“If you have content, you have stories to sell,” said Butch Stearns, Chief Customer Officer at The Pulse Network and sports anchor. He made a point about the importance of content, especially now as the shift of resources to inbound marketing continues to evolve and expand.
Because it is becoming an essential strategy, here is advice from five marketing experts that spoke at the 2014 Inbound Marketing Summit, held in Boston, Mass.
The New Customer Experience Paradigm
Marketers need to take a look at a customer’s holistic experience. Scott Liewehr from the Digital Clarity Group explained that the customer experience is a sum of all interactions with an organization. “The failure of a single interaction threatens a customer’s entire perception of a brand,” he said.
He stated that 89 percent of consumers say they have switched a business to a competitor due to poor customer experience. It is no wonder that eight out of ten CEOs put customer experience as a top initiative, although Liewehr believes they really do not know what that means.
Digital clarity is important, but for big organizations there is no clear owner of it. “Consumers have a voice and a choice,” he shared. Now consumers can vote with their purchases and suggestions. The consumer now has more power, as there is an amazing access to knowledge. For example, think of how hard it is now to be a doctor. Everyone comes in thinking they know what is wrong with them.
Just imagine what it was like seven years ago before the iphone. He joked, remember when you did not have to sit in the back of a taxi cab and use your phone to guide them to where you want to go?
For firms that do not continue to invest in themselves and head in new directions, they end up becoming the status quo. “If you stay on the old trajectory, you’re at a disadvantage,” said Liewehr.
The dissonance gap is the time it takes to go from the status quo to the new paradigm, shared Liewehr. “Every day you get farther and farther away. You have to cross that chasm,” he advised.
The new paradigm is that consumers have voice and choice, pointed out Liewehr. He used this math equation to make his point:
Customer’s perceived experience - customer’s expected experience = customer satisfaction
Liewehr told attendees, “You as marketers, you’re putting lipstick on a pig. The uglier the pig the more and more lipstick you put on.” However, that approach can backfire, because without turning around the issues you are actually going to turn off your customers more.
Liewehr’s advice? We must evangelize internally, develop awareness that the customer experience needs to improve holistically and get started improving the customer journey.
A Digital Handshake
Jillian Vorce, chief handshaker at The Jillian Group, spoke about the original importance of a handshake. When shaking hands, it showed you were not holding a weapon, thus conveying trust. She asked the attendees how they are conveying trust in the digital space.
Vorce broke down a really bad in-person handshake. She advised, “Don't be the limp fish (handshaker) in person and online. Demonstrate your brand in person and online!”
In person your body language and posture make the good first impression. What is it online that makes the good first impression? It is important to think about perceptions, as people are the multipliers that can help your business. Online or in person, you’re one handshake away from more success for your organization, shared Vorce.
Engagement Is What Matters
As more businesses adopt social media into their marketing strategies, marketing managers are getting pressure to justify it as a marketing tactic.
Brad Blake from Hill Holliday cautioned the attendees to not focus on vanity metrics. They do not matter. For example, it is not about how many Facebook likes a company has. That is because, for many, liking a page is the only engagement a fan has.
He asked, “Do followers matter?” He showed Hill Holliday’s analysis that of all the people that retweet on Twitter, only about one third of them are followers.
While Facebook’s organic impressions have declined, engagement on Facebook is up. Blake said, “It might be actually helping to get the right information in front of the right person at the right time. Viral impression rates were up to.”
The real-time marketing trend is becoming more popular with marketers. The classic example is Oreo Cookie sending out the ‘Power out? No problem.’ message during the Super Bowl.
He advised posting content and then monitoring to see if it works. Determine a KPI threshold and pay attention to likes, comments, shares, sentiment and organic reach. “If it works, share it,” he a said. Then do more stuff like it.
If all social media marketing is planned ahead of time, marketers will not see how people react to it. It is not enough to get likes, as there are some people that just like everything. Instead, you have to see how people react to it. Blake recommended identifying the cost per acquisition/conversion and tying in things like the lifetime value of a customer. Think ROE (Return on Engagement).
The Importance of Videos
Paul Casinelli from Brightcove shared three interesting stats about how videos help a website:
• 157% increase in organic traffic from search engines
• 105% increase in time spent on site
• 2x the overall conversions
Casinelli believes that at least half of the buyer journey is driven through the digital channels and content. He said, “Video is probably one of the most powerful ways to drive marketing results.”
He asked attendees, “Is your video converting to business results? Is your video delivering great video experiences on every device?” If you do not know the answers, it is important to track performance and know if the content is working.
One best practice he recommended was to push videos to social channels to extend reach and build an audience. He also showed how videos can be used in multiple consumer stages as they progress like education, evaluation, selection and loyalty.
We have all heard of B2C (business to consumer) and B2B (business to business), but Casinelli highlighted H2H (human to human). If you think that way, videos can be powerful no matter the industry.
Broadcast In Multiple Ways
Paul Colligan at ICTG spoke about multicasting. This marketing strategy is about sharing content in many different ways. It is important to repurpose content so it can be shared in different forms and in different places.
He gave an example of a live streaming video event, in which topics get generated from the social audience input. Taking questions on air is a great way to build content. He suggested using Google Hangouts on air live (and YouTube) to do this.
[More info from Google on live streaming: Schedule broadcasts and go live in HD on Google+, YouTube and your website. It will be recorded and automatically saved on your YouTube channel.]
“You don’t get to choose the format, your audience does. This is incredibly important. The content is the platform,” advised Colligan.
Mike Byrnes is a national speaker and owner of Byrnes Consulting, LLC. His firm provides consulting services to help advisors become even more successful. Need help with business planning, marketing strategy, business development, client service and management effectiveness? at ByrnesConsulting.com and follow @ByrnesConsultin.