By Nicole Coons
Marketing Vanguard/Principal Consultant
Integrated Marketing Solutions
Frost & Sullivan
Marketing leaders from around the globe recently convened at the Boston, MA, Copley Plaza for the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, excited to discuss their day-to-day issues and solutions and strategies for meeting the new demands being placed on them and their teams.
During this three-day marketing think tank, participants asked each other questions like “How are you showing an ROI in your content marketing?” and “How are you engaging audiences across differing segments using social media?” Marketers also benefited from presentations delivered by marketing leaders who shared their stories of transformed brands, cultures and products, as well as marketing’s role in creating and sustaining value for customers.
If we had to pick one word that encapsulates this year’s theme of “how to stay connected and engaged with your empowered customer”, it would be Innovation. Innovation is finding a better way of doing something. For marketers, that means finding better ways to create value in the eyes of the customer.
Keynote speaker Stephen Liguori, former Executive Director, Global Innovation & New Models at GE, made a strong case for innovation as the marketer’s fundamental role. He distinguished innovation from invention in that innovation is “the process of translating an idea (the invention) into a good or service that creates value for which customers will pay.” He went further to say that marketing’s emerging new role is to lead innovation because it’s the marketers who bring the voice of the customer to the table. He summarized his point “It’s the value of the innovation that determines success or failure…if you focus on the value of innovation, you can build a successful career.” Stated by another keynote, Andy Burtis of McKesson, marketing itself is now the value-creating product.
Participants at MARKETING WORLD 2014 came away with a number of lessons that will help them create more value in their marketing and deepen connections with their empowered customers. Here’s our take on the top 10. If you were at this year’s event, please share your top take-aways in the comments below.
1) Check your brand. Social media is definitely the topic du jour. But the advice that got heads nodding was this: don’t attempt anything in social media until you’ve got three other essentials right: Your brand, your people and your customer service.
2) Invest in great talent. Several presenters echoed this advice, including Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, where the right talent doing the right work helped the organization achieve high visibility and success with its marketing campaigns. Other presenters and participants shared examples where the success of certain social media programs, data analysis, and even product innovation were due to one or two key talented team members. Hiring people who are knowledgeable, skilled and creative in the areas where you need expertise can make all the difference in your marketing program success—implementing new software alone won’t solve everything. Crowd sourcing is yet another way companies are locating great talent to make significant strides in value creation.
3) Map your customer’s journey—all of it. Over fifty percent of the audience polled during a keynote presentation said they are using journey mapping and personas to develop a picture of their targeted audiences. Furthermore, marketers are urged to consider both the “choosing” and the “using” stages of the customer journey. Seek to understand how you are viewed by the customer along this journey, and then connect how you serve their needs along that path by looking at your operational processes.
4) Know your customer’s 100 pain points and then focus on the ones that you uniquely solve the best. This was a little nugget that was conveyed by a number of presenters—also coined the “no stone unturned” approach by Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Jessica Jeffcoat. She advises, “Listen before you add to the noise…and be open to the inherent value expressed by your customers. What do they say is most valuable? Then use those exact words as you communicate.”
In conversations about personas and personalization of content, the experts advise that it’s essential to know as much as you can about your target (up to 100 pain points, according to one presenter). Then decide what conversations you want to be a part of—hopefully it’s those where you have the most to give. This action step is also a reminder to marketers that we needn’t be everything to everyone. There’s a chance for a deeper connection with your customer, and hence more value shared, when you choose to focus on serving through what your business does best.
5) Start with just a handful of personas. Many who are just beginning to work with personas wanted to know how many a company should have. While there was never a magic number deemed to perfectly capture the essence of every customer, two helpful rules of thumb were 1) fewer is better and 2) consider that you have your current personas (those who buy from you today) and your aspirational personas (those markets you want to capture in the future).
6) Check your content for value. Here are some questions you can ask yourself about your content to see how well it’s adding value. Any one of these attributes will raise the level of your content from a sales pitch to useful content that builds connections with your audience:
7) Get savvy around digital and data. Marketing automation and Big Data were recurring themes, as it’s an area that’s bringing marketing from an art to a science. Data sophistication is increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making for marketers. As discussed by Ian Cross, Professor, Bentley College and Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, data is a critical asset that needs to be managed and turned into an opportunity. The next generation of marketers who are data driven and adept at the technical and analytical aspects of working with data will be able to turn findings into monetizing opportunities and things of value. Once again, it’s not the data itself creating the value, it’s about how well people use it.
8) Invest in some form of marketing automation. Taking the previous point a step further, the fastest way to get savvy around digital and data is to jump in and begin using it. Marketing automation is a rapidly evolving field and the array of choices is dizzying; the fact is that these tools are helping to put marketers back at the table with credibility. Marketing automation tools provide actionable insights and tools for measuring ROI. Look for tools that are flexible and offer scalability.
9) Ensure you are mobile-ready. According to Matthew Donegan-Ryan, Director of Mobile Strategy at Cvent, the average person checks their smart phone 150 times a day. That translates to about once every six minutes. The average user has 65 apps on their phone or iPad, downloading one new app every month and discarding those that are not useful. You now have to assume that your audience is consuming most of your content from a device other than their desktop. Websites and emails need to have responsive design for tablets and smart phones, and the rest of your content needs to be easy to consume from these devices as well. Perhaps this explains the increase in the popularity of video. While it may be hard to read a three-column PDF file on your phone (hint: one-column pages are mobile-friendly), video can easily be consumed while listening and watching. Many examples of video marketing were shared during the event, and video content has the added benefit of helping you break through the noise.
10) Be okay with feeling scared. The audience collectively exhaled when Stephen Liguori issued this advice. “The truth is,” he said, “we’re all scared, and that’s a good thing… It’s okay not to have the answers.” He finished with the following four-step call to action, which superbly summarizes some of the most salient points from throughout the Executive MindXchange:
These were just a few of the potentially one hundred or more take-aways from the 15th Anniversary 2014 MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. If you attended, we’d like to know what action items you took away. If you didn’t make it, what questions do you hope are answered at next year’s event? Share with us and your peers below!
Marketing Vanguard/Principal Consultant
Integrated Marketing Solutions
Frost & Sullivan
Marketing leaders from around the globe recently convened at the Boston, MA, Copley Plaza for the 15th Anniversary MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, excited to discuss their day-to-day issues and solutions and strategies for meeting the new demands being placed on them and their teams.
During this three-day marketing think tank, participants asked each other questions like “How are you showing an ROI in your content marketing?” and “How are you engaging audiences across differing segments using social media?” Marketers also benefited from presentations delivered by marketing leaders who shared their stories of transformed brands, cultures and products, as well as marketing’s role in creating and sustaining value for customers.
If we had to pick one word that encapsulates this year’s theme of “how to stay connected and engaged with your empowered customer”, it would be Innovation. Innovation is finding a better way of doing something. For marketers, that means finding better ways to create value in the eyes of the customer.
Keynote speaker Stephen Liguori, former Executive Director, Global Innovation & New Models at GE, made a strong case for innovation as the marketer’s fundamental role. He distinguished innovation from invention in that innovation is “the process of translating an idea (the invention) into a good or service that creates value for which customers will pay.” He went further to say that marketing’s emerging new role is to lead innovation because it’s the marketers who bring the voice of the customer to the table. He summarized his point “It’s the value of the innovation that determines success or failure…if you focus on the value of innovation, you can build a successful career.” Stated by another keynote, Andy Burtis of McKesson, marketing itself is now the value-creating product.
Participants at MARKETING WORLD 2014 came away with a number of lessons that will help them create more value in their marketing and deepen connections with their empowered customers. Here’s our take on the top 10. If you were at this year’s event, please share your top take-aways in the comments below.
Top 10 ways to create more value for your customers through marketing
1) Check your brand. Social media is definitely the topic du jour. But the advice that got heads nodding was this: don’t attempt anything in social media until you’ve got three other essentials right: Your brand, your people and your customer service.
- Make sure your brand is solid. As Jamie DePeau, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer of Lincoln Financial Group stated, “Are you really evolving the way you help and serve, or are you just updating your website and changing your logo?” Keep your marketing engaging by keeping your brand relevant and timely for your targeted audiences. This advice was reiterated throughout the Executive MindXchange.
- Next, care for your people (employees, partners, ecosystem) and ensure they know the value proposition and are motivated to uphold and share your company’s vision.
- Finally, before entering the world of social media, content personalization and the rest, make sure you have a handle on your customer’s journey once they become a customer. Nothing will kill a new customer’s spirit faster than a bad experience, and social media only increases the speed of negative customer service “wild fires”.
2) Invest in great talent. Several presenters echoed this advice, including Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, where the right talent doing the right work helped the organization achieve high visibility and success with its marketing campaigns. Other presenters and participants shared examples where the success of certain social media programs, data analysis, and even product innovation were due to one or two key talented team members. Hiring people who are knowledgeable, skilled and creative in the areas where you need expertise can make all the difference in your marketing program success—implementing new software alone won’t solve everything. Crowd sourcing is yet another way companies are locating great talent to make significant strides in value creation.
3) Map your customer’s journey—all of it. Over fifty percent of the audience polled during a keynote presentation said they are using journey mapping and personas to develop a picture of their targeted audiences. Furthermore, marketers are urged to consider both the “choosing” and the “using” stages of the customer journey. Seek to understand how you are viewed by the customer along this journey, and then connect how you serve their needs along that path by looking at your operational processes.
4) Know your customer’s 100 pain points and then focus on the ones that you uniquely solve the best. This was a little nugget that was conveyed by a number of presenters—also coined the “no stone unturned” approach by Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Jessica Jeffcoat. She advises, “Listen before you add to the noise…and be open to the inherent value expressed by your customers. What do they say is most valuable? Then use those exact words as you communicate.”
In conversations about personas and personalization of content, the experts advise that it’s essential to know as much as you can about your target (up to 100 pain points, according to one presenter). Then decide what conversations you want to be a part of—hopefully it’s those where you have the most to give. This action step is also a reminder to marketers that we needn’t be everything to everyone. There’s a chance for a deeper connection with your customer, and hence more value shared, when you choose to focus on serving through what your business does best.
5) Start with just a handful of personas. Many who are just beginning to work with personas wanted to know how many a company should have. While there was never a magic number deemed to perfectly capture the essence of every customer, two helpful rules of thumb were 1) fewer is better and 2) consider that you have your current personas (those who buy from you today) and your aspirational personas (those markets you want to capture in the future).
6) Check your content for value. Here are some questions you can ask yourself about your content to see how well it’s adding value. Any one of these attributes will raise the level of your content from a sales pitch to useful content that builds connections with your audience:
- Does it tell a story?
- Is it personal?
- Is it emotional?
- Are you wrapping your customer in an integrated experience?
- Are you speaking to your audience at all points along their decision process?
- Are you helping them compare?
- Are you helping them understand why?
7) Get savvy around digital and data. Marketing automation and Big Data were recurring themes, as it’s an area that’s bringing marketing from an art to a science. Data sophistication is increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making for marketers. As discussed by Ian Cross, Professor, Bentley College and Misty Hathaway from the Mayo Clinic, data is a critical asset that needs to be managed and turned into an opportunity. The next generation of marketers who are data driven and adept at the technical and analytical aspects of working with data will be able to turn findings into monetizing opportunities and things of value. Once again, it’s not the data itself creating the value, it’s about how well people use it.
8) Invest in some form of marketing automation. Taking the previous point a step further, the fastest way to get savvy around digital and data is to jump in and begin using it. Marketing automation is a rapidly evolving field and the array of choices is dizzying; the fact is that these tools are helping to put marketers back at the table with credibility. Marketing automation tools provide actionable insights and tools for measuring ROI. Look for tools that are flexible and offer scalability.
9) Ensure you are mobile-ready. According to Matthew Donegan-Ryan, Director of Mobile Strategy at Cvent, the average person checks their smart phone 150 times a day. That translates to about once every six minutes. The average user has 65 apps on their phone or iPad, downloading one new app every month and discarding those that are not useful. You now have to assume that your audience is consuming most of your content from a device other than their desktop. Websites and emails need to have responsive design for tablets and smart phones, and the rest of your content needs to be easy to consume from these devices as well. Perhaps this explains the increase in the popularity of video. While it may be hard to read a three-column PDF file on your phone (hint: one-column pages are mobile-friendly), video can easily be consumed while listening and watching. Many examples of video marketing were shared during the event, and video content has the added benefit of helping you break through the noise.
10) Be okay with feeling scared. The audience collectively exhaled when Stephen Liguori issued this advice. “The truth is,” he said, “we’re all scared, and that’s a good thing… It’s okay not to have the answers.” He finished with the following four-step call to action, which superbly summarizes some of the most salient points from throughout the Executive MindXchange:
- Play big or go home.
- Innovation is disruptive, lean and “crowded”.
- Get savvy around digital and data.
- Forget 1-3, and help your customers.
These were just a few of the potentially one hundred or more take-aways from the 15th Anniversary 2014 MARKETING WORLD: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange. If you attended, we’d like to know what action items you took away. If you didn’t make it, what questions do you hope are answered at next year’s event? Share with us and your peers below!
No comments:
Post a Comment