The Benefits of Embracing Consumer Privacy for Digital Marketers

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Marketers have been tracking behavior, targeting individuals, and gathering endless data with implicit consent for years now. But after recently learning about privacy breaches across social platforms and search engines, consumers have started taking ownership over their data and privacy rights. As this trend becomes more popular the traditional data tracking strategies will likely no longer be a suitable way to pursue leads and revenue. 

Privacy is something a lot of marketers, and companies as a whole, are starting to take into consideration as making a core principle of the user-first experience. Privacy and transparency have the potential to shift the focus from getting short-term leads to creating long-term trust and consumer relationships. These factors are what have the potential to make your brand stand out among others and why embracing privacy can actually turn into profit. 

 

Here are 5 reasons why marketers should start embracing privacy: 

Gaining customer trust 

Embracing transparency is a way to show you’re an accountable brand and deserve the trust of your customers. When you adapt endless paragraphs of legal privacy jargon to a language regular consumers can understand, it won’t seem that you’re trying to hide something or pull a fast one on them. This allows consumers to let their guard down and begin trusting you so you can then start building loyalty.

 

The opportunity to turn a one-way conversation into a two-way conversation 

Obviously you can’t just stop asking for customer data completely, but sending and receiving data from customers is no longer a unidirectional relationship. You don’t want to keep asking for as much data as possible, only the data that really matters. This means you have to rethink how you want to communicate, instead of just continuing to communicate with the data you already have. Once you’re better aware of what the customer really cares about, you can start building a real relationship and starting a two-way conversation. Showing that you actually care about what’s happening in customer’s life is what makes the difference between brands people love and those that get looked over. 

 

The chance to expand business and increase revenue 

It’s been found in a privacy study that people are willing to invest more money into brands that are known to respect and protect privacy. The research showed that users are even willing to pay more monthly for services that delete their data immediately. Not only is investing in privacy-oriented marketing an economic win, but the data you do receive is much more meaningful. It will help you to provide offers to customers at the right place, at the right time. You could take that data even further to develop more custom-tailored products or services, generating more revenue and creating more value for your customers and your brand. 

 

Contributing to brand experience 

Most companies are trying to comply with privacy regulations, so to stand out you have to be creative. Finding innovative ways to communicate with customers will help build and improve brand experience. The main reason customer data should be used is to improve the experience they have with your company. Which is why it’s important to remember to not ask for too much data, just what’s important and can help contribute back to the customers some how. Brands need to start thinking about creating ideas and experiences that consistently add new value to people’s lives. 

 

Gain better ROI 

When you start focusing on privacy-oriented marketing, you’ll also be able to start focusing more on personalized, efficient marketing. You’ll reduce the time spent on non engaged customers, which allows for more time and effort for those who are already involved or open to your brand. You will be able to further understand the customers that do allow you to use their data, enabling you to tailor messages more perfectly for them. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Embracing privacy isn’t some new marketing secret weapon, as it’s something that every company should comply with. But when it becomes a core value and naturally integrates with the rest of your customer experience, it can start to set you apart from other brands. Privacy will continue to become more important as users continue to get more savvy. Going beyond the bare minimum will not only allow your company to be ahead of the curve, but will help you to be seen as accountable, secure, and trusted to current and potential customers.

 

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Becoming an Experienced-Focused Brand

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The days of the “sell and forget” relationship between customers and brands is long gone. Most brands now aim for having exceptional customer service and continuous customer engagement. Brand loyalty is more crucial than ever due to the internet and social media influencing the acceleration of the “full brand experience” approach. Brands positioned with customer-first, always-on experience optimization approach and build for personalization are becoming market leaders. 

The question is – how can brands achieve this? There is a common misconception that becoming an experience-focused brand is a difficult process. In reality, it is simple and just requires you to listen and observe your current customers. 

 

What Is Brand Experience?

Brand experience is a marketing function that integrates a comprehensive collection of interactions to elicit emotions and feelings from consumers. It shapes the way consumers feel toward a product or business, helps build consumer awareness, and can even create brand-loyalty. An experienced-focused brand has a strategy to continuously deliver positive and meaningful experience throughout every interaction. With every product, service, and process designed, customer experience is at the fore-front of decision making. 

 

How to Become an Experience-Focused Brand:

 

Identify Audiences 

Marketing strategies should never be developed without a target audience or first gaining consumer insight. Customer feedback is essential when it comes to designing an experience catered to them. To get started, determine who is your current audience. It’s helpful to use data sources if possible, such as google analytics, databases, prior research, etc. Find out what your audience likes, what they dislike, their spending habits, what they’re motivated by, or any other important psychographics relevant to your brand. It’s also important to look at loyal customers separately to see if there are any drastic differences between them and average consumers. 

 

Create a Customer Journey Map 

After your audience has been identified the next step is to build out a customer journey map. Some marketers believe this step is not necessary, but a customer journey map can be a very valuable tool. Breaking down the customer journey phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps towards maximizing customer success. Everything a company does essentially revolves around solving customer problems and helping them achieve long-term success with your product or service.

Creating an ideal customer journey map generally has six steps

  1. Determine a clear objective for the map. What are its goals, who is it for, and what is the experience based upon? It may be beneficial to create a buyer persona based on this and the demographics and psychographics that represent your average consumer. 
  2. Perform customer research. Anyway that you can gain feedback from real customers or prospects works. The most important aspect is that you only reach out to those that have or would seriously be interested in purchasing your products or services. 
  3. List out all the touch points where customers can interact with you. This can be directly through your website or outside sources, such as social channels, paid ads, emails, or third party links. It helps to also list out all the action, emotions, motivations, obstacles, and pain points customers experience throughout their interaction with your brand. 
  4. Choose the type of customer journey map you want to create. This is based on the elements you want your map to show. The most common types include current state, a day in the life, future state, and service blueprint. 
  5. Take the customer journey yourself and analyze the results. You should follow the map through each customer persona that was created. Analyzation is where you can discover where customer needs aren’t being met, as well as solutions to other problems they might face. 
  6. Make necessary changes based on the data gathered. 

 

Measure Experience 

While thinking thoroughly from the customer’s perspective and about their journey is important, measuring their experiences from direct interactions is even more effective. The key is to make sure you’re using the right customer experience metric at the right point in the customer journey. A common mistake made by companies is only using one kind of metric for every step in the customer journey. Most customers have different experiences and needs at different stages in the process, which is why a single metric can be ineffective and problematic. There are a variety of customer experience metrics, such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), and Customer Effort Score (CES). It’s also important to ask for feedback at the proper time, through the customer’s preferred channel. The average consumer does not want to spend extensive time giving companies feedback, meaning the measurement process should be as short and easy as possible. 

 

Build the Ideal Experience and Start Putting it into Action

With all the prior steps completed there should be a solid foundation to build a high quality experience directly based on consumer insights. It’s beneficial to perform multiple audits of data and technology throughout the building process. This helps support the automation of personalized, people-based experiences. Aligning stakeholders across the organization is another important element to driving change. Data-driven approaches that prioritize and emphasize customer perspective is extremely valuable when you run into any political or organizational roadblocks. In the beginning it’s beneficial to prioritize quick wins. This way you’re still making progress while laying out critical interactions that take more time, effort, and long-term planning. 

 

Final Steps 

After the ideal customer experience has been built it’s time to test it. Some brands only measure and test their customer experience if it’s new or has been changed recently. Brands that are truly going for being experience-focused should track and measure experience continuously and make regular updates and improvements based on that data and feedback. Brand behavior is more important to consumers today than ever. That means brands have to be prepared to change their behavior when necessary. It’s all about personalization, relevance, and engagement with consumers. 

 

More From Onimod Global 

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Marketing Automation: Why It’s Essential and What to Avoid

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As more businesses shift away from traditional marketing tactics, agencies should follow suit. The times of one-time projects, lower value relationships, and thoughtless solutions with no unified reporting will lead to failure. The demand for full digital marketing services continues to increase, meaning agencies are taking on new clients while trying to keep existing ones happy. But with the rise for the need of digital services also comes the rise of resources available that makes providing those services easier. 

Some agencies have started using automated marketing systems to increase both sales revenue for both their company and their clients. These solutions allow repetitive tasks like email marketing, social postings, and ad campaigns to be automated, not only for efficiency, but to also create a more personalized experience for users. Not to mention, every step customers make can be triggered and tracked as they go through your marketing funnel. Allowing marketers to make appropriate adjustments to ads, campaigns, website, etc. 

Marketing automation is becoming a must have for agencies to stay relevant, but it can lead to failure if it’s not correctly implemented. 

 

Why You Should Use Marketing Automation 

 

Higher Value Relationships 

Marketing automation presents the ability to build and provide hyper personalized services for clients. This includes things like initial automation technology adoption and strategy, creation of email templates, nurture sequences, landing pages, as well as ongoing campaign assets, analytics, and optimization. Providing all these services ,in addition to the initial transition, makes it difficult for clients to change agencies. Not to mention it sets you apart from the competition, as many agencies have not yet integrated automation into their marketing strategy. 

Recurring Revenue 

Marketing automation is what can make an agency go from completing endless one-time projects, to being a consistent, must have resource for a number of companies. Marketing automation is necessary for almost any client and many companies struggle with technology. Many companies also struggle with knowing where exactly they need to personalize messages and where they shouldn’t. That’s where you should come in, and ultimately move towards a retainer-based relationship and consistent revenue. 

Proving Value 

Clients always want to know they’re getting the best ROI possible. When marketing automation is carried out correctly, there should be no issues presenting results. It gives you the ability to show measurable results with comprehensive lead-to-revenue reporting. Since it’s rooted in data, you’re provided the necessary numbers to help clients pinpoint what should be focused on and what should be tossed. Marketing automation also becomes more valuable and a better investment the longer it’s used. The more data there is, the more accurate the results will be, and can hopefully show month to month improvement. 

It’s Necessary to Stay Afloat 

According to Ad Age’s Agency Report 2018, U.S. agency growth is the slowest it’s been since 2010, except for those offering digital marketing services. With the need for digital services growing, marketing automation is basically becoming a must to stay in business. Companies need more data than ever to feel confident about their spending. Marketing automation can assist with all of these aspects when executed correctly. You can create new streams of revenue, attract new clients, provide real evidence of ROI and a service too complicated to take on in-house. 

 

Marketing Automation Mistakes 

A misconception has grown around automation that is can salve for any slowdown in marketing growth, including the need for generating new leads. This leaves many marketers with sophisticated tools automating the middle-of-the-funnel, but no real strategy or solution to generate new leads to nurture in the first place. This commonly results in marketers purchasing email lists to nurture instead of generating inbound leads. While this is a quick solution, it doesn’t work long term. This strategy fails to create a solid foundation for healthy, long-term customer relationships. Instead, it produces spammy content and incredibly low ROI. 

Another mistake is using marketing automation to force customers through a funnel with arbitrary touch points and irrelevant content. Marketers try to pass customers on to the sales department as quickly as possible, creating a disjointed customer experience. When marketing automation operates in a silo like this, points of friction are introduced that stall and strain what could have been productive, long-term customer relationships. Instead, there should be a contextual experience built on each customer’s individual needs. 

 

Final Thoughts 

Marketing automation can be a powerful and effective tool. To make it work it’s essential to understand all components and distinctions. Marketing automation should always be backed by an inbound strategy centered around the prospect, using all the information known about a person to inform the automation strategy. The ultimate goal is to deliver the information people need to make a purchase, when they need it, right where they’re looking for it. 

 

More From Onimod Global 

At Onimod Global we are experts in marketing automation and customer relationship management software. Our work is creating digital synergy and cross-channel digital marketing campaigns driven by machine learning analytics and human intelligence. Together ensuring your brand meets the consumer when and where they need them. Learn more about what we do, or become a client today. 

 

 

Generation Z Marketing Strategies

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Gen Z now makes up 26% of the population and comprises 48% of the total media audience. Their spending power is estimated to be between $29 and $143 billion, without taking into account their influence on household spending. They are a formidable consumer demographic, but the generation gap leaves some marketers struggling to successfully reach them. 

It is true that conventional digital marketing strategies rarely work and there has yet to be a complete consensus of which methods are most effective. But experts are starting to come together to compile their best recommendations and guidelines for successfully marketing to Generation Z. 

 

Highlight Social Awareness 

This generation has a heightened awareness of issues plaguing our society and the rest of the world. They know that what’s occurring now has the ability to strongly impact their futures. Which is why if they discover that a company is engaging in objectionable practices, they will avoid doing business with them at all costs, while making it widely known. Conversely, brands that are positively contributing to society or the environment have the opportunity to be strongly supported by Gen Z. As individuals they have varying beliefs, but they share a number of ideals such as inclusivity, multiculturalism, social justice, environmental awareness, and anti-capitalism.

A great example of a company that has done this is TOMS Shoes. For every pair of shoes purchased, they donate another pair of shoes to a child in need. These are the kinds of campaigns and practices that this generation looks for before fully getting behind a brand. 

 

Focus on Mobile Platforms 

75% of Generation Z selected a mobile phone or smartphone as the device they use most. This means strategies aimed at desktop users are no longer effective, especially when it comes to eCommerce web designs. A study performed by Google revealed that Gen Z mostly uses smartphones to make online purchases, and highly prefer online shopping in general. This means all web designs must be mobile-friendly, the checkout process needs to be simple, and content must be created with mobile devices in mind. Voice search is something else to keep in mind, as its use is on the rise with Gen Z. So it’s important to produce website content which conforms to patterns from everyday speech.

 

Be Personal and Relatable 

Generation Z was raised on the internet, they’ve seen everything there is to see. Which means using traditional sales ad and blatant customer manipulation attempts will fail miserably. Aggressive ad copy should be replaced with relatable and relaxed language. They will only pay attention to ads that are directly related to personal needs and desires. They expect retailers to offer a more personalized experience based on the customer’s shopping habits and preferences. This can be accomplished by creating targeted landing pages, publishing content aimed at the right buyer personas, and giving personal replies to messages on social media.

 

Use Each Social Media Platform Differently 

Social media has been a part of Generation Z’s entire lives. They’re highly aware of what each platform is best for and use each reflectively. Which means you can’t advertise to them in the same way on every platform. Response Media’s study reveals that Gen Z: 

  • Showcase their aspirational selves on Instagram
  • Share real-life moments on Snapchat
  • Get the news on Twitter
  • Glean information from Facebook

Instagram is also most used for brand discovery, with 45% of teens using it to find new products. And YouTube is used most for shopping recommendations, followed by Instagram, then Facebook. These are all things that should be closely kept in mind when conducting social media campaigns, sharing content, etc. 

 

Create Quick, Effective, and Visual Content 

It’s a common misconception that Gen Z has an outrageously short attention span, 8 seconds to be exact. In reality, they actually possess a sophisticated filter that comes from growing up surrounded by a deluge of information. So yes, you have very little time to convince them that your content is worth their time, but if it is, they can focus (or binge) long enough to complete in-depth research on any topic. 

Additionally, 71 percent of 13 to 17 year olds spend more than three hours a day watching online videos. But that doesn’t mean you can throw any video advertisement in front of them and they’ll pay attention. On average, Generation Z clicks “Skip” on skippable video ads after only 9.5 seconds. It all stems back to growing up in an information overload environment. This means you need to start focusing on only giving them the most necessary and important material. 

 

Final Thoughts 

When it comes to marketing to Generation Z, the most important thing is to forget all the misconceptions. They are not a generation of unintelligent, short attention spanned, detached kids that are dooming digital marketing for the rest of the generations. Every new generation of consumers means shifting marketing tactics and best practices in order to continue driving revenue and growing as a brand. When you execute your digital marketing strategy correctly, Gen Z can bring in major revenue, their own as well as revenue from their parents. They care about social responsibility, authenticity, and personable customer experiences. Brands have the opportunity to start engaging with socially active, highly motivated young people. They want to connect with companies, lead a following, or even become loyal brand ambassadors. Generation Z presents a new challenge that may just not seem worth it to some, but they offer the opportunity for huge payoffs with a little bit of work and understanding. 

 

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The Best Post-Cookies Digital Marketing Strategies

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Marketers have been predicting the death of cookies since 2017, and yet it’s still holding on. Safari and Firefox already block third-party cookies by default, and Google Chrome is soon getting the controls to follow. This has been regarded as the “nail in the coffin” for cookies, meaning the end is finally in sight. 

What exactly does this mean for digital marketers that have been relying heavily on cookies for so long? If that includes you, there’s no need to worry. Marketing as we know it will survive. There are a number of more effective data sources being developed, as well as plenty of tactics to break and replace the cookies habit. 

 

People-Based Marketing 

People-based marketing combines real-time behavioral data with first party brand data to create a cohesive marketing system, centered around the individual consumer. This behavioral marketing method does not rely on third-party cookies. Instead it allows brands to use a proactive approach, creating a marketing strategy that’s ready to meet the user wherever they choose to engage. 

A successful strategy includes three key elements: Identification, Data, and Automation. 

Identification: This is the process of identifying and connecting consumers and their devices, with the ultimate goal of ensuring persistent, cross-device recognition for a single view of the customer. This is necessary because most consumers do not spend time online on a single device. A typical consumer navigates through various devices – desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets, while looking at the same products. If the full customer journey is not tracked well, it could lead to incorrect assumptions about their behavior. These assumptions can cause inaccurate data, ultimately resulting in poorly designed marketing campaigns. 

Data: Brands have an abundance of data on each customer, from purchase data to email engagement to device information. Until recently it was impossible to actually put this data to use, due to limitation certain channels have put on it. With the identification-first approach, we can now tap into the dunes of dark data since it all ties back to the first identifying point – the email address. Now, brands can organize all their data the “people-based way,” attributing every piece of data to the single individual in question. And it’s not just historical data, brands can refer to real-time behavioral data like their device, their interaction with your website, their carts, as well as the products and categories they visited while browsing. Linking together these data points allows brands to get a singular view of the customer.

Automation: Instead of relying on cookie-based data, people-based marketing automation relies on first party-based targeting. Brands unlock a singular view of consumers, one that anchors all of the data discussed above to a single email address. As a result, brands can automate their marketing approach across all devices and all channels under a single cohesive marketing strategy. The power of people-based marketing stems from the fact that it looks at the business’ lowest common denominator, the consumer, as opposed to a specific channel or device.

 

Contextual Advertising 

In the simplest terms, contextual advertising is advertising on a website that is relevant to the page’s content. In traditional contextual advertising, automated systems display ads related to the content of your site based on keyword targeting. This is not a new strategy, but keyword contextual based advertising is one of the best options to cookies-based behavioral targeting. The downfall to behavioral targeting is that you may be getting shown ads for things you would never really buy as an everyday consumer. With contextual advertising you’re only shown ads based on the content you’re looking at, not your overall behavior profile. 

Google AdSense is the ideal platform for this type of advertising, giving you the ability to place, images, videos, or text ads on pages of participating sites. You can put dynamic content in front of people that weren’t necessarily searching for you, but were already interested in your field of industry. YouTube advertising, which is a part of the Google Ads System, is another contextual advertising opportunity. For example, you could show a brief video game ad right before a video game tutorial YouTube video. 

The move to contextual targeting will also mean a move back to focusing on producing and distributing relevant content. Extremely specific ads need to be created for equally specific keyword groups and site pages. User relevancy should be maximized, which in turn maximizes clicks, conversions, and ultimately ROI. 

 

Final Thoughts 

The disappearance of third-party tracking may be unsettling at first, but most marketers are starting to believe tracking cookies are no longer needed. Apple’s Safari and the GDPR made the method increasingly unattractive and the expectancy of stricter privacy regulations is why Google is planning on joining the “cookies ban” bandwagon. Moving forward it’s going to be all about exploring new technologies, innovation, and striking a balance between profit and privacy choices to avoid another wave of consumer backlash. Utilizing first-party data that you can get when people intentionally engage with your brand is the first step toward accomplishing this.

 

More From Onimod Global

While there’s no avoiding the changes to come, you don’t have to face these challenges alone. Onimod Global is here to help, with expertise in every area of digital marketing, including SEM, SEO, Social, Web Dev, Graphic Design, and more. Receive the highest-quality customer service, 24/7, at an affordable rate. Learn more about what we do, and start your project today. 

Collecting and Utilizing Customer Feedback

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As we live and work in an era of unprecedented global transparency and digital experience-sharing, feedback has never been more business-critical than today. Feedback, both negative and positive, is constantly being shared about companies, products, and experiences. This is referred to as the feedback economy, and as it has grown, it has become the cornerstone of company growth initiative. 

The feedback economy has changed the way customers make decisions and their expectations are at an all-time high. While gaining customer feedback as become a no-brainer for most companies, analyzing and utilizing that feedback is not so simple. 

 

The Top Ways to Gather Customer Feedback 

Live Chat 

One of the best features an eCommerce website can have is live chat. This option allows companies to get closer to their customers by being able to immediately address needs or challenges. Companies can easily identify patterns of any recurring issues, speeding up the process of finding long-term solutions for those issues. There are a number of services that introduce live chats on any website, such as Zopim. You can make the live chat proactive by making it appear on users’ screens whenever they have been a page for a specified amount of time. This increases the efficiency of the feature and the chances of it getting used.

As with all forms of feedback, the quality of company response plays the biggest role in getting real results. Having employees constantly monitoring the chat is important, ensuring all customers’ questions or concerns are addressed promptly and legitimately. To go even further, you can get feedback on the live chat session. A short survey can be sent to the user, asking whether or not their experience was helpful. This can help companies immediately identify the effectiveness of the chat and chat-support personnel. 

Form-Based Surveys 

Surveys are the most basic and common way to gain customer feedback, but there are many opportunities for error when using this method. It’s common for companies to get carried away with too many questions, trying to get as much detailed feedback as possible. QuickTapSurvey discovered that the number of questions and time spent answering questions is not a linear connection. The more questions a survey has, the less time respondents spend on each question. Meaning that the more questions a survey has, the less accurate and reliable the responses will be. There is no ideal survey length, but from what research has gathered, the shorter the better. A good strategy is to make sure that every question has a clear purpose and will fulfill end goals.

It’s also important to include open-ended questions. While multiple choice questions are quicker for customers to answer, the answer choices are based on company assumptions. Open-ended questions give the customer the opportunity to give their unique and long-tailed opinion. These types of surveys should only be sent to engaged users that will take the time to provide the feedback. 

Consistently Monitor Social Channels 

Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become an invaluable resource for customer feedback. Similar to live chat, there are a variety of tools available to help companies gather conversations that take place on social media about a brand, and even monitor social presence of companies and their competitors. Social listening is a great way to get closer to customers, improve user experience, and quickly respond to comments or issues. Just as with live chat, time is crucial when it comes to handling questions, complaints, or any kind of negative feedback, as it can spread quickly. Social listening requires resources dedicated to monitoring and responding to feedback, as some companies even turn to third-parties. Feedback monitoring should go even further than just on social media, as there are a number of review-based apps and sites that are valuable as well. 

On-Site Comment/Suggestion Boards 

Suggestion boards take gathering feedback further by allowing users to not only collaborate ideas with the company, but with other users as well. Depending on the type of board used, posts can be upvoted or commented on by other users. This can help companies discover what needs or opinions are most popular among their customers. Simplicity and ease of navigation is important. Users should be able to post and comment without any difficulties. Creating categories, allowing users to view the most popular posts, and making it searchable are all ways to increase efficiency and effectiveness. To get started, invite the most engage users to leave ideas, those that know the brand best and can leave legitimate improvement suggestions. After there is a strong base board, other users can be invited to start upvoting, commenting, or leaving ideas of their own. Real results take time, as feedback isn’t accumulated immediately. 

 

Using Customer Feedback 

Product Improvement 

Being able to identify product improvement areas is one of the best things a company can get out of customer feedback. More often than not, loyal and engaged users have developed an expertise of products and their features, maybe even more than employees. No matter how hard brands try to put themselves in their customer’s shoes, users will still have a different perspective and different ideas that wouldn’t have been thought of. It can save time and resources following user advice. Not only will customers appreciate that they’re being listened to, it can set companies apart from the competition as a business that genuinely cares and implements customers’ valid ideas. 

Prevent Customer Churn 

Negative feedback shouldn’t be swept under the rug or kept silent. This is crucial to improve customer service and experience. Ignoring negative feedback has compounding effects. A customer who has taken the time to contact you about a problem is much more likely to spread that information to others, especially if they were just ignored. Failure and negative feedback is actually an opportunity to foster a stronger and long-term relationship with that customer. Understanding these customers’ problems and ensuring future satisfaction is important. Keeping a consistent two-way conversation open goes a long way, by building trust and showing you care. Responding to negative feedback increases the chances of keeping an existing customer, which is cheaper for companies in the long run, and looks better all around.

Empower Employees

Customer feedback can be used as a driver to motivate employees. If there has been consistent positive feedback about one feature in particular, share that with whoever is responsible and the team as a whole. It’s a good strategy for encouraging healthy competition among staff. Similarly if there is any consistent negative feedback about one specific feature, pass it on to those responsible. They should communicate with the dissatisfied customer directly. It can make employees feel more in charge and encourage them to take ownership of products or features. Sharing interesting feedback can help teams start deeper conversations about products and come up with new improvements and ideas. 

Identify Potential Advocates 

Consistently gathering customer feedback can help quickly identify those that are most satisfied and the most loyal. The next step is to develop those customers into valuable advocates. Get them sufficiently educated and excited about products so they can accurately share and recommend them. Advocates don’t need monetary rewards to be motivated. Give them shout-outs on social media, send them exclusive information, deals, or even hand written notes. New customers often trust other customers more than companies themselves. It’s a good sign if more than just the company is boasting about how great their products are.   

 

Final Thoughts 

Creating a product and marketing it well is only half the job. The feedback economy is growing, companies can take advantage of it by having a lasting commitment to gathering, analyzing, and sharing feedback to anyone that plays a vital role in product and business development. Customer feedback is becoming more and more essential for growth and mastering customer experience. A company that falters in listening to customer feedback is a company that will most likely falter in all other areas. 

 

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Understanding Different Types of Location-Based Marketing

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The idea of location-based marketing is not new, but it is becoming an increasingly popular campaign strategy for brands to attract both new and loyal customers. As the use of mobile devices continue to rise and advancing technology is at all-time high, location-based marketing has become easier and more effective than ever before.

It is essential for brands to understand the different types of location-based marketing tactics, to be able to utilize them in the best and most fitting ways for their brand.

 

What is Location-Based Marketing?

Also referred to as geomarketing, it is any form of marketing that incorporates location intelligence to improve the odds of specific ads reaching the right consumers at the right time. As we said before, this is not a new concept, but today’s geomarketing activities are much more advanced than traditional strategies. Marketers now have the ability to engage with people when they actually need your products or services, instead of just sending out ads and hoping you can convince someone they need it or that they will keep you in mind for when they do at a later time. The idea is that it will increase your overall return on investment.

 

Types of Location-Based Marketing:

Geofencing

This refers to serving advertisements or content to consumers based on their real-time location. It uses global positioning or radio frequency identification to define the geographic boundary. Once the virtual barrier is established, the marketer can set up triggers, sending out texts, email alerts, or push notifications when a mobile device enters or exits the area.

Geofencing is a way to engage consumers based on a hyper-local location, triggering immediate sales and helping to understand the consumer mindset. There are a number of tools and technologies brands can use to set the parameters and automatically send notifications, ads, content, etc. The most prominent companies providing these capabilities are Facebook and Google. Snapchat also provides location-specific geofilters that brands can utilize to promote events or raise awareness. There are also a number of push notification providers that provide these tools as well.

Geotargeting

Geotargeting is serving advertising and content to audiences that have visited specified locations in the past. Marketers geotarget through mobile devices because they’re always present and location gives valuable insight on the users’ environment and mindsets. Ultimately making it easier to deliver more relevant content, and hopefully increasing likelihood of sales. The central idea of geotargeting is that understanding consumers real-time or past locations, enables marketers to get as close as possible to deliver the right messages at the right time.

Geo-Conquesting

The goal of geo-conquesting is to attract customers away from competitors using location-based ads. These ads can be served to customers who are currently visiting the competition, or have visited them in the past. The idea behind the practice is that a consumer who is or has been at the competitor’s business is already in the market for a particular product. A competitor that can serve a compelling ad that’s close by has a good chance at attracting that business.

For example, Burger King ran a campaign using geo-conquesting tactics by offering one cent whoppers to those that had their app open when visiting a McDonald’s. To use geo-conquesting successfully, brands must be sure to have accurate location-data, but companies in the field continue to boost geo-data quality. Making the tactic easier and easier to utilize.

Proximity Marketing

Similar to geofencing, this tactic uses technology such as beacons, near-field communication, or augmented reality to trigger ads, alerts, or content to smartphones, but only when they are a few feet from a specific location. This is increasingly used as a fast and easy way to make payments. Smartphones can detect close by credit card terminals, and if your card is linked to your phone, you can make a payment without digging for your wallet. Beverage companies are also starting to take advantage of this tactic with new augmented reality apps, such as Living Wine Labels. Users can scan wine labels with their phone, which then turns the label into an animated display while educating them on that particular wine.

 

The Benefits:

Location-based marketing offers a variety of opportunities that can be utilized by all types of businesses because it’s very low cost, sometimes even free. Everytime you create a page for your business on a location-based service, you’re getting free advertising. The more advanced forms of location-based marketing are still very affordable, but are highly targeted, meaning you’re getting the most out of your ad dollar.

You get to better connect with loyal customers, while attracting new ones. You can allow past customers to leave reviews, getting better insight of their preferences. With check-ins you can also reward frequent customers with discounts, deals, or special offers. It also gives you a tangible way to identify who your most loyal customers are. This can show potential business that you really do value your customers, while keeping the existing ones happy. Some companies also use the tactic of offering specials to first time customers, or first time check-ins. Once you have their attention, you can hopefully turn them into repeat customers by showing them all you have to offer.

This also gives you the opportunity to convert impulses into sales and increase business during slow periods. For example, it’s raining and you sell umbrellas. You can send out ads offering deals on umbrellas to those in your geolocation, hopefully catching someone that needs one. You can also send out deals to those in the area during times of the day you don’t normally get very much business. Let’s say you’re a coffee shop near a university and you don’t get many customers from 1-4 pm. You now send texts to students within 2 miles of your business offering $1 off coffee during that time. Even though you’re offering a discount, you’re still getting more sales than before, and maybe generating loyal customers for the future.

 

Concerns:

Some consumers worry about privacy when it comes to GPS or location tracking. A critical step in utilizing location-based marketing is understanding how these audiences are created and how to ensure consumers that their privacy is protected. The data should always be aggregated and anonymized, preventing individual tracking. This is a common practice because there is no incentive to gain from building a campaign around an individual person. It’s best practice to not build audiences off of any sensitive locations, such as anything related to healthcare. Most, if not all, location-based marketing services follow and adhere to the codes of conduct from various industry groups. Marketers generally prefer to reach as many people as possible within their target market. As long as users are aware that they are opting-in to share their location, and that they can opt-out if they chose, there are generally no issues.

 

Conclusion:

Location-based marketing offers unique opportunities and benefits that traditional marketing tactics cannot. Though any successful campaign will rely on multiple strategies and tactics to reach success. While data is extremely critical, content quality is equally, if not more important.

If you’re struggling to generate visibility, reach, or business in general, we can help. At Onimod Global we are experts in digital synergy, creating cross-channel digital marketing campaigns driven by machine learning analytics and human intelligence. Together ensuring your brand meets the consumer when and where they need them. Learn more about what we do here, or contact us today here.

The 411 on 1:1 Marketing

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The “one size fits all” mass marketing method has been well on its way out of style. Before it was all about getting out a message to as many people as you possibly could, hoping that at least one of them would become a customer. Over the last few years marketers have discovered that going this route is generally not the most cost effective. They’re now trying to send out more personalized messages to a more specific target market. 

One-to-one marketing, also referred to as relationship marketing, is by no means a new strategy, but has become one of the most popular buzzwords of 2019. It focuses on personalized interactions with each customer, catering to their individual behavior and needs. The challenge faced by marketers now is how to achieve this digitally. While brands are constantly updating their process to be more customizable, it still has yet to be perfected.

Types of One-To-One Marketing

Customization

This gives each customer the ability to customize the product to fit their own taste. The company doesn’t have to learn the preferences of each individual customer. It just has to produce and manufacture each product differently, according to the preferences set by the customer.

An example would be how Nike.com gives consumers the opportunity to customize their own shoes, deciding the colors, material used, etc. Some social media platforms also let users customize their profiles by giving the option to alter their feeds to fit their own preferences and interests. 

Personalization

With personalization the company takes the time to learn the personal preferences of each customer individually. The company then customizes its marketing plan accordingly, catering to the tastes of each individual.

Amazon.com is considered one of the most successful at using this strategy. They collect data on users based on what they have bought or looked at in the past. Amazon then uses that data to recommend new products for them to purchase.

Why it Works

One-to-one marketing takes customer relationship management data, then segments, activates, and measures that data to discover the customers of highest value, while maximizing reach to them. One-to-one marketing generates lift, has the ability for extremely specific segmentation, as well as producing measurable results. You have the ability to substantially increase conversion rates due to the fact that you’re delivering more relevant messages to each audience segment, according to the feedback from those segments. You’re also creating micro-segments, targeting each customer specifically and uniquely.

Getting Closer to One-to-One Personalization

As we said before, this is not a new concept, but taking it and perfectly applying it to the digital marketing world has difficulties. MarketingLand has found 5 steps brands have started integrating into email campaigns, attempting to get closer to reaching one-to-one personalization.

1. Practice Good Data Hygiene

Remove inactive subscribers, duplicate emails, and fake accounts regularly. The quality of your content doesn’t matter if it’s not making it to the right, and legitimate, people.

2. Maintain Good Relationships with ISPs

Brands need to follow the best practices to maintain good relations with internet service providers such as Google, Yahoo, etc. A poor reputation can prevent your brand’s emails from reaching your subscriber’s inboxes. Monitor your reputation by frequently reviewing and adjusting targeting, frequency, and deployment strategies.

3. Use User-Friendly Templates

The development, creation, and deployment of campaigns can take weeks, maybe even longer, if marketers don’t have a streamlined process with the right tools in place. Marketing teams can build responsive, dynamic campaigns without coding, using drag-and-drop functionality. Production time can be cut in half, allowing your team to create more relevant content for more of your audience.

4. Dynamic Content Blocks

These have the ability to cater to each subscriber segment, creating greater efficiencies when changes frequently occur. For example, in retail there is a constant movement of pieces from inventory to offers that have the possibility of changing at a moment’s notice. Building automated pieces of content into template ensures that these last minute changes can be made with no real labor. This reduces production and also allows the design team to focus on other, more important tasks.

5. Have a Robust Trigger Program

This is the easiest way to implement personalization for email programs. The program delivers relevant content in a timely manner with the results being open rates exceeding far above averages promo messages. MarketLand suggests to frequently check subscriber activity, purchase history, browser behavior, preference data, etc. to find additional ways to boost your program. These triggers can provide a jump in revenue with less maintenance in content creation.

Additional Thoughts

All marketers are aware that individualized content is the best way to build awareness and relationships with customers. While it’s easy for smaller companies to personally communicate with each individual customer, there are many barriers when trying to make that happen on a much larger, digital scale. Despite the challenges, marketers are employing a variety of strategies that are allowing them to get much closer to one-to-one personalization. 

More From Onimod Global

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Why Programmatic Video Advertising is on the Rise in 2019

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In the recent years programmatic advertising has quickly gained a substantial amount of popularity, especially among digital advertisers.

It’s estimated that they will be dedicating even more of their budgets to programmatic video inventory in 2019. It is estimated by eMarketer that programmatic video ad spend will reach $29.24 billion, which would account for almost 50% of all programmatic display advertising spending this year.

Why exactly is this strategy gaining so much popularity and why do digital advertisers believe it is valuable enough to be spending almost half of their budget on it? Are there possible downfalls?

What is Programmatic Video Advertising?

Programmatic video advertising is essentially the use of bots to buy ad space according to set prerequisites. The advertiser enters a detailed description of their ideal audience, their budget, and their ads into the program. The program then takes user data and uses real-time bidding to display the ad to a user that fits the ideal client profile, the advertisement with the highest bid is given the spot. This process is completed before the page loads. Ideally, the ads are only being shown to people that would actually be interested in what’s being offered, to hopefully get the most out of the ad spend.

The Benefits:

Greater Reach

The internet averages billions of users at any given time, with the possibility to reach millions, depending on the targeted parameters. Programmatic enables advertisements to reach a variety of different channels across platforms that companies would not otherwise have the ability. The program has an extensive web of established connections that allow these companies to reach new users across all platforms. Not only does the message have the potential to reach a larger amount of people, it also reaches specific people, those identified as the ideal audience.

More Specific Targeting Capabilities

Programmatic technology uses behavioral analysis to pinpoint the audience that the ads are best tailored for. The program is capable of IP targeting, geolocation targeting, contextual keyword targeting, and retargeting. This means advertisers and marketers can continue to reach those ideal customers that have yet to make a conversion to the website.

Uses Real-Time Data

As soon as a campaign is released, every detail is immediately trackable. You don’t have to wait until the end to measure the results. As soon as an ad is displayed the impressions, who it was seen by, where they were located, ect. can be instantly analyzed. This also allows to make changes whenever necessary, ensuring you’re not spending ad dollar in the wrong places.

The Challenges:

Fraud Risk

With the ultra simplified process of being able to buy and sell ads, anyone is essentially capable. The most common instances of fraud in programmatic advertising are non-viewable ads, as well as bot traffic. The problem of non-viewables is that the ads are reported as placed and displayed, but they were actually buried, never reaching the user. And while bots can make things very efficient, they can also be used to fool the system. The artificial traffic is used to drive up the prices, resulting in higher ad spend.

Ad Misdirects or Misplacement

Publishers can sometimes forward ads to affiliated entities, getting displayed there instead of their intended placements. This could mean that the ad never actually reach its targeted audience. Depending on the ad, this could be harmful to brand image. For instance, if an adult-intended ad ended up being displayed on a children’s site. While stronger preventative measures are being created, issues can still frequently occur.

It gets Costly

As the precision of pinpointing the perfect customer increases, so does the price. Depending on how specific your audience is, it may be more beneficial in the long run to purchase the more expensive program. You don’t want to be wasting money on an audience that would never even consider what you’re offering.

Final Thoughts

There’s no doubt that programmatic advertising is extremely efficient, but just as every other advertising platform there are a variety of downsides that come along with the advantages. As with anything, you just need to decide if those benefits outweigh the risks.

For more information regarding the newest digital marketing trends, visit the Onimod Global Website. If you’d like to see what we’ve done for other companies and can potentially do for you, click here, or if you’re ready, you can request a quote here today.