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In News

How To Avoid Ruining Your Brand With Branded Content

August 2, 2017 No Comments

Marketing is increasingly more complex, what with disruptive technologies in mobile, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and automation. Consumers are now more empowered and more skeptical than ever about businesses. The media is fragmenting in today’s “always-on” world.

This feeds an insatiable appetite for diversified branded content. It challenges marketers to act more like newspaper or magazine editors, and mix long-form “features” with by bite size lifestyle morsels. This supplants the traditional campaign-based model of digital as extension to the TV buy.

In the hyper-complex, chaotic ecosystem, no single ad could tell the whole multi-dimensional story of a brand to a diverse audiences. “Positioning”, the celebrated interruptive model of message-pushing, owning a distinctive real-estate of the customer’s mind, is out of date. In this age of dialogue marketing, content management is the new strategic imperative for brands.

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However, as brands embrace content marketing, marketers don’t just want content — they want a lot of it. Demand for branded content is driving staggering growth and investment. A survey by the Content Marketing Institute found that 73% of marketers say that creating more engaging content is a top priority of their organization. In 2016, marketers spent more than $10 billion on branded content, according to Forrester Research. The Boston Consulting Group expects spending on branded content to rise to $25 billion by 2019.

Brands could once produce just 2 or 3 TV commercials a year, and spend about eight-to-nine-months developing one piece of content and, then, half-a-million-dollars on producing each piece of film. Now, those 2 or 3 pieces have turned into hundreds and thousands of pieces of content,; eight months has changed to eight days and eight hours, while budgets have become smaller. Many brands are paying a high price for this proliferation by producing a large volume of low quality content, simply because they feel like they need to be on social media.

Because of sub-par quality, most content goes unseen. Marketing analytics firm Beckon found that that just 5% of content generated 90% of total consumer engagements. The rest is noise. In fact, branded content as a marketing approach is failing, and consumers are rebelling, with one in five smartphone users, or almost 420 million people worldwide, blocking advertising when browsing the web on cellphones. That represents a 90% annual increase. Consumers don’t reject the clutter – they reject the crappy content which does not inspire, enlighten, educate and entertain consumers.

Content marketing requires scale, and a different set of management skills. It requires planning and resource allocation, and the understanding that content is not a tactical tool. Here are a few things that can help manage scaling the content demands of a brand:

1. Set an editorial calendar. It will ensure adequate time to prepare content in a timely manner without feeling rushed

2. Think “repurposing.” Core pieces that can be adapted help create a wide variety of content on the same or similar subjects, that will be quicker to apply at various channels

3. Queuing. Do have an inventory of finished content “in waiting”, ready to publish if current content is pulled or suddenly becomes irrelevant.

4. Create content in batches. Produce multiple pieces concurrently in order to lower cost and to increase efficiencies.

5. Outsourcing. When you don’t have the resources to produce high quality content that you need have, an external network that can be quickly activated, comes in very handy.

Content should not be about impressions. With content, you don’t really get credit just because you’ve put a lot of it out there or because a lot of people saw that it existed. You get credit when you engage people, and entertain and inspire them with what you publish. To avoid a quality trap, you need to approach it strategically and understand how each piece contributes to brand equity.

By Avi Dan

Avi Dan is CEO of Avidan Strategies. It improves agency partnerships, and manage agency search and compensation

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Identity Marketing Backfires: Don’t Tell a Consumer What they Like

August 1, 2017 No Comments

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

When choosy parents choose Folláin jam and sports fans who call themselves sports fans subscribe to SkySports, identity marketing is hard at work. But what happens when this type of advertising misses the mark?

According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when a person’s sense of ownership and freedom is threatened they are less likely to respond positively to identity marketing campaigns.

“While people may be drawn to brands that fit their identity, they are also more likely to desire a sense of ownership and freedom in how they express that identity. Identity marketing that explicitly links a person’s identity with a brand purchase may actually undermine that sense of freedom and backfire,” write authors Amit Bhattacharjee (Dartmouth College), Jonah Berger (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), and Geeta Menon (New York University).

The researchers ran a series of five studies that compared two types of identity marketing, messages that simply referenced consumer identity or messages that explicitly tied consumer identity to a brand purchase. Participants were first asked to answer questions about the importance of a given identity in their overall life. They then viewed an advertisement for a brand that appealed to that specific identity. The advertisement used a headline that either referenced the identity or explicitly linked it to a brand. Participants then rated their likelihood to purchase a product from within the brand.

Study results showed that explicit identity marketing messages backfired with consumers who cared about the specific identity and resulted in a lower likelihood to purchase the product. This information may help brands understand why some people react negatively to products used in important areas of their lives.

“Contrary to the traditional thinking about identity marketing, our research shows that people who care deeply about an identity are not receptive to messages that explicitly communicate how a brand fits with their lifestyle,” the authors conclude. “In fact, to restore their sense of freedom, some people may avoid purchasing a product that otherwise appeals to them and fits with who they are.”

There you go marketers. You can suggest your product to your customer using their identity, but not tell your customer that if they are a certain type of person that they will buy it for sure. Humans: we hate being told what to do.

In News

An Early Warning Sign to Change Your Social Media Strategy

August 1, 2017 No Comments

By Ryan Holmes.

Treating social media as just another marketing channel? Tread lightly. A user revolt is brewing.

Fake. It’s a word that gets mentioned a lot these days when we talk about social media. Fake news. Fake followers. Real people sharing fake, filtered versions of their lives.

It’s enough to make you stop and wonder: Is there something inherently wrong with social media? Is it bad for us? It it … evil?

This isn’t a new question. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. My life and career are wrapped up in social media. I know it’s sometimes tempting to dismiss social networks as time sucks … or even threats to civilization. But this is too simplistic. The truth, I think, is much closer to an old adage:

The day after fire was invented, someone invented arson.

Social media, just like fire, is a technology. It’s neither good nor evil. You can use it to bring warmth and light into your life. Or you can use it to burn, harm, and destroy.

For some people, social media is a valuable tool that brings together family and friends, raises awareness for social causes and gives us something to scroll through when we’re bored. For others, it becomes a tool for exploitation, an unhealthy addiction, even a vehicle to spread hate and violence.

Ultimately, the impact is in our hands. Social media, as the name suggests, is just the medium–not the message.

The social paradox

Having said that, it’s not hard to understand the haters. In some respects, social media has done a 180. In the beginning, it was about living out loud–an antidote to slick corporate messages and imagery pushed out over TV and in magazines. Facebook was revolutionary precisely because it was real–immediate and unfiltered. On Twitter, people really did share photos of their breakfast.

But that’s changed. The gold standard in social media these days is something that’s “Instagram-worthy.” Instead of a raw look at real life, we get an impossibly beautiful and polished version of life–cropped, filtered … largely fictitious. Even when it’s our own face. The popular Facetune app, for example, makes it possible for anyone to airbrush their features to model-worthy perfection. (And, more often than not, these perfect people on Instagram are actually trying to sell us something.)

That same craving for fakeness and excess partly explains the prevalence of fake news and clickbait. As our news feeds get increasingly crowded, it’s hard to resist gravitating to splashy, tabloid headlines, even when we sense something just doesn’t add up. Fakeness is a lot like trans fat in that way–tempting but just empty calories; irresistible but ultimately damaging.

A real-ness revolt

But it’s critical to remember social media isn’t just that. And it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, it’s not hard to see a countermovement afoot–a push to reclaim social media’s roots. Snapchat started it. Disappearing pics gave people license to be real again. Silly lenses helped us let our hair down. Instead of worrying about projecting a personal brand, we actually started communicating.

Thankfully, other networks have begun to get the message, too. Facebook Live videos are proving so popular because you only get one take–no re-dos. Instagram Stories already has 250 million users in large part because it’s a lot more interesting to watch an unedited video of someone than to look at a picture that’s been Photoshopped to death.

Intimacy and authenticity are regaining a foothold. Especially among younger users, fake is out. Teens have taken to starting “finsta” accounts–friends-only Instagram profiles–so they can share a “less edited, less filtered version of their lives.” The newfound popularity of the Minutiae app–which alerts users at a random time and challenges them to share a “mundane” picture of their actual surroundings–is another testament to this real-ness revolt.

Social media lessons for businesses

So, where does this leave all the companies today who rely on social media to connect with customers? To me, it’s an early warning. Social media has grown into an invaluable business tool. (In fact, my company is built on that fact.) But treating social media as business as usual is a recipe for failure.

More than other channels, social media marketing requires creativity, reinvention and breaking rules. Because there are no gatekeepers, people are constantly pushing the limits and demanding more real-ness and more honesty. Businesses that have grown used to treating social media as just another mass marketing channel may have a rough road ahead.

The key, instead, is to find ways to reclaim social media’s personal and human roots. Granted, doing this at scale isn’t easy. But the more that businesses are able to share candid updates and connect with people on an individual level, the greater the impact that their messages will have. Getting actual employees on board–and even executives–can go a long way to breathing life back into dry corporate social media channels. Tracking “meaningful relationship moments“–not vanity metrics like Likes or RTs–is also a step in the right direction.

The alternative isn’t pretty. A rebellion is brewing. Social media may be more prevalent than ever, but news streams today are as likely to be greeted with skepticism as with enthusiasm. Honesty, transparency and authenticity are re-emerging as the new standard. Anything less is playing with fire.

Image Credit: Getty Images

By Ryan Holmes

Founder and CEO, Hootsuite@invoker

Sourced from Inc.

In News

Unclear CEO Expectations Often Inspire Marketing Officers to Quit

July 28, 2017 No Comments

More than 40 percent of CMOs have been in their jobs for 2 years or less.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Nearly three-quarters of chief marketing officers believe their jobs aren’t designed to let them have the greatest impact on their companies, according to a new survey.

Chief marketing officers frequently suffer from having poorly designed jobs, accounting for why they have the highest rate of turnover among all roles in the C-suite.

The survey found that more than 40 percent of chief marketing officers have been in their roles two years or less, and 57 percent three years or less – a significantly shorter tenure than any other C-level executive.

This “revolving door of CMO short-timers” affects how consumers view the company, since new chief marketing officers often change some or all of their predecessors’ strategic direction for positioning, packaging and advertising. These changes also come at a significant financial cost.

The research was conducted by Neil A. Morgan, a professor of Marketing at Indiana University, and Kimberly Whitler of the University of Virginia. The results can be found in the Harvard Business Review article, “Why CMOs Never Last and What to Do About It.”

“We believe that a great deal of CMO turnover stems from poor job design,” Morgan and Whitler wrote. “Any company can make a bad hire, but when responsibilities, expectations and performance measures are not aligned and realistic, it sets a CMO up to fail.”

They interviewed more than 300 executive recruiters, CEOs and chief marketing officers; conducted multiple surveys of chief marketing officers; analysed 170 CMO job descriptions at large firms; and reviewed more than 500 LinkedIn profiles of CMOs. They found more disparity in how the chief marketing officer’s role was defined and much more than for any other C-level role.

Morgan and Whitler found common core CMO responsibilities. More than 90 percent of chief marketing officers were responsible for marketing strategy and implementation, and more than 80 percent controlled brand strategy and customer metrics.

“But beyond that, the range of duties – from pricing to sales management, public relations to e-commerce, product development to distribution – is mind-boggling,” they said. “Even before considering candidates for the job, a CEO must decide which kind of CMO would be best for the company.”

Their research identified three types of chief marketing officers: the strategist who makes decisions about firm positioning and products, accounting for 31 percent in their survey; the “commercialiser” who drives sales through marketing communications (46 percent); or someone who is an enterprise-wide profit-and-loss leader who handles both roles (23 percent).

The key problem is that CEOs and executive recruiters do not do a good job of identifying the type of role that the firm needs the chief marketing officer to play before they identify and evaluate candidates. Rather, they look at CMO candidates and select the one the CEO rates highest – which assumes that the CEO knows what type of chief marketing officer the firm needs.

That turns out to be a false assumption in most cases. This is much less of a problem for chief financial officers, chief information officers or even chief human resources officers, where there is much more standardisation in the role these executives play across firms and industries.

To solve the problem of identifying the type of chief marketing officer they need before looking at candidates, Morgan and Whitler said CEOs need to take into consideration:

The degree to which consumer insight needs to drive firm strategy.
How difficult it is to achieve firm-level growth.
The level of dynamic change in the marketplace.
The historical role of chief marketing officers in the organisation.
The firm’s structure, including whether the marketing function is centralised or dispersed throughout the organisation.

Once they have identified the type of chief marketing officer they need, CEOs must design the role to align with what the firm needs from that person before looking for candidates. This “role design” part of the process is also done badly most of the time.

“Alignment of responsibilities is the critical area where mistakes are made. It’s common for companies to describe a role in which the CMO is expected to change the overall performance of the firm,” Whitler and Morgan wrote.

“Expectations typically far exceed the actual authority given the CMO,” they added. “That problem is often compounded when CEOs are wooing candidates who already have good jobs.

“While overpromising and ‘up-selling’ are common in recruitment across many functions, our research suggests that they can be a bigger issue in marketing, because of the general confusion and lack of uniform expectations about what a CMO does and the knowledge and skill differences among marketing executives.”

Only 22 percent of the job descriptions Morgan and Whitler studied mentioned how chief marketing officers would be measured or held accountable, and only 2 percent had a specific section that clearly spelled out job expectations.

When searching for the best CMO candidate, Morgan and Whitler also point to the increased importance of experience in shaping knowledge and skills relative to other functions due to the lack of professional certifications in marketing, compared to those required of lawyers and accountants.

Only 6 percent of the chief marketing officers in their survey had degrees in marketing. Although 44 percent had MBAs, their educational backgrounds varied and included degrees in other disciplines such as engineering, philosophy and political science.

This means that most chief marketing officers learn most of their marketing “on the job,” making their prior experiences and employers of key importance in determining their knowledge and skills.

“Another stumbling point, in our analysis, is that in almost all CMO job descriptions there are significant gaps between the responsibility given and the experience required,” they added.

In News

Sex Doesn’t Sell Anymore… Wait… What?

July 25, 2017 No Comments

If you think sex sells, you’d be wrong. You now need to associate your product with compelling dialogue to make it appear attractive.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

So maybe a world saturated in free porn and technology has had a rather unpredictable outcome. People are craving conversation and connection in person, and not nameless faceless sex, helped along by tech. Who knew?

Plenty of Fish (POF), a dating website and app, has just released the findings of Conversation Nation, the largest survey on the topic. According to this survey, 90 percent of singles crave great conversation – not sex.

65% of both men and women of all generations believe conversation is a lost art, yet see a great conversation as the top indicator of a successful match.

Conversations should be a primary driver in how singles connect, according to the study. However, 61 percent of singles believe the rise in technology usage has impacted our ability to have meaningful, face-to-face conversations. Nine of 10 respondents identified a great conversation as the gold standard for a great date, bumping out sex by a longshot with only one in 10 opting for it. Compelling dialogue can also make someone appear more attractive, according to nearly 90 percent of respondents.

“The internet is making it difficult for people to have meaningful conversations, so technology companies need to do their part to solve that,” said Celeste Headlee, conversation expert and author. “Learning to have conversations that inspire and enlighten you is achievable.”

POF have decided to concentrate on conversation as the true measure of dating success. The company has just launched “Spark”, a new in-app feature that enables a user to easily initiate a conversation. By picking up and dragging a new conversation icon over any aspect of a potential date’s profile, users can quote and comment on any content – from photos, to anything a user has written about themselves.

“With more conversations than any other dating app, Plenty of Fish is focused on bringing conversation back to singles,” said Hesam Hosseini, CEO, Plenty of Fish. “In the short time we’ve been testing Spark, we’ve seen a 15 percent increase in conversations. Given our scale, this can result in an increase of hundreds of thousands of conversations happening every day on the app, leading to more dates and more relationships – and it is just our first step to bring the art of conversation back to dating.”

Conversation Nation Insights

The Emotion of a Great Conversation

Nerves run high with Gen Z. While 87 percent said they prefer face-to-face conversations with someone they’re interested in dating, a full 62 percent said they get too nervous for face-to-face. Only 32 percent of Gen X and 26 percent of Boomers felt the same way.
Fear of rejection (48 percent) and not knowing what to say (43 percent) are the leading reasons why singles are hesitant to start a conversation with a potential date. Of all the generations, Gen Z is least likely to start a conversation because 60 percent have a fear of rejection.

The (Lost) Art of Conversation

Face-to-face conversation isn’t the only lost art. Letter writing (78 percent), common courtesy (66 percent) and cursive (63 percent) are also on their way out.
With age comes confidence: Forty-five percent of Gen Z think they need tips or techniques to keep a conversation going, while only 35 percent of Millennials, 25 percent of Gen X and 18 percent of Boomers felt the same way.
Sixty-one percent believe that technology has impacted our ability to have a meaningful, face-to-face conversation, because it’s distracting (72 percent), people are heads down in their phones (65 percent), and it has just made people worse at speaking face-to-face (61 percent).

Smart + Funny = Key to Attraction

Nearly nine in 10 respondents have found someone more attractive after having a conversation with them, proving beauty is a lot more than skin deep. Intelligence (42 percent), having a sexy voice (40 percent), and a sense of humour (34 percent) ranked at the top of reasons people got better looking with dialogue. Gen Z and Millennials both selected sexy voice as their top pick, while Gen X and Boomers chose intelligence.
It does work both ways: Someone can also appear less attractive after a conversation. Having nothing in common (61 percent), coming across as insensitive or mean (58 percent), and having misaligned values (57 percent) dominated an appearance downgrade.

Tech Talk: What Constitutes a Conversation?

More than 80 percent of respondents agreed that a phone/voice call is a conversation, but division ensues from there.
- Fifty-four percent said texting constitutes a conversation, particularly among Millennials (67 percent) and Gen Z (76 percent). Only one in four Boomers think texting qualifies as a conversation.
- 87 percent of Boomers don’t consider chat apps as a conversation. A majority of Gen Z (54 percent) and 47 percent of Millennials disagree with the Boomer mindset.
- Boomers are significantly more likely than other generations to communicate by email, while Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z prefer texting.

So if you are about to launch that sexy ad campaign, maybe you need to have a rethink. Witty and smart is the new sex, and if any of us want to sell anything, we have to take this on board.

In News

The Weather Can Make People More Open to (or Ignore) Your Mobile Phone Ad

July 21, 2017 No Comments

Certain weather conditions get better consumer responses to mobile marketing efforts.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Many factors impact digital marketing and online advertising strategy. And now, a new Chinese study provides insight to a growing trend among firms and big brands … weather-based advertising. According to the study, certain weather conditions get better consumer responses to mobile marketing efforts, Also, the tone of your ad content can either help or hurt your marketing efforts, depending on the current local weather.

In the U.S. this is far more advanced than in Europe. Over the pond, many major brands – including Burberry, Ace Hardware, Taco Bell, Delta Airlines, and Farmers Insurance – are currently leveraging weather-based promotions. More than 200 others have partnered with the Weather Channel Company for targeted advertising and promotions.

The study, “Sunny, Rainy, and Cloudy with a Chance of Mobile Promotion Effectiveness,” was conducted by boffins at Beihang University, Temple University, Fudan University, and Zhejiang University. The authors examined field experiment datasets with mobile platforms (SMS and APP) on two digital products (video-streaming and e-book reading) on over six million mobile users in 344 cities across China. They simultaneously tracked weather conditions at both daily and hourly rates across these cities, with a focus on sunny, cloudy and rainy weather.

The authors found that overall, consumer response to mobile promotions was 1.2 times higher and occurred 73 percent faster in sunny weather than in cloudy weather. However, during raining conditions, that response was .9 times lower and 59 percent slower than during cloudy weather. Better-than-yesterday weather and better-than-forecast weather engender more purchase responses. A good deviation from the expected rainy or cloudy weather with relatively rare events of sunshine significantly boosts purchase responses to mobile promotions. In addition, compared with a neutral tone, the negative tone of prevention ad content hurts the initial promotion boost induced by sunshine, but improves the initial promotion drop induced by rainfall.

The authors also ruled out the possibility that the results could arise purely because of different mobile usage behaviours during different weather conditions. Their results also took into account the effects of individual locations, temperature, humidity, visibility, air pressure, dew point, wind, and time of day.

“Obviously, although brand managers cannot control the mother-nature weather, our findings are non-trivial because they suggest that brands can leverage the relevant, local weather information in mobile promotions. Firms should use the prevention-tone ad copy on rainy days and the simple neutral-tone ad copy on sunny days to attain greater bang for the buck,” said Chenxi Li of Beihang University.

“Given that consumers nowadays are inundated with and annoyed by irrelevant ads on their personal mobile devices and small screens, for marketers, these findings imply new opportunities of customer data analytics for more effective weather-based mobile targeting,” added Xueming Luo of Temple University.

The full study can be found here.

In News

In a Digital Economy, Marketing is the Business Glue

July 19, 2017 No Comments

By Vala Afshar

Only 12% of marketing organizations are ‘extremely satisfied’ with current outcomes realized as direct result of their company’s marketing investments, this according to the latest STATE of MARKETING 2017 research. Harvard Business Review study found that only 15% of marketing and sales organizations have the right talent, processes and tools to perform at the highest level.

To learn more about high performing marketing organizations, Ray Wang and I invited one of the top chief marketing officers (CMO), and digital business transformation thought leaders, in the world to our weekly show DisrupTV.

Joanne Moretti is the SVP & Chief Marketing Officer at Jabil, and General Manager at Radius Design. Moretti has a universal reputation of driving transformational business outcomes by focusing on developing and cultivating a customer focused culture of innovation, superior quality, agility, sustainability and scale. Moretti has spent 30 years in the high tech and software industry and today proudly servers on the Executive Leadership team at Jabil, a U.S. based design, manufacturing and supply chain services company with 180,000 employees and $18.4 billion in annual revenues.

Radius Design is an innovation and development firm organized to help companies define a strategic path to success and then realize it through superior, user-inspired design and execution. Moretti is the GM at Radius Design, responsible for managing the design firm to drive high value growth for Jabil’s shareholders. Prior to Jabil, Moretti was the VP/Chief Marketing Officer of Dell’s Software division. Before Dell Joanne was the first VP and Dean of the award winning HP Sales University. Moretti is an industry thought leader and is frequently quoted and featured in numerous industry and media publications. Moretti is also a Six Sigma Master and a brilliant follow on Twitter at @JoannMoretti. Her Twitter bio reads: “Advocate for women in STEM and generally helping customers leverage technology as a weapon of mass disruption.”

Joanne Moretti, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer at Jabil and General Manager Radius Design

Moretti spoke to us about the humility of Jabil and their past tendency to not publicly market their incredible global design, manufacturing and supply chain services. Today, Jabil is helping companies around the globe shift from being only product companies to Internet-connected products and services companies. Jabil guides companies develop purposeful innovation, building products and services that fuel growth and customer advocacy through digital business transformation. Today, Jabil is helping companies develop internet connected products, capable of collecting and analyzing data to help identify new business model innovation and improved service delivery opportunities.

Today, the most valuable companies in the world are software and data companies. Every business is trying to become a software business.

In a Digital Economy, Marketing is About Effective Communication and Connections

In the digital economy, one of the most important roles of marketing in business is to be the glue, according to Moretti. Marketing is bringing the parts of the organizations together to drive digital transformation. Digital marketing is not digital business, it is so much more. Communications about change management, both internally and externally, is a key function for marketers. Organizational change – people, process, tools and ultimately culture – requires a clear understanding of the mission.

Moretti advises CMOs to recognize the importance of being a communicator and connector. Marketing is the most important mission critical success factor to drive change. Being the communication vehicle, the glue, and the function that helps drive alignment is the most important role of marketing, according to Moretti.

Early Customer Conversations Accelerates Concepts to Commercialization

Radius Design is the tip of the spear with Jabil. So many customers come to Jabil to determine what to build and why. Moretti shared with us a customer case study around oral hygiene with a company called Onvi. Onvi collaboration with Radius delivered innovation for oral healthcare, using a connected brush that helps create new business model innovation, while improving the quality of health. Moretti also shared with us the possibilities of using virtual reality in retail. Moretti advises companies to design for manufacturing and scale. She also strongly emphasizes the importance of pricing – the wrong pricing model can kill a product or service.

The Unprecedented Velocity (Speed and Direction) of Innovation Requires Innovative Marketing

Moretti spoke to us about urbanization and the need for smart cities and improved healthcare infrastructure – by 2020, 80% of global human population will be in cities. According to Moretti, the aging population will grow the human population to over 8 billion by 2025 – driving the need for businesses to improve service delivery through personalization, immediacy and intelligent products and services. Technologies like cloud, mobility, big data, artificial intelligence, IoT and VR/AR will disrupt existing companies and drive creation of new business models. Combination of technologies like AI and CRM platform will drive and grow economies to a tune of $1.1 trillion more revenue and 2 million new jobs. Companies are fighting to stay relevant by working with Radius Design and Jabil to identify new ways to compete in the age of the connected customer.

We You are a Dog, Don’t Try to Be a Cat

Moretti advises companies to digitize what you do best – for Jabil, that’s supply chain management. Do what you do really well, and close adjacency, and invest your talent and investment to further improve true differentiation of your company. Keep doing what you’re good at, and continue to build on adjacencies.

There is definitely transformational design and innovation nirvana at Jabil and Radius Design. Moretti and her team work closely with companies to develop leading-edge capabilities that are designed for manufacture-ability and scale. She is also marketing the capabilities of one of the most successful design, manufacturing and supply chain services company in the world with Jabil and Radius Design. Moretti is pioneer CMO and a design and innovation expert. She is doing an incredible job of guiding companies, helping them bring concepts to commercialization in record time. To learn more, please watch our video conversation with Joanne Moretti.

By Vala Afshar

Sourced from HUFFPOST

In News

Email marketing up 83% since 2015 as B2B marketing grows by 200%

July 18, 2017 No Comments

By Laurie Fullerton

Never underestimate the power of email – a cornerstone for both traditional marketing and consumer-facing market strategies that has seen an 83% growth in B2B and B2C markets since 2015.

According to new research released by Salesforce, who polled 3,500 global marketing leaders, at either a manger level or higher position for its fourth annual State of Marketing report, email experienced the largest surge in consumer-facing marketing programs, with email use by B2C marketers rising 106%. This surge indicates that marketers may be testing new channels in conjunction with proven ones to find combinations that work for their consumers. Marketers also report higher levels of awareness, engagement, and acquisition when combining email with additional marketing channels according to Salesforce.

The Salesforce report also found that video advertising has experienced the largest two-year growth in B2B marketing, with video use growing 204%. Email was the second-highest advertising channel in growth for B2C marketers, but trailed video advertising’s growth of 141%.

Video advertising was closely followed by SMS/text messaging, a channel that grew 197% in the B2B market. B2B email marketing, on the other hand, has only grown 56% since 2015.

A marked trend among high-performing marketers is that they are 12.8 times more likely to combine marketing efforts across channels such as email, mobile, and social. On average, marketing leaders today say that 34% of their budget is spent on channels they didn’t know existed five years ago and they expect that to reach 40% by 2019.

The reports also suggests that about half (51%) of the emails are identical messages to what they have broadcast in other channels. This is considered to be a missed opportunity for most marketers who may not be evolving fast enough between email and other channels based on customer behaviors or actions.

Additionally, 51% of respondents said their emails contain the same messages as other marketing channels, while 29% of email messages evolve across channels and customer actions.

As in previous report iterations, Salesforce analyzed the differences between self-identifying high-performing and low-performing marketers.

By Laurie Fullerton

Sourced from THE DRUM

In News

How to Grow a Premium Brand Without Killing its Soul

July 13, 2017 No Comments

Managers of premium brands face a perennial dilemma. How do you grow a premium brand without killing its soul?

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A unique brand cachet attracts its core high-price-paying customers. But what happens when you seek to expand sales to the masses by offering lower prices? In recent years, outlet stores located hours away from glitzy shopping districts have sprung up everywhere. They are selling off-season and lower-tier merchandise at a fraction of regular retail prices. They have become significant sources of revenues.

The conventional wisdom is that relying on revenues from outlet stores can destroy the brand’s prestige over time. But according to a forthcoming study in the journal Marketing Science, outlet stores may actually help improve the brand’s cachet.

The study, “Why outlet stores exist: averting cannibalisation in product line extensions,” was authored by Donald Ngwe of Harvard Business School.

Ngwe analysed five years of customer sales data covering over 16 million customers and 27 million transactions from a major high-end fashion firm with hundreds of regular and outlet stores around the country. He found that the brand’s core customers are picky about wanting the latest products and are willing to pay premium prices, but are unwilling to travel very far to buy the brand.

In contrast, the larger mass of customers who aspire to consume this brand, but are price sensitive, are not only willing to travel the long distances to outlet stores, but are also not very picky in their tastes for the latest products and willing to tolerate lower quality. Therefore outlet stores expand revenues with limited cannibalisation of revenues from the core high paying customer base.

Taking into account this strong negative correlation between taste for quality and new products and willingness to travel for shopping among the core and mass segments, Ngwe modelled the firm’s product introductions in regular and outlet stores. He found two key results. First, the availability of outlets for selling older products to mass consumers means that firms can take more risk and introduce more new products at faster rates at its regular stores. Second, as outlet stores absorb the customer base of price-conscious customers who need less service, the firm can invest in greater service at regular stores. New product introduction at regular stores increases by as much as 16 percent. Ngwe said, “Here is the kicker. Even as outlet stores generate significant revenues from the masses, they help the brand increase its cachet among its core customers through more new products and higher service.”

The conventional wisdom that outlet stores can be detrimental to a premium brand’s health arises from failing to recognise the positive spillovers from outlet stores on regular retail stores. Ngwe noted, “For the brand we studied, there is little cannibalisation of regular store revenues by outlet stores. Moreover, outlet stores have positive spillovers in terms of higher service and more frequent new products in regular stores. So the net effect of outlet stores is to increase brand cachet.”

However, Ngwe cautioned, “Critical to our conclusion is that core customers would not shop at outlet stores due to their aversion to traveling long distances. This may not be true for customers of other brands, particularly lower end ones. Also, pure online brands cannot use travel distances to separate their core and mass customer segments. Online premium brands will need to find other means to differentiate their upscale and mass offerings.”

The complete paper is available here.

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31 Simple Marketing Cheat Sheets For Business Owners That Don’t Understand Marketing

July 13, 2017 No Comments

By John Rampton.

Marketing your business can be tough, and it helps to have excellent resources to keep you up-to-date and effective.

This list covers 31 of my favourite guides, checklists and cheat sheets that cover the basics of marketing: everything from SEO, to email marketing, to social media, to blogging. Add your favourite cheat sheets in the comments at the end of the post!

1. The Ultimate List Of 53 Blog Post Ideas For Content Marketers

An infographic listing 53 types of blog posts you can use to inspire your next post. Ideas include lists, how-to’s, case studies, rants, interviews and many more.

2. The Keyword Research Cheat Sheet

What types of keywords should you be targeting? Which tools should you use? What types of sites should you try to compete with? This excellent cheat sheet from the folks at Penguin SEM answers all these questions and more.

3. Social Media Marketing Checklist

You know you need to be using social media, but you’re not exactly sure how or why. This checklist will help you define your target audience and then figure out exactly what you should be sharing on various platforms.

4. SEO Best Practices For Blogs

You know SEO is important if you want your blog posts to rank in the search engines. But where do you even start? This infographic outlines the six most important elements you need to include if you want your posts to rank.

5. 101 Copywriting Do’s & Dont’s

Not everyone is a natural-born writer. This comprehensive list tells you exactly how to write content that gets engagement and helps you accomplish your goals.

6. Website Pre & Post Launch Checklist

Do you have a brand new site you’re eager to launch? Not sure what you need to do, and in what order? This simple checklist will help you figure out what needs to happen and when. Includes guidance on content, social media, analytics, optimization and much more.

7. The Ideal Length Of Everything Online

Ever wonder exactly how long your tweets, blog posts and subject lines should be? This infographic tells you the optimal length you should aim for if you want your content to succeed.

8. A 50-Point Checklist For Creating The Ultimate Landing Page

Landing pages are essential for converting visitors into customers or email subscribers. This comprehensive checklist lets you check off all the elements you need to keep in mind when creating your own landing pages.

9. Best Practices For On-Page Optimization

You know it’s important to use keywords in your content, but may not know exactly how. This downloadable guide from Marketo will walk you through exactly how to find, use and track your keywords most effectively.

10. Copywriting Cheat Sheet

Did you know writing for the web, for email and for social media all require slightly different strategies? This cheat sheet from Vertical Response outlines best practices when writing for a variety of different marketing channels and platforms.

11. 140 Web Buttons & Calls-To-Action

This free, downloadable file from Hubspot includes seven sets of buttons you can use on your website. Bonus: The download also comes with a guide on how to write effective copy and calls to action for your landing pages.

12. How To Use Facebook For Business: 25 Facebook Marketing Tips & Tricks

Most business owners use Facebook for their marketing, but may not totally understand how to use it effectively. This cheat sheet will show you how to set up a Facebook page and use it to drive traffic and leads for your business.

13. The Viral Marketing Cheat Sheet

Ever wonder why some posts, memes or videos go viral, while others flop? This cheat sheet from Kissmetrics outlines seven ways to give your content the best chance of going viral.

14. Marketing For Dummies Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet gives a brief overview of some of the most important aspects of any marketing strategy. Includes info on marketing to produce more sales, how to cut your marketing budget without losing customers and how to boost results using creativity.

15. Link Building Tactics – The Complete List

Link building can be a time-consuming process, but it helps to have pretty much all the most effective strategies in one place. This comprehensive guide covers dozens of link building strategies, while also letting you know a) how long each one takes, b) what competencies you need in order to do them, and c) the value of each link.

16. How To Create East, Yet Actionable, Content Marketing Personas

Creating personas allows you to understand exactly who needs your product, and how you’re going to market it to them. This comprehensive guide from the Content Marketing Institute will walk you through all the whys and hows of creating and using personas in your marketing.

17. A Complete Checklist For Social Media Managers

This checklist breaks down social media tasks into daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tasks. It’s the actual checklist used by Sprout Social’s social media manager Darryl Villacorta, so you know it will be good!

18. How To Get More Likes On Facebook

Do you struggle with growing your Facebook page? This infographic from Kissmetrics covers the most effective strategies for increasing likes, comments and engagement on your page.

19. 10 Strategic Mistakes On Twitter

Sometimes the best way to figure out how to do something right is to understand what you’re doing wrong. This infographic gives a visual representation of the most common mistakes you could be making that are sabotaging your efforts on Twitter.

20. Digital Marketing Cheat Sheet

Ever hear terms like “CTR”, metadata, sitemap or “AIDA” and wonder what on earth they mean? This cheat sheet does a pretty good job of defining some of the most common words and phrases you’ll encounter in the online marketing world.

21. The Beginner’s Guide To SEO

This comprehensive guide, written by myself and marketing guru Jayson DeMers, covers everything you ever wanted to know about SEO. From doing keyword research, to link building, to what to do when things go wrong – this guide has it all.

22. The Beginner’s Guide To Online Marketing

Another beginner’s guide, this one provides an overview of everything you need to know about digital marketing. Grab a cup of coffee before you dig into this one…it’s going to take a while!

23. A Complete Guide To Local SEO

If you have a local business, you might have noticed you need to use some slightly different SEO strategies. Following the techniques in this guide will ensure your local business gets found in the search engines by customers looking for what you have to offer.