A 9 step approach to help understand your global customers
Editor's note: This is the first in a series of articles giving best practice advice on International Marketing using digital media. I'm delighted that Emma Durant, a specialist consultant in this area, has agreed to share her knowledge on how to best use digital marketing channels for this; a neglected topic since many marketers are faced with this challenge.
Dave Chaffey
Everyone in marketing knows the importance of understanding your customers. In a way, this becomes an even more important issue when faced with a global digital strategy, as you not only need to understand them, you also need to look at their regional differences and similarities.
Step 1. Confirm your global business customers
You should already have a clear idea of who your overall target customer groups are as a business. If not, then you need to…
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May 24, 2011
Some still don't get the potential of digital media
A friend of mine who works for a brand development agency, made a comment the other day, which summed it up for me. He suggested that digital agencies don’t really need to understand about brand as digital marketing is not really about strategy is it, but about execution, right?
I find this idea both short-sighted and dangerous. The idea that to develop digital communications you don’t need to understand the longer-term objectives and goals of a business just doesn’t stack up. Digital can no longer be (and should never have been) considered a ‘tactic’, but demands the same level of strategic planning and direction as any other communication.
So in my first post for Smart Insights, I thought it would be useful to look at approaches we can use to harness the power of digital media to build brands.
Why branding should be at the…
Online Customer Experience and Branding - an example of integrating the website and social presence
Today, with so many prospects and customers interacting with you online, I believe your brand really is greatly influenced by the Online Customer Experience you develop. But I think many don't see how a website can support and especially enhance their brand. In this posts I'll share an approach I use with businesses and I hope you can adapt this model for your own business or your clients - it's classic brand marketing.
Brand value mapping
The first stage is to understand where a brand is right now. I was recently discussing this approach with my class for marketing students in Derby. As a starting point we did a brand mapping activity for different companies. The areas highlighted in red are the key review areas for your online brand.
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Lisa Wood, Head of Marketing at HSBC Bank International explains the thinking behind their annual customer engagement campaign
HSBC International offer Offshore banking, so people living overseas are a key audience, with the Expat Explorer survey a key part of customer communications strategy:
It was great to get the opportunity to interview Lisa about the commercial thinking behind the campaign since I've used this brand-led campaign as an example of this customer engagement approach for several years now in my digital strategy and SEO workshops. I think it's a good example of how you can develop a customer engagement device within an audience that's often time poor and it really adds to what the brand offers.
The fourth survey has just gone live, so in this timely…
The somewhat surprising Number 1 is eBay - really!?
Well, according to the guys at Yomego (who run social media monitoring software from Alterian SM2) that's the case. Certainly not the first brand to jump to mind, and not one of the company's that we hear much off on the social sites like Mashable.
[caption id="attachment_4248" align="alignright" width="399" caption="Snakes & ladders: The social top 50"][/caption]
The SMR Index gauges brands' social effectiveness using reach (social noise surrounding the brand) and satisfaction (popularity). Also factoring in the "recency" of social interactions, the index then ranks companies…
Why your blog should be *the* focal point for building your brand online?
I'm still surprised how little blogs feature in digital marketing strategy and planning -- whether marketers run a corporate or brand blog as part of their web strategy, or leveraging third party blogs via blogger out-reach.
Blogs can also give you a hub for syndicating content and offers via the social networks as this post by Dave on blog content syndication shows.
I believe that this area really needs taking more seriously, the latest information from Technorati's 'State Of The Blogosphere' (Technorati quiz several thousand bloggers) reveal some interesting take-aways that I'd hope provide some motivation:
Blogs are the new news: The blogosphere is still in transition, and still they have mainstream influence - you only have to look how progressive brands are leveraging bloggers to promote their latest product, message or campaign.
Blogs are social:…
Is Your Brand Inspiring The Millennials?
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: Our modern concept of convenience is about getting what you want, when and how you want it - whatever that may be, so says Nick Parish - the North American Editor of Contagious. Blogging on Mashable, Nick believes that it's down to Millennials, or as Edelman call them 8095-ers. Double-jargon alert, I know, that's people born in 1980-1995 in short. I feel a lot of us have come to expect that, it's how it is, and probably how it always has been when change happens and a new reality dawns for enough people - a Tipping Point as Malcolm Gladwell puts it.
Edelmen's 8095 survey is important and insightful to what is an influential market - did you know that 8 in 10 Millennials take action (or at least claim to, whatever action is) for brands that they trust - their…
A liveblogging summary from ECMOD 2010
Online, Kevin is best known as @minethatdata, his moniker showing his passion for getting the most from your customer and sales data. I has worked at some of the biggest multichannel retailers in the world including Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer, and Lands' End using an analytical driven approach to improve profitability.
I was pleased to be in the audience at the ECMOD Conference to learn from Kevin as he explained his consulting approach of multichannel forensics which he has applied over 50 companies in the last 3 years covering 1 billion purchase transactions!
Challenges of catalogue marketing
On a positive note he revealed that on average c40% of customers should return over time to buy again, the Internet hasn't changed this greatly.
Instead, acquisition is the biggest challenge for majority of his clients - it's becoming harder to acquire new customers through time, e.g. mailing lists are now…
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently caused a stir at the Nielsen Consumer 360 conference by reportedly stating that Email is dead (she would say that wouldn't she and if you listen to the whole clip she didn't actually say what she was widely reported to have said).
However, her argument that only 11% of teenagers use Email daily is compelling and I find when talking to students they don't really understand the concept of email marketing - they just perceive most marketing emails as Spam while being positive about integrating with brands through social networking sites.
What consumers say about their email and social media usage
Two recent surveys from the email industry suggest email is very healthy in terms of account usage and…
I recently read a great document, Brand Trends for 2010 (PDF), by Brand Keys with sound principles that can be applied to many business. It got me thinking how brand development has really come to the fore in digital marketing, likely because of the rise of social media, after the long obsession with all things direct response. I think this is a good thing and in line with what matters to us, as customers.
So, for my first post on Smart Insights I wanted to explore some of the Brand Keys predictions further, share my thoughts and see if anyone else had things that they wanted to share on this subject given that "€œbranding"€ and "€œbrand development"€ have so often being misunderstood.
First - It"€™s important to recognise that building a strong brand has always been important if differentiation and avoiding having a commoditised product or service matters to you.…
