Marketing Trends

If you’ve ever flipped on an NBA game in the last few years, you’ve probably noticed one small little detail embroidered on the left shoulder of your favorite NBA superstar. A logo. Sponsorship opportunities are plentiful in professional sports, and the relationship between a team and the community in which it plays is a critical aspect to take into account when it comes to their jersey patches and what brand gets that prime real estate. The Orlando Magic partner with Disney, the Milwaukee Bucks stay true to their roots and have a relationship with Harley Davidson. For the Charlotte Hornets, which are owned and operated by basketball’s biggest star, Michael Jordan, the partnership it has with LendingTree is rooted in the brand’s history in the community. “Sponsorships are more of an investment in the greater good of the community and the long-term relationship with your consumers…. You make the investment with the understanding that you're going to get unaided awareness and aided awareness. Aided awareness is seeing the logo on your chest. You see the benefit and aided awareness from that logo being on their chest, and when they're on television. When you see those jerseys in there, it's spread across the country. The unaided awareness, that's a bit slower. And we've just determined that the value of those points over time, coupled with the things that we're going to do offline is where the value lies.”Cornell McGee is the Senior Vice President of Marketing for LendingTree, an online loan marketplace based in Charlotte, North Carolina. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Cornell opens up about the company's long-standing relationship with the Charlotte Hornets and the value that brings to the brand and its customers. Plus, he explains how marketers need to be thinking about partnerships more generally, and how every marketer can deliver high-value content to their consumers.Main TakeawaysAir Jordan: Some partnerships are meant to simply drive brand awareness, while others serve multiple purposes. When thinking about partnerships, make sure you are investing with the understanding that you are going to get both unaided and aided awareness from your partnerships. Your aided awareness will consist of your visibility and you will see immediate benefits. Your unaided awareness will build at a slower pace but will help over a longer period of time.Are We Exclusive: The lifetime value of any particular customer should be a fundamental baseline to your customer success strategy. Once you think about their long-term journey, you move past simply reaching a customer at the point-of-sale, and you create a more long-term problem-solving relationship with them.Just Give the People What They Want: It’s a simple notion, but can never be overstated: Feed your customers the content that they crave. Make sure you are constantly listening and understanding what their needs are and then act appropriately. Don’t act based on your own intelligence or desires. Produce your content based on what the consumer is asking for in order to meet their needs, delight, and serve them.---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.

Here’s the deal, customer service gets a bad rap, but the truth is that when done well, solving customers’ needs is awesome, and when you can actually give them a good experience and make their day, that’s just icing on the cake. Reaching that outcome takes work, though, and the market for how customer service outsourcing is conducted has been changing over the last few years.  Companies such as Alorica are emerging in this industry thanks to its ability to adapt to the changing landscape of our world and deliver a service that takes some of the hard work out of the customer service process. “The market for customer service outsourcing is changing dramatically. What has been a fairly well-established model — where we could operate call centers on behalf of our clients and manage that customer experience more effectively — is getting disrupted. And a big part of that is the way that technology is supporting more personalization, new channels for customers to engage with brands, and thinking through how to bring together a value proposition that takes a massive distributed labor force and enables them with technology that then delivers an outcome, utilizing proven processes and techniques.”Those are the words of Colson Hillier, the CMO of Alorica, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, he discusses the radical shift in how large scale customer service departments — such as call centers — are being forced to alter their format and where Alorica comes into play. Plus, Colson details how personalization efforts continue to put the customer experience at the forefront of every decision.Main Takeaways:The Good ‘Ole Days: The market for customer service outsourcing is changing significantly. The well-established model of operating call centers on behalf of clients has been disrupted due to new personalization methods and how consumers can easily interact and engage with brands at a quicker pace.Bring the Value: The overall value proposition that brands are bringing to their clients is no longer rooted in products, but rather the overall experience and how the customer is able to utilize the service.The Big Chair: The role of the CMO is no longer about nit-picking products and campaigns, but rather a broader scope of responsibility and not just thinking about the overall product portfolio, but rather product development, marketing, and how the company tells the overall story of the organization.---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.

More than likely you’ve come across your favorite YouTuber dropping their favorite line, “this episode is sponsored by [Insert brand name here].” And while that tag might be an annoying sidetrack to the content you came for, there is something bigger at play with that message than what you see and hear on the surface, especially to the marketers who set up that sponsorship. “The feel of your brand coming out of the mouth of somebody who has a respected audience is valuable. It's better than just appearing on a no-name editorial or piece of content. It's better if it touches them more. So that's the foundation. That's the underlying principle of why that potential reward is dramatically outsized. ... when you have a hit, you hit big.”Those are the words of Daniel Conn, the CRO and Co-Founder of ThoughtLeaders. Daniel joined this episode of Marketing Trends to discuss why marketers are suddenly starting to look at sponsorship opportunities as a separate and valuable channel, and he breaks down why the right-partnership, paired with the proper voice, can have endless opportunities for your brand.Main Takeaways:A Whole New Channel: Marketers and strategic planners are now beginning to look at sponsorships as a legitimate channel that is an important part of their media mix. No longer are sponsorships viewed as single tags at the end of a bowl game. Instead, they are fully-integrated partnerships paired with strategic partners who connect with a target audience better than other kinds of advertising.Authenticity Matters: Any brand and content creator can partner with each other. But when you are partnering with podcast hosts and YouTubers that already have built-in audiences, make sure their message and audience are authentic and connected to your brand. The power of influencers speaking for your brand on a daily basis is that they capitalize on the opportunity to connect with users in a way traditional advertising does not.It Sounds Simple, But It’s Not: Success rate is the metric brands have to rely on when measuring the value of a sponsorship. It seems obvious, but it’s true that you cannot put too high a value on the success rate, and what it means in terms of ROI.---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.

Jonathan Yaffe is not joking when he says our economy is changing. No, he isn’t talking about the rise and fall of the stock market or the way consumers distribute their money. What he is talking about is a culture shift, from a things economy to one focused on experiences. Jonathan knows this because he saw it shift first-hand during his days with Red Bull, where he learned the power of experiences, but also the deficiencies within the experience industry — especially when it came to ROI.“We were spending billions of dollars a year on experiences and it clearly worked. But what drove me absolutely crazy is that we had no data. We had no ROI. We believed that we were changing people's behavior by creating these massive large-scale experiences all over the world. But we had no idea how they were actually working real-time.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jonathan, who is now the Co-Founder and CEO of AnyRoad, discusses why it's time for marketers to stop focusing on their products, and instead think about r how to turn their brand into an experience that will drive lasting lifetime value. Jonathan also details wheat makes for successful experiential marketing strategies and which companies are doing it best.Main Takeaways:It’s a Lifestyle: Most companies will need to shift their focus toward marketing experiences and away from actual products. As more and more consumers begin participating in experiences, their brand loyalty is more likely to grow, which will lead to more sales from that consumer over time.Are You Making Money Though?: One of the biggest issues currently facing experiential marketing is that most brands do not have a comprehensive strategy behind how to understand the ROI their experiences are bringing in. In order to successfully understand experiential marketing, you need to have a 360-degree view of who your customer is, what drives their buying behavior, and how you can build loyalty with that customer over time.Changed Behavior: Experiential marketing is not about pushing products but rather it’s about changing a consumer’s behavior so their buying habits naturally increase over time. If a consumer only visits a yoga class once a month, marketers need to begin to figure out ways they can alter that same consumer’s buying behavior so that they will visit that same class multiple times a month.---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.

Matt Epstein was three years removed from his days at UCF when he decided he’d finally had enough of the job-hunting process. Endlessly sending out resumes without as much as a response had worn him down and he had to take a hard look at why, as a marketer, he couldn’t make himself stand out. marketer,  So he changed his strategy and instead of doing what everyone wanted him to do, he pivoted and took a risk.“If whatever you're doing, you're not feeling a little uncomfortable, then that means you're not taking risks. And the worst thing you could do as a marketer is not take risks. If you're not zigging while everyone else is zagging, well then guess what? You're not going to stand out. And the worst thing you could do as a marketer is not stand out.”The risk Matt was about to take meant he’d use his entire life savings on one specific campaign: to market himself to tech giants such as Google by using a clever website, GooglePleaseHire.me, which was complete with a video resume designed to make him stand out. Believe it or not, Matt didn’t actually get that job at Google, but the risk still paid off and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Matt explains how.  Plus, Matt details how the early marketing strategies he used helped lay the groundwork for his future campaigns, and how marketers should be taking risks these days.Main Takeaways:Be the Bigger Company: When it comes to competitive advertising, the only instance in which you can go directly at a competitor is if they have significantly more market share. You need to think about the optics of the situation. Companies that are perceived as leaders within their market could be perceived as petty or bullying if they go at a competitor. So a good rule of thumb when it comes to competitive advertising is to punch up, not down.Messaging That Works: One of the first things marketers should be doing when they join a new company is to identify a message that not only sticks out, but also cuts through all the noise. If your message is getting lost in the crowd, whatever you do beyond that point will not be successful, regardless of the ad spend you put behind it.Are you a Risk-Taker?: Whatever strategy you are pursuing, should make you feel uncomfortable. If you are comfortable as a marketer and as a department, it means you are not taking a risk, which means you are not going to stand out from the crowd. Constantly be challenging yourself and your team to be thinking of new ways that deviate from what everyone else is doing.---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.

Ushering a company through a rebrand is a daunting enough task. Now try walking that tight-rope when your company is pivoting from a non-profit impact-driven organization to a for-profit company focused on making sure its clients receive accurate data to power their A.I. Sounds challenging, right? A.I. has become something of a buzzword in marketing circles, the technology has merits if you understand what it needs to make it successful. “There is an idea that without that data artificial intelligence wouldn't exist. There's synthetic data creation, and there's now models that can train off of very little data. But at the highest level, A.I. just doesn't exist without training data. And quite honestly, trading data at this point, doesn't exist without a massive human workforce. And that workforce is often overlooked.”Those are the words of Heather Gadonniex, the VP of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Sama. She is a marketing and data expert with a mission to deliver actionable data to power marketers’ ambitious A.I. goals. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Heather discusses why marketers need to know where their data is coming from in order to know how to properly use their datasets. She also shares stories on how she helped Sama pivot from a non-profit organization into the world of for-profit business, the challenges of their rebrand and the importance of impact.Main Takeaways:What Matters: There are a few core things that really matter in any business: personnel, culture, revenue and impact. Those four pillars all require different departments being in alignment with each other. Without any kind of alignment between your product teams, marketing teams, or sales stakeholders, you don’t have the ability to grow, scale or make the most impact that an organization can have in the marketplace because you’re not all focused on the same goals.Data 101: A.I. will continue to be one of the most important tools moving forward, but marketers must understand not just how to enable those insights to power your business, but where that third party data is coming from. Is the data set that the company is providing trained on your data or is it coming from another data set? The answer to those questions will impact the predictions you receive from your tech stack.How to Train Your Data: There’s this notion that A.I. and machine learning are going to replace marketing jobs in the future. However, that is simply not the case. What is often overlooked with new marketing technologies is the training data that goes into these tech stacks. At the highest levels, A.I. doesn’t exist without training data, which does not exist without a physical workforce behind 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.

In her years of experience as a marketing analyst and advisor to the C-Suite, Erna Alfred Liousas has worked with businesses of all sizes. From small SMBs to large enterprises, she’s seen it all. And it’s through these interactions with marketing departments of all sizes that she found clarity on all the areas where marketers are struggling most, including where a marketing team is most-frequently struggling in designing the customer experience.  “Marketers are recognizing that customer experience consists of numerous touchpoints, including all of the ones that marketing owns. The true definition of customer experience is the perception that customers have of an organization. And that perception is formed by the interactions across all of the brand’s touchpoints. So it's not just marketing. It's not just a product. It's not just service. It's everything.”Erna is the founder and CEO of U*Realized, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, she discusses why marketers need to start placing a greater emphasis on customer service and the feedback loops those interactions provide. She also discusses how messaging specificity can make all the difference when trying to reach your target audience, and why playing in three channels as opposed to one, might pay huge dividends.Main Takeaways:There’s Gold in There: Customer services are  a way to directly capture thoughts and insights from the customer, and smart marketers should be using those insights as a peek behind the curtain at some of the unspoken or indirect feedback customers are thinking about. Marketers should view customer service as another channel that can supplement some of the information that you would be getting elsewhere.Be Intentional: Make sure you are doing your due process before you commit to any one channel. Now is the time for marketers to review all of the channels that they’ve been leaning on and calling successful and ask themselves tough questions, such as: are customers actually engaging with us or are they just liking the content? Your social channels must accomplish a goal, so make sure you are setting KPIs in order to reach that goal.Make it Sing: When it comes to messaging, specificity and relevance are what will have the most impact. Make sure you understand what the message is you’re trying to convey, the importance of it in relation to the customer, and which of their channels they would prefer to see that message or content.---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.

2020 proved to be one of the most unprecedented and unpredictable years in history. Forevermore, marketing students will study the way brands altered campaigns at moments notice, embraced new technology, and dealt with social challenges as they surfaced. And they will also study the fallout and response to all of those activities in the years that followed, especially as it relates to marketing in the digital world to meet a new kind of audience. “2021, aside from all of this exciting brand new technology, and all of the demographic shifts that are happening that are going to allow brands to do new things for the first time, it's going to be a year of huge risk because a lot of consumers and employees that are at home with a lot of extra time, a lot of millennials and genZ that are going to be spending more time than normal on social media and on digital, which means a lot of the things that brands are doing right now is going to be scrutinized.”Kai Wright is an author, advisor, and lecturer at Columbia University, as well as the Founder & Curator of blacklist100, so he sits at an interesting intersection in the marketing universe: both as a scholar and a practitioner. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kai dives into the intricacies of 2020 and the ripple effect it continues to have on the marketing industry. Kai also dives into the social movements brands have had to respond to and what that response means to consumers.Main Takeaways:All About the Ecosystem: Companies that took the time to invest in their digital ecosystems prior to the pandemic are now ahead of the game. Investing in that digital infrastructure allowed those brands to move quickly as the world shifted even more toward online activities, and gave them the opportunity to build trust with consumers and a sense of strong brand loyalty.The Next Big Shift: The next huge growth opportunity for marketers is not going to be commerce or digital, but rather it will be how they start shifting their messages to target minority communities and meet their needs more specifically. The U.S. Census estimates that over the next 40 years, 90% of the country's population will be made up of three groups: African Americas, LatinX. and Asian Americans. Marketers who can pivot their messaging and target these audiences will see more growth than those who stick to their old ways.The Power of the SMB: Marketers need to have an understanding of the audience or community that they are targeting. The SMB market is integral from an economic perspective, especially the communities that operate around them. Ignoring or misunderstanding SMBs will eventually lead to withering away of that market and the surrounding communities.---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 nothing more frustrating than putting hours of time and money into a project only to watch it lay dormant. And yet, we see this happening constantly with brand landing pages and websites — the online face of the company — left neglected and forgotten for long stretches. So how can marketers break the mold and turn their websites into a long-lasting and user-friendly experience? That’s a question that Anne Stefanyk says her clients come to her with daily.“The website has become a marketing decision more so than an IT decision. 80% of our clients tend to be Director of Marketing or CMOs. And what happens is they come to us and they say, ‘We need a real specialist to make sure that our website works. We need to be making sure that not only are we getting leads, but we're getting qualified leads, and we're moving them through the sales funnel as fast as possible.’”Anne is the CEO and Founder of Kanopi Studios, a web agency designed around helping marketers create beautiful websites through adaptive execution and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Anne discusses specific growth strategies for how marketers can turn their websites into ROI machines. Plus she explains why search engines and search functions continue to be an undervalued asset and she details common mistakes she sees on most websites the marketers listening might want to check for.Main Takeaways:Continuous Improvement: You will never find a savvy marketer who will tell you that you can build a website and simply leave it static. Instead, they are continuously monitoring and maintaining their overall website experiences to make sure that it is meeting user expectations, which change more frequently than ever before.The Three Cs: A successful website growth strategy starts with deploying the following strategy: Connect, Communicate, and then convert. One of the most common components of a failed website’s growth strategy is missing dialogue. Institute a conversational chat function that can learn and adapt to your users, but most importantly one that opens the experience up to more personalization efforts down the road.Through the Side Door: Marketers need to think of their website as a guided tour of their brand. Guests want to be shown around and they want you to make that process easy for them. Most times, guests won’t find your site through your homepage, but rather through search. SEO should be doing the work for you. Users that access your site through search are 200% more likely to convert on sales. Make sure you deploy a successful search strategy, but also you empower your site to have a search function as well.---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.

The saying, “cash is king,” might have finally met its match in 2020. As more and more businesses and banks push their business toward eCommerce and digital transactions, the result is the further shunning of physical cash., One CMO is hoping to cash in on that trend, if you will, by capitalizing on every single swipe of the credit card thanks to a little help from A.I.“We thought, what if we use AI technology embedded on our cards? So when you scan [the card], you'll get personalized offerings and content? That will help customers to get offers faster and in one offline innovative space, as well as on our side, we'll optimize our marketing spend.”Those are the words of Levan Gomshiashvili, the CMO of Bank of Georgia, and his example of card-linked marketing is a look at how his marketing team hopes to stay ahead of the curve in 2021. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Levan details what else is on the table this year, including how his team works with the product development and sales teams to create winning products and strategies in order to meet the customers where they need them most. Plus, Levan discusses how marketers can stay ahead of the curve, even when their budget might be cut.Main Takeaways:Card-Linked Marketing: Marketers are constantly trying to find new and innovative ways to create a more personalized experience for their clients. A developing avenue that Bank of Georgia is pursuing card-linked marketing. By using demographic data from purchases, bank marketers can now create a clearer overall picture of each individual customer, while pushing messaging and promotions that are more effective to what the customer needs and wantsSo You Want to Be a TikTok Star: It’s more important than ever that your messaging reaches your target audience. When it comes to your digital messaging efforts, work to make sure you are reaching them on the channels that they are already engaging with. If your audience is on TikTok, shift your digital strategy to meet them on that platform, but don’t get too comfortable. You have to constantly be exploring new platforms and environments in order to keep your content and messaging timely, while appealing to your base audience.Don’t Overthink It: As marketing budgets shrink due to the fallout from 2020, marketers need to double down on the tactics and strategies that worked for them in 2020. If digital channels were a huge success for your brand, focus on those channels and products that the customers have already told you they need and want.---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.