they think it’s expensive. But unlike email marketing, which can often have low ROI, text-message marketing trends positive. I have a friend who sees a $25 return for every $1 he spends on SMS.

SMS marketing costs depend on how many texts you want to send. You usually purchase credits to send SMS messages through a platform. That means you can spend as much or as little as you’re comfortable with.

Four Tips for Better SMS Marketing

We know that SMS marketing is worthwhile for brands, but that doesn’t mean you should dive in without a plan. You have to know how to wield it to get the best results for your business. So as promised, follow these for tips to max out your results.

1. Have decent site traffic.

SMS marketing works best when you have established web traffic. That’s because SMS messaging happens at the bottom of the funnel; it’s meant to pull users through to conversion with enticing offers or valuable content. You still need to bring in enough web users to bulk up your list if you want to see positive ROI.

Shoot to have at least 20,000 visitors a month on your site. This is what’s going to build your list quickly and move the needle for your business.

2. Minimize friction.

Once you have a healthy amount of traffic on your site, make it simple for these visitors to subscribe to your SMS list. At this point, you want to minimize friction at every turn. Don’t force customers to go through a four-step process just to subscribe; they don’t have the time or patience for that. Follow this frictionless process to gain more SMS subscribers from your website:

  • Feature popups to your mobile users.
  • The user can then tap the popup to pull up their information. With one click, they send their information to subscribe.
  • They receive a message that they can click to complete the double opt-in.

This process eliminates fake numbers from your list and makes the double opt-in process as painless and fast as possible, meaning more people will happily join your text list.

3. Content matters.

Content is still king, even for text messages. Remember that your content can’t be spammy. Instead of pushing customers to buy, buy, buy, you should deliver value. The goal is to start a conversation, not pressure your customers. Share interesting, helpful content like news, fun conversation-starters or information on freebies or discounts.

Don’t neglect visual content, either. SMS is a fun medium through which you can send videos, GIFs and custom images to your subscribers. Jazz up your copy with visuals that get people’s attention. Consider using tech like RCS to create an engaging experience for your customers within their native SMS application.

4. Nurture your relationships.

The final piece of the puzzle is to send SMS messages regularly to your subscribers. You won’t get results if you’re communicating with your list once a month; one or two times a week is best to get more engagement. In fact, this will actually minimize unsubscribes. If you text customers once in a blue moon, they’ll forget they subscribed and feel caught off-guard from your message. Regular communication is best for customer relationships.

But you don’t have to remember to send new messages every week. Any decent SMS marketing platform will let you set up automated SMS flows. For example, you can send a welcome sequence when someone joins your list. Or maybe you send over a how-to automation for a product someone just bought.

While other strategies should still have a place in your business, SMS marketing is the dark horse of digital marketing, allowing you to engage with customers and finally see a return on your budget dollars. The future is now, so get ready to hit “send.”

Feature Image credit: Westend61 | Getty Images 

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Founder, Quiet Light Brokerage.

Sourced from Entrepreneur Europe

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Five Simple Steps To Demonstrate The Full Value Of Marketing

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By Meta Karagianni.

I have two daughters under the age of ten, and I am trying to instill in them an appreciation for and understanding of the value of money. Every week our girls get an allowance, and we discuss where and how they want to use their money. We have often been pleasantly surprised at some of their spending choices.

In B2B organizations, leaders may be surprised at all the ways marketing contributes to the business, as marketing may not be fully communicating its value. The notion of marketing accountability is not something new — these roles have always been accountable for the size of the marketing database, the number of people who attend an event, the click-through rate on an email campaign and, ultimately, pipeline contribution. What has changed is the level of accountability, the importance of the things we are accountable for and to whom we are accountable. Some may argue that this is a positive change, but many CMOs still find it challenging to demonstrate where marketing adds value to the business. Our 2019 Global CMO Study showed that marketing’s contribution to the business is one of the top five areas that will influence the marketing strategy over the next two years.

Today, more than ever before, marketing leaders have access to a plethora of data. They have been using that data to develop better dashboards and conduct before-and-after analysis to show how their efforts impact the business. And yet the struggle to communicate marketing’s value persists. Although we can’t give up on these efforts, one thing is clear: They are not enough. As one of the CMOs I was speaking with put it: “There are people who understand what we do and there are also stakeholders who don’t know or don’t even believe what we do.”

To deal once and for all with the sceptics and the non-believers, CMOs must go beyond dashboards, using a different approach to show clearly and holistically how marketing creates value for the business. This year, SiriusDecisions developed and launched our new B2B Marketing Value Model, which helps CMOs to do exactly that (see my earlier blog post “Not Just Leads and Pipeline: How to Show the Full Value of Marketing.” Since then, I have been partnering with clients to operationalize the B2B Marketing Value Model in their organizations using these five simple steps:

  1. Identify all the audiences — internal and external — that marketing impacts. Starting with that view provides a powerful perspective that anchors value-related discussions, especially as the role of marketing expands across a wider number of audiences as go-to-market strategies and business models continue to evolve.
  2. Start populating the two layers of the model, identifying what marketing does that delivers value to these different audiences and how that work delivers value to the business. Once we put these components in place, we are ready to start using the model.
  3. Map the current state. Identify the areas where internal stakeholders perceive value is delivered by marketing today.
  4. Map the future state. Introduce what’s possible by highlighting all the areas in the model where marketing delivers value, although stakeholders don’t necessarily understand this. Prioritize focus areas to expand discussions. Marketing leaders can’t win all battles at once.
  5. Build the operational capability and bring data-driven examples that allow marketing leaders to articulate marketing’s value in the areas selected in step two.

SiriusDecisions Command Center® data shows that high-performing marketing organizations are 64% more likely to say they have a measurement-driven culture. That’s a big shift for many organizations, as this goes beyond measurement and reporting. As the role of marketing expands, marketing leaders need to demonstrate how they are accountable for all of the ways marketing adds value for the organization.

Here is my advice for marketing leaders: Pause to think about what you have achieved with your teams and where you want to make an impact in 2020 and beyond. Then step back from your day-to-day activities and take stock of all the audiences the marketing function serves and the value you deliver to them. Use that perspective to navigate your future discussions about marketing value. As my kids surprised me with some of their choices, you may find that your peers, leadership team or board are surprised by all the ways marketing impacts the business.

Download the eBook from SiriusDecisions 2019 Global CMO Study.

By Meta Karagianni

This post was written by Meta Karagianni Service Director, European CMO Strategies at SiriusDecisions product line by Forrester, and originally appeared here. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website.

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Why marketers must look beyond cookies and rethink data in the 2020s

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By Thomas Hobbs

Marketers must stop prioritising strategies built around cookie data if they’re to succeed in the 2020s. Speaking on a panel at The Drum’s Predictions 2020 event at Sea Containers this week, Andy Chandler, Adjust’s VP for UK and Ireland, called for brands to evolve in the post-cookie world and start to work out whether they’re truly adding value to their customers’ lives.

“With Google Chrome getting rid of third party cookies, brands need to start looking at data differently or they’re going to very quickly get left behind,” he explained. “We are moving into a cookie-less world, where consumers are interacting more with apps than browsers, so the way we measure data needs to truly reflect that. We need to keep evolving and keep up with where people are, ensuring we add real value to their lives.”

A recent feature by The Drum explored the impact of Google’s plans to “render third-party cookies obsolete” and how brands must now respond. According to Ed Preedy, chief revenue office at Cavai, one solution could be for brands to use online messenger apps to speak directly to their consumers. He says messenger apps can ensure more tailored advertising and better conversion rates when it comes to making a purchase.

He added: “In 2019, there were 73 trillion posts across all messaging apps. And in markets like APAC and Latin America, something like 63% of consumers purchased over a messaging app or spoke directly to a business. These are becoming hotbeds for commercial opportunity and it will only grow in the decade ahead in the UK too.

“Messaging apps allow for a genuine two-way interaction. They qualify what users want and who they are almost instantly, so therefore the advertising that runs is contextually relevant. They will become so much more important as cookies start to dissipate. I think there will be a wider move to more personalised platforms, where advertising is less random.”

It was a frank assessment that Tanzil Bukhari, managing director for EMEA at DoubleVerify, very much agreed with. He insisted consumers now want to see more relevant advertising and that getting rid of cookies will ensure this happens more consistently. “The Google Chrome announcement will mean publishers have to offer much richer and directional content, and that’s only a good thing.”

Using data in the right way

But there was also a message of caution in the air, with Vodafone’s brand director Maria Koutsoudakis warning that brands and agencies who prioritise data too heavily risk becoming irrelevant, on a panel earlier that morning alongside Ogilvy CEO UK, Michael Frolich. Koutsoudakis asked the audience: “When was the last time you spoke to a customer? If you stood back from click attributions and A/V testing then what do you really know about your customers now?

“By only really focusing on data, there’s a risk we create a generation of marketers who don’t understand brand, consumers or behavioural change and aren’t agile enough to cope with it. There needs to be more of a blend of people being on the ground, really speaking to their customers, as well as having a good data strategy. If marketers only care about digital metrics then there’s a risk they become irrelevant in marketing in the 2020s.”

With consumer data obviously so important to the UK mobile network’s business, she admitted it has taken a back step to ensure it’s precious about protecting it. “We don’t sell this data as we can’t afford to lose our consumers’ trust,” she admitted. “Being so cautious might mean we get left behind, but I think it’s worth it as we can’t take any chances.”

Frolich agreed with Koutsoudakis’ sentiment. In the 2020s, he said ad agencies shouldn’t be using client and third party data unless they can absolutely prove it has a positive impact on creativity and this in turn enriches the lives of their customers.

“We aren’t a data company, we are a creative agency,” he insisted. “We use client data and third party data to feed our creativity and build better work that consumers then enjoy. If you’re using this data and it isn’t creating better human insights then you’re using it incorrectly.

“Agencies have bought big data companies and it isn’t working because they’re not using the information to create better marketing. If we can work with a client like Vodafone and use their data to feed better creativity then we’re winning.”

The sentiments around trust were picked on another panel, where Courtney Wylie, VP of product & marketing, Mention Me had a word of caution: “We’re going to continue to see this evolving trend of lack of trust. A declining trust in influencers, brands, marketing channels.”

However, the way the relationship between agencies and brands works will become a lot more adaptable over the coming years, with a one-size-fits-all approach now completely redundant. John Readman, CEO & Founder, Modo25, explained: “In past there were only two options: work with an agency or do something in-house, but we will see these lines blurring more and more. There’s no reason why a combination of both won’t be the best way forward.”

Talking about the way forward, Andrew Challier, chief client officer, Ebiquity predicted that the industry will finally see “the rebirth of creativity and the importance of creativity in engaging people and reaching people in a meaningful way.”

A more ethical way of thinking could impact Facebook and Amazon

As we move further into the 2020s, some of the event’s panellists warned that established retailers and social media brands could start to fall short, as consumers switch to a more ethical way of thinking.

“Yes, lot’s of people still buy off Amazon, but the fact Brits also want to become more engaged with their local community means independent retailers should be confident heading into this new decade,” predicted Hero Brown, founder of Muddy Stilettos.

She explained further: “We’ve noticed a real shift in our readers wanting to support the high street more and more, and there’s this ethical thinking coming through, which could be detrimental to an Amazon. Shoppers want real-life experiences, even from online brands. They’re starting to get tired of faceless fast transactions and want to see brands brought to life in a more physical way. This trend will only intensify in 2020.”

Meanwhile, Darren Savage, chief strategy officer at Tribal, would like to see Facebook’s dominancy recede in the social media space. “I think major firms who consistently lie will come unstuck in the 2020s as people won’t put up with it anymore,” he said. “An immoral toxic cess-pit like Facebook will come tumbling down.

“The blatant lies they tell around consumer data will mean people will leave the platform in much bigger numbers. Truth is more important than ever before and just being a big business isn’t going to protect you if you mislead consumers.”

Proving you’re making a difference

This ethical way of thinking also extends to a brand’s commitment to sustainability, and Misha Sokolov, co-founder of MNFST, believes this will only rise in importance over the coming years.

“I spoke recently to someone at the Volkswagen Group and he was telling me how they calculated they were responsible for 1% of all global emissions, and that’s why they now want to be carbon neutral within 10 years,” he said. “The smartest brands won’t just put a nice message on their packaging, but do something that has a provable positive impact on the environment and helping reduce climate change. It must happen automatically as brands will lose market share if consumers don’t think their being ethical enough. There’s no excuse in the 2020s.”

And businesses shouldn’t just think of sustainability in environmental terms either, with it also being just as wrapped up in how a brand and business treats its employees. Stéphanie Genin, global VP of enterprise marketing at Hootsuite, says employee advocacy will be a huge trend moving forward, as consumer want to ensure their favourite brands treat their staff good before supporting them with a purchase.

She added: “Employee advocacy and employee generated content will become so so important. When you empower employees to be the communicator of what your business stands for it really adds to brand value and boosts sales. I think marketers are missing a trick by not prioritising this more heavily.”

However, Readman, added none of this will work unless it’s part of a global governance policy. “It’s all good being sustainable and doing good things for employees in one market, but if it’s not something you’re doing consistently across the board then consumers will work it out and there will be a backlash.”

Meanwhile, for John Young, executive creative director and co-founder, M-is, as brands start to really understand the consumers through personal engagagement, “the advertising budgets will transfer into experiential budgets.”

Be as safe as possible

Another topic of conversation that came up throughout the day was brands ensuring the data they keep on consumers remains safe, especially as more and more of their ads are traded programmatically.

Francesco Petruzzelli, chief technology officer at Bidstack, said that 13% of global ads are currently fraudulent and that while major brands know it’s a “big issue”, they’re not necessarily doing enough to prevent it. “We acquired a publishing guard to protect publishers, but I find a lot of people aren’t thinking seriously enough about this issue. It won’t go away!”

Dan Lowden, chief strategy officer at Whiteops, added how he recently worked with a major brand who believed bots were accounting for up to 5% of fake views of its £10m campaign, but says his team worked out they were actually accounting for 36% of traffic.

Looking ahead, he concluded: “The bad guys aren’t going to let up and will keep on persisting with cyber crime in the 2020s. We all need to be serious about tackling this problem and do more to collaborate as an industry to ensure that marketing dollars are genuinely being spent on human engagement and not just robots.”

By Thomas Hobbs

Sourced from The Drum

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