Tag Archive for: Marketing

Reports: How retail marketing managers use digital, and how customers think…

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Social media marketing has become more and more important for retail marketers in the U.S. this year compared to 2013. This states the latest reports by Extole which was based on the survey response of 302 people responsible for marketing and technology at U.S. retail companies. However, mobile marketing and email are still top priorities as well for those marketers across various verticals, company sizes and geographies.

Extole Report 2014 Marketing Spend to 2013

Although social media marketing was the leading marketing spend compared to last year with 41%, mobile advertising (32%) and email marketing (31%) were catching up as well. Whereas thee marketing spends were on the sweetspot for budget spends, topics like display advertising (28%), content marketing (28%), and paid search (24%) got less marketing spends this year.

Extole Report 2014 Marketing Channels Regularly

The report also made clear that retail marketers use social media and email two most (85%). Not surprisingly as social media was mentioned as the most effective tactic for acquiring customers. 50% of the retail marketers have picked it in the top three results. Nevertheless, if retail marketers want to convert retail customers, email marketing is still seen as the most effective marketing tool.

Spot On!
If we compare this report to another much broader study by Capgemini “Digital Shopper Relevancy Report” that asked 18.000 consumers around the globe, marketers might be putting too much emphasize on social media marketing. Marketers might have a closer look at the not “socially-engaged shopper” categories and then decide in which markets to invest in social media marketing, and which stay with a broader holistic digital marketing approach.

Capgemini 2014 Digital Consumers

What is your experience on how to best address your customers in the retail or technology space?

Report: Best rated CRM software tools 2014

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A recent report from G2 Crowd, based on the reviews of 1,700 CRM professional users, shows that Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are the leading two customer relationship management (CRM) systems. This is the finding of a report that has checked the 27 highest rated systems by customers.

The report grouped tools together based on two main deliveries a) overall customer satisfaction (average scores by users) and b) market presence (market share, vendor size, and social impact). The report defined the CRM systems as software systems that provide salesforce automation features (account, contact and opportunity management), marketing automation tools (lead and campaign management), customer support options (knowledge management and support case), and a unifying database.

In the CRM “leader” category finished Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. Both tools showed substantial scale and were rated relatively highly. Salesforce was rated significantly better by 9 out of 10 users: reviewers gave Salesforce 4 or 5 stars. Furthermore, 84% stated they would recommend the product to peers and 88% thought the CRM tool is headed in the right direction.

However, Microsoft Dynamic’s impact on the market in the top tier is predominantly depending to its large market share. Only 60% of Microsoft Dynamics users rated the product 4 or 5 stars. Still, 64% would recommend the tool to their peers and 60% think the CRM system is headed in the right direction.

G2 Crowd Grid CRM Software 2014

Spot On!
Another study by Salesforce.com shows that customers experince CRM systems to boost customer experience. However, data quality and predictive analytics could still do better in performance conversion. Nevertheless, the battle in the CRM tool business is on. Microsoft just bundled their product offering to challenge Salesforce. Although aggressive pricing might change proples’ minds, Salesforce.com has the benefit there exist hundreds of AppExchange partners, like Marketo, Eloqua, LinkedIn and others. While Microsoft also has its’ partners, Salesforce.com’s still offers the enterprise app cloud development platform that shows more opportunities.

dmexco 2014 – Flashback in Quotes & Discussions

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dmexco 2014 Debate HallThe growth trend of the digital marketing show dmexco is impressive and continues to write a promising (hi)story.

Visitors: 31.900 – increase by 16% compared to 2013
Exhibitors: 807 – means over 65 exhibitors more than 2013
Speakers: 470 – as of various stages with new start-up village and work labs

This year I wanted to wait some days before I am writing my little review to see what really stayed in my mind, and what people were talking about after the event. This is what stayed in the brains of my friends – maybe it should reach you.

1. “dmexco is like the Lumascape brought to life.”
#Quote in Breaking Down Silos for Brands Panel
Damian Burns, Director of Global Strategic Partnerships, Google

2. “Nerd is the new black”
Brad Rencher, SVP & General Manager Digital Marketing, Adobe

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3. “Online is the new offline.”
Quote by Joko Winterscheidt, TV-Moderator

4. “The play is to work out the first against the second screen.”
Quote in “Addressable TV – A Marketers’ Dream Panel”
Jim Clayton, Executive Vice President, HE New Business Division, LG Electronics

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5. “The digital revolution is over, we are now in the digital evolution.”
Quote in Digital Revenue optimization 2.0 Panel
Sital Banerjee, Global Head of Media, Philips

6. “The brand in many ways need to take the back-seat. It can’t be all about the product if you move into the content section.”
Quote in “The Content Summit”
Jimmy Maymann, CEO, Huffington Post

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7. “@ft presence at #DMexco so big they don’t even have a stand! They are on every phone and tablet! @dmexco @ftbized”
Quote from #FT rep/via Oliver Matthews

The three main takeaways from the event for me were…
a) Trend: dmexco stages are challenging global TV stages.
b) Topics: TV goes mobile. Digital is leading corporate strategy.
c) Town: Cologne needs more taxi drivers and/or UBER subscribers.

Really looking forward to moderate the next dmexco, 16th and 17th of September 2015.

CU there!

Website Experience: Consumers rate performance most, content second

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The common understanding in marketing teams is that content is key to meet the expectations of consumer. However, this might be right, most US consumers (52%) see high performance as the main quality feature of a website, according to a recent report from Limelight Networks.

The report that surveyed 1,115 consumers valued website performance (streaming with no buffering, pages that load quickly, and so on) as the most important digital experience feature. It also states that performance comes before fresh and updated content, delivering a consistent experience on mobile and desktop, and providing personalized content.

Performance is Key to Websites

The respondents also make clear that they (59%) will wait less than five seconds for a webpage to load before being frustrated and leaving the site. Even more, more than one in three (37%) stated to leave and buy a product from a competitor if a website is slow.

The mobile experience is also becoming more critical for marketers. When 85% accessing a website with a mobile device at least some of the time, and 50% of the surveyed people do so with either a smartphone or a tablet most of the time, it shows that mobile customer experience needs to be thought about carefully. However, the good signs are that almost half of the users (44%) are more generous in terms of waiting for website response when accessing websites via mobile devices but the trend is to see fast downloads as well on mobile and desktop.

Spot On!
The report illustrates the connection between brand and website experience: 82% of consumers recommend a brand after a positive website visit.

Website Performance leads to Recommendation

However, marketers might think about personalization with the use of smart data now, the report also warns that more than one in three users (38%) do not want websites to remember their previous website visits. The website experience remains a business challenge “Businesses need to educate themselves on the challenges and intricacies of delivering a high performance digital experience to ensure hidden latency issues don’t disrupt a user’s interaction with the brand,” summarizes the report.

Social Network Leaders for Business

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Adobe’s CMO.com did a great job in summarizing the leading social networks for business in one nice infographic alongside their CMO Guide to The Social Landscape. The marketing technology company checked each of the platforms according to four criteria: brand awareness, customer communication, SEO and traffic generation.

Obviously and not surprising, the leading platforms are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. From our experience not all marketers are aware of the importance to change the contents for each platform and not just run them in different timings. The target-groups on the various platforms may be quite different, thus their interests in content and context as well as their wants and needs might vary extremely – although they might be the same people sometimes.

YouTube will probably become the leading platform when the whole world is more driven by Millennials and their input. Although you might be thinking about funny videos, going viral now, most of the business content can be manuals, employer branding stuff, or even product explanation videos. The opportunities are massive and it is time for marketers to realize.

In the B2B space, Slideshare might be a new platform for marketers. The chances are big here as well, as companies and brands get the option to show presentations from various standpoints. Especially, if the company is addressing different stakeholders in a purchase process, it is sometimes good to open up some thoughts before the meeting, so stakeholders can prepare. And, how often did presentations before meetings not go through as of company email file restrictions…?!

Obviously, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest play a role from a corporate brand perspective. And Google+ especially from a SEO and content marketing point of view. However, we are still at the beginning and every case needs to be evaluated on its own.

Any important platform you are missing in the top 8 social networks?

CMO_Social_Landscape_2014

What makes a great brand? (SlideShare)

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The team at We Are Social have created an interesting presentation on “What Makes A Great Brand”. However, I can already hear some of you social geeks saying, moaning and arguing what is missing in the slides and what you could better, maybe start reading and thinking about it first, and then try to find some more brands that have changed the way customer perceive brands today.

The slideshare presentation comes from a a project done in cooperation between We Are Social and The World Federation of Advertisers on Project Reconnect. This initiative was created to understand brands with a deeper meaning by listening to what people really want from brands and advertising. The idea behind it was to align marketers practice and customer expectations. Viewers get to know insights made while talking with marketers about inspiring marketing trends and approaches.

Click on the button to load the content from www.slideshare.net.

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Why 'A' marketers are better than the rest (Infographic)

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Although many marketers have heard of the analytics, data and technology challenges, a minority of 26% of marketers understand their value for the business they run. This is the latest results of a joint study from VisionEdge Marketing (VEM) and ITSMA Marketing Performance Management (MPM) with input from 380 marketers gives insights on marketing performance and best-practices.

The study shows how marketers can earn an “A” grade from the C-suite as they understand impact on data for business. The outperforming marketers know how to make performance management a priority. They know how to plan and implement a well-defined and documented road map for performance improvement. While many marketers measure effort and activity, these “A” grade marketers find the right metrics on ROI efficiency, while building dashboards in order to communicate business benefits of their efforts.

Not surprisingly, “A” grade marketers know how to align their marketing objectives with business priorities, which are the basis for selecting the right metrics. They understand why their offerings create a bi-directional benefit for customers and shareholders.

Of the top performers, 63% claimed increased customer share of wallet. This is a massive success when compared with 48% of “B” marketers and 38% of low performing marketers. When monitoring improvements for business growth, 54% of “A” respondents confirmed improvements in their win rates. This stands against 39% of the “B” competitors and 25% of laggard marketers.

However, some of you marketers might think you should have the ROI in focus, the “B” grade marketers
are too much looking for sales figures. They are spot on getting leads for their pipeline and try to map the customer journey intensively. Still, they lose the big picture of the long-term web strategy. The lazy laggard marketers just see the production of marketing campaigns as their target instead of producing and generating real business results, according to the study.

ITSMA-VEMMPM-Study-2014

Study: Social and Native Ads beat Email in Branding

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A recent study suggests that marketers should focus more on social media advertising and native promotions. The results of the study conducted by Millward Brown Digital for MediaBrix show that these tactics are more effective than email.

The respondents -300 marketers from Fortune 5,000 companies in 17 business categories- of the study answered with the follwowing response on which advertising formats and types “meet their digital branding objectives” on a multiple choice and multiple selection questionnaire.
– Social (51%)
– Native (46%)
– Email (36%)
– Paid search (23%)
– Mobile Web (23%)
– “Emotionally targeted” in-game (20%
– Mobile in-app (20%)
– Programmatic (18%)
– Regular in-game (14%)
– Text messaging (12%)
– Direct purchse ads from websites and blogs (11%)

When Millward Brown asked marketers on their preferences on “what types of digital ad campaigns has your company conducted”, the reponses were quite similar. Of the responding marketers, 77% mentioned that social is their way forward where as 73% replied email and 68% were heading for native. Although this might suggest that email marketing is a thing of the past, the marketers did not say that email does not work any longer.

Seeing news from Procter & Gamble marketing lately, it illustrates the confusion generated by the marketing industry on what’s the future of advertising going to be like. P&G will invest 70% of their advertising in programmatic in the future. A move that follows the American Express example trying to shift 100% of digital ad buys to programmatic. Against this movement stands some results of the Millward Brown study which shows that 30% of digital marketers understand that programmatic advertising creates some negative consumer experiences, with the unfavorable result in not leveraging but hurting brand loyalty or negating their branding objectives.

Please finds the main results of the study in the following infographic.

Infographic-Social-Native vs Email

Infographic-Social-Native vs Email

Catch Up! Essential Skills of Modern Marketers (Infographic)

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If you are a great marketer, you always want to be ahead of the curve with your marketing team. But what talent ingredients does it need today to be among the leading experts of modern marketing? eMarketer has just come up with their latest “Skills of the Modern Marketer” report.

In this report we get to know the skills that senior marketers have to achieve or to be coached for in order to manage their teams correct supported by the latest trends. And it becomes clear that it is not only about knowing the right marketing tactics and trends, we also have to shape our personality with empathy, adaptability and collaboration skills. And furthermore, it has become a challenge to understand the latest marketing technologies and how they can foster the ROI of your business.

The following infographic summarizes the report and the findings, based on interviews and a survey with senior level marketers.

eMarketer Essential Skills Modern Marketer Infographic

The Challenge: Measuring ROI on Social Media (Infographic)

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After three years, the guys at MDG Advertising have updated their last infographic on ROI on your social media “The ROI of Social Media: Is Social Media Marketing Effective?” This new version will be helpful to challenge your business objctives, your metrics and the understanding of how to leevrage your social media reccruiting efforts. The good thing about this infographic is that it shows 45% of social media marketers can build new partnerships through social media. Furthermore, an astonishing 72% of respondents claim that Social Media has helped “closing business.” And, 6% more respondents state they used successfully Social Media to recruit people for their business.

These are their 3 main factors of measuring from MDG Advertising which can be used as a guideline to foster your social media program.

Social Media Understanding
Look beyond the sales numbers and cost structure. Do your brand monitoring first, not for one month but for at least three in a row and on a daily basis. Then, try to figure out how your brand perception and recognition has changed latey (with or without latest social media efforts). Which significant issues have changed your brand perception? Which tools have help identify the changing brand perception?

Business Objectives
Most companies and their leaders start and change their social media program when the trial-and-error mode has proven the fail of the social media strategy. You better start defining your business objectives first, and one thing is for sure. You do not start, just because your competitors are active in social media platforms. Maybe you want to have a look at your brand perception and web conversations first, then you ask what engagement do your customers show in the various channels. Does all this engagement make an impact on sales? And how is your brand perceived along the social web clutter?

Measuring Figures
According to the infographic, CMOs use the following metrics to measure their social marketing efforts. It shows that as in earlier years, quantity comes first, however I would suggest you better go with quality. How says what and when, and how does this affect other consumers of your brand.
68% Site traffic
66% Conversion
63% Number of members
50% Revenue
43% Number of page views

You have good different thoughts about it? How does your company or brand measure the ROI on Social Media? Share them with us, or just have a look at the infographic, and maybe some ideas on the ROI of Social Media will come up then.

MDG Advertising 2014 ROI SOcial Media