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. [...]
Watch this short video for an explanation of market composition and why this affects your marketing funnels and campaigns.
Persona -> Needs -> Map -> Content -> Marketing Funnel -> Sales Funnel -> CustomerIn my previous article “Customer Journey Mapping - Needs & Wants”, I discussed how customers’ needs change throughout their buying journey. [...]
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 Customer [...]
By using Odyssiant as your content auditing tool, you gain access to exceptionally valuable insights that will inform and improve your content planning, delivering greater value from your content programme for your business.“The benefits were [...]
What you don’t know about marketing and sales funnels that could cost you tens-of-thousands and threaten your return on marketing investment: 6 Reasons that shouting louder and [...]
Carrying out a content audit is like any other marketing activity: it’s much more likely to create a great outcome if you have spent time creating a plan.To be fair, content audits aren’t hard. However, [...]
At Odyssiant, we are advocates for content audits that go beyond the basics of telling you ’what you’ve got’ and instead inform you of what you need to create in order to maximise your opportunity [...]
To be fair, it is impossible to describe the ‘perfect’ content audit as different businesses will have different objectives and start-points. However, if you want your content audit to move beyond simple list generation to [...]
Visualising the outputs from a content audit is vital for gaining the maximum value from the exercise. This is especially the case if the content audit extends beyond what the content was about and [...]
Odyssiant is a free content journey platform that allows you to capture, visualise and act upon a content audit. Users can upload all content into the Odyssiant content library, capturing all core details including any url [...]
Before embarking upon a content audit, stop and ask yourself this question: how is this content audit going to improve your content programme? It is only by having a clear set of desired outcomes [...]
Most content audits are recorded using Excel spreadsheets. While this allows any business to create a basic list with some core parameters, there are some significant shortcomings.To contextualise those shortcomings, you need to first ask [...]
Can your sales funnel data show you this? A traditional funnel report will show you how many customers you have at each stage. The stages will be defined by how interested or qualified the customer should [...]
Anyone who has invested the time mapping the end-to-end customer journey for their business will almost certainly have come across one simple revelation: it is not one journey, it’s two journeys.In reality it could be [...]
74% of marketers said that a cohesive omni-channel experience was important (34% said it was very important). (https://www.targetmarketingmag.com)We would all agree that there needs to be consistency of the brand experience across channels and the [...]
How many content strategies do you have within your business? Indeed, how many content strategies do you have within your marketing function? Just the one? Fingers-crossed that is the case, but can you place your [...]
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) according [...]
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, with [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 really. [...]
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. But [...]
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 [...]
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? In [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 a [...]
Like algae blooming in a nutrient-rich lake, the amount of content being produced by companies today is growing at an exponential rate. How much content is being created, which functions within the business are creating [...]
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 [...]
You have created an awesome video, written a gripping article or drawn a masterpiece. You publish to your website and social channels. Being a good marketer, you then amplify the reach of your content by [...]
Every piece of creative that you produce whether text, images or video and for social media, campaigns, TV adverts, call centre scripts or corporate communication is content. Content is marketing fuel, it is sales support [...]
How much does your business spend on content each year? If you are following global trends, it is an amount that is set to have doubled between 2016 and 2021; global spend on content marketing [...]
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.You read, [...]
Growing the size of your customer base and managing it has been the mission of a number of methods, movements, technologies, approaches or business functions (take your pick!) for around the last 30 years. First [...]
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 [...]
Who are these socio-demographic twins?Both maleBoth born 1948Both grew up in the UKBoth have divorced and re-marriedBoth have grown up sonsBoth are very wealthyBoth like to spend their holidays in the alpsBoth are world famous [...]
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 through [...]
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 that [...]
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 equipment, [...]
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 [...]
Personalising content is not hardThe quest for personalisation remains a marketing obsession, and rightly so. Simply treating customers as a collective mass where the individual’s needs does not matter lacks common-sense and conflicts with customer [...]
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. [...]
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 being [...]
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 [...]
“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 feeling [...]
You may be familiar with this type of model that describes the capabilities of an organisation:(This example has been cut down to just consider the areas that are required for customer communications.)Current methodology for using [...]
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 [...]
Effective content doesn’t happen by chance. It is the result of a strong centralised content strategy.When content is out of control it might not appear on the surface that it is a problem or that [...]
Pity anyone within a blue chip business who tries to unravel the complexities of their content programme. For a start, it won’t just be one content programme as multiple brands, agencies and functions will be [...]
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 [...]
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 thinking across [...]
Customer communications silos are commonplace within nearly every business. For large businesses there is no getting away from the fact that the natural evolution of the various business structures and processes has led to different [...]
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 why do [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Intelligent Customer Engagement began from a simple premise: content is the best way to have meaningful engagements with your target audience but most content marketing lacks strategy.Why is that though? The answer is really quite [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
