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The need for transparency in digital marketing

According to Katumba (2018), social media has enabled companies to effectively communicate with consumers. More importantly, it allows for instant feedback and personalised communication. With the view to transparency, social media is certainly a suitable platform for presenting the customers with information.

Figure 1: Factors that demonstrate a Brand’s transparency in digital marketing (Katumba, 2018)

Transparency is very crucial to customers since it results in brand trust. In a study cited by Katumba (2018), respondents (61%) pointed out that transparency can be enhanced by admitting mistakes. Besides that, 58% of the participants indicated that honest responses to their social media’s questions enhance transparency. Kovacs (2012) mentions that business should understand that web tracking can make browsing more efficient. Basically, the relationships between consumers and brands are more and more built on social; customers are expecting businesses to become more open and available than in the past. 

Marketers that treat transparency as a business imperative are inclined to build a trust that is invaluable with their customers. Essentially, transparency is the main differentiating factor, which would motivate consumers to stay loyal to the brand even during difficult times. Additionally, the transparency level created results in a more customer-centric atmosphere; that is to say, when the company is more transparent, the customer relationship becomes deeper. In addition, the brand is humanised by the combination of trust and transparency. This makes the customers feel like they are connected to the company at a personal level.

In Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström, and Freundt (2014), they observed that price transparency has a very strong impact on the company. In the present tight economic times, finding a good offer is the main focus of the customers. Transparency is valuable to both the customer and the organisation. It builds trust between customers and employees, which consequently enhances employee retention. When employees are satisfied they work hard to exceed the expectations of the customer. This results in customer retention as well as increased profit. Certainly, transparency in digital marketing offers a powerful insight into satisfaction among customers. After establishing a mutual trust, customers are inclined to become more open in offering feedback. When they are encouraged to share with fellow customers their experiences, transparency is inclined to increase. Basically, what the customers say about the organisation is more credible and valuable as compared to what the organisation says about itself. Such interactions would certainly enable the organisation to effectively understand how to surpass customer expectations.

References

Katumba, K. (2018, September 4). People Want Brands to be More Transparent on Social Media. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/people-want-brands-to-be-more-transparent-on-social-media/

Kovacs, G. (2012, February ). Tracking our online trackers. Retrieved from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/gary_kovacs_tracking_the_trackers

Leeflang, P. S., Verhoef, P. C., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European Management Journal, 32, 1–12. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0263237313001576

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Utilising B2B Content marketing to improve sales

Research, according to Chaffey (2018), shows how the content marketing in business-to-business (B2B) marketing is becoming more popular. The changing buyer behaviour has led to an increased emphasis on content marketing considering that 92 per cent of prospective buyers starts with an information search (Chaffey, 2018).  The success factors for aligning around activities of content marketing are shown below.

Figure 1: Activities related to content marketing and sales collaboration (Chaffey, 2018)

As shown in figure 3, the success factors that support alignment include measurement and evaluation plan, content marketing strategy, and account targeting strategy, which includes sharing market data and buyer personas. As mentioned by Cam (2014), the World Wide Web is utilised by millions of people daily for everything from sharing news, ordering products, chatting with friends to transferring funds. The World Wide Web is an enormous virtual city that allows people to communicate with one another and business to sell products in web languages. World Wide Web allows for B2B Content marketing; thus, offering the business the potential in the development of the marketing role in B2Bfirms in a manner that makes sales and marketing to be aligned effectively. According to Wang, Malthouse, Calder, and Uzunoglu (2017), marketing plays a complementary role to the orientation of sales force to personal selling through an emphasis on digital B2B content marketing. The World Wide Web can be considered as an environment for pull marketing, whereby customers are pulled by companies to their brand websites by means of social media and search engine optimisation. Content is certainly a crucial element of inbound marketing techniques; therefore, understanding ways of using content in marketing or in engaging customers, could help develop an effective approach for inbound marketing. 

Content involves the static content that forms web pages, as well as dynamic rich media content. Digital content marketing involves utilising the digital content as a way of drawing B2B customers to a social media presence or website as well as promoting continuous engagement and interaction with the brand community.  Digital content is utilised in diverse ways in marketing exchanges. With the view to B2B digital content marketing, digital content is normally utilised as a technique for inbound marketing with the goal of pulling the customers to the company’s website as well as to potentially create dynamics of brand community related to the website. Normally, the organisation offers such content for free with the goal of promoting their products/services and also to nurture relationships with the other organisations.

References

Cam, T. (2014, May 12). What is the world wide web? Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8hzJxb0rpc

Chaffey, D. (2018, October 1). Improving sales and marketing collaboration with B2B Content marketing. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/improving-sales-and-marketing-collaboration-with-b2b-content-marketing

Wang, W.-L., Malthouse, E. C., Calder, B., & Uzunoglu, E. (2017). B2B content marketing for professional services: In-person versus digital contacts. Industrial Marketing Management, 1-9. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321314160_B2B_content_marketing_for_professional_services_In-person_versus_digital_contacts

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Surviving the Digital Transformation

Even though business has drastically changed in the Internet Age, age-old standard operating procedures (SOPs) could still save the rationality of the business. The objective of SOPs is to improve the effectiveness of the organisation by saving effort and time when facing repetitive situations. While the business digital transformation is quickening and the globe is shrinking, it has become imperative to implement processes that support the companies’ scaling into a position to exploit the international markets’ profit potential. Regardless of the organisation’s product/service selection or size, it is important to examine every process used on a daily basis. After listing the processes, the management should find ways of transforming analogue processes into digital processes. As pointed out by Smart Insights (2018), many companies are failing miserably in the area of social media; it is important for companies to understand how to tap into this digital asset. Certainly, organisations should consider creating as well as espousing SOPs which could be followed easily by employees so as to get the job done.

Figure 1: The SOP Solution (Smart Insights, 2018)

As mentioned by Chaffey and Smith (2017), to survive digital transformation, digital marketers must adept at change processes. To effectively manage digital marketing in any organisation, the integration with digital business services like extranets and intranets must be managed through collaboration. Companies should consider social Customer relationship management (CRM and social business as a means of improving collaboration internally as well as harnessing the insights from partner and customer interactions. Chaffey and Smith (2017) assert that the useful approach to developing a roadmap of marketing enhancements is a capability assessment of the individual channels and overall digital strategy. The digital marketer should offer great multichannel customers by ensuring that data security, privacy and quality are adequate in meeting the needs of the brand and customers.

Figure 2: Success Factors for Digital transformation (Chaffey & Smith, 2017)

Enocson and Söderholm (2017) point out that dynamic capability enables organisations to grow in different directions. The advantage-creating capabilities level depends on the firm’s strategic position. Still, the strategic position of the firm can only be enhanced if the firm’s management is able to identify the capabilities offering a competitive advantage and can benchmark the capabilities against those of the competitors. The firm’s source of differentiation does not depend on the resource itself, but also coordinating the production processes of the firm. To survive digital transformation, the firm resources’ reconfiguration should be made through organisational learning, whereby innovative processes are adopted.

References

Chaffey, D., & Smith., P. R. (2017). Digital Marketing Excellence : Planning, Optimizing and Integrating Online Marketing. London: Routledge.

Enocson, J., & Söderholm, L. (2017). Digital Transformation, a Question of Survival? Retrieved from iVA portal: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1114775/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Smart Insights. (2018, September 4). 5 Standard Operating Procedure Strategies to Survive the Digital Transformation. Retrieved from Smart Insights: https://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/managing-digital-transformation/5-standard-operating-procedure-strategies-to-survive-the-digital-transformation/