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Chart of the Week: Pandemic hits high-ticket air travel and cruises, alongside small pleasures such as eating out, as marketers reassess what constitutes value for customers right now and how digital marketing can help

Charts from Market Insider paint a grim picture of life for marketers in the travel industry as airline and cruise numbers plummet

The biggest cruise names in the pandemic are, of course, Princess Cruises' The Diamond Princess Yokohama (with 700 passengers infected and eight deaths) and the Grand Princess (now in day 14 of quarantine in San Francisco). Analysts at Goldman Sachs are comparing the pandemic to similar scale events such as the 2001 recession, the 2008 financial crisis, and, the Costa Concordia disaster of 2012 (another cruise ship disaster, where 33 passengers died off the coast of Italy).

"Averaging the moves made after such events, cruise prices dipped by 6.3% and took roughly…

Five ways marketers can benefit from continuing professional development

As marketers we can sometimes become insulated from the world around us. But when we poke our heads above the parapet, it’s surprising what we can learn from others. I’ve always been interested in how other people approach their jobs, and a couple of recent conversations with friends opened my eyes to the way engineers, IT consultants and doctors approach their professions. Unlike engineering, or professional services such as accountancy, the marketing profession doesn’t put the same emphasis on continued professional development (CPD) and chartership. I’ve been a Chartered Marketer for over 10 years but I’ve never been asked about it by anyone, including colleagues, hiring managers or agencies. Whilst experience and aptitude is crucial, I also believe it’s important to have strong, up-to-date knowledge and understanding so we can practice our craft as marketers with confidence. …

Good service once earns one happy customer. Consistently good service builds a satisfied, loyal customer base.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a sole proprietor doing everything in your business, you can’t control how your customer service teams work at every moment. How do you make sure customers get a consistent, positive experience every time they interact with you?

Customer service needs to be at the heart of your business. It’s not something that’s limited only to the customer service team. Your company culture and the heart of everything you do need to revolve around serving your customers as well as possible.

This blog post explores 2 case studies - which highlight the dos and don'ts of customer service in 2020. But first, how can you lay the groundwork that makes it simple and rewarding for your employees to provide good service every time?

Building strong customer relationships

Before you can develop…

Smart Insights members and followers have been discussing positive brand responses to Coronavirus which have moved us and impressed us.

We hope you will find this summary of some of our favourite responses below helpful. It may even spark a new idea for your business to help you weather the global economic impacts of COVID-19.

Social media giants' joint industry statement - Stu Miller

To me, the single best response has been the big social networks agreeing that ensuring truth of information on their platforms is incredibly important - especially at this time. We can only hope that this remains the case once COVID-19 has passed - it's long overdue!

Free access to and guidelines from forward-thinking online events platform - Tiago Caramuru 

InEvent has opened free access to its software…

Channel sales compose a fundamental part of most business models. Trusted partners can help companies enter new regional markets with little investment or expand their share in existing markets.

But most channel partners will work with more than one brand, so a business needs to establish close relationships with its partners to boost its channel sales strategy. In a crowded landscape, live experiences (online and offline) have proven to be a successful way for brands to establish relationships with target audiences. Traditional marketing can communicate the quality of your brand’s product and the value of your relationship, but connecting channel partners with your brand amplifies the impact even more. With the right B2B event marketing strategy, you can build confidence in your brand plan and help secure further investment, too. [si_guide_block id="146918" title="Download our Business Resource – Channel and partner marketing improvement guide" description="In this guide we'll show you the seven factors that you should use…

As a small business owner, you can’t do it all. The first step is admitting you need help. The second is deciding how/when you could benefit from collaborating.

Before jumping to conclusions, you should first determine if your particular project is suitable for outsourcing. Assess your team’s competencies and define your marketing production workflow. Only then can you make the best decision for each of your projects.

Your team doesn’t have to do it all

After prioritizing your projects (however your organization does that), it’s time to decide whether any of them are appropriate to be outsourced. To help with this decision, consider these key questions: Is this project mission critical? Is the success of this project critical to the success of our organization (to our vision and KPIs)? Is this project strategic? Does this initiative/project involve things like the integration of new marketing technology, or a revamp of our customer experience? Is learning…

Cost-plus (times based) or value discussion: which one works better for your agency?

When I was putting together the new agency guide to pricing digital marketing, I made a conscious effort to call it exactly that - a pricing not a costing guide. I grew up in agencies that talked about ‘cost proposals’, ‘costing projects’, ‘cost to client’ and spreadsheets that had cost against each deliverable rather than ‘price’. In putting the new guide together, I referred back to two existing project budget workbooks that are on Smart Insights. But I refreshed them and renamed the line items from cost to price. Why am I reinforcing point this so much? Because if you start with the idea of ‘Price’ and not ‘Cost’ (Time + Materials + a markup) you are on the way to actively thinking about how your agency makes money – by providing value to clients (and therefore earning a value-based…

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Facebook and Instagram issue rallying cry for social media marketers to meet customers on their terms, Shell investigated over "drive carbon neutral" claims, UK 2020 Budget and what it means for marketers

Welcome to this week's news roundup, where we're taking a look at a couple of important social media updates, a key investigation into a fossil fuel company's bold "sustainability" claims, and what the UK 2020 Budget could mean for marketers both within the UK and internationally.

IGTV re-sharing live videos update

Breaking the 60-second limit, Instagram’s IGTV - the vertical video platform for influencers, brands and fans alike - has made headlines this week.

After a rocky start (who wants to be the first to produce an hour of content for their followers?), Instagram has made a number of strategic decisions to increase IGTV traction. By introducing IGTV previews into users’ Instagram feeds, it attempted to bridge the gap between…