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Recently I read a lot of blogs and articles about changing shopping behavior and what drives those changes. Many different reasons were offered: from price to selection and convenience.

I think in retails’ more than 3000 years of existence there have only been 3 major transformations impacting shopper behavior all driven by retailers’ desire for operational efficiencies.

For many centuries the small store staffed by the owner or an attendant dominated retail. Then came self-serve shopping which gave the shopper control over the shopping process. On the heel of self-serve came one-stop shopping driven by increasing store sizes giving shoppers the convenience to buy everything in one place instead of having to go to the butcher, baker, grocer and farmer.

For many years shoppers had control and convenience with one major component missing: transparency. Shoppers were dependent on newspaper inserts from retailers to find out about best prices and selection of products. The arrival of the Internet and the mobile device to access it solved that issue.

Now shoppers have Control, Convenience and Transparency.

• Control through self-serve: select what, where and when to buy and for how much
• Convenience through one-stop: global shopping mall in every pocket
• Transparency through the Internet: knowledge of best selection, location and price

Inbound is good, outbound is bad. This is the black and white message touted on many recent articles, blogs, brochures, websites, Linkedin, etc on the issue of Marketing. One could believe that Inbound Marketing is the best thing since sliced bread and Outbound Marketing needs to be avoided at all cost.

But I would argue that this is far from the truth. Especially in a B2B sales environment the last phase can only be achieved successfully with two people sitting face to face negotiating and discussing a complex deal or project. There is no whitepaper, no blog, no infographics, no email, etc that can replace that human interaction and shaking of the hands.

Now don’t get me wrong. Inbound Marketing is important but so is Outbound Marketing. The only things that are dead are cold calls, interruptive ads and spam. Nobody answers their phone any more unless they know the caller. It is easier to reach somebody via social media. And ads need to be entertaining, engaging and adding value or they are tuned out. And spam is illegal anyway.

I think at the end of the day it is all about Marketing. Inbound, Outbound, Traditional, Digital, Classic, whatever. Those comprise just different strategies, tactics and channels to get your message to your target audience. It is not a zero sum game, one or the other. Marketing needs to deliver on objectives and whatever strategies and tactics that effectively and efficiently fit that bill should be used.

The basic marketing process is very simple:

Attract
The first job of marketing is to get your company, product or service noticed by the target audience and entice them to visit your website. It is getting increasingly difficult to break through to customers. Everybody has a blog, a whitepapers and e-books. The big opportunity lies in creating content that is really helpful to your target audience’s business. Once you have that it is critical to promote it with a great headline that your prospect just has to click on to find out more. The channels used to get the message out can be anything from a traditional magazine to a Tweet, a Linkedin ad or an email campaign.

Engage
Once your target audience is on your website, blog or Linkedin page you need to engage them to make them interested in your company, product or service. Here is where the content comes into play. It needs to give insights that are unexpected, new or thought provoking and the insights need to create a link with your offering. This is the issue and this is how we can help. Simple, isn’t it?

Convert
This is where good marketing shines and mediocre marketing breaks down. The target audience does not see as clearly the issue as you do or does not see why they might need your company to solve an issue.

You want the prospect to read your content and fill out a form to ask for a proposal. If you get 1% or more of website visitors to that you have a winner. It is more likely that a visitor downloads a paper or signs up for the blog news. Also great.

You need to define what your website has to achieve and based on that develop the content that can help you do that.

In conclusion, it should be said that it is not about inbound or outbound marketing. It is about Marketing, full stop. Chose the right message and content to get noticed and engage your prospects and customers and link it to your business so that they act on it.

“Executives are finding that the winning differentiator is no longer product or price, but the level of customer engagement relative to the competition.”
Rama Ramswami, Senior Editor, The Economist

Introduction

Only about 10 years ago the only place to buy something or even just get information about a product or service was a store/outlet/branch (or a catalog) staffed by sales people. This was a very physical experience with sales staff leading you through the process more or less efficient.

Today with the Internet somebody can go from browsing to buying in a split second. The activities of browsing and purchase still have to be guided by experiences. But this time the human interface is replaced by a machine.

The digital media interface still has all the limitations of classical media but has to deal with a larger complexity; People who just browse and want information and people who are ready to buy and everything in between. It is expected that the ‘machine’ knows why a person is there then best to serve that person.

Background

Customer experiences and customer engagement are some of the most widely used words in the digital economy mainly in relation to websites and social media. What seems often forgotten is the fact that experiences are shaped mainly in the real world through use, purchase and other key occasions and many different touchpoints.

The challenge today is how to cross the digital divide and deliver those great experiences of using and/or consuming a product and brand to the web and translate it in a relevant way into digital experiences that are real, authentic and above all memorable. Most brands today have a mismatch between the use or consumption experience and the purchase experience.

Marketing Concepts

This mismatch between use/consumption experience and purchase experience started the new discipline of Shopper Marketing. Up to that point most brands were researching the consumer behaviors and motivations and executing in all media of that time against those motivations. The 30sec TV spot was the king of the mountain.

Now suddenly the shopper was of interest and P&G invented the concepts of first and second moment of truth and Coca-Cola started the concept of occasion based marketing, both concepts have purchase occasions and the shopper motivations as the target for marketing. Initially consumption and purchase was treated similarly by marketing until research showed that the shopper and consumer are the same people with very different behaviors and motivations dependent on the occasion. Shopping is all about getting a task done whereas use and consumption is about the pleasure of using or consuming a product.

So today we know that different media require very different marketing approaches. Consumer and shopper marketing are widely accepted and used marketing disciplines by retailers, CPG companies and agencies.

The rise of the Internet now begs the question if this marketing approach is still adequate. The huge difference the internet brought to shopping is the fact that a consumer can become a shopper in a split second on the same medium and vice versa. This was never the case before. There was a clear separation between shopping and use/consumption. Purchase took place in physical locations or on the phone (calling after an infomercial on TV). But it was clear that people in front of the TV were consumers and people in store or on the phone were shoppers. Today on the internet we do not (yet) know if somebody is there for information only or if the person is ready to buy. This brings about a new kind of marketing.

Contextual Marketing.

People have two types of context:

1. A static disposition which does not change like their demographics, psychographics, likes and dislikes, affinities, etc
2. A dynamic situation which can be different based on peoples situation in life, and changing behaviors based on attitudes and motivations

In the past, a brand had a few touch points which were quite static and only accessible at a certain time (store opening hours, TV availability). Those were mass media and stores.

Today there are many more touch points. Actually people are carrying the touch points if you will with them all the time. Everybody has the possibility to access any brand at any moment in time and anywhere. This means brands need to be ready for people with any contextual disposition and in any situation. A consumer or shopper can come through the door in a store or to a website via any type of screen and just request information, just purchase or be in any stage in the process from trigger to purchase or even move through the whole process at the website.

Digital Influence

Customer satisfaction (represented here by the Net Promoter Score which is word-of-mouth and recommendation) increases with digital influence resulting in a positive impact on the shopping experience. The more digital connections a customer had with their retailer, the higher the level of satisfaction they reported for their in-store shopping experience resulting in a higher NPS (net promoter score). Shoppers with six digital connections were more than three times as likely to recommend the store to others as those with only one digital connection.

Cross-channel behavior

In today’s environment people use all different kinds of media, online and offline, to meet their information and shopping needs. As the chart below shows, people on the path-to-purchase switch with ease between those different media. Buying in store still outperforms buying online whereas web and offline media still pay a similar role when it comes to getting information.

At the end of the day the retailer and the brand have still the same objectives as before the digital world erupted: Traffic/visitors, Basket size and Loyalty/Repeat visits. Today it is not just about those measures in relation to the store but also for the website.

As consumers and shoppers switch from different channels and media it is important to acquire data about their actions and behaviors which will inform marketing strategy and tactics.

Spark Marketing works with companies to develop innovative marketing strategies, messaging and campaigns that help B2C companies increase sales and B2B companies generate and convert leads combining Classic Marketing knowhow and Digital Expertise delivering result that exceeded clients’ expectations.

Marketing is about Message, Digital is just the delivery channel.

I would like to share two personal case studies that demonstrate that even the savviest digital companies can mess up badly when it comes to getting Marketing and Digital right.

The first story is about the ‘Uncarrier’ T-Mobile

My wife and I had T-Mobile as a carrier for as long as there are cell phones. My wife’s nephew works for T-Mobile. But we also have come to like the $10 per month free calling to Europe (yes, we pay $10 for all our calls to Europe – landline or mobile) and the free mobile Internet and text messages when we are in Europe and 20 Cents calls per minute (who uses the phone for talk anyway?).

We both had outdated phones – about 5 years old which means digital stone age. Our service in Phoenix was OK but not great and we attributed that to T-Mobile limited coverage. On a recent trip up north to Flagstaff we had big problems with our connections even on the highway so we decide to upgrade. First we wanted to change carrier AND get new phones. We then decided to do it in two steps and get new phones first.

We tried to do some research for phones on the T-Mobile website which was a disaster. I knew that the website was not great from paying bills monthly which I dreaded because the website is so unfriendly, slow and clunky. So we went to the store. We asked one staffer if new phones will solve our connection problem. He said “maybe”. We asked what phones we should get. He said he had an iPhone and that is the only thing he knows. So we went to the displays which were a bit more helpful. I finally decide for a larger screen Kyocera for $150 and my wife got the iPhone promotion – $250 off. She wanted to switch from Android to iPhone anyway.

I love my new phone. No connection problems any longer. It works like a dream. My wife still struggles with the iPhone but she also likes it. On our recent trip to California we had no problems whatsoever. Even in remote areas like Death Valley and Yosemite.

Now what is the morale of the story? If T-Mobile would have sent us anything – email, letter, link, etc. spelling out clearly that a new phone will dramatically improve our experience we would have changed way sooner. We only hung with T-Mobile because of the other benefits. But imagine somebody who is not that vested. Clear Marketing communication and messaging is key. Digital is just a new way to deliver the message.

The second story is about Cox the Internet service provider

Again, we had Cox Internet, phone and TV for about 14 years. Our modem was the same age. We were early adopters. One Sunday afternoon our Internet went out for no reason. To cut it short, there was nothing wrong with the connection – our modem just gave up. But when I called Cox to solve the connection issue they told me that because the age of our modem they had a restriction on our Internet speed because the modem was so old that it would ‘blow up’ with the fast speeds. I went out to BestBuy immediately and got a new modem/router. No problems ever since.

Now what is the morale of the story? Again, if Cox would have sent us a message telling us that a new modem would double our speed and that they had to restrict our speed due to the age of the modem we would have changed a long time ago. Probably would have bought a Cox modem.

Conclusions

You will say. Well, you should have known that new tech stuff is faster and should have upgraded sooner. I am saying, in a busy world, who has time to constantly do research and check out new stuff? Also, the point is that those two companies just messed up in their Marketing and Customer communication.

What about the one-on-one marketing, individualized services and custom solutions those companies are talking about? Where are their digital agencies or departments who should have analyzed those data and developed relevant messaging and campaigns?

Those 2 companies had all the data. They know our phones and the modem and router. I am getting newsletters from them and other commercial offers. But never did they take the time and tell me what I really needed to know to improve my experience dramatically.

It is the point of good Marketing to market the benefits of new products and services to existing and new customers and use the digital channels to deliver those in an engaging and convincing way.

Spark Marketing works with companies to develop innovative marketing strategies, messaging and campaigns that help B2C companies increase sales and B2B companies generate and convert leads combining Classic Marketing knowhow and Digital Expertise delivering result that exceeded clients’ expectations.

What role a functioning, well oiled online lead generation engine plays in today’s digital age.

Let’s cut to the chase. A study by Hinge Research showed that high growth companies just do a better job at online marketing than average growth companies. Wait? Did I get that right? Or is it that a better online marketing engine drives growth for companies? Anyway, the data speak for themselves.

The fact is that high growth firms generate more leads online and recruit more employees online which then results in higher profitability driven by efficiencies in led generation and recruiting.

This is driven by the changes in the market with customers, even higher up Directors and C-suite being more in tune with technology and more comfortable to just turn to their digital device to search for solutions and companies providing those. In the past executives had to put a lengthy RFP to be educated on a solution and find a possible company to help them. Today the process of being educated is done and expected for free on the internet in real time. This is cutting down time and costs.

Hinge Research also did some research on buyer behavior and motivation. They found that potential buyers of services and solutions first research issues to educate themselves and then research the companies who could be the possible best in providing those solutions.

This means that blogs and whitepapers of service providers need to address issues and the website needs to show how the company/agency is addressing those issues.

The service provider website should answer 4 main questions – this is the information a brand company and potential employees are looking for in an agency:

1. Who are we? This section should include information about the company, history, people, locations, beliefs and values. A short synopsis of the company personality.
2. What do we do? Services and solutions the company offers described in a very easy to understand, solution and results driven way. A framework that shows in second what the company is really good at and what makes it special.
3. How do we do it? How the company works. Process described in a simple chart, pictures and videos.
4. What is in it for me? The results a company can expect to achieve when working with the agency. Include case studies, clients and results all linked to services, solutions and processes.

Conclusions

The website of any company today is the most important lead generation, communication, education and sales tools all wrapped up in one. It needs to very quickly engage the visitor and intuitively lead him/her through the sections of the site that answer all questions, educate on all issues and present the best solution. The site needs to build enough trust that the visitor converts from an interested visitor into a potential customer or actual customer.

Companies need to study customer behavior in their real and digital environments, in their purchase and use occasions and then develop, design and deliver digital experiences that engage customers and are consistent across channels and platforms and therefore build brand equity and convert visitors into customers.

Spark Marketing works with companies to develop innovative marketing strategies, messaging and campaigns that help B2C companies increase sales and B2B companies generate and convert leads combining Classic Marketing knowhow and Digital Expertise delivering result that exceeded clients’ expectations.

This is the best time in years for a challenger brand to outperform a dominating competitor.

This is the best time for challenger brands. Most industries experience a transformation of their business models driven by digital technology. Customer behavior is changing as technology advances at an ever increasing speed resulting in consumers being ahead of many companies, even brand, category and market leaders.

This is the opportunity for disruptive challenger brands to leapfrog and outperform their stronger competition unseating the market leader by winning people’s hearts with better experiences and engagement. This is the time to think and act big with small budgets. This is the time to lead from behind. This is the time to win not by mimicking the pack ahead, but by breaking away from it.

Challenger brands have to use their budgets and resources more effectively and efficiently and work harder and smarter. If we just think of the old AIDA funnel and how this has changed.

Awareness and Interest – Engagement

In the past to achieve top awareness and interest for a brand, service or product, companies had to invest big money in presence and mass media marketing swallowing up big chunks of the marketing budget. It was all about achieving ‘street cred’ by having physical outlets and/or mass media presence.

Today it is possible to achieve global awareness and interest for a brand by using the Internet and social media in a very smart and engaging way, investing a small budget into innovative search strategies and smart paid online media tactics disseminating creative and engaging content. Getting the message out is now so much easier, faster, efficient and effective if done in a way that moves against the mainstream.

Desire and Action – Purchase

To sell a product or service in the past a company had to have own stores, convince retailers to get shelf space in their stores, invest heavily in direct sales media or have a massive sales force that could talk to customers moving them through the AIDA funnel.

Today even a small company or single person can sell product to the whole world. A well organized website that answers all visitor questions in an efficient and engaging manner can move a visitor from awareness to purchase in a few seconds or minutes. But of course not every website is about sales. It can be just converting a visitor to ask for quote or to sign up for a newsletter.

Most companies think they need to put everything out on their websites and social media. But in fact they only need to answer 3 questions:

• Do I need this? Focuses on problem solution and functional/logical benefit and engagement
• Do I want this? Focuses on emotional benefit and engagement
• How much? Focuses on what the customer needs to give up for the product

Focusing on those 3 questions and answering them for the visitor and customer in the fastest and best way will drive business in today’s fast paced digital world.

It pays off to focus on intangibles:

Conclusions

So, how can challenger brands get ahead?

Do those 3 things better and faster:

• Data, analytics and insights that lead to better strategies
• Content and experiences that engage in a superior way
• Integration of marketing and technology that drives smart communication and engagement

Companies need to study customer behavior in their real and digital environments, in their purchase and use occasions and then develop, design and deliver digital experiences that engage customers and are consistent across channels and platforms and therefore build brand equity.

Some great challenger brands:

• AVIS – We try harder
• T-Mobile – The Un-carrier
• Apple – Think Different
• Linux – Software problems should not cost money

Spark Marketing works with companies to develop innovative marketing strategies, messaging and campaigns that help B2C companies increase sales and B2B companies generate and convert leads combining Classic Marketing knowhow and Digital Expertise delivering result that exceeded clients’ expectations.

How to Create Memorable Experiences in the Digital Age
 “Work is Theater and Every Business is a Stage”.
B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore

Customer experiences and customer engagement are some of the most widely used words in the digital economy mainly in relation to websites and social media. What seems often forgotten is the fact that experiences are shaped mainly in the real world through use, purchase and other key occasions and many different touch points.

The challenge today is how to cross the digital divide and deliver those great experiences of using and/or consuming a product and brand to the web and translate it in a relevant way into digital experiences that are real, authentic and above all memorable.

For example, when it comes to cars there are 3 main experiences: Buy – Drive – Maintain. The buy experience for most cars is still unpleasant for customers as is the service or maintain experience. Customers still dread purchase or service contacts with most dealerships. But everybody loves the driving experience.

The objective of car brands today is to raise the purchase and service experience to a level that is more in tune with the driving experience and the brand perception. Therefore dealerships became more modern and sales and service staff is more in tune with today’s demanding customers.

The new digital dealership experience today begins with local search on a customer’s phone when someone looks up the address. If local search isn’t treated as part of the “real experience’ it’s a missed opportunity. In fact, the brand could tie digital experiences to “Drive” (an app that tracks mileage, weather and other things that might lead to tips/advice) and “Maintain” (CRM and/or partnerships) as well.

Similarly consumers feel ‘refreshing, excited and fun’ about drinking Coca-Cola. But they describe purchasing Coke as ‘unpleasant, dull and boring’. In addition brand awareness of Coke is about 98%’ preference 55% and in-store purchase is only 45%. This started the discipline of shopper marketing or experience marketing. The question is how to deliver the positive consumption experience into the store considering that the shopper mindset is different from the shopper mindset.

In-store brand communication, secondary placements and cross merchandising were the answer. Some of the shopper marketing programs delivered up to 30% in sales increases – a win-win situation for the retailer and the brand.

Today’s digital experience for a consumer brand has to deliver the brand promise across all media and touchpoints. For example, based on the GPS location of a mobile device the brand could deliver a consumer oriented message when the person is at home or a bar or restaurant or a shopper oriented message when the person is in a store.

Conclusions for Digital

The challenge today is how to cross the digital divide and deliver those great experiences of using and/or consuming a product and brand to the web and translate it in a relevant way into digital experiences that are real and authentic and not contrived.

Companies need to study customer behavior in their real and digital environments, in their purchase and use occasions and then develop, design and deliver digital experiences that engage customers and are consistent across channels and platforms and therefore build brand equity.

Spark Marketing works with companies to develop innovative marketing strategies, messaging and campaigns that help B2C companies increase sales and B2B companies generate and convert leads combining Classic Marketing knowhow and Digital Expertise delivering result that exceeded clients’ expectations.