Digital Marketing Daily

Your daily dose of digital marketing inspiration 💡

[digitalmarketingdaily]

Many companies and brands today are in sore need of a reality check. In a day and age where human-centricity holds the key to building brand affinity, being human is no longer a ‘nice to have’, it’s a must have. People are drawn to brands that open up, admit their vulnerabilities, and are easy to approach. They yearn for genuine, sincere human connection. They don’t want to be intimidated, they want to be heard, and they want brands to listen.

But social media is a vast ocean of conversations and it can be challenging to navigate its tricky waters. How do we mine this fathomless, never-ending sea of information and keep up with our customers’ latent human desires and anxieties?

Enter social listening. Social listening is a digital anthropology technique that helps brands keep tabs on up-close-and-personal conversations their customers are having and meet them in the middle. By tracking different kinds of keywords (e.g. brand mentions, industry mentions, location-specific mentions) social listening softwares like #hootsuite, #sproutsocial, and #buzzsumo can help brands:

💡 monitor customer queries and concerns; 💡 proactively respond to feedback, good and bad; 💡 stay on top of the latest industry trends (and subsequently, competition); 💡 engage with existing brand advocates in addition to prospective ‘leads’; and 💡 connect with potential influencers.

It’s time for companies to extend beyond their comfort zones and reach out. Empathy takes more work, but it’s the only sure way we can connect on a human level.

- - - 📖 Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and widely acclaimed as the ‘Father of Modern Marketing’ • Hermawan Kartajaya, Founder of MarkPlus, Inc • Iwan Setiawan, CEO of MarkPlus, Inc.

*** Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊 ***

[digitalmarketingdaily]

Another often unnoticed barrier to a seamless customer experience comes from organizations failing to align their sales objectives with their marketing activities.

Without collaborative effort and unifying our sales and marketing functions, we as companies undermine and fail to better appreciate (let alone resolve) our customer's issues and needs. Without integrating our online and offline touchpoints and experiences, we fail to provide the consistent, positive omnichannel experience our customers want and deserve, from mobile to e-commerce to in-store.

By implementing a sound CRM system to break down the silos in our organizations and encouraging a more holistic corporate culture and mindset, we can win the CX battle, beat competition, retain our customers, and reap the benefits of positive online reviews on social media.

- - - Today’s tip: Push out the silo mentality from your organization. - - -

📖 Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and widely acclaimed as the ‘Father of Modern Marketing’ • Hermawan Kartajaya, Founder of MarkPlus, Inc • Iwan Setiawan, CEO of MarkPlus, Inc.

*** Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊 ***

[digitalmarketingdaily]

If your brand is struggling to turn interested customers into real leads — i.e., nudging them from A2 ➡️ A3 (swipe left) — chances are your content isn’t piquing their curiosity. If your content isn’t compelling your audience to ask questions and dig deeper into your brand, it probably isn’t triggering enough conversations. Sit down with your communications team and revisit your content ideas and creative process; brainstorm ways you can strengthen your brand appeal that will force your customers to talk to their friends, family, colleagues, etc.

There are absolutely tons of ways you can format your content: from written (blogs, case studies, FAQs, e-books) to graphic (comics, infographics) to interactive (quizzes, games, video series). And there are equally as many ways to distribute (and amplify!) that content: from owned media (website, blog, social media) to paid media (native advertising, paid search, influencer marketing, social media ads), and — if you’ve done your research properly, and your content is authentic and engaging and truly resonates with your audience — perhaps even earned media where it will distribute itself through shares, reviews, and word of mouth.

At the end of the day, you want your content to be intriguing but also create an information gap between what your customers know and what they want to know. While building brand awareness is important, it’s not necessarily an accurate gauge of your market share nor an indicator of how effectively you’re converting would-be customers to buyers.

- - - Today’s tip: Focus less on the outcome and more on the process. - - -

📖 Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and widely acclaimed as the ‘Father of Modern Marketing’ • Hermawan Kartajaya, Founder of MarkPlus, Inc • Iwan Setiawan, CEO of MarkPlus, Inc.

Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊

[digitalmarketingdaily]

The O₃ framework helps optimize marketing efforts across our customers’ buyer journeys, from awareness ➡️ advocacy.

• ‘Own’ influences mimic a buyer’s individual preference and predominantly come from their past experiences with our brand.

• ‘Other’ influences come from the external environment, which typically means friends, family, social networking platforms, and communal rating systems like @amazon, @yelp, @tripadvisor, etc. As highlighted in our previous post, the most highly influential segment and driver of purchase usually tends to be YWNs.

• ‘Outer’ influences encompass advertising and marketing communications. Unlike the other two, these can still be managed and controlled by brands and companies.

Brands and marketers must discern which of these influences hold most significance to our customers and then focus marketing efforts accordingly. If, for instance, ‘other’ > ‘own’, then emphasis should be placed on community marketing activities. Whereas if ‘own’ > ‘other’, then more resources should be dedicated to building our customer's post-purchase customer experience.

- - -

📖 Philip Kotler, Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and widely acclaimed as the ‘Father of Modern Marketing’ • Hermawan Kartajaya, Founder of MarkPlus, Inc • Iwan Setiawan, CEO of MarkPlus, Inc.

*** Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊 ***

[digitalmarketingdaily]

Recent research from @amplifinity has found that the most effective way to refer a customer and maximize conversions is verbally. With customers increasingly turning to their social circles for advice and reviews, brands now more than ever need to leverage the power of customer connectivity and advocacy. Start encouraging peer-to-peer conversation among your customers and communities, appeal to and capitalize on their curiosity with proper content marketing. Map out their customer journey all the way from awareness to purchase, and study their needs and requirements at every touch point. Once you know what they are, find ways to delight them! Oftentimes, all it takes is that one moment of delight to convert them into loyal advocates. And make sure that you’re giving them a seamless experience both online and offline. They expect it.

*** Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊 ***

[digitalmarketingdaily]

Brevity is key. Stuffing your content with jargon-filled corporate-speak does nothing in the way of connecting with your intended audience. Avoid fancy words, ban dehumanizing buzzwords from your vocabulary that strip your brand of any individuality and humanity, and start cutting straight to the chase. Don’t be tempted by a long word or an overwritten phrase when there’s a clearer, more concise, and equally compelling alternative available.

*** Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊 ***

[digitalmarketingdaily]

Netizens (aka citizens of the internet) play a big role in bringing communities together online and expanding a brand’s market share. Advocates of total democracy and expressive evangelists, #netizens relish being heard (even under anonymity) and seldom think twice about speaking up for what they believe in. Tech savvies and usually highly influential, many of them are content creators in their own right and are admired by those in their network for their authenticity. Netizens see the world horizontally, embrace openness, and strive to grow the value of the internet in order to help other users make better decisions online. Though by no means easy to impress, it is this bunch that can best amplify your brand message; once they give you their seal of approval, they are committed and loyal to your brand and often times even go out of their way to safeguard it against haters and trolls.

So seek out, invest and engage with these social connectors, because as ambassadors they are bound to reap tremendous benefits for your brand.

Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊

[digitalmarketingdaily]

The market is becoming more and more connected, inclusive and transparent everyday. Today’s social media platforms, namely Twitter and Instagram, enable people to share their customer experience online with other potential or existing customers, which in turn inspires them to emulate similar behavior and experiences. With social circles becoming the main source of influence — often outweighing even personal preference — relationships between brands and customers can no longer remain of vertical nature.

Customers can no longer be viewed as mere ‘targets’ and this is further fueled by the low level of trust that they put in advertising already. Instead, our customers should be considered peers and friends of our brand. And if we as companies don’t embrace this shift to a more horizontal and social landscape and become more transparent and honest about our true value, chances are we'll be worth very little (if anything at all) to our desired market segment and communities.

Are you a digital marketer, digital marketing agency, or an entrepreneur? If you are, we’re on Instagram too! Follow us at @digitalmarketingdaily for all things digital. 📱 💻 📊