Category Archives: e-/marketing

e-/marketing: a bridge with mobility, technology, philosophy, psychology, social trends

Acquisition and loyalty: the digital marketing mix

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How to gain more customers and how to make them come back? Those are the key objectives when it comes to marketing. How can marketing contribute to achieve business objectives?

Traditionnally, you have the 4 P’s of the marketing-mix: Product, Price, Placement (distribution), Promotion.

With new technologies and new media, the 4 P’s remain, but they can be influenced and enhanced in new ways: internet has deeply modified the distribution channels, technology can augment information about the product and the experience with the product (or the brand), you can have more price segments and price calculation, such as dynamic pricing (think of EasyJet), and last but not least, the promotion opportunities have grown exponentially, bringing along huge progress (segmentation, tracking, social graphs, etc..).

But considering the contribution of new media & communication tools to the above mentioned objectives, coming back to the basic sometimes cannot hurt.

And for me, explaining the different aspects, in a very simple (yes, a bit simplistic, too!) way would be as in the image. From there on, you can dive into details, explain the points of convergence, how social media mechanisms impact almost all aspects and how to leverage them in an optimal way according to your company’s objectives. But at least you can get the big picture.

The mobile is in grey, but it could be illustrated in another way, as it permeates all aspects of communication, now.

Do you agree with the general idea? What would you add or change? And why? I would love to know!

Convergent Tracks in 2011: Marketing and Technology

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As we’ve seen it in the past couple of years, the acceleration of technological innovations has been impacting many sectors, marketing included. Some disciplines like communication, PR, marketing, customer service have partially blended, technology contributing to “dis-cluster” them, bringing along in the same time new challenges.

As stated in this excellent article, “Social technology is permeating everything in our lives. It seems that every medium of media has integrated social into the message. The Facebook craze has pulled over 500 million people into use of social technology for multiple purposes. Humanity is experiencing connectivity to the human network like never before in history.

The influence of technology on humanity is affecting all market sectors whether private or public, on-line and off line. The intersection of technology and the human network is disrupting old business models, organizational theories and beliefs systems founded in old knowledge. ”

In this disruption context, question is: How to bridge the gap? How to leverage those (r)evolutions to empower your organization’s global efficiency?
It has become essential to understand new technologies, how they can augment your marketing’s objectives, impact your business results.

New kinds of jobs are emerging: community manager, chief marketing technologist, digital strategist, etc, that all have in common to mix combined skills in technology and communication, marketing.

Paradoxically, the more fragmented the world becomes, the more “convergent tracks” we’ll see, with an emphasis on the convergence of: mobile (highly fragmented)-social-local.

Here are some of the -new- challenges marketers are facing:

  • keeping track of new trends
  • understanding the mechanisms underlying the power of technologies
  • understanding how they can impact your product/price/communication/distribution/customer experience
  • figuring out strategies optimizing a mix of media according to the objectives (acquisitoin, loyalty, brand awareness, ..)
  • understanding key data factors: analytics, performance, ROI, social CRM, …
  • diving into social media…
  • And enjoying this high-pace evolving environment!

And, at the converging point between marketing and technology, connections and emotions, the lattest being the central linchpin to valuable connections.

That’s why you see those 2 signs on the image: <3 is the symbol of love in the digital media and the other one, on the right, is the symbol of sharing/connecting (via 2.0 technologies).
It is my personal way of wishing you all a happy 2011, under the sign of love and connections, all real, no matter the media!

If you’re interested in decryptering the discussed trends, you can focus on these 2 information sources:
Adage Digital
The Marketing & Innovation Daily

And for the upcoming months:
10 digital predictions for 2011
Top 10 Stories on AdAge.com in 2010
Social Media in 2011: Six Choices You Need to Make

PS: social media is implicitely included in the article, as being one of the most disrupting trends, mix of platforms, technologies, participation, interaction, crowdsourcing potential, etc, etc…
PS2: Focus. It’s getting more and more noisy out there.
PS3: Follow your own track

Image courtesy of a dear friend, Jacques-Antoine Besnard, quadruple airship world champion who’s leading the engine on the image. Official site of the last world championship. His official Fan Page (not regularly updated). A model of a focused mind. Merci Jacot :-)
Icons taken from The NounProject

The Dawn of the Social Consumer – Emotional Connection at its Heart #socialconsumer #digitalmarketing

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Original article via briansolis.com
Emotional connection is at the heart of what makes social media in its whole so powerful and empowering.
The long-time readers of my blog know it represents one of the central pillars of my work, so central that I even state those values as core values in my posterous profile (and many others). Here, the inaugural article.
Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent, has – brilliantly – dug the phenomenon and implications for business, marketing, social media in numerous articles.
In this article, Brian Solis places and develops the idea around the concept of social consumer, social currency and I definitely agree upon the vision putting emotional connection at the center of the social commerce.
As for a brand, what are the direct implications of “creating emotional connections” with its stakeholders? Not only customers, but also employees, investors, potential investors, potential customers, potential employees, “friends”, depending on the proximity’s ring of the person? (see Jeremiah Owyang’s “Rings of Influence).

Going back to the values.

Company’s values, brand’s values need to be (re-) identified, stated, declined, shared inside the company, at all levels.
It is the pre-supposed condition upon which to build a long-term value-adding relationship. Values can be occasionnally translated into different shapes, through different media, devices, places, by different people and in many different ways. Each of these occasions being the touching point for an emotional connection, potentially leading to a further step.

Values are the continuous thread leading to added value in the long run.
Why? Because values contribute to create an overall perceived consistent image, experience of a brand, company.
Inlaid in the consistency, lays trust. In trust roots long-term mutual beneficial relationships.
In other words, we could say that well-identified and built upon values create in fine an increased perceived value (of the product/brand/company).
What is your take? Do you think that you can build long-term profitable business through marketing and social media without assessing first the core values ?Here, the inspirational Brian Solis’ article.

Read My #Paperli Daily News Rather Than My Twitter Account

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A couple of months ago, during a lift@home event – Think Data, sitting among a couple of other “happy fews”, we assisted to the presentation of a brand new project, called “paper.li“, by Small Rivers. The idea? To create a new kind of “newspaper”, online, offering the quintessence of curated information through the lense of a person (until now, her or his Twitter account) by a subtle and complex aggregation between the shared tweets of that person and followers. The initial project has improved a lot, allowing for instance to create a newspaper based on a #hashtag or a Twitter list.
paperli claudiafalt ClaudiaFaltysBenassi Daily

One of the main benefits is to offer to a specific audience an “augmented information“: selected, curated, and augmented by the “curator” and her/his “followers”. The resulting aggregated information, displaying multi-media formats – videos, pictures, slideshare, tags, themes, real-time tweets, selected articles, links, ..- is a highly value-added information.

In these times where it is very challenging to sort the “good” information out of an ever-increasing “noise”, this Daily Newspaper is a breathe of fresh air… and a gain of time!

For your followers, for your company, for your customers, try to think of the best Paper.li that could offer them most of added-value? Think of a theme (a hashtag on Twitter), a Twitterlist?

For me, for you, I’m of the meaning that http://www.paper.li/claudiafalt, aka The ClaudiaFaltysBenassi Daily is of higher value than my Twitter account (@claudiafalt), if you want to have a “bigger picture” of the key trends and sectors I follow and share. Above all if your are NOT on Twitter.
Some great examples I like to follow:
The #etourisme Daily: a field I’m active and interested in (in French, here), gives me in a glimpse the major information of the latest 24 hours. Easy to stay up-to-date, easy to share!
The Musee de l’Elysee Daily : for personal interest in arts (in my region and wider)
The EdelmanDigital Daily: for same kind of things as on mine, but far more popular! (shared by @armano) (Note: I don’t publicize my Daily Paper.li on Twitter)
So many interesting newspapers out there!

Personnally, I decided to share this link as one of my major (most representative) digital accounts on my LinkedIn Status and added it to my other “websites”. Still thinking how to organize next steps, for example for the business card.

Since I’m committed to share information that 1. I read thoroughly 2. I think is worth to share, and since I decided to broadcast my daily Paper.li, I’ll be more restrictive with the people I follow, in order to offer a valuable information.

For the moment, as you cannot interact yet via paper.li, it’s still a restriction for a broader adoption (as of right now, but things seem to evolve very quickly).

But you can already import your Daily paper into a blog or site (click on “promote”), (not yet for wordpress.com..).

For more, up-to-date information, on Twitter, follow @SmallRivers

And you? Did you plan to integrate a Paper.li Daily on your blog? For your company?
Do you already follow some paper.li’s Daily News? Would you like to share them?
****************
Here’s a video of one of the co-founders explaining Paper.li during lift10Conference (via the article below)

Some more articles (French):
Paper.li: la veille sur Twitter
Le Temps: SmallRivers, de l’eau au moulin des média

Thank you #liftpeople #lift10

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Once again, this edition of Lift Conference has been inspiring, at different levels. Inspiring, thought-provoking talks, format, overall design, experience area.

And people.

Short or longer exchanges, moments, with people (image) unlocked this last inner tiny resisting bolt.
Time for change.
I’ll remain engaged on the sides of Sosoftware, which I am member of the Board of, as a strategic and marketing advisor. Besides this, I would like to explore other tracks, bridging my interests, experience and skills to help other projects, companies, people in the vast field of #digital #marketing. To be specified, yet.

What do you think? Your take? Ideas, maybe?

The image speaks for me (thank you all).

Special thanks to Sevket, designer.

And to Bread-and-Butter for the original poster of Lift and for the overall lift’s design, part of Lift’s success, I am convinced.
(The role of art in interaction, events, has been discussed in René Paré’s workshop)

To Be – What you Share – Or Not To Be

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Is our identity, mainly online, defined by what we share?

Technology has made the act of sharing (others content)- to your community-ies (friends, followers, readers…) so easy, a click on “share” on Facebook, a click on RT on Twitter, a blog post mentioning another post, that it has become very easy to shine through others’ content.

But am I really the reflection of what I republish? The “re-publish” notion can be extended to pictures taken at an event, where the people I capture are the value rebounded indirectly on me, the same with quick videos.

At some extent, I would answer in a positive way. Yes. Yes, what I share to my community gives them a good picture of what I like, what I find of interest. Even of my skills. I offer them the value created by someone else. In doing so, it would be hypocritical not to recognize that a slight part of it will be redirected on my own image.

But in my opinion, this can be done in a very transparent way, giving credit to whom deserves it, linking to the source, quoting the original article, quoting the person who published it. Otherwise, it would become “robbing”, as states it Valeria Maltoni in her recent, striking article. Shining through someone else’s content/opinion is easy.

These last weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot on that issue. For 2 main reasons:
First, there’s been a lot of noise around some big event recently, bringing along tons of pictures, videos, tweets, RT’s, etc.. but empty of real meaning. Or there were a thousand of people gathered for a major event that had nothing new to bring to the crowds, or the noise was too big on social networks and the efforts of “translation”, of value- addition too light. Or maybe both !
Secondly, I’ve been recently challenged by a question that sounded like: ok, you share Mashable or Techcrunch articles, great, but this is easy. Implied: what is your real “value-addition”?

So, sharing makes sense when you add your own opinion, colour, take.
Or, better, when you create your own content. Which opens other questions, deserving interest (and another post :-))
This will turn into long-lasting trust into what you think, you share. And, yes, you’ll be a little bit what you share.
But not only.
And you? Did you notice what are the favorite people you follow and why? Do they give a special meaning to the information they share?
I would love to have your opinion!

Image credit to Alex King