Branded Software Experiences – A Cost-Effective and Critical Component of Your Brand Advertising Mix. Free Whitepaper from the BrandChannel.com
Branded Software Experiences – A Cost-Effective and Critical Component of Your Brand Advertising Mix. Free Whitepaper from the BrandChannel.com
Forrester‘s Marketing department do a great job, and they have cut me a very personal email called the Marketing Leadership home page, which has 6 Success Imperatives – the 6 factors that make a marketing leader successful.
Needless to say each imperative leads to a report that I can’t share, but I can share the imperatives themselves! They are;
1. Harness emerging customer trends. Find the results of global Consumer studies which expose how consumers change their interaction with brands, media, and each other.
2. Thrive on market and technology change. Markets and technologies change rapidly, and effect how your firm manages consumers, content, processes, and business partners. This imperative will help you set priorities and select the right tools and markets to stay ahead of your competitors.
3. Differentiate the brand experience. Brand loyalty continues to drop as product cycles shorten and consumers turn away from advertising. To differentiate your brand from the pack, and justify high margins, find the latest research on brand and loyalty management.
4. Optimise the marketing and media mix. “Half of the marketing budget is wasted; we just don’t know which half” no longer holds true. With new marketing and media planning tools and methods, you can raise the return on every marketing dollar and develop effective multichannel campaigns.
5. Build influence across the company. The role of the CMO is evolving from “market communications” to corporate business strategy, putting the customer first in everything the firm does.
6. Create and nurture high-performance teams and partnerships. The changing role of marketing forces leaders to review their organisation, skills, and partners.
Sound advise as usual from Forrester, who I have to say have always been my favourite analyst co.
It’s not new. But I am reading Zag which is all about the notion that radical differentiation is the #1 discipline of high-performance brands (and I really want to shout about it!)
If you have read it. Apologies.
BUT if you haven’t, part 1 of the Zag workshop explains why differentiation is key:
Bonus. New to Marty Neumeier? This is just as awesome.
There is plenty of discussion out there about B2B and B2C marketing, and whether there is a difference in the disciplines. On the one hand business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy. And yet there is a perspective that buying a product for yourself verses buying for your company is a very different, emotional experience.
Lets face it. There are plenty of good and bad marketing examples on BOTH sides of the divide, and the best marketers will be those that draw best practices from both disciplines.
To that point, this week I saw a great DM piece from Sky. This is clearly a world away from High Technology marketing, but what I received was a timely reminder that you can get inspiration from anywhere.
You see, being a subscriber to Sky+ I get to come home after a hard day at the office, open a beer, and watch my wife’s favourite TV programmes – all series linked using Sky+! It was great of Sky therefore to mail the household to explain that one of the broadcasters in the UK (Channel 4) were making a few changes in my area – and that programmes due to be recorded using Sky+ wouldn’t work on or after a particular date.
Maybe not a big deal at face value eh? Think again. For my wife to be reminded that someone in the household would need to re-select what they wanted to record is a pretty big deal. She works hard all day with two (great) kids, and at the end of a draining day likes nothing more than putting her feet up and watching some dross. With Ugly Betty just one of the programmes set on permanent record, the aftermath of a failed recording would have caused a fair old rumpus in the household.
My wife will have blamed Sky (when in fact this is a broadcasting issue apparently), complained about how poor the service is (it only takes one glitch for a consumer to feel hard done by these days) and held a grudge for quite a while (1 bad customer is worth 10 delighted ones).
The lesson for a High Technology B2B marketer therefore?
The next time a technology partner makes a software update or a major new release, make sure you do a real good job finding out the consequences for your customers, and the potential ramifications. Then in a clear and concise fashion, explain the issues and the route to resolving the issues that might surface. Why? Your brand depends on it. And moreover do it right, and you’ll have a brand advocate on your hands – after all my wife passed me the DM knowing I’d love it.
Best practice in building trust, building a powerful brand, and providing exemplary customer service doesn’t require you to think differently just because you are operating in B2B or B2C. Poor is poor, good is good, and great is great whomever your customer is.
In the year 2000, some of the stars of creative advertising during the 20th century nominated 115 best slogans, straplines, taglines, and headlines. Nick Padmore in The greatest copy shots ever written has analysed the list a bit further.Nick is a digital copywriter at bd-ntwk/London and admittedly has ‘an unhealthy interest in how language works, and where it came from’. Without wanting to steal his thunder, Nick suggests all great copy shots should:
Sound advise? Read on here.
I am a huge ChangeThis fan, and I am always happy to promote a manifesto they publish that I admire. Like Build Your Brand in Bits and Bites: Building Your Personal Brand Online, by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson.
Arruda and Dixson warn: “You are being googled.” Internet research is now a no-brainer in the hiring process, whether you are applying for a job or pitching your bid. So, how can you impress recruiters and clients when they perform this kind of reference check? The authors offer steps to making you digitally distinctive.
