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Posts Tagged ‘Customer Relationship Management’

Creating a Strong Brand

Friday, March 19th, 2010

Written by Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Corporate Identity and the Reputational Platform

Creating a strong corporate identity is a priority for every business. However, there aren’t many companies who are able to create the desired identity, or the right image in the minds of their target audiences. The right corporate identity is critical in creating a strong brand, and is part of the strategic reputation building process. This view is commonly known as the Reputational Platform. . The Reputational Platform helps to identify your organisation’s story – a bit like a theme behind what your company is all about.

There are 3 themes in the Reputational Platform;

• Activity – such as with Shell Oil company above. Shell's activities are mainly within the oil, gas and energy sectors.
• Benefit – like with Sony who provide leading technology in entertainment.
• Emotions – such as family business Johnson & Johnson.

When setting out to create a strong corporate identity you should consider how far it is that your brand can be developed and what are the benefits in doing this? Brand building is a costly investment and can take a long time, sometimes in the region of 3 to 5 years.

Tactics to create a strong brand
Investment and focus in the following areas will assist with the creation of a strong brand;

• Quality of products and services
• Passion for brand
• Customer relationship management
• Strong corporate governance and compliance
• Integrated risk and issue management
• Crisis planning
• Corporate responsibility (CR)
• Strong brand values, experience and communications
• Organisational culture and structure
• Contract fulfilment
• Business presentation and conferences
• Customer facing staff

Brand equity
As a result of the introducing tactical brand building activities into your business, your brand should begin to show an increase in its brand equity. Brand equity is an intangible asset, however, is becoming more and more important when valuing a company. In previous years, much of an organisation’s value was placed on physical assets such as buildings. As we move towards a more service and knowledge based economy, intangible assets are becoming even more important.

One of the things you should also be aware of at this stage of building a strong brand, is the ability to measure the strength of your companies reputation. Once you have measured your core activities you can then rate them by aggregate scoring. The process of scoring, or indexing , will give an indication as to the strength of your reputation. This is called the Reputational Index.

And finally, you need to ensure that the valuation of your intangible assets (brand equity) is fully aligned with the reputation of the company. If the company doesn’t have the reputation to back up the valuation of its brand equity, then the value of the company will fall, in line with the reputation. Likewise, if the reputation is higher, then the brand equity will rise to become more aligned, and hence the value of the company will also rise.

Tags: brand quality, corporate responsibility, Customer Relationship Management, strong brand
Posted in How To Do... | No Comments »

Cautious Customers

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Written by: Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

It’s clear that the current climate has driven consumers to re-evaluate how they spend their budgets. With discounting top of mind, customers are being even more cautious with their spending patterns and are still expecting the same quality and levels of service they’ve become accustomed to in the past.

This poses a challenge to us marketers who are working harder than ever at customer relationship management (CRM), embracing highly targeted marketing techniques geared specifically towards the needs of the customer. There’s nothing new with this scenario, compared to previous recessions, and how targeted marketing campaigns helped businesses to survive. However, this time around, the new age marketers MUST embrace the digital landscape in order to compete and retain the fickle client ready to jump ship at the drop of a competitor’s promotional newsletter.

There are several online and offline marketing strategies businesses should be engaging or planning to engage such as; measuring online activities, using data to track buying habits and direct marketing to specifically target and re-engage, reminding the cautious customer why they should remain a customer of yours.

Key steps:

Ensure customer retention is part of your strategy
Maximise your marketing mix
Listen to your customers
Re-engage lost customers
Become more personalised, relevant and precise
Measure, test and adjust your programmes for greater returns

Tags: Customer Relationship Management, customer retention, direct marketing
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

Social media or social mediocre?

Wednesday, November 4th, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Ok, so we all know about social media; Facebook and MySpace are officially entrenched in society; Twitter is closing ranks, with corporate blogging on its heels. Because of this popularity many companies conclude that the time is right for them to enter this new found ‘meeting space’. However, the question shouldn’t be ‘is social media ready for you’? But more like, ‘are you ready for social media’?

We’ve put together a hit list of things that companies, in particular business to business, should run a check on prior to doing any social media campaigns;

1. Does your senior management team understand? And even more so, do they support social media? This is one of the single biggest road blocks to making social media work.

2. The Corporate website – Before you take the next step on the web, it’s important to have a good foundation. If your current site needs a new design or has usability issues and doesn’t really reflect your business, then direct users to the current site first rather than to a social media space. Social media can wait. Leveraging social media comes with a new set of customer exceptions. At the top of that list is a usable and robust web site.

3. You love the web but does the web love you? For social media to help impact organic search traffic it’s important that your organisation goes through some basic optimisation of your web pages.

4. No rest for the wicked – a lot of social media is free, but they also take time. If you currently don’t even have time to read emails let alone post regular engaging content and be available to respond, then don’t pile on social media to your workload. Get support to make it happen.

5. How do you know if all is going well? If you’re going to spend time on the web then you need to manage your analytics and report statistics, hit rates etc, in order to gauge response and traffic. Google do a free analytics tools (amongst others – good ole Google!) Without information like this your social media strategy is about as focused as a gozzy kid with a patch on his eye. (I should know, I was that kid!)

6. What was I trying to say again? Social media can work for the good and the bad. If your message isn’t clear or you haven’t work out your positioning, then these weaknesses will be highlighted. Try to work out exactly what it is you’re trying to say before saying it.

7. To be heard but not seen – like it or not, transparency is a very important part of online culture. You don’t have to Tweet every business secret, but an expectation exists. If you can’t be sufficiently transparent then wait until you can.

8. My customers aren’t always right – If customer service isn’t a priority for your business then you’re going to find out sooner rather than later that social media doesn’t help the issue. That being said your customers are talking about you. The best way to fix poor customer service is to get them involved in the process to make it better.

9. ‘I “don’t” want that one’ – If your product’s a bit rubbish then social media will only help to tell more people that it’s rubbish. The only positive thing that would come out of this is that you’ll get valuable real-time feedback. However you’re probably better off focusing on making a better product rather than spending time on social media.

10. Sales Funnel looking like a garden hose? If you’re looking at social media as a possible lead generation source then it’s important to have a sales funnel that works to back these efforts up. Organise your sales process and all contacts through an effective CRM system.

Many of these items may seem obvious, but that’s the point. Social media isn’t a magic cure-all system. It can make bad things worse and good things better. My overall recommendation is that if you’re still in the investigative stage, keep on researching. Research is good, evaluate and think critically about how your customers will perceive you. It makes sense to get rid of the bad habits before you start.

If you want to read more about social media, in particular with regards to e-marketing then take a look at a previous post here; http://www.studiowide.co.uk/blog/?p=74

Tags: Business to Business, Customer Relationship Management, e-marketing, marketing, social media
Posted in Marketing | 2 Comments »

Black sheep of e-marketing

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

Social media is the black sheep of the e-marketing family, falling behind pay-per-click and email marketing in the minds of most marketers, but we predict that this is all set to change.

black-sheep

Generally, businesses are just wakening up to what social media can do and how it should be treated. Currently used as a fun way to immerse users in brands, rather than as a tool for direct selling. Innocent drinks and Compare the Market are two companies that have got it right. Both have used Twitter to great effect, with funny and engaging feeds that are ‘on brand’ and don’t do the hard sell.

With the onset of more open source programs and widgets that do almost everything imaginable through the interface of a browser, social media is no longer the finger-in-the-air medium it used to be.

We’ve started using blogs at Studiowide (you’re reading one right now!) and our target is to raise our profile as a leading marketing company in Liverpool. The posts that we make are replicated over the web through news feeds and also on twitter. This gives our followers and customers the opportunity to publically engage with us on their terms with comments and feedback. Ultimately, this level of activity is rewarded by Google who like content publishers.

Social media is moving at speed so it’s vital that you get to grips with new developments; a word of caution though; try first before you jump, see which one’s works for you and which ones don’t.

Tags: Business to Business, Customer Relationship Management, e-marketing, marketing, new marketing, online, technological changes
Posted in General Marketing | 2 Comments »

Is inbound marketing replacing outbound?

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

We’ve been noticing more and more that Outbound Marketing is increasingly being brought to the forefront and possibly looking more likely to start replacing inbound.

What do we mean by outbound marketing? This is all of the “in your face” traditional communications that organisations and marketing companies have historically churned out to the masses. With a strong focus on getting people to buy and not much on listening to what people actually want.

Inbound marketing however sponsors the voice of the customer; listening to their needs, adapting products accordingly and engaging on their terms. It’s the total opposite to ‘interruption marketing’ and business is conducted on the basis of the customer coming looking for you – seeking you out from the crowd.

With limited time and tons of information at a finger tip, the way we present ourselves to this newly empowered customer is extremely important. Consistent messages across all online brand communications, and participating in helpful discussions and communities relevant to your sector will all gain you credibility and exposure, but you need to effectively manage the pipelines of information that are available for all to view.

Keep in mind also that purchasing departments are using the web to prequalify new business. So if something’s don’t stack up, then chances are this could go against you in the decision making process.

Tags: Business to Business, Customer Relationship Management, marketing, new marketing
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »

B2B Marketing

Monday, October 12th, 2009

By Carl Da-Costa-Greaves

What is B2B Marketing?
B2B Marketing is where a proportion or all of your marketing efforts goes towards promoting goods or services to businesses whose main transactions are with other businesses. For example, If you consider the action of selling computers to a company, or the maintenance of networks under a services agreement, both are transactions between two companies and considered business to business or B2B for short.

B2B marketing is now one of the fastest developing fields of marketing. New technologies bring more businesses together, thereby companies start to ‘tap up’ each other far more sharply. Technology also makes the world a smaller place. So it becomes essential for sales and marketing experts to understand and apply the principles of B2B marketing.

CRM

Characteristics of the industry;
• Fewer but larger buyers
• Demand often derived from consumer demand – e.g. car industry buys steel because consumers buy cars
• Volume and value of transactions are usually higher
• Buying unit differs – more rational approach, more people involved
• Buying /selling process usually more formalised

When to use it?
Used as a management process to identify and capture the interest of potential prospects. This information is then tracked using a formal sales process and Customer Relationship Management software (CRM). Each suspect or prospect that has been identified through marketing efforts can be further escalated to the next stage of the business to business relationship via a number of focused Brand Communication and sales promotion efforts.

What do you achieve from B2B Marketing?
Converting prospects into customers is an important objective of B2B marketing. If managed correctly then a prospect should convert to a customer. At this point, the relationship management aspect and customer relationship should not end there. Instead of thinking about the sales process in a traditional way, like a funnel; where prospects pop out the end as a customer, think of it like an hour glass; the efforts are greater at first, reducing as the relationship grows, at the point until the sale is made; then the focused efforts begin again and increase with frequency, until we reach a re-buy. At this point the process repeats.

So, as a prospect reaches the sales conclusion then it’s not merely enough to service the buyer’s contract and deliver the goods. Just as much effort should be expended in after service marketing and further relationship building with CRM, in the form of service, support, updates etc.

Key steps:
1) Ensure that you have a complete and up-to-date database available
2) Devise a sales process and track through a CRM database
3) Plan effective promotions and regular contacts directly aimed at the needs of prospects
4) Create the desire and show customers how they can purchase
5) Integrate all communications, both online and offline, to ensure a coherent message

Tags: Business to Business, Customer Relationship Management, marketing, Promotion, Selling to B2B
Posted in How To Do..., Marketing | 3 Comments »