CRM in my eyes is a very wide field and its complexity very much depends on the way it is implemented. A perfect example for CRM are Customer Cards, Client Cards or whatever you want to call them. You use them everytime you buy something at the respective store and this gives them the opportunity to start collecting data about you, their customer. The value of that data then is subject to the way it is processed and merged. What I mean is, it makes little sense to know what you are buying, if they don't also know e.g. your gender, your age, your demographic situation, etc. This makes it easier to start segmenting customers and put up statistics on them. For example which age group of what gender buys the most Justin Bieber tracks (not allowed to say CDs here anymore). We all know the answer to that one. But the quality of the information that can be gathered through such systems is mindblowing. And the effect it can have on your companys sales performance is outstanding. Yes, the example with the client card is a little worn out, so let's have a look at a modern way of implementing CRM in your company. Before that, I would like to try to explain the meaning of CRM in my own words:
CRM is collecting data about consumer behavior, analysing it and using the collected data for the marketing mix. Through this you are able to increase the customer frequency, their satisfaction and make them repeat customers instead of one timers. You really try to understand your customer better and make them come back for more. As a consequence your customer loyalty will rise and opportunities for up and cross selling will appear. The whole idea is to be able to provide relevant offers and information to your customers. How relevant that information is, depends solely on how well you know your customer and therefore, how well your CRM data is collected and used.
So much for that, now i would like to have a look at a few companies and how I think they implement their CRM. It isn't rocket science to see what happens above the surface, i.e. what the customer can see. But it is a little more difficult to find out what happens under the surface, i.e. what only the company sees.
Zappos takes pride in their customers sevices and they use it as their main marketing tool. Instead of investing in paid marketing, they make sure their customers are happy and let them spread the word. Being an Online Store like Zappos makes it easier to collect data from your customers. Through simple analysis tools like Google Analytics, you already gather a great deal of information about your visitors, those are not personalized though. That means you have a set of data, but you cannot link that data to single users. The great thing about online buying is that your customers usually sign up on your page and willingly provide you with all sorts of information about them. And even better, if they are logged in while they surf on your page, you can tell exactly what they looked at, what they bought, and therefore start knowing their preferences. Simple. Amazon has been doing that since the beginning. Rather annoying sometimes in my eyes, especially if you just click on a product once, without special interest in it and then you are flooded with suggestions about this product category which is not really relevant to you. So the system does have its flaws, but hey, most times you do search for things which actually are relevant to you.
The European pendant to Zappos, Zalando is also implementing the same stragegy. And to make sure it is done properly, they outsourced the whole thing. This happens rather often, considering that CRM can become a very costly and complex tool, also depending of the size of your operation.
Times are changing and so are the rules of the game. With new players, you need new strategies. Tablets and smart phones have proven to have a mayor influence on todays CRM strategies. Because now you can not only follow your customers at home or in the office, but pretty much everywhere they go. And with a little thing called geolocation, you can even tell where they like to move around, where they shop, which bar they go to celebrate happy hour etc. and provide them with relevant offers taking their current location into consideration. Here you can see a little video about how geolocation works and what it is good for in marketing.
To wrap it up I would like to say that with the technical possibilities we have today, it has become rather easy and relatively cheap to start implementing CRM systems, but it is not so easy to use them effectively. This is probably the reason why a lot of companies outsource this. However, it is an absolute must nowadays for any company to know their customer and build up a relationship with them. No matter if that is done through large and costly software systems, or simply through minimizing the distance between you and your customer.
Cheers! P
Montag, 12. Dezember 2011
Sonntag, 4. Dezember 2011
e&m-Business
Before starting this course, I had a normal working knowledge on e-commerce, especially due to the fact that I am co-founder and part of the management team of a company that offers e-commerce services on a b2b basis, and also builds and manages e-commerce platforms at own risk. This has given me profound insights on how the business works. But like with everything in life, you never stop learning. And in this particular case, I believe you should learn one new thing every day. It is such a fast paced and innovative environment, it is hard to keep your knowledge up to date. And also due to the fact that the web is not static but extremely dynamic and new ideas and concepts come out on a daily basis, it is very difficult to analyze what is useful, what is a trend and which innovation or business model will help shape the future of what we know as e-commerce today. So jumping on to every train can be a dangerous strategy. It can also be a dangerous strategy to be the innovator and come up with mindblowing ideas. Why is that? Well, if we look at some of the first search engines for example. Remember Altavista or Lycos? No? I don't blame you. What they did really was paving the way for Google. As an early mover they had to deal with all the difficulties and obstacles you encounter when bringing a new concept to the market. Once the technology and the concept was ripe, it got harvested by others such as Google or Yahoo. So we find similar situations in e-commerce. Especially if we limit the scope to b2c e-shops. Many trends disppeared as fast as they appeared in the beginning. Take the electronic malls as an example. A few years ago it seemed to be a trend and a promising concept to have multiple brand stores united on one platform. Really, all of those platforms more or less diappeared. Needless to say, that sometimes old trends which didn't work out can get a new boost through innovation. This is what I believe with regards to bulding successful strategies in e-commerce: Do not take every trend as a template for a succesful business model, most of them die within a year. No matter if there was a huge hype around it or no hype at all. Make the customer's life easier. Complicating the shopping process for the client because you want to show everything you can do with your programming skills and apply what you've learnt at your last photoshop course is a conversion killer. Keep it simple. Take Amazon as an example. Amazon obviously has a very sophisticated site, but they don't need to bloat things with tacky animations and background music. They are succesful because they offer almost anything you could want to shop for, they offer it at very competitive prices and they make sure you have it within a couple of days. Obviously, if you want to enter this market, don't try to compete with Amazon. Rather try to find your vertical spot where you can shine, and maybe one day Amazon will knock on your door and offer you an irrefusable amount of cash. Bingo!
One thing I haven't been able to work with a lot so far is m-commerce, or m-business. I will refer to it as m-business, because the scope goes far beyond simple business transactions. Through the technology we hold in our hands today, we can also manage our clients, business partners and our employees. When you receive a package via UPS or any other of the many parcel services, you will sign for the reception on a digital mobile device. In fact, UPS was one of the first companies to implement such a system and you could say that this was one of the first appearances of e-business. In this case, the digitalization of the delivery process was an advantage for the company as well as for the cusomters. It made it easy to track the delivery, control the employees performance and therefore increase efficiency and customer value. UPS' "Parcel Men" currently use the DIAD (Delivery Information and Acquisition Device) and the GSS (Global Scanning System). The DIAD helps tracking the delivery, supplies a regularly updated delivery list, captures the pick ups and the deliveries and secures communication with the distribution center. The GSS is responsible for capturing the parcels at the distribution centers. Obviously we (almost) all own smart-phones and we know the possibilities those devices give us. The example of UPS is to show you, that m-commerce is more than just mobile gadgeting. It can be a core element of a companys process structuring and therefore of its value chain.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore that there are millions of mobile internet devices (MID) out there and we need to take that as an opportunity to, amongst others, enhance our customer relationship management and advertise more efficiently. In the U.S. the mobile advertising market is expected to turn over $3.1 billion in 2013. Here you find a great article about mobile advertising and CRM. For me there are two aspects which make m-business worth getting into. It gives you the ability to follow your customers wherever they go and therefore collect valuable data about their consumer behaviour. And it makes it possible for you to be in touch with your clients at all times, hence be closer to them and have a tighter realtionship. Again space is limited, for more on this topic check this out.
Cheers! P
One thing I haven't been able to work with a lot so far is m-commerce, or m-business. I will refer to it as m-business, because the scope goes far beyond simple business transactions. Through the technology we hold in our hands today, we can also manage our clients, business partners and our employees. When you receive a package via UPS or any other of the many parcel services, you will sign for the reception on a digital mobile device. In fact, UPS was one of the first companies to implement such a system and you could say that this was one of the first appearances of e-business. In this case, the digitalization of the delivery process was an advantage for the company as well as for the cusomters. It made it easy to track the delivery, control the employees performance and therefore increase efficiency and customer value. UPS' "Parcel Men" currently use the DIAD (Delivery Information and Acquisition Device) and the GSS (Global Scanning System). The DIAD helps tracking the delivery, supplies a regularly updated delivery list, captures the pick ups and the deliveries and secures communication with the distribution center. The GSS is responsible for capturing the parcels at the distribution centers. Obviously we (almost) all own smart-phones and we know the possibilities those devices give us. The example of UPS is to show you, that m-commerce is more than just mobile gadgeting. It can be a core element of a companys process structuring and therefore of its value chain.
Nevertheless, we cannot ignore that there are millions of mobile internet devices (MID) out there and we need to take that as an opportunity to, amongst others, enhance our customer relationship management and advertise more efficiently. In the U.S. the mobile advertising market is expected to turn over $3.1 billion in 2013. Here you find a great article about mobile advertising and CRM. For me there are two aspects which make m-business worth getting into. It gives you the ability to follow your customers wherever they go and therefore collect valuable data about their consumer behaviour. And it makes it possible for you to be in touch with your clients at all times, hence be closer to them and have a tighter realtionship. Again space is limited, for more on this topic check this out.
Cheers! P
Montag, 28. November 2011
Staging
It is not from nowhere that the term "staging" has found a use in marketing. With all the different platforms we use nowadays to market and present products, staging has become a more complex discipline, as it was 20 years ago. It is not only in shops, print media and with the packaging that we can stage our products, we have a much wider range of possiblities now. And it is not only the diversity of the media, but also the diverstiy of the devices the media is displayed on. Every device has its only prticularities, which have to be taken into consideration during the creation of the staging concept.
When you try to do some online research about staging, you will come across a massive amount of real estate agencies, talking about properly staging a house in order to improve sales. Here is an example. This is a pretty straight forward hint to what staging could mean. In this case it is how to design the surroundings of a product and everything which is related to it, in order to be able to make an experience out of it and therefore market it more effectively. It seems to me like this is a huge topic in the real estate business, but it is more difficult to find articles about it with a more general character.
So we have a product and now we want to stage it properly. What are the options we have? I have come up with the following (incomplete) list of instruments which I think could be useful:
- Packaging
- Homepage
- Video (Youtube)
- Banners
- Fragrance
I believe it's essential to try to combine as many instruments as possible, and also make sure that they are in line with each other. What I mean by this is, that the homepage should be staged in the same design as the packaging, for example. At least with regards to style, colors, font, etc. The customer should be able to recognize the link.
Now I would like to go through some of the instruments mentioned above and try to give examples for succeful implementations. I won't do this in too much detail, it's just to give an overview of how I believe staging works.
So first we have the packaging. Taking consumer electronics as an example, there are a few benchmarks we can consider. Apple and Samsung have clearly set the standard for the packaging of mobile devices and its peripherals. Here's an example of how packaging can actually generate content. To put it in simplw words: the packaging is so good, that design oriented people talk about it and post their opinions on blogs, forums and other social media. Remember I mentioned user generated content in a previous post? This is another example of it.
Creating a homepage nowadays is not like it was 10 years ago. Technologies evolve and the user's expectations do too. The good thing is, there are plenty of studies you can have access to concerning how a webpage has to be desigend in order to draw the user's attention to the right things. There are a few basic points, which have to be considered before starting to design a homepage. You can find them here. Furthermore we know today, where users look first on a homepage.
This example is from yahoo. Now I will compare it to a homepage of a company which I believe masters the art of staging. Nespresso plots their main brand ambassador George Clooney right in the middle of the field that is considered to be the first and most viewed. The whole area is a slider so as George disappears a delicious selection of chocolates appears, followed by a coffee machine and back to George. Everything the brand stands for within 3 slides. In my eyes this is a great example for successful online staging.
Staging should subliminally transfer the products quality. It is a way to make sure the customer perceives the product in the way we want. Russian Standard Vodka for example is considered a "cheap" product in Spain, while there Smirnoff is more of a premium brand. In northern Europe Russian Standard is marketet as a premium product on the other hand. And Campari (the owning company) does that through the way they stage it here. Check out this video on horizont.net.
Today we also have to consider that a lot of people are carrying internet capable mobile devices. Another opportunity for marketing, adverstising and therefore also for staging. BMW had a mobile camapaign launched this year via a news network application. This is just an example of how you could expand staging onto mobile devices.
So what was your favourite staging in 2011? Was it the royal wedding? Or maybe the end of a surpression? Whatever it might have been, I am sure you have already planned your own staging for tomorrow. And if not, good luck with that!
Cheers! P
When you try to do some online research about staging, you will come across a massive amount of real estate agencies, talking about properly staging a house in order to improve sales. Here is an example. This is a pretty straight forward hint to what staging could mean. In this case it is how to design the surroundings of a product and everything which is related to it, in order to be able to make an experience out of it and therefore market it more effectively. It seems to me like this is a huge topic in the real estate business, but it is more difficult to find articles about it with a more general character.
So we have a product and now we want to stage it properly. What are the options we have? I have come up with the following (incomplete) list of instruments which I think could be useful:
- Packaging
- Homepage
- Video (Youtube)
- Banners
- Fragrance
I believe it's essential to try to combine as many instruments as possible, and also make sure that they are in line with each other. What I mean by this is, that the homepage should be staged in the same design as the packaging, for example. At least with regards to style, colors, font, etc. The customer should be able to recognize the link.
Now I would like to go through some of the instruments mentioned above and try to give examples for succeful implementations. I won't do this in too much detail, it's just to give an overview of how I believe staging works.
So first we have the packaging. Taking consumer electronics as an example, there are a few benchmarks we can consider. Apple and Samsung have clearly set the standard for the packaging of mobile devices and its peripherals. Here's an example of how packaging can actually generate content. To put it in simplw words: the packaging is so good, that design oriented people talk about it and post their opinions on blogs, forums and other social media. Remember I mentioned user generated content in a previous post? This is another example of it.
Creating a homepage nowadays is not like it was 10 years ago. Technologies evolve and the user's expectations do too. The good thing is, there are plenty of studies you can have access to concerning how a webpage has to be desigend in order to draw the user's attention to the right things. There are a few basic points, which have to be considered before starting to design a homepage. You can find them here. Furthermore we know today, where users look first on a homepage.
This example is from yahoo. Now I will compare it to a homepage of a company which I believe masters the art of staging. Nespresso plots their main brand ambassador George Clooney right in the middle of the field that is considered to be the first and most viewed. The whole area is a slider so as George disappears a delicious selection of chocolates appears, followed by a coffee machine and back to George. Everything the brand stands for within 3 slides. In my eyes this is a great example for successful online staging.
Staging should subliminally transfer the products quality. It is a way to make sure the customer perceives the product in the way we want. Russian Standard Vodka for example is considered a "cheap" product in Spain, while there Smirnoff is more of a premium brand. In northern Europe Russian Standard is marketet as a premium product on the other hand. And Campari (the owning company) does that through the way they stage it here. Check out this video on horizont.net.
Today we also have to consider that a lot of people are carrying internet capable mobile devices. Another opportunity for marketing, adverstising and therefore also for staging. BMW had a mobile camapaign launched this year via a news network application. This is just an example of how you could expand staging onto mobile devices.
So what was your favourite staging in 2011? Was it the royal wedding? Or maybe the end of a surpression? Whatever it might have been, I am sure you have already planned your own staging for tomorrow. And if not, good luck with that!
Cheers! P
Donnerstag, 24. November 2011
Web 2.0
When I first heard the term "Web 2.0" I thought wow, finally a faster Internet. Right. Then I found out that USB 2.0 and Web 2.0 had absolutely nothing in common. ( Yes I know, all you nerds out there are frowning right now) Hmmm... so what is this Web 2.0 then? The term was introduced for the first time in January 1999 by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design.
So what do you do when you want to find out more about something? That's right, you Google it! When typing in the keyword "web 2.0", Google will vomit around 2'490'000'000 (yes that is in billion!) hits. Whow. What to do with so much information? Well, let's be pragmatic and start at the top: Wikipedia. Wikipedia says this about web 2.0. Wikipedia's definition is probably the most commonly used one on the planet. Why is that? Well, Wikipedia is always right... or is it not?
When wikipedia first launched, it was an absolute revolution. An encyclopedia written by everyone, on the internet, for free! Let's have a closer look at the "written by everyone" part. Because this is really the essence of what we are looking at here. Wikipedia was one of the first massively used platforms, where the users were responsible for its content. This created a whole new level of interaction. A new world, a self regulating world. Wikipedia is a perfect example of what Web 2.0 stands for. It is the use of the World Wide Web, not only as a static source for content, but as a platform for interactive behavior. Take the Mass Effect Wiki for example. This is a site in site type Wiki, integrated in Wikia. It is the place for Mass Effect enthusiasts, to share their experiences, their knowledge and their problems with this popular SciFi RPG (Role Play Game).
Now you might ask yourself: what does this have to do with marketing? A lot! It is every marketeers dream. Just imagine all the information the company publishing this game can gather about their customers. They can find out about their preferences, their wishes, their problems, their behavior in general...it's just fantastic! And it is a perfect opportunity to engage your customers too. Let them be part of it. Make them feel that they are a part of it. We will see more about this when I come to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in one of my following posts.
So Wikis are one good example of what characterizes Web 2.0. But that's not everything by far. Take the vast amount of social media platforms. It's all user generated content over there. And they live of the interaction between the users. The information the users publish during those interactions. A lot of times that information is valuable to someone, mainly companies. So suddenly we have a whole new pool of business models, which basically created itself, it just had to be harvested. And some are doing a pretty good job at it! The main tools we can use to implement user interaction on our platforms, homepages, e-shops, etc. are the following:
Podcasting
Blogging
Tagging
Contributing to RSS
Social bookmarking
Social networking
However, like with almost everything, there are drawbacks. Users are getting more and more scared of their data being misused. More and more people want to be more conservative with their data. That is a trend for sure. And what do we do with trends? We make a business out of them. And tadaa! Here you have a second gen facebook type thing which allows you to keep all your data private (at least they say so). And they offer a special service for brands too. And they don't refrain from spitting into Face...aehm book's face. Check it out for yourself.
I could go on for hours talking about this topic. But everything must come to an end. I have limited myself to Wikis and social media platforms here, but obviously there are many more ways to describe web 2.0. Here you can see the list of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites.
Oh, I think I forgot to mention something important. The crowd thing. Everything's a crowd these days. Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing.. It is said that the crowd is wise. It is wise because many are smarter than just a few. Well in most cases that might be true. I will contain myself from giving you a contrary example. The crowd really is that mass I was mentioning in the beginning. Most of you know the popular site Atizo. A perfect example for a crowdsourcing website. Solve problems, or even better, get them solved by the crowd. For zero, zilch, no money at all... I love it! Every company should love it. And many do. Like Migros, for example.
Cheers! P
So what do you do when you want to find out more about something? That's right, you Google it! When typing in the keyword "web 2.0", Google will vomit around 2'490'000'000 (yes that is in billion!) hits. Whow. What to do with so much information? Well, let's be pragmatic and start at the top: Wikipedia. Wikipedia says this about web 2.0. Wikipedia's definition is probably the most commonly used one on the planet. Why is that? Well, Wikipedia is always right... or is it not?
When wikipedia first launched, it was an absolute revolution. An encyclopedia written by everyone, on the internet, for free! Let's have a closer look at the "written by everyone" part. Because this is really the essence of what we are looking at here. Wikipedia was one of the first massively used platforms, where the users were responsible for its content. This created a whole new level of interaction. A new world, a self regulating world. Wikipedia is a perfect example of what Web 2.0 stands for. It is the use of the World Wide Web, not only as a static source for content, but as a platform for interactive behavior. Take the Mass Effect Wiki for example. This is a site in site type Wiki, integrated in Wikia. It is the place for Mass Effect enthusiasts, to share their experiences, their knowledge and their problems with this popular SciFi RPG (Role Play Game).
Now you might ask yourself: what does this have to do with marketing? A lot! It is every marketeers dream. Just imagine all the information the company publishing this game can gather about their customers. They can find out about their preferences, their wishes, their problems, their behavior in general...it's just fantastic! And it is a perfect opportunity to engage your customers too. Let them be part of it. Make them feel that they are a part of it. We will see more about this when I come to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in one of my following posts.
So Wikis are one good example of what characterizes Web 2.0. But that's not everything by far. Take the vast amount of social media platforms. It's all user generated content over there. And they live of the interaction between the users. The information the users publish during those interactions. A lot of times that information is valuable to someone, mainly companies. So suddenly we have a whole new pool of business models, which basically created itself, it just had to be harvested. And some are doing a pretty good job at it! The main tools we can use to implement user interaction on our platforms, homepages, e-shops, etc. are the following:
Podcasting
Blogging
Tagging
Contributing to RSS
Social bookmarking
Social networking
However, like with almost everything, there are drawbacks. Users are getting more and more scared of their data being misused. More and more people want to be more conservative with their data. That is a trend for sure. And what do we do with trends? We make a business out of them. And tadaa! Here you have a second gen facebook type thing which allows you to keep all your data private (at least they say so). And they offer a special service for brands too. And they don't refrain from spitting into Face...aehm book's face. Check it out for yourself.
I could go on for hours talking about this topic. But everything must come to an end. I have limited myself to Wikis and social media platforms here, but obviously there are many more ways to describe web 2.0. Here you can see the list of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites.
Oh, I think I forgot to mention something important. The crowd thing. Everything's a crowd these days. Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing.. It is said that the crowd is wise. It is wise because many are smarter than just a few. Well in most cases that might be true. I will contain myself from giving you a contrary example. The crowd really is that mass I was mentioning in the beginning. Most of you know the popular site Atizo. A perfect example for a crowdsourcing website. Solve problems, or even better, get them solved by the crowd. For zero, zilch, no money at all... I love it! Every company should love it. And many do. Like Migros, for example.
Cheers! P
Donnerstag, 6. Oktober 2011
"Storytelling"
At this same moment I am sitting in the train wondering why everybody is so into their 20 Minuten magazine. What is it that makes it so popular? It cannot be the thoroughly researched and carefully composed articles (right). No, it's because this magazine is telling us stories, rather than just throwing facts at us. It is somewhat tacky, yes, but it is also entertaining to a certain extent, I have to admit.
So is that what storytelling is all about then? Entertainment? I believe a large piece of it is exactly that. But by far not everything. A simple little story can be entertaining for the time you read it. 5 minutes later you will have forgotten about it again, well at least I would. So the greatest challenge for people writing marketing-stories is to use the history of the company as a plot and wrap it in shiny glittery paper to make it desirable - desirable to read, to remember and to talk about it. The word of a good story will spread like a wildfire in California during mid August.
What other aspects might be behind the success of storytelling in marketing? I believe to have found one. Don't we like to identify ourselves with the charachters of movies we watch or books we read? Well, what happens then if we identify ourselves with the life story of a CEO, or even with the company itself if we consider it as a character? We build up an emotional relationship with the person or brand. That my friends is the highest art in marketing. Have your customer identify him- or herself with your company and he or she will be a loyal customer for all times. I think this is the essence of storytelling and the reason for actually investing all those resources in getting a good story out there.
Cheers P
So is that what storytelling is all about then? Entertainment? I believe a large piece of it is exactly that. But by far not everything. A simple little story can be entertaining for the time you read it. 5 minutes later you will have forgotten about it again, well at least I would. So the greatest challenge for people writing marketing-stories is to use the history of the company as a plot and wrap it in shiny glittery paper to make it desirable - desirable to read, to remember and to talk about it. The word of a good story will spread like a wildfire in California during mid August.
What other aspects might be behind the success of storytelling in marketing? I believe to have found one. Don't we like to identify ourselves with the charachters of movies we watch or books we read? Well, what happens then if we identify ourselves with the life story of a CEO, or even with the company itself if we consider it as a character? We build up an emotional relationship with the person or brand. That my friends is the highest art in marketing. Have your customer identify him- or herself with your company and he or she will be a loyal customer for all times. I think this is the essence of storytelling and the reason for actually investing all those resources in getting a good story out there.
Cheers P
Abonnieren
Posts (Atom)