SigmaWay Blog

Focused market research is imperative for building of brands and foundation for market research is laid down by market intelligence. In broad terms, market intelligence collates three types of information- business, market and competitive. For distribution of information, social media is playing a huge role. Thus integration of marketing intelligence with social media monitoring and digital space opens up many channels of opportunities to address specific business issues and enhance performance significantly. However, this requires intense understanding and customization of data. Also, digitization of field resources poses certain challenges. On a concluding note, the authors, Stephen Dale and Melissa Chue are of opinion that market intelligence should ultimately serve as be the backbone of any organization and more investment should be made to expand digital resources and data. Read more:- http://www.marketing-interactive.com/events/intelligence-bedrock-good-market-research/

The only possible way to ensure public safety and act against the financial ruin or loss of the company's reputation is to know how and when to respond. The timing of a crisis cannot be predicted with certainty but crisis management plays a crucial role to ensure that the company stands in the wake of an unexpected and unfortunate mishap.

Steps to be followed for management of crisis are :

• Messaging is a fickle art - A humble dosage of humanity and being transparent is the best policy. It is important to provide the information about the issue to the public in a polite manner.
• Restoring and rebuilding your reputation through media - Working with the media is the best way for restoring people's trust.

For further details on crisis management, please follow the link :

http://www.business2community.com/crisis-management/need-crisis-management-01239230 

Mobile is a much more personal, interactive, engaged platform than desktop, and should be used as such. - By Ari Brandt (CEO and co-founder of MediaBrix). In this competitive era, if a company won’t recognize the opportunity first, a chance of losing the games increases. And mobile phone is one of the biggest opportunities to maintain a close relationship with your customers. But most of the ad companies are failing to recognize the demands, challenges and opportunities of mobile phones. Rule to crack the opportunity of mobile phones:
• Leave old ad methods behind.
• Take advantage of unique mobile capabilities.
• Put the customers first.
• Leverage new measures of campaign success.
Read more at: http://mashable.com/2015/06/11/mobile-marketing-innovation/

Maximizing ROI has become the ultimate goal for Marketers. Increasing visibility, likes, followers and tweets seems to be the major indicators. Daniel Newman, author of The Millennial CEO and a Forbes contributor, in an article in Forbes term these indicators as vanity metrics which distract marketers from the actual story. Rather than measuring likes, focus should be on how many of the likes were converted into new customer and other measures which go beyond customer acquisition and sales that will help discern their real growth story. 

He lists out 7 things that marketers should measure: 

• Top of funnel conversions

• Engagement

• Customer satisfaction

• Customer Retention 

• Employee satisfaction 

• Employee retention 

• Attributable Revenue

For more on this, follow the link http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/05/12/7-things-marketers-should-measure-big-data-can-help/

Marketers need to think creatively for building an effective and creative campaign. On the other side, they have to give returns on investments. So, marketers are feeling stressed. To improve the performance of the marketers, they need to make standardization a priority across their organization. Standardization is an essential practice to improve the performances and gives long-term benefits. Scott Vaughan (CMO of Integrate) in his article at marketingland.com, discussed about five areas where marketers should start standardizing are:
• Process
• Data
• Key technology systems
• Metrics and Benchmarks
• Team Expectations
Read more at: http://marketingland.com/marketers-time-stop-standardize-130267

With increasing use of smart phones in today's life, most of the viewers are using smart phones for research and buying online. This is the biggest opportunity to the companies. Mobile is not just an e-commerce channel, but it can be used for building relationship with your customers. Brian Rigney (CEO at Zmags) in his article “Maximize Marketing Reach: A Glance at the Customer Is All You Get” at marketingland.com, discussed about four simple steps to deliver rich and creative campaigns at the right place and says, “52 percent of Web traffic to retail websites globally currently comes via smartphones and tablet devices.”  Steps are:
• Think for omni-channel and use holistic approach.
• Develop sites, offers and experiences in different ways to serve different channels.
• Create, adjust and preview the sites.
• Tap the knowledge base to understand what works for your organization.
To know more about these steps, follow this link: http://marketingland.com/reach-glance-get-often-small-window-130011

TV is the giant megaphone- Isaac Weber (VP of strategy at MarketShare) of their marketing budget in these mediums of advertising. But according to a latest study by MarketShare a market analytics company,” TV advertisements has remained the most effective medium of advertisements.” According to the study, the premium digital video delivered higher average returns than short-form video content from non-premium publishers. TV is the only medium which maintains its effectiveness over five years while other media are declined by more than 10%. TV marketers can optimize their spending by leveraging data sources. To know more about the study, follow this link: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/why-tv-still-most-effective-advertising-medium-165247

Data, guided by technology, always provides precision to a marketer’s intuition. While technologists favour conservative decision-making on the basis of comparative testing, marketers prefer taking risks and walking the extra mile. Now-a-days, as a company's profitability depends on its digital marketing capability, to a large extent, customer data and analytics, mostly decides a company’s success rate. On the other hand, technologists also facilitate in isolating the redundant tools and programmes in the system, thereby cleaning the system and reducing unnecessary expenditure. The right marketing technology makes the decision-making process less complicated thus proving once more, the importance of the relationship between marketing and technology.
Read more at: http://www.cio.com/article/2933479/marketing/how-to-strike-a-balance-between-marketing-and-tech.html

Sigmaway uses data analytics technologies to deliver business insights from your marketing data. Contact us at contact@gosigmaway.com for a demo.

Self-learning machines need data to learn. So one possible way to get the data that is being generated from all the devices being used across the world is IoT-Internet of Things. Devices communicate with each other and are interconnected through various networks. This could help advance many fields especially medical field. But a standard protocol has to be developed for devices to communicate with each other. It was proposed that the protocol should take care of safety of humans, security of IT infrastructure.

To read more, follow: http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/analysis/2410409/big-data-and-iot-powered-self-learning-machines-wont-take-over-the-world

In a saturated market, even the powerful brands have a hard time achieving growth targets. Big companies can do so by entering into new categories, which would increase the brand strength across markets. An established brand name would endorse itself in the new market. A classic example is National Geographic Society's shift from magazines to television channels, expeditions, and retail stores that sells books, clothes, and travel gear. The first step to go about brand extension is to look out for the categories that can be entered into, the target markets. The next step is to define how well your brand would fit into those markets, which would require assessing a new market like a start-up would. The third step is to design a prototype and test it against failures. Finally, prepare your response to the competitor's reactions; make sure the organization in ready to go. Successful brand innovation would harness the potential of the brand, all the while serving consumers better and bigger. Read more at :http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/incumbents_as_attackers_brand-driven_innovation

The success of the startup is not dependent on the idea, but it depends on getting the customers. As a startup, getting customers is one of the biggest challenges. 
Jeff Foster (Co-Founder and CEO of Tomoson), discussed about few tips to get your first 1000 customers. Some of them are:
• Setup a waiting list
• Use personal network
• Target online publications
• Get bloggers on your side
• Build suspense
• Work with early adopters
• Create high quality content
• Offer a free product option
• Incentivize customers to sell your product
• Online advertising
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/247049

B2B firms can learn from the long journey of B2C firms with mobile apps and learn how to maximize customer engagement and revenues."-Uma Ganesh (CEO, Global Talent Track) Mobiles forced large B2C companies to make mobile marketing and apps as the integral part of their marketing strategy. Apps have already exceeded the web when it comes to consumer time spent. But in case of B2B firms, decision makers use traditional means rather than mobiles across all touch points, including apps, websites, landing pages, email and social media. In building an app, a company need to invest money. In order to make the app work for marketing, it is important to plan that will lead to convenience and customer delight. To know more, follow this link: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/success-with-mobile-apps-in-b2b-marketing/81549/

Reinvention is a popular way to reinvent an existing product. This can be done by extending the product line, creating a new product that is designed, executing and messaging to appeal to the new user segment. Reinvention helps in surviving in this dynamic world and helps in tracking new market segment.

Kumar Srivastava (Senior Director of Product Management) in his article at entrepreneur.com, talked about questions asked before starting a replacement cycle because entrepreneurs need to understand in detail what has changed in the user’s world. Questions are:
• Has the user base changed or evolved?
• Has the purchase and onboarding decision process changed?
• Has the interaction mechanism or value chain changed?
• Have the experience expectations changed or evolved?
• Have the support and training expectations changed?
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246539

With so much technology advancement in real estate business, finding the right digital marketing strategy for your real estate business is creating disruption not only for brokers, but also for agents. 91% of realtors use social media in their business and 45% of realtors want more technology from their brokers. To build an effective digital strategy, broker needs to provide right software and training to their agents. Matthew Barba (CEO and co-founder of Placester) in his article "6 strategies to kick your broker marketing into high gear" discussed about 6 strategies to help brokers in marketing. They are:

• Take the lead and help your broker in deciding the right technology and provide solutions to their problems.
• Educate yourself and your brokers.
• Use the right tool for your job.
• Work as a team with your agent.
• Recruit wisely.
Read more at: http://www.inman.com/2015/06/04/6-strategies-to-kick-your-broker-marketing-into-high-gear/

A famous marketing automation provider claims that the new analytics abilities of the company are helping consumers in retrieving marketing data and transferring it for 'deeper analytics' to business intelligence (BI) systems. The features include accessibility of configured datasets and integrations. Traditional marketing automation systems didn't give marketers enough flexibility and accessibility to their specific, desired data, also requiring them to use a specific BI platform only. Present automation systems not only give access to the specific, required data but it can also be analyzed using any tool ranging from excel to different other BI tools. Read more at:

http://www.cmswire.com/marketing-automation/act-on-debuts-data-studio-capabilities/

In this competitive world, relying on one or two marketing channel is not a right decision. If you want to have a competitive advantage, use omni-channel marketing. Omni-channel marketing is about teamwork and using various marketing channels towards a single goal and delivering customer satisfaction. Key to omni-channel marketing success is analytics. Analytics and predictive modelling helps in gathering data, segmentation and provide relevant information. Companies can use internal data assets with external market intelligence to drive a decision. Tying customer's digital information with strong database helps in delivering personalized messages to customers.  Analytics provides metrics which helps in comparing channel performance. Helps in combining 1st party and 3rd party data. Read more at: http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/19/129314.html

Digital intervention is influencing all sorts of businesses now-a-days. It is important to stay updated, in order to survive the competition. A well-known sneaker company has entered the business of digital sports in order to survive the digital disruption, happening all around. Other companies include a famous coffee maker brand, who has embraced digital transformation by launching an online platform to capture consumers' ideas, experiences and preferences. Instead of focusing too much on cost reduction, it's time to focus on innovative technology, which is also risky. For digital upgradation, it is important to understand the online topography, to recover the required data, which is analyzed using data analytics, which then gives results, used for understanding customer sentiment. Read more at:

http://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7232-are-you-becoming-a-digital-dinosaur

According to the MillwardBrown's AdReaction 2014 report, “multiscreen consumers usually prefer micro-video, interactive TV ads, and TV ads promoting mobile apps, Facebook pages, and brand websites.”  Multiscreen marketing is a storytelling strategy that brands employ to reach audiences across multiple platforms. It should be a part of an overarching strategy. And you have to incorporate a creative mix of hashtags, follow-up social engagement and user content re-purposing across multiple screens. Some tips are:

•        Use cross-screen analytics to know where your audiences live and work.

•        Choose the most efficient media to achieve your reach and frequency objectives.

To know more tips and information about multiscreen strategy, follow this link: http://www.marketingprofs.com/opinions/2015/27762/four-quick-tips-for-a-winning-multiscreen-strategy

According to the NetProspex report based on the analysis of 223million records in the database of B2B companies, most of the their marketing and selling database lacks in providing key information about prospects and customers. According to the report, 84% of the records don’t have revenue information. 82% of the records were missing with employee information. 72% of the B2B companies didn’t include website domain. 54% of the records did not include a phone number of customers and many were inaccurate. To know more about NetProspex report, please follow this link: http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2015/27711/the-state-of-b2b-marketing-data

According to Marge Breya (CMO and Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Informatica Education), “data is the fuel powering business processes, machines, sensors and customized user experiences.” Using data in marketing gives you a competitive advantage. Some basic steps for making data driven marketing team: firstly, identify a person who has knowledge about data analytics within and outside the organization. Secondly, to create a data driven culture, find a leader. Thirdly, a leader needs to create an environment where their marketing team feels safe in becoming data literate. And to solve the problem of “how to make a data literate team,” use education, exposure and practice. Read more at: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2928800/big-data/how-to-create-a-data-driven-marketing-team.html