Paul Cheney says, “The promise of content marketing is that all that’s needed to provide value is creating high-quality material that gets noticed. The material then does all the pre-selling for you so your company closes more deals with greater efficiency. No need for cold calls, pushy sales tactics, or throwing money at direct mail. But the question since the beginning has always been, “does it ROI?” According to Karen Thomas-Smith, VP Provider Marketing and Reference Management at healthcare giant Optum, it absolutely does. She led a team in a pilot program at Optum that completely... [...]

Selena Blue says, “For most companies and its marketers, ensuring good placement in search engine results is crucial. In 2015, Google updated its algorithm. The update earned the name “mobilegeddon.” Why? “If someone is doing a search on Google using their mobile device, Google is going to show websites that are mobile friendly before websites that are not mobile friendly,” said Danny Gavin, VP, Director of Marketing, Brian Gavin Diamonds, in his interview at the MarketingSherpa Media Center at IRCE. “You can imagine that people who don’t have a mobile friendly site they lose... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, “Marketers can learn a lot from Pokémon GO, and it call comes down to one mantra: Gotta catch ‘em all. Except in our case, we’re talking about our customers. While not everyone can create a social phenomenon out of their product, you can definitely capitalize on one to pique your customer’s interests and stay top of mind. Pokémon GO, which is an augmented-reality smartphone game that has players exploring the real world to find virtual Pokémon, is currently rivaling Twitter when it comes to daily active users. This means you can’t afford to just ignore it.... [...]

Regina Love says, “I’ve gotten the nickname “Coupon Queen,” because I love a good deal. It’s hard for anyone to turn down a 50% off sale from their favorite company. Promotional marketing uses special offers to raise a customers’ interest, to influence a purchase and to even stand out among competitors. As marketers, our main goal is to use tactics like this to boost awareness in order to build the community for our brand. A few months ago, I wrote a post on building customer experience by looking at event marketing while we prepared for MarketingSherpa Summit. Before getting started... [...]

Brian Carroll says, “When the business strategy isn’t linked with sales and marketing, the result is that marketers and sellers end up working harder, not smarter. This has a multi-billion dollar impact. Most companies struggle with this according to the Frank Cespedes, author, and Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School: “Selling [or marketing,] no matter how clever and creative, can’t generate good financial returns unless it’s connected to strategy.” I met Frank while we both spoke at an event in Santiago, Chile. We had a memorable time sharing ideas and research. I thought... [...]

Daniel Burstein says, “Fiduciary duty. These words have been in the news lately, as the government seeks to require that financial advisors have a fiduciary duty to their customers in certain cases. A fiduciary duty is a legal duty to act solely in another party’s interests. So what this new regulation essentially means is, financial advisors must put customer’s interests before their own. And the financial industry has been fighting this. As marketers – this should be crazy to us! This is what we should do every day: Put our customer’s interests before our own. How can a business,... [...]

Melissa Pickle says, “MarketingSherpa Summit 2017 will be here before you know it, and our team is hard at work planning the agenda, with a special emphasis on customer-centric strategies and approaches. As we select our keynotes, the team has conducted in-depth research and gained some interesting takeaways from both academic and marketing practitioners. We highlighted the first five takeaways earlier this week, and we have five more thought-proving insights again for you today. Takeaway #6. Build habit forming products Many of the products we use in our daily routine have influenced our... [...]

Melissa Pickle says, “At MarketingSherpa, we’re in the planning phase for MarketingSherpa Summit 2017. With the interest of our customers’ experience at the core of our every decision, we conduct extensive research to select the most thought-provoking and applicable keynote sessions for our attendees. During our research phase, we have identified 10 key takeaways from leading experts (both academics and practitioners) in marketing. That’s a lot of key takeaways, so we’re breaking it up into two digestible bites. Read on today for insights around customer centricity, empathetic marketing... [...]

Regina Love says, “When you go to a restaurant and your customer experience before the meal arrives is terrible, you’ll most likely refer to that restaurant as being terrible, even if the meal was amazing. Customer service has the power of leaving a bad taste in your mouth. Customer service and marketing now work together more than ever. At the MarketingSherpa Media Center at IRCE 2015, Courtney Eckerle, Managing Editor, MarketingSherpa, interviewed Katie Laird, Director of Social Marketing, Blinds.com, on how her team was making amazing strides with their customer experience”. How... [...]

Courtney Eckerle says, ““The real challenge is that the path to purchase isn’t just a single step anymore,” said Ali Wing, Chief Marketing Officer, maurices. The clothing retailer has addressed this in two ways, Ali said. – Putting in place attributions in order to organize which channels receive credit – Transitioning analysis of those attributions from a transactional approach to that which includes well-rounded customer data “We’re attaching customer data so we get a long-term value in understanding the customer we’ve acquired, versus the transaction we just acquired,”... [...]