Companies do not need to spend too much time or money on marketing once their customers are happy, as word-of-mouth spreads. Social influencers are tagged by companies for their digital marketing abilities as their recommendations matter a lot especially on blogs and social media. However, often we observe this sort of passion to be missing among customers. In order to inculcate such passion, companies may be advised to follow certain steps. First of all, the company must be aware of its positioning and not try to become something it isn’t good at. The entire market can never be buyers, so companies must address its target audience. A narrative must be built around the brand, which the people can own up to. It must be authentic and believable. A lot of brands make the mistake of simply communicating to the customers. Instead they must talk with them, to gauge authentic business intelligence on market behavior and brand perception. The company leaders must remain accessible and believable while the organization itself stays grounded and focused. All communication must be consistent with the overall message. The brand must never be viewed as an instrument for profits alone but must stand for something way bigger.

Source:https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309897

Uploaded Date:16 March 2018

Branding is an art, firms at several levels of development at grappling with. Its importance cannot be overstated as it leads to increased customer loyalty, pricing power in the market, motivated employees and reduced advertising costs. Marketing heads or company CEOs must ask themselves certain tough questions such as which customer problem their company is solving, or about the core values of the group. Companies must strive to building a proper brand pyramid which is a top-down principle incorporating the principle behind the work, followed by other important brand communication. The pyramid will be a five-step one with its core brand idea on top, followed by its product persona. Then come the emotional benefits, functional benefits and lastly the specific features and attributes. To set up such a pyramid, one needs to start from the key stakeholders such as its founders, top management and heads of customer-facing teams. A brand audit must be performed with them all to understand the key points that really matter. This business intelligence gauged will be crucial for any “current state” document to be prepared. The same will be discussed at the initial meeting. The brand pyramid needs to be agile, where components may be shifted as per current business requirements. It needs to be communicated to the entire company, but only after the key stakeholders have signed it off as official.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/how-to-build-a-brand-pyramid-8491

Uploaded Date:16 March 2018

There are several ways in which Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence (AI) is helping marketing in the present times especially in generating SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads). More than half the executives surveyed in a study by the Stack, reported feeling confident of AI’s impact in improving customer support and service to be highly positive. A similar number have confided in a Capgemini study that AI can help marketing by providing personalized solutions to individual customer types. Such data is also essential for new product development. Possibly as soon as by 2020, as per an IDC White Paper, digital marketing will enter a new phase with personalized multi-channel advertising on an accelerated mode. Customer retention is already showing improvement due to the use of machine learning in predicting risks and establishing intervention models accordingly. The elasticity in price and its further optimization is being enabled by AI across industries such as airlines and hotels. Business analytics is now being used for forecasting demand, setting price in retail and improving efficiency in assortment, eventually leading to an improved EBITDA across industries. AI is also being used for cross-selling and up-selling strategies across customer segments, buyer personas and product lines. There is an upward movement in lead accuracy. The marketing mix is now being devised using AI based data to optimize for sales offers, programmes and incentives. Even specific customer segments are now being defined category-wise using machine learning apps.

Source:https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2018/02/25/10-ways-machine-learning-is-revolutionizing-marketing/#25ae02d25bb6

Uploaded Date:03 March 2018

As per a study concluded, more than a trillion US dollars were spent by various companies in the year 2017 on marketing alone. This puts enormous pressure on marketers to justify the costs to CEOs and CFOs. In order to respond to this seemingly unfair pressure, CMOs have developed their own matrix titled as the Marketing Mix Optimization (MMO). Here the various elements of the marketing mix such as creatives or media are assessed. MMO has gone through two major stages, so it is now time for the MMO 3.0. For this to work well, certain conditions are necessary to be imposed. First of all, the marketing efforts must be aligned with the overall company strategy and periodic targets. The marketers must have access to the data warehousing done, so that meaningful insights may be extracted from the same. A balanced approach is needed to be applied towards business analytics. While it is necessary, analytics must not be considered the final word, as a qualitative humanizing effort is needed to gauge business insights. The analytics that will be gauged needs to be used by marketers who have a sense for the right numbers. Flexibility must be built into the operations. Marketing efforts will thus succeed through proper accountability and using a portfolio of techniques as outlined on MMOs.

Source:http://www.bain.com/publications/articles/how-cmos-can-get-and-keep-their-marketing-mix-right.aspx

Uploaded Date:23 February 2018