Marketing Trends

Data, data, data. In 2021 it’s all you hear… especially if you’re a marketer. Whether you are taking calculated risks to ensure campaigns are rooted in what the data is telling you, or conducting massive rebranding campaigns, just about all of your activities are rooted in analyzing the numbers and mitigating risks. But data these days is more than just numbers and graphs on a spreadsheet. It comes in all shapes and sizes and can be used to build a valuable connection between brands and consumers. And that’s where Lisa Giacosa comes in.“What gets exciting when you're on the agency side is that you can look at understanding consumers' entire spectrum across multiple touch points, across multiple products and services, and start to stitch those journeys together and think about alliances and the way that you can bring things together. We've been able to go to our clients and say, we know that we can measure this correctly. And we know that we can get this to a point where we can give you a guaranteed outcome against what's going to happen for your business.”Lisa is the President and Global Head of Data, Technology, Analytics, and Insights at Spark Foundry, a global media agency that’s all about bringing the heat to brands by driving higher engagement, affinity, and transactions. Lisa helps make that happen by guiding brands to take calculated risks through the power of data strategy and technology. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Lisa details what that looks like, and she goes deep in one particular area that is on the cusp in the marketing world: TV attribution..Main TakeawaysForget the Jargon: Don’t get lost in three-letter acronyms. Your team should never rely on buzzwords or acronyms when describing a marketing strategy. Teams that rely on these acronyms often lack the ability to articulate how their business or marketing strategy will benefit your team in the long run.We Don’t Have the Whole Picture: One of the biggest obstacles when it comes to TV attribution right now is there is no one single source of truth when it comes to providers. Instead, marketers are left to piecemeal their CTV strategy through multiple vendors.Understanding Data Privacy: There is starting to be a shift now where consumers are becoming more educated and beginning to understand what data privacy means and how it impacts their value exchange when it comes to consumed media---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer  Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Sometimes marketers can be too nice, or too respectful, or honestly, just not bold enough to either go wild or just say no. After all, the primary goal of any marketing team is to serve the clients’ best interests, but what if what the client is asking you to do is wrong? Or just too vanilla? Sometimes, the answer is to have the courage to think outside the box.“I love crazy ideas. The crazier the idea, the better. That's where true marketing genius comes from is the crazy things where you go, ‘Well, what if we could… and then let's figure out how we do it.’ So I always tell them, we live in a world today where there's very little you can do besides posting something inappropriate on social media that can't be taken back and that you can't stop from a digital perspective. So you have a lot of flexibility to test out ideas, to come up with a concept, run with it and see if it works.”Stephanie Cox has made a career in thinking outside of the traditional marketing constraints. What others might perceive as an obstacle, she tackles head on. She is a modern day marketer with a  no-holds-barred, just-get-it done mentality and she joined Marketing Trends to discuss her role of VP of Sales and Marketing at Lumavate, a company that is helping marketers create apps using low-code. On this episode, Stephanie details how Lumavate pivoted from a sales-led approach to one focused on product, and she gives out some tips and tricks for leveling up the customer journey, and how she flat out gets things done.Main TakeawaysIt’s Not Technically Stealing: Imitation is the highest form of flattery. That’s why marketers that are looking to make the pivot to a product-led strategy should attempt to imitate companies within the space that are already successful. Don’t copy their strategy verbatim, but there is nothing wrong with understanding and using the building blocks that made their campaign successful and then ideate on top of that foundation based on the needs of your company.Be Bold, Folks: When it comes to digital marketing, there is no excuse for sticking to a conservative strategy. It’s very rare for marketers to not be able to pivot if something is not succeeding in a way you thought it could. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas to see if they work, because if they don’t, you can pivot at a moment's notice.The Magic Number: Data is and remains the key to every marketer’s success strategy. If you take a bold leap, make sure your reasoning is rooted in what the numbers are suggesting. That way, if that leap doesn’t pan out, you have a logical explanation for why you attempted it.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Automation is hot. It’s new, exciting and it’s sexy. And let’s be real for a second, everyone loves it when their job gets just a little bit easier. Every day, new tools are added and implemented into the modern marketing stack, and personalization tools and chatbots are being used with more and more regularity But how can we optimize those tools even more? What does the optimal marketing tool look like? “The most overlooked thing is people forget that people are human. They use automation to make a bunch of robots, and I don't know about you, but I don't like hanging out with robots, I like hanging out with people. And if your marketing makes me feel like I'm a human and I'm interacting with a human, I'm usually going to be much, much more engaged.”Dan McGaw is the founder and CEO of McGaw.io, a company that focuses on helping marketers get the most out of their technology stack. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Dan details how marketing tools can and should become more human, and he explains the key obstacle that prevents marketers from having a clean revenue-generating funnel. Plus he reveals the one big tweak every marketer should make to their SMS channels to drive better results.Main Takeaways:No End in Sight: It’s hard to define what inning we are in when it comes to analyzing the marketing stack because new software and tools are constantly being built. This constant evolution of technology means you need to strategize on how and what you’ll implement in your own stack. Don’t jump the gun and rush to use  the newest tools that likely still have a lot of flaws to workout. Instead, focus on integrating the tools you already have to make sure they work as a cohesive unit before adding something new.Can You Profile the Subject?: Personalization has never been more important than it is today. But as a marketer, you have to make sure that the people who give you their information are being profiled correctly so that when they sign up for your email list, the information and content that you are sending them directly relates to their needs.Mr. Robot: Your SMS strategy needs to toe a fine line between  effectively relaying your message and content to the consumer, but also making sure that you are speaking directly to them as a person. If your text content makes it feel as if the customer is interacting with an actual person and not a chatbot, you are more likely to see engagement.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

There are a few things in life Chris Thomas loves: The first is a delicious slab of ribs sitting on his dinner table. The second is playing the harmonica. And lastly, Chris lives to help small businesses find their voice and their audiences, and he does that through his agency, Yonder. Chris started Yonder in his basement and has grown it into a full-fledged agency that companies of all shapes and sizes trust to help them with the most fundamental of problems: finding their audience. “Every time [clients] walk in the door and they're like, ‘We can't generate leads, or nobody knows who we are.’ I'm like, ‘Well, who's the audience? Who are you trying to reach?’ That's really the biggest [obstacle] for everybody. You're a boutique for women over 45 and you're on Facebook trying to market to 50-year-old dudes. That's not going to work. And once they figured out their audience, the rest is easy.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Chris explains his passion for helping SMBs discover their audience as well as their own brand identity. Plus, he details some of the best strategies for how companies can retool their SEO approach, and he reveals the reason you should never equate retooling your brand with fixing the nuts and bolts of your business.Main Takeaways:Who Is Your Audience?: This is the fundamental question to ask a client that is having trouble generating leads or finding awareness. Once you have clarity on this, targeting efforts and generating meaningful leads becomes much easier.Have Some Self Awareness: As a marketer, success comes by knowing your strengths and weaknesses and adjusting your plans based on those things.  Don’t overstretch yourself in areas that you know are out of your wheelhouse. When you start dipping your toe into unfamiliar waters without a paddle, you’re doing your client and yourself a disservice.Your Brand is Not Your Business: When a small business believes it needs to reposition and work on its brand, what marketers need to be stressing is for them to go back to the basics of the business. They should examine their website and SEO practices, and educate their customers on who they are. Once those business fundamentals have been addressed and results follow, then it’s appropriate to n refocus your efforts on the brand.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Cutting the cord is not new, it’s just getting more popular as companies such as Netflix and Hulu, which have each been around for more than a decade, continue to rise. But as consumers continue ditching traditional broadcasting platforms with more frequency, brands are being forced to find new ways to reach their audience, and one way they are doing that is through connected media devices and CTV. Unlike traditional broadcasting platforms, which offer a limited amount of commercial inventory per show, CTV is providing brands more flexibility and thus, more opportunity.“When you think about what's possible in this new digitized version of TV, and when you think about the fact that more and more consumers are cutting the cord, it allows you to secure more reach than ever has been available before through connected television and online video inventory, but it allows you to be more specific and targeted in how you buy that connected inventory.”But how brands distribute to platforms and reach their target audience is the challenging part. Stephanie Geno, the Seniior Vice President of Marketing at  Innovid, is here to help. Innovid is an online advertising technology company that offers distribution and management of digital ads and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Stephanie dives into how the company is harnessing CTV to change the ad game. Plus, she discusses best practices for targeted advertising, and why personalization is a great tool, if you can get past its downsides.Main Takeaways:Cord Cutters: More and more consumers are shifting their viewing habits from relying on traditional broadcast and cable companies to subscribing to streaming services. And while this is not shocking, what is surprising marketers is the amount of inventory and targeted advertising that is available to them through connected tv and the smart marketers are putting that inventory to work for them.Universal Metrics: There is a growing need to create a universal metric system that allows marketers to have a baseline of comparison across various forms of digital marketing. Advertisers need to think in terms of both macro and micro effectiveness across their ad buys, and they need to optimize both.Personalized to My Needs: Personalization creates greater relevance for marketers, but it’s also creating a greater ability to be agile. However, it does not come without its pitfalls. When one-to-one personalization entered the market, it set off a chain reaction of overly-complicated strategies and forced marketers to overthink things. Personalization tactics should be used as a tool to broaden your reach, but also to help marketers extend their creative efficiency, with the ability to test, learn and optimize their practices.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.Show Less Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

2020 will forever be remembered as the year of a once-in-a-century pandemic, but it should be recognized that it was the year we all got reacquainted with our homes. From streaming a late-night movie in the living room, to hopping on early-morning conference calls in our home offices (or closets or spare bedrooms), in 2020 our homes were asked to do it all. Almost a year ago David Marine, the CMO of Coldwell Banker, joined Marketing Trends to detail the company’s ambitious rebranding strategy and he’s back now to update us on how it all worked out. “2020 was going to be the year of the rebrand, and what a great year it was going to be with all these plans. And as you know, 2020 happened to all of us. So things had to change, but here we are a year later and I can honestly tell you with a straight face that 2020 was actually the perfect year for Coldwell Banker to rebrand.”Things may have worked out for Coldwell Banker, but it wasn’t easy. Campaigns had to be altered, messaging and digital strategies were scrapped and shifted on a dime, and David was along for the ride every step of the way. On this episode of Marketing Trends, David tells us what it was like, he details the wins and losses of 2020 for Coldwell Banker, and he dives into how marketers can be agile in their digital efforts so that they, too, can rebrand or adjust when the time calls for it.Main Takeaways:A Brand You Can Trust: When you have more than 100 years of company lineage, consumers have had time to build trust in a brand. But just because you have heritage and time on your side, doesn’t mean your messaging doesn’t have to meet the moment. Consumers are more likely and willing to trust brads that deliver authentic messaging that matches the purpose of your brand, the story you are trying to tell, and that meets the moment of the ad and acknowledges whatever might be happening in the world.Is That a Hybrid?: A new way to look at your ad spend should be a mix between traditional broadcast channels and streaming services. Your digital strategy should be a mix of your larger media plan. Focus your broadcast plans on marquee events that drive live audiences, such as sporting events. Then use your digital channels to supplement that audience with platforms such as Hulu, that allow you to target your audience while snagging a different demographic at a lower cost.This is Us: When thinking about partnerships, you have to be strategic. Don’t just go out and partner with the first company that is willing to give you money. Instead, ask yourself how this partnership brings value to your brand and does this company meet the standards and expectations that you have already set for yourself?---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Marketing is all about trends, what’s hot and what’s not. What’s trendy and what’s a thing of the past. After all, the name of this show is Marketing Trends. And to be the best in the field, you have to grasp what sticks. But while marketers attempt to chase the hottest new thing, their jargon is often filled with buzzwords. Daniel Incandela is the CMO of Terminus, a company built on the backbone of ABM, and he had to learn first-hand that not everything — including the term ABM — is just a turn of phrase and that there is real merit to some buzzy ideas.“At first I had a certain level of disdain for ABM. I thought it was another buzzword coming through, and what I've learned over the years, and certainly now, is a lot of people associate account-based marketing with just targeted ads. That is certainly a component of it. But if [targeted ads] is the expectation of ABM, then you're never going to see the full value of it.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Daniel details new strategies for how ABM marketers can stick out from their peers and move past the bias that might exist around account-based marketing. Plus he digs into why storytelling is the backbone of any successful campaign. And he updates us on his new role with Terminus and how he approached his first 90 days.Main Takeaways:More Than a Buzzword: ABM is more than just a buzzword and marketers have to stop thinking about ABM as just targeted advertising. While ad placement is a component of every great ABM strategy, the core component of any ABM strategy should be storytelling. Start focusing on the story of your ABM campaign and how your customers will interact with it.Formula For Success?: B2B marketing has a tendency to be repetitive and uninspiring and more times than not, B2B campaigns have a hard time differentiating themselves from their competitors. Just because your product speaks for itself, doesn’t mean things such as branding, messaging and the customer experience don’t matter.Just Shoot Me a Text: As a marketer, messaging and understanding where to reach your customers has never been more important than it is today. Don’t get bogged down and only attempt to reach your audience through one channel. Experiment and try different touchpoints, such as text messages, phone calls, or emails.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

There’s no doubt that metric reports are valuable for marketers. After all, those numbers offer insights that greatly influence decisions around where a company should be spending its money. But what happens when two completely different programs, such as an NBA game and network television drama, draw similar audience metrics? How do you differentiate the two? Or does it not really matter? After all, if both programs are drawing the same number of viewers, they have to be equivalent, right? “There's a number of variables that you would look at to evaluate whether something is meaningful, but it all depends on what the consumer target is that you're looking at. So you can put in any variables that you want to decide what they are, such as which program you would choose, but you're not just looking at spots and dots like we have in the past. You're evaluating that programming based on whether it will resonate with the audience, and whether it's in the right context for that audience.”All those spots and dots, they are important in their own right, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Erin Flaxman, Global Chief Growth Officer for Havas Media Group, explains why. Erin discusses why it’s important to dive deeper into all the numbers on your metrics report in order to better understand your target audience. Plus, she gives some practical tips on how brands can create meaningful content based on what the metrics reveal in order to more fully connect with consumers.Main Takeaways:Brand Matters, Right?: Not according to a study done by Havas Media Group. If 80% of brands completely disappeared, most consumers would not care. What consumers do care about is if the product and company engage with them in a meaningful way.More than Just Spots and Dots: It’s important to remember that not all ratings and metrics are positive for your brand. Just because two separate events draw similar results ini audience size, those audiences are not always equal, so you have to be thinking about which audience is right for your brand. An audience for an NBA game is completely different than one for an episode of Breaking Bad. As a marketer what you need to be looking at is how your product or service fits into that audience and how you provide meaningful content to them.Not Just Another Zoom: One of the biggest challenges for companies today remains how marketers present pitches to clients. When putting together a pitch, marketers have to start thinking about new ways they can be creative and show that they have a plan to keep the audience on the other side of the screen actively engaged.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Let's be frank: the app store is overwhelming. There are far too many options and too many barely-differentiated apps. When everything looks and feels the same, how can you possibly stick out? The key, you already know, is advertising. But these days you can’t just put out a banner ad, or stick an ad on a landing page or a newsletter and expect to see success. You need strategies that go one step beyond just getting a download, but instead lead to deeper conversions. To do that, you need to do a bit of Inception-style marketing.“When you have millions of apps that consumers can choose from, being able to advertise to users and other apps to create awareness and get them interested in engaging in our app becomes super important. You can't just create a good app and throw it out there and hope for the best. You really need to support that through effective advertising. And if you've got an app, you're going to want to be advertising your app inside of other apps.”Those are the words of Dennis Mink, the Vice President of Marketing at Liftoff, a one-stop-shop for programmatic user acquisition. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Dennis details effective strategies marketers should be using to get the most out of their apps, and why your KPIs have to be more about conversions and engagements and less about downloads.Main Takeaways:What’s the Value For Me?: When designing advertisements to promote your apps, your designs should be less flashy and more focused on how your app actually works, the benefits of the apps, and the value the app is going to bring to the user.Just Do Your Job: The job of a mobile advertisement is no longer simply to convince users to download an app. The role of an ad has shifted where the main responsibility is now to convince users to actively convert inside the app.Let’s Get Technical: When deploying machine learning tactics, you need to focus on a few main things. The first is that the data that you are feeding your algorithm is clean. And the second is that your techniques are helping you accomplish certain goals, like driving in-app engagement and conversions and doing those two things at scale.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.

Eric Siu likes to say he was never successful athletically. And while he might have struggled between the lines, there was one arena in which he thrived: the digital one. Eric always found comfort when it came to video games, where for years,  he dominated as a successful esports player. For Eric, success in gaming was rooted in the mindset that failure was his and his alone, but that regardless of the struggle, the next level was always within reach..That mantra is something he still follows today.“I think marketers have to understand that there are levels to everything, and there are levels of your career, there are levels to when you're working out, and there are levels of games. If you can reframe life into a game, if you can reframe business into a game, it just becomes a lot easier and a lot more fun.”Eric is an investor, founder and advisor to companies. He is also the Chairman of the digital marketing agency, Single Grain. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Eric dives into what it means to have a leveling-up mindset and some of the steps that marketers can take to move up in their careers.  Plus, Eric details the two key areas marketers should be honing in on when it comes to optimizing their website.Main Takeaways:Built for Speed: When you’re trying to optimize your website for search, you have to be thinking about the things that matter most, which are content and links. Part of having good content is having a great user experience, and that means having a fast website. Always be thinking about how you can make your website faster and easier to consume.The Right Mix: It’s important when you are sourcing talent to find the right mix of employees who can excel in multiple areas. It might sound simple, but it’s not. Most marketers are not great product people and the same can be said for product personnel. Look for people who can manage both sides of the coin.The Long Game: At the end of the day, you have to always be thinking about long-term success and not what is happening in the short-term. Constantly be thinking about where you can get the most untapped potential and then leverage that into something that will benefit you in the long-term.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. Mission.org is a media studio producing content alongside world-class clients. Learn more at mission.org.