Marketing Trends

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.

Let's get into some marketing 101: Every marketer has some kind of base they market their products to. For example, if you’re in the market for a tire, Goodyear is probably on your radar. At Adobe, the marketing team attempts to appeal to customers who want to tap into their inner creative side. But what happens when you don’t have a defined customer base? What if your customer base is literally any business and every industry? “[We’re] dealing with every single industry out there. You're getting to see customers who are going through some of the biggest challenges from going global, and that drives activity and questions in the marketplace that we try to jump on and have better answers for. They're getting into new products and services, new markets, and they need to rely on us for our expertise about how to handle customs in any marketplace.”Meet Chris O’Brien, the Chief Commercial Officer for C.H. Robinson. Through his 25-plus years at C.H. Robinson, Chris has seen it all. From dealing with customers at both a regional and national level, to working on supply chain management around the globe. On this episode of Marketing Trends, he details how and why the supply chain industry has seen increased visibility over the last few years, and he explains the importance of building a customer experience that puts the user at the forefront and the implications that doing so will have on your company’s culture.Main Takeaways:Increased Visibility: The stress the pandemic has placed on global supply chains is a brand new challenge in the industry. As a result, there is increased visibility and the relevancy of companies like C.H. Robinson.Level Up: Your customer experience should not only touch consumers at multiple levels, but it needs to be more proactive and less reactionary. By being proactive, you can create a better overall customer journey from start to finish and serve your customer in multiple ways.Brand Over Everything: In the current climate, the power and stability of your brand is more important than ever. Maintaining a strong, stable, and meaningful stance among customers is a top priority for marketers.---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.

Joel Windels, the CMO of NetMotion, says if you’re working on building the ultimate customer experience, you should shift your mindset and instead look at it as an overall consumer experience. The difference is subtle, but the applications and implication of that mental move are necessary in a world where buying something goes far beyond just the basic transaction.   “The quickest way to describe why it's important is unboxing videos on YouTube,” he said. “You don't just buy a gadget or a phone anymore. You're buying the presentation of the box that it comes in and how it slides out and how it sets up. It's much more than the utility of the product itself. From the moment you first hear about us, to the moment you finally login, it's all of those micro touchpoints. How do you make sure every single interaction you have with us as a business is just really good.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Joel takes us further down the consumer experience rabbit hole. Here he provides some key marketing strategies to help curate a positive 360-customer experience, including tactics that not only drive customer engagement, but then turn those customers into champions for your brand.Main Takeaways:Surprise and Delight: Every time you have an engagement with a customer, you have to be thinking about how to turn that customer into an advocate for your brand. This is especially important when a customer has had a poor experience with your brand. Find all the points in the customer journey where you can go above and beyond what is expected in order to mend that relationship and earn a loyal customer for life.And Now, Something Completely Different: There is no doubt that marketing in 2020 was vastly different than ever before — but that just meant that marketers had to find innovative ways to engage with customers.,  To get and stay ahead, continually find ways to turn routine, potentially rote events such as webinars into something new that a customer would want to take part in. In fact, studies show that webinars and virtual events that featured unique twists often receive higher engagement and longer participation.To Infinity and Beyond: The customer experience is more than just the overall journey from product identification to checkout. The journey also includes all the other touchpoints as well. From presentation, to unboxing, and feel, marketers must always be thinking about how you can turn every single interaction into a positive experience.---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.

Never before have consumer expectations shifted at such a rapid pace. As brands and marketers try to keep up with an always-evolving consumer landscape, what they are quickly discovering is that just because you operate in one sector, doesn’t mean you are just being judged amongst your peers. As the  Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing, Product and Digital Officer at City National Bank, what Linda Duncombe has discovered is that while the customer always comes first, the way customers interact with other brands and platforms across multiple sectors greatly alters the expectations they have for yours.“They're not comparing me to banks. They compare me to the experiences that they're having in their lives. When we think competition and innovation, it's really easy for us to say this bank is doing this and this bank is doing that, but that's a big mistake because that is not what we are being benchmarked against. Innovation now has to start thinking very differently about how we meet the client experience. It's evolving.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Linda discusses why City National Bank has widened its scope of technology services in an effort to make the customer experience a more streamlined experience. And she discusses why the customer’s voice is larger and more important to marketers today than it has ever been before.Main Takeaways:Can You Hear Me Now?: Never before have clients played such an integral role in the development and launch of products. As clients’ voices rise in importance, marketers need to develop a workflow that now incorporates the client more in order to ensure that their needs are being met. Co-creation helps develop a working and personable relationship with the customer while making sure they have a seat at the tableThink Outside the Box: When you are hiring a marketing team, think outside the typical personnel you are comfortable with. Don’t lock yourself into hiring individuals with only banking experience, or only content expertise. When you confine yourself to those boxes, you often find the same types of candidates and a lack of diversity in skill. Instead, go outside of your organization and industry in order to create a diverse team filled with passionate marketers who can help innovate your space.Expectations Rising: Banks and companies are no longer being measured solely based upon their products. Instead, customers are measuring a company's value based upon a variety of factors, including the social good they contribute to their community. Incorporating some sort of social mission or community initiative will help the upcoming civic-minded generation feel comfortable working with and remaining loyal to your 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.

It’s no secret that the power of a brand can make all the difference in the world of marketing. When people think of Apple, they think of clean, sleek and innovative designs. When you think of Wendy’s, its smart and clever Twitter account has become the high water mark for how brands should interact with their base. But what happens when you’re a smaller brand still building your message? How do you go about finding your base and voice?“We can talk about the quality of the food and the antibiotic-free chicken. We can talk about our made-from-scratch Southern sides. We can talk about that hospitality experience. We want you to feel like a guest when you're [at Joella’s]. And we thought that was just the bigger play to help educate people around hot chicken and also have a little bit more of that broader appeal. So we're not just that destination to come try hot chicken once we get the hottest thing. We want to develop customers that love our flavor and love our experience and want to continue to come back to us for more.”Those are the words of Katie Wollrich, the CMO of Joella’s Hot Chicken, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, she dives into the importance of messaging and understanding where your brands live within the marketplace and in the minds of consumers. Plus, Katie provides insights on how marketers who are accepting their first CMO position, can hit the ground running.Main Takeaways:Be Our Guest: When your brand is regional and not national, it’s important to recognize the impact of being a community partner. This means putting more of a focus on understanding the impact local public relations can have on your brand. Being able to partner with local organizations and then using those partnerships as opportunities are important when it comes to brand awareness.Building Up Your Brand: When it comes to developing your brand’s message, finding your voice doesn’t happen overnight. Instead, you need to be methodical and opportunistic with your approach. Keep your message simple and consistent. Start with gathering strong strategic insights and then reiterate that same message over and over again.Rewarding Loyalty: One of the best ways to get to know your customers and to understand them is through loyalty programs. Not only are you consistently rewarding your guests when they come into the store, but the data you are gathering from those visits is far more valuable. When you have a better understanding of your customer, who they are, and what drives their purchases, it provides a better chance to reach them in the moments that matter most.---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.

Tim Glomb has never been one for doing things the “traditional way.” From his days producing reality television shows, to his current gig as the Vice President of Content and Data for Cheetah Digital, Tim has consistently operated under one founding principle: To create content that makes people say, “‘That was awesome.”“You want to know if your content is resonating. Yeah, jumping out of a plane and having Tommy Lee FaceTime you and all these things sounds crazy, but we had CMOs and CEOs and some of our clients writing our CEO notes and emails going, ‘Did I just watch your team jump out of a plane to kick this off? That’s [awesome]. That's different. You got my attention.’ You have to experiment, you have to jump-off ledges, but they’ve got to be calculated risks. You have to be doing things that people are going to look at and go, ‘Why the heck did they do that?’ Some will fall flat — so, fail quickly, and move on, but you've got to take those risks and you go to have fun. If you're not having fun, why are you doing it?”Fun is the keyword, but in the B2B industry, it can sometimes get lost in the day-to-day marketing tactics being used. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Tim discusses how B2B marketers can think differently and start injecting a little more adventure into what they do, and he talks about the power of creating meaningful and engaging content, even in a space that’s not known for it.Main Takeaways:Viva La Content!: In a world driven by content, you need to constantly be thinking to yourself, ‘Is this content something that I would want to consume?’ If the answer is no, you need to rethink what you are producing for your clients. Put your client first and don’t just produce content that improves their metrics. Produce content that inspires and energizes your clients and makes them excited to work with you.Through their Eyes:  One of the biggest mistakes marketers often make is not letting their clients tell their own story. Don’t tell the story for your clients — let them convey their message and then it’s the marketers job to find a unique way to make the audience engage with that.Data Know-How: When you’re looking at your data, ask questions, and really listen to what the market is telling you. The goal of any content should be engagement, but make sure that you are listening to the people on what they want, even down to the medium and the format.---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.

Perhaps the Cookie Monster said it best when he uttered the phrase, “Cookie not diet, because Cookie is Lifestyle.” For Tom Carusona, the CMO of Insomnia Cookies, that mantra has never been more true. But after more than two years as the head marketer for Insomnia Cookies, he’s learned one key lesson…“From a content perspective, authentic cookie shots are what people want. They want to see a warm, delicious, melty, cookie that you can practically smell through your phone. I remember when I started, I was [saying], ‘I don't want to just see a string of a zillion photos of cookies,’ but it turns out that actually, that's exactly what people want.”As a marketer, it can be hard to go against your creative intuition, but on this episode of Marketing Trends, Tom goes into detail about how Insomnia Cookies has built such a loyal following, the importance of using marketing tools that resonate with your brand, and why sometimes it’s best to just give your audience what they want.Main Takeaways:Insomniacs: When you are working with influencers, it's of the utmost importance you are working with individuals that represent your brand in an authentic way and believe in your product. The influencers you work with should have an audience that is in line with the core demographics of your own business.Nom, Nom, Nom: Make sure the content you are producing resonates with your audience. If your followers want to see warm, melt-in-your-mouth cookies, give them pictures of those same cookies. Don’t try to force content down their throats that they are not asking for. Keep it simple and stay true to your brand.Evolution of the Field Marketer: Field marketing is now more about having a pulse on what is happening within your stores and then providing your brick and mortar locations with a toolkit that their sales teams can utilize to reach their goals. The trick is creating a toolkit that stores across the country can utilize successfully.---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.