The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX

Third part of a multi-episode discussion of what changed to cause the need for agile brands. Continual market disruption has created a need for a more agile approach to branding, marketing, and the operations of an organization.

Second part of a multi-episode discussion of what changed to cause the need for agile brands. Unlike the “Mad Men” days of advertising, it’s not enough to send one-way messages. Successful brands don’t talk at people, they engage with them. A modern brand offers a multi-channel customer experience that is a persistent two-way exchange, more like a relationship than a one-off experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First part of a multi-episode discussion of what changed to cause the need for agile brands. Social media, in its broadest sense, has transformed commerce, marketing, media relations, and our relationships with both brands and our colleagues, friends, and family. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our last episode on the subject of what sets agile brands apart. Agile brands have a two-way relationship with their customers, particularly their best and most loyal ones. What does this mean? Brand development and marketing still belong to the company doing the marketing. However, being agile means giving a little bit away in order to get more in return. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Continuing our discussion of what sets agile brands apart. “The customer is always right” is a cliché we’ve all heard countless times. It’s vital to listen to our customers so we can understand what they are saying, and why they believe they are right. This process of listening and reacting has been made both easier and infinitely more complicated by the rise of social media, review sites, social media “influencers”, and company websites that solicit feedback. To be nimble and react to what your current and prospective customers say, what your competitors do, and what your critics write, you must be prepared to listen, analyze and adjust what you’re doing at a moment’s notice. So, keep in mind the point above about using data throughout your processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many companies got on the “big data” bandwagon early, driving it on a path of growth that IDC predicts will reach in excess of $200 billion by 2020. Many realized that with big data came a lot of tough decisions about which data to look at, and how to sift through it all. Everything from financial and sales data, to website analytics, to real-time social media listening tools can clutter any database and reporting tool. This creates overload and confusion, often resulting in marketing and sales reports based on what data is easy to obtain and make sense of, rather than what data is valuable to understand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all hear about engagement, but what does it really mean? To many digital marketers, it’s a metric to be reported. Consumers rarely view engagement in the same way, or think of it all. In an era where advertising and marketing are so pervasive, customers aren’t seeking engagement with brands. In fact, most people who do not work in the marketing world rarely, if ever, think about something like brand engagement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While some things need to stay the same in a brand, a truly Agile one needs to evolve over time. There are two ways to look at how an audience changes over the life of a brand. First, you can look at audience shifts in terms of how an audience’s preferences and behaviors change over time. This could be measured in everything from how they interact with your brand (e.g., a shift in mobile device usage, or increased adoption of social media for customer service) to their buying behaviors or other preferences. The second way you can look at audience shifts is in how different audiences may find your products and services useful over time. You may go to market assuming that your product solves a specific audience’s problems, but then find that you are instead being very successful with a completely different audience. What do you do? Depending on your strategic approach, you may decide to embrace this new audience, or you may shift your messaging and strategies to focus more on a different demographic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Once when I was speaking on the topic of agile marketing at a conference, someone asked a question that should be addressed here: Doesn’t it go against the fundamentals of branding to be so agile, and adapt to change so easily? What about the core things that make up a brand? For this reason, we need to think of the Agile Brand as being nuanced. Earlier in the show, we described “timelessness” as one of the key aspects of a great brand. It’s important to make sure we don’t confuse matters. While much of our discussion of the agile brand has centered on creating a continually evolving entity, we should also be clear that there are certain brand elements which should not be readily modified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices