Content Challenges: What is a content strategy
Current accepted thinking on a content strategy is that you think of some themes that you want to create content around - you may well call these content pillars - and then you brainstorm some [...]
Breaking down the silos to become customer-centric
We have already identified the pervasive problem of over communication with customers due to the wide variety of internal silos all communicating at once. But being aware of the problem is one thing, doing something [...]
Best practice in Customer Journey Mapping
All too often Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is constrained to the customer’s online journey and even then may only be the journey from entering your website through to the point of sale. However, creating true [...]
Adding AI to marketing
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has burst onto the scene and is now taking root within the marketing stack. From established vendors to innovative start-ups, specific applications are emerging that are simplifying tasks, enhancing analytics, freeing up [...]
Where to begin when considering your contact strategy
Better customer communications can be worth millions in annual revenues. This is because there is a strong correlation between the customers’ experience and loyalty [Forrester Report: Customer Experience Index]. So, companies that manage their communications [...]
Account Based Marketing (ABM) and Buyer Journey
Current ABM approaches assume that you need to know who the person is to market to them. A core tenant of many B2B marketing “experts” is that good targeting of accounts is key to [...]
Personas to Map to Funnel
Persona -> Needs -> Map -> Content -> Marketing Funnel -> Sales Funnel -> Customer In my previous article “Customer Journey Mapping - Needs & Wants”, I discussed how customers’ needs change throughout their [...]
Understanding the role of content in customer journey
In the previous article, “Every journey starts with a single content step”, we explored the need to define your customer’s buying journey from their perspective and then use this to create truly customer-centric content. [...]
Why Buyer Journey Mapping is so important now
Watch this short video for an explanation of market composition and why this affects your marketing funnels and campaigns.
Customer Journey Management – Overcoming the silo problem
Silos are one of the largest hurdles for any successful Cx programme to overcome. We explained why in our article “Is Customer Journey Management next?” when we discussed the challenge of demonstrating ROI for [...]
The commercial benefits of Buyer Journey Management
Chief marketing officers (CMOs) who design and incorporate customer journey management as part of their overall activities outperform all others by 54% (24.9% vs 16.2%) in annual improvement on ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment) [...]
The all knowing content hub
In the new world of marketing and financial accountability, data, or more accurately insights from that data, have become one of the most important elements to get right in order to be successful. However, [...]
Do you have a “leaky funnel”?
Useful things funnels. In the real world they allow you to pour accurately into narrow containers and in the marketing world we use them as a way to describe the channelling of customers towards a [...]
Your role as marketer needs to change again!
You have no doubt heard many times already that your role as a marketer needs to change. In fact, your role as a marketer has always been about change, so this is nothing new [...]
The dawn of commercial marketing
Times, they are a-Changin’ sang Bob Dylan. Marketers around the world should all be singing the refrain. Change is not new when it comes to marketing of course. In fact, change is a constant. [...]
How being customer-centric drives business growth
Do you work for a business that has prioritised the need to become customer-centric? If the answer is ‘no’ then it is a fair bet that over the next year or two it could very [...]
Measuring the new ROI of marketing
Before looking at what the new potential is for calculating the ROI of marketing, let us first look at the “old” ROI of marketing. What do you measure at the moment to determine success? [...]
Change how you measure your marketing ROI
In the article The New ROI of Marketing we looked at how the accounting based calculations are made to understand our ROI and profitability. The conclusion being that becoming a customer-centric business will unlock a better engagement [...]
Customer contact, the internal dimension
Picture yourself sitting in the senior management meeting where you are seeking buy-in to a contact strategy change management programme. You have spent several weeks developing the proposed approach and building the watertight business case [...]
Have you bought your own product?
Have you bought your competitors product? This might sound like madness, you probably do competitor analysis if not regularly at least once in a while to keep your positioning fresh, why would you need to [...]
Where existing customer contact goes wrong
As you start to investigate where your customer contact/communications are causing problems with your customers you will quickly realise that what you need is a contact strategy. Your next question will be “What is [...]
Why is content not connected?
Watch an online ad, navigate around a brand’s website or consume some social content on the likes of Facebook or Linkedin and you will notice one similarity – none of the content is connected. [...]
Houston we have contact…
Why do you need to do anything differently when it comes to the way you contact your customers? Because change is inevitable and your customers have already changed and in many ways. When things change [...]
Posing questions around the danger of describing but not understanding
Who are these socio-demographic twins? Both male Both born 1948 Both grew up in the UK Both have divorced and re-married Both have grown up sons Both are very wealthy Both like to spend [...]
What insight do you need to map a customer’s journey
There is considerable amounts of noise and “trending” around customer journey mapping at the moment. While it is good to see that this now includes more about what content is required to guide customers [...]
The biggest challenge of setting up an AI for marketing
As marketers begin to seek practical applications of AI, they are encountering the first challenges. However, the biggest challenge of all is data. Almost all AIs require “training”, this means preparing historical data so [...]
Mapping the Buying Journey
A few weeks ago, I treated myself with a pair of Bose SoundSport Free wireless headphones. They’re brilliant. I love them. But even though they have been available for some time and I love Bose [...]
Building an audience to leverage customer timing
What is “customer timing”?In my previous article (https://bit.ly/2F1Cq0i), I talked about mapping the buying journey so that, as marketers, we could better help the customer through the process of buying and making a decision by [...]
Can all content be centrally planned?
Can all content be centrally planned?Simple answer: yes.However, for many organisations the gap between how content is currently planned (i.e. within lots of separate teams) and planning content centrally may appear too enormous a challenge. [...]
What do I need to do differently to be customer-centric?
The world of customer-centricity can be split into three camps. Firstly there are those that have embraced the need to transform themselves into a customer-centric business. Then secondly there are those who realise that [...]
Content Challenges: Commercialising a content strategy
Recent research shows that because of the ubiquity of content, most buyers will be 60% of their way to a purchasing decision before they speak to sales or make a purchase online. Of those that [...]
Know How: Buyer Journey Planning is the first step to commercialising content marketing
“Holy Grail”, “Elephant in the Room”, “64 million dollar question”, whatever idiom you want to give it, the marketing industry is quite rightly obsessed by ROI. In the world of content marketing, the initial [...]
The problem with silos
Integrating disparate customer communications silos is a major headache for CMOs, as highlighted by a recent survey of 50 CMOs by Marketing Magazine. The article says: “Creating a truly integrated customer experience requires joined-up [...]
How silos impede customer-centricity
Having a customer-centric culture does not make your business customer-centric. Many factors will be behind this but the hardest one to tackle will be the customer communications silos that exist within your business. So [...]
The spinning wheel of engagement
PR and marketing has fallen into a trap. This trap is something we call the ‘spinning wheel of engagement’.PR and marketing teams have become very good at engaging their target audiences online and within social [...]
The business benefits of customer journey mapping
Customer Journey mapping is a term that is increasingly being used within the marketing industry, the but definition of what exactly it means is still very much in dispute. Many commentators refer to Customer Journey [...]
Every journey starts with a single content step
Customer journeys. That age old process adopted by marketers to define the behaviour of their target audience when they are trying to persuade them to buy their product or service. Most commonly visualised as a [...]
The ideal approach to customer contact
In the article “Houston we have contact!” we talked about the first three steps to take in designing and implementing your contact strategy. Whilst these are all necessary steps, they are still “tactical”. What we [...]
Customers hate badly managed communications
When was the last time you thought about the way in which your business communicates with your customers? Not what you are saying or how you are saying it, or even the KPIs of your [...]
Aligning comms silos equals business benefits
Building a business case to break down the communications silos within a business does not only require a clear understanding of the business benefits that will be achieved but a considerable amount of internal alignment [...]
Where are your customers on the pre-sales journey?
Two questions with profound consequences for how your market and sell to your customers todayQuestion 1: How many customers make it from your marketing activities through to a sale?Question 2: How many customers are making [...]
Knowing your customers needs
The no brainer business value of speaking to your customers’ needsIf I’m going to buy from you, I need to know you can meet my needs; that’s a no brainer. If I’m going to engage [...]