Beware the danger of false precision and over expectations. We are living in an era of of titanic shifts; an era where significant changes happen in comparatively short amounts of time. 10 years ago, smartphones didn’t exist. Now we can’t live without them. Companies like Slack and Uber have gone from pre-existent to multi-billion dollar valuations in less than 5 years. We are staring down the barrel of a world where autonomous cars and robotics will power a large percentage of of our world’s infrastructure. Virtual reality will propel us towards placing an “n factor” on just about everything, making the “reach” of virtually everything exponential. Connecting our homes, our gardens, offices, manufacturing equipment, and everything else will fundamentally shift how value is created, shared, distributed, and harvested. But, there’s a lot of work to do, and these changes will ultimately take decades. These changes will most often offer incremental improvements that move us 5 steps ahead and then 3 steps back.
Navigating Monumental Transformation. Leveraging Predictive Marketing to Unlock Growth Opportunities with Existing Customers | Lattice Engines. Senior leaders are under constant pressure to grow their organizations – to beat last quarter’s numbers; to grow organizational and stakeholder profitability. Because of this, marketing and sales teams are incentivized to acquire new customers by expanding into new markets, capturing existing opportunities through creating and aligning value propositions with evolving customer demand.
In addition to fueling growth through acquiring new customers, customer retention, gaining additional wallet share, and successful cross-selling and up-selling to the existing customer base can also help to drive significant revenue and corporate growth. However, technological advancement, increased competition, and lower barriers to entry are shifting the nature and duration of customer loyalty and retention. The requirement for organizations to provide contextual offers and partner with their customers is only getting stronger as markets become more dynamic. Attempt to understand your share of wallet. Customer Retention, Expansion, & Loyalty | Lattice Engines. Brian Vellmure sur Twitter : "End your #CALDC3 experience today w @funnelholic at 4pm and yours truly at 4:45pm in the #marketing / #custexp track.
Science of storytelling: why and how to use it in your marketing | Media Network. “They lived.” Telling a story in two words is a bold move, but Subaru does it in a compelling 30-second commercial. At first glance, hunks and scraps of metal that once resembled a vehicle make it seem as though whoever was in the car at the time of impact could not have survived.
But with Subaru, they did. Powerful stuff. This short commercial is just one example of influential storytelling in marketing. Psychology Today highlights the influential role of emotion in consumer behaviour in four points and makes a compelling case for storytelling: • Functional MRI neuro-imagery shows that, when evaluating brands, consumers primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences) rather than information (brand attributes, features and facts). • Advertising research reveals emotional response to an ad has far greater influence on a consumer’s reported intent to buy a product than does the ad’s content—by a factor of 3-to-1 for television commercials and 2-to-1 for print ads. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7 Must-Have Customer Engagement Tools for 2015. What Business Are You In? Are you sure? As we draw towards the close of 2014 and look ahead to a new year, it’s a time of reflection, evaluation, and goal setting for many people.
Performance reviews (if you’re still doing it the old way), finalizing budgets, and making plans for the next 357 days (until the holiday season rolls around again) are squeezed in on top of normal work and projects with end of year deadlines. While most organizations are locked into benchmarking off of last year’s success to set next year’s goals, a more important question may be looming. Hold that thought for a minute and join me for a quick coffee break. Credit: Getty Images The other day, I walked into Starbucks. I had an hour or so in between meetings, so I had my laptop with me.
Over the past year (seemingly an acceleration of a multi-year trend), I’ve witnessed a steadily growing army of laptop-focused mobile workers in restaurants and coffee shops who post up for hours; working, while paying their rent by purchasing a cup of coffee. 6 questions with the most active VC in marketing tech. The circus known as Dreamforce and the company behind it: A 2014 Retrospective. Over 150,000 registrants, 5,000,000 online streaming views, and well over 1,000,000 meals to help feed the hungry. The stage(s) featured execs from some of the most recognized organizations in the world, a former US Vice President (Al Gore) and Secretary of State (Hillary Rodham Clinton), the poster persona for Self Help (Tony Robbins), the Beach Boys, Bruno Mars, Cake, a consumer product launch from another well known pop music artist – will.i.am, and a heavy focus on philanthropy and global issues.
If you haven’t been there (lately), the description might sound strange for an event that is hosted by the world’s most well known CRM technology vendor. What Salesforce has done with Dreamforce is astounding. It’s currently third on my list of fascinating social experiments behind Las Vegas (its history and growth), and Burning Man. It really is in that same group of phenomenon that transcends boundaries and easy classification (and it’s the only one that doesn’t take place in the desert). Marsha Collier sur Twitter : "Which #Content Catagories are being Shared on Which Devices? #marketing... What connection brings. The kids were sleeping in the backseats as our loaded down Sequoia traversed the winding road over the sheer cliffs that drop down into the vast and rugged Pacific coastline.
I asked my wife in a whisper to do a little bit of research for our pending arrival in San Francisco. After punching on her iPhone for a minute, she whispered back that there was no signal. No signal? A combination of relief and mild panic immediately ensued. I couldn’t find out what the parking alternatives to our hotel in San Francisco were, or make dinner plans, or schedule a route through the city that my boys had never visited before. I wouldn’t be receiving any inbound messages or notifications from my social networks. Worse yet, what if something unexpected were to happen on our journey? We were disconnected. The Tragedy of the Disconnected The party was traveling a new trail that had been recommended to them. If the trip had been attempted today, they would have likely had access to GPS signals.
Survey Reveals Digital Marketing Budgets Will Increase By 10 Percent in 2014. STAMFORD, Conn., April 29, 2014 View All Press Releases Digital Marketing Budget Increase Reflects Focus on Customer Experience Digital marketing budgets will rise by 10 percent in 2014, following a double-digit percentage increase in 2013, according to a survey of marketing executives by Gartner, Inc. The survey found that, on average, companies spent 10.7 percent of their annual 2013 revenue on overall marketing activities, with digital marketing spending averaging 3.1 percent of revenue. These findings are included in Gartner's Digital Marketing Spending report that is based on a survey of 285 individuals located in the U.S., but answering mainly for their entire organization (only 21 percent reported U.S. -only data). "Marketing leaders are securing bigger budgets to define markets, develop offerings, and attract, acquire and retain customers," said Yvonne Genovese, managing vice president at Gartner.
This research is part of the Gartner for Marketing Leaders program. Contacts. Demand for speed driving investment in customer analytics & marketing technology. The cabbie welcomed me and we started on our way to Dulles. The snow had been falling for hours, and his impression was that people would be trying to beat the weather. I was indeed leaving a bit early to make sure to catch my flight back to the West Coast.
The email I received that morning from my in-laws in French Polynesia didn’t help. When he asked what the conference was about, I replied “analytics”. He looked at me with a blank stare. It began to make sense. Analytics growing in strategic importance I heard several folks at this year’s SAS Global Forum making the case that analytics is the trump card that is helping to pave the CIO’s path to the more strategic conversations at executive table. There is also plenty of posturing and championing of new roles like Chief Data Officer, and Chief Analytics Officer. SAS is addressing this market need by making investments in coordinating activities for marketers to allow more sense and respond abilities from one centralized dashboard.
Sources: IBM-Silverpop Acquisition Imminent. IBM Corp. is reportedly in acquisition talks with Silverpop and a deal is imminent, according to multiple sources. IBM is said to be offering about $270 million, which is about triple Silverpop’s estimated annual revenues of $90 million. Representatives from Silverpop declined to comment and IBM officials were not available to respond to the reports. The news points to more consolidation in the industry, including Adobe’s recent purchase of Neolane, Salesforce.com’s deal for ExactTarget and Oracle’s acquisition of Eloqua. Silverpop is focused on supporting interaction with buyers through email, social networks, mobile and web sites — capabilities that are lacking in IBM’s Unica Marketing Operations offering. “IBM gets an enterprise-class B2C email engine that is competitive with ExactTarget and Responsys,” said David M. Observers say that the $270 million valuation seems low compared to other recent deals in the marketing automation space.
Pressure Builds On Independent Vendors. "Growth Hackers. There’s a growing movement in Silicon Valley to replace “Marketers” with a new position called “Growth Hackers”. Some are claiming that startups should eliminate their marketing teams altogether. I agree that marketers in general need to become more data-oriented and tech-savvy.
I also respect many of the techniques that are getting categorized as “growth hacks”. But I seriously question that this narrow new job title somehow replaces or obviates the entire field of marketing. Everything that I’ve read about “growth hackers” seems like a part of the marketing role — a subset of direct marketing blended with product development. As background, here’s how Andrew Chen defined “Growth Hacker” in a widely read piece called “Growth Hacker is new VP Marketing“: “The new job title of “Growth Hacker” is integrating itself into Silicon Valley’s culture, emphasizing that coding and technical chops are now an essential part of being a great marketer.
Growth hacking alone doesn’t build a brand. Marketing Automation Market Share | Market Automation Times. The Content Marketing Journey. The content marketing road is becoming a longer road to travel. In June 2000, there were fewer than 8 million websites. Today that number is greater than 750 million, according to Netcraft.com. The volume of content on websites—from white papers, blog posts, and eBooks to videos and webcasts—is strewn across each side of the road like flashing signs alerting us to important traffic information ahead or, in some cases, backfires.
“With the flood of content continuing to increase, there is no longer scarcity around information,” says Brian Vellmure, who helps B2B and B2C organizations across a variety of industries and sizes accelerate growth through customer-focused transformation initiatives. The content marketing road is only going to get narrower. “As more organizations increase investment in the creation and distribution of compelling content, it is becoming harder to create content that is valuable and truly differentiated for each specific audience,” Vellmure says.
Considering Klout to Lithium Rumors: Mashing Up Content, Influence, and Digital Communities. Earlier this week, I had a conversation with several members of one the world’s most recognizable technology companies. During the conversation, I mentioned Klout, Little Bird, and Lithium, among several other companies doing interesting things on the fringes of mainstream corporate technology adoption. Why? Because the topics of influence and community and digital networks are central to the future of business; the the future of the planet, really. This week, rumors began flying that Lithium is acquiring Klout. Marshall Kirkpatrick, Little Bird‘s CEO and Founder, quickly responded with a positioning post that opined about both influence and the superiority of Little Bird’s view of digital influence. Identity and Influence are important battlegrounds The importance of digital (and real) identity is an important battleground over the next decade, mostly because digital identity will soon be synonymous with identity.
So, back to Lithium and Klout. Is it “working”? So, where does Klout come in? Itamar Simonson: Why Do Consumers Ignore Personalized Offers? Consumers love a deal, and even more so if it’s customized just for them, right? Not so fast, says Itamar Simonson, a marketing professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Simonson has found that rather than being enticed by them, consumers are skeptical of those personalized offers that flood their inboxes.
His research, “Beating the Market: The Allure of Unintended Value,” was published in December 2013 in the Journal of Marketing Research. Marketers have long assumed that touting a promotion as “customized,” “based on your past purchases” or “especially for you” will persuade customers that the product will fit better, fulfill more needs or otherwise prove more satisfying than others. But “telling consumers that an offer is tailored for them can backfire” and lower the chance that they’ll bite, writes Simonson, who co-authored the study with Aner Sela of the University of Florida and Ran Kivetz of Columbia Business School. Why are customers so skeptical? How to Determine the Right Size for Your B2B Marketing Budget. Marketing leaders struggle with top-down allocated marketing budgets. Stop struggling with budgets determined with archaic means.
Begin leveraging best practices when planning your marketing budget amount. World class firms perform marketing budget planning from two dimensions: Top-down – The business allocates a % of total revenue to marketing based on past history and known thresholds in the industry for marketing spend. Bottoms-up – The marketing team performs activity-level planning. This data rich effort reverse engineers the impact desired by using historic data. Do you have enough budget? Why % of Total Revenue Isn’t Enough Most companies benchmark their marketing budget as a percentage of total revenue.
Below is an example of a simple benchmark of marketing budget as a percentage of revenue. While the % spend is useful, it requires a deeper analysis of spend. The total budget also does not point to how the dollars are used. CMO’s Aim for 25% Contribution to Pipeline and Revenue. What's Bigger Than Big Data? | Mitch Joel. How's your big data business strategy coming along? I jokingly tell colleagues in the marketing world, that you can't throw a professional marketer down a flight of stairs these days without the words "big data" tumbling out of their pockets.
There's no need to benchmark brands against their competencies with big data because, quite frankly, most brands don't even have a proper definition for what big data means. Plus, even if they did, there are but a small, few brands who have the technical and strategic capabilities to truly benefit from it. On top of that, most brands are still incredibly weak at leveraging their current data sets to improve outcomes in a faster, more efficient, way. Translated: you have brands worrying about big data, when they're still pretty sucky at small data.
That doesn't diminish big data's ever-growing importance or its pending dominance, but it does take a lot of the steam out of the shiny bright object syndrome engines that we're all faced with these days. Why marketing isn't marketing anymore | VentureBeat | Business | by Bruno Aziza, Alpine Data Labs. Critical Lessons: NFL focuses on a better customer experience - Next Gen marketing on display.
The Digitization of Everything: It’s Impact on the Buyer’s Journey and Marketing’s Role. What Are The Most Popular Topics on LinkedIn Today? Location Revisited: Marketing’s cornerstone takes on a new paradigm. The biggest innovation in marketing is yet to be done: Madlibs with Brian Vellmure. Create a vacuum, don't fill it. Brian Vellmure - Google+ - 8 MULTI-SCREEN LESSONS TO APPLY from on Googles' recent… Brian Vellmure - Google+ - This morning I had the privilege to do an inbound marketing… Best Practices in Inbound Marketing.
Is Your Content Marketing Failing? This Might Be Why | CRMSoftware.TV. The New Way to Segment For a 6x Greater Return. What Does it Take to Write a Billion-Dollar Marketing Story? The New Science of Viral Ads. Ads Worth Spreading: TED Announces Winners of 2012 Marketing Challenge. The Digitization of Human Interactions: From Long Tail to Mass Disruption. Content Marketing: Vendors as Publishers. Why 2 In 5 Facebook Users Click ‘Unlike’ What's the one question you should always ask when creating content? Marketing Under Siege. The Future of Demand Generation. Inbound Marketing is All Connected. B2B Marketing Week- July 11-15, 2011 | Focus.com.