Services: Marketing Optimization

 

Marketing Optimization

 

Mobile, social media, and online communities have changed how demand is influences and measured. Traditional one-way marketing methods should not be scrapped but should incorporate the newer marketing methods so that comprehensive cross-channel marketing maximizes the return from consistent messaging across all meaningful touch-points with prospects and customers. The internet and wireless devices, and the rising generation have changed business forever.

 

Community Building

The internet community is making it possible to communicate with customers in less expensive, more accurate, more transparent methods. Product Management can listen to and contribute to the community in order to make better product requirements decisions, test out products, and in the case of open source software, even have the community do some of the development. With the use of forums and wikis, the community can share so much with each other about how to use a product or service that company based support personnel and documentation development can be reduced. Marketing needs to be expanded into the community so that the talk about the product or service is showing up in Facebook, Tweeter, and YouTube as examples. Traditional sales roles are becoming company ambassadors or evangelists that work within the community offering services such as training, conferences, and specialized support to “influence” the key influencers of the community. Relationship building is focused on the key community influencers rather than strategic or key customers.

 

Cross-Channel Marketing

Multi-channel marketing refers to sending out the same message to your audience using a variety of different channels (email marketing, direct mail, mobile, etc.). The channels work independently and are generally not coordinated - more of a silo approach. When referring to cross-channel marketing, you’re still using multiple marketing channels but you're taking a much more choreographed, orchestrated, personalized approach. One message reinforces the next message and leverages the benefits of the specific channel by driving your audience to action, as opposed to just repeating the same message. It's much more tightly integrated and looks at the interactions 'holistically' - not only how the customer is receiving the communication, but also how they're responding to it. A cross-channel marketing strategy then takes that into consideration before sending out the next communication.

 

"90% of businesses say the cross-channel experience is critical to their business’s success."
- Foviance & Econsultancy, “Multi-channel Customer Experience Report”, Nov 2010

iPowerplex will provide resources and methodologies for streamlining and automating multi-channel or cross-channel marketing.

Globalization
Target markets and no longer separated by geographical boundaries. Internet cultures are not confined to countries or regions. The internet has made it easier to learn about and connect with people without geographical restrictions. This means that the similarities and the differences about people and their opinions about historical and current events can be made know on a near real-time basis. Potential consumers are connecting across cultural or geographical barriers. The concept of preparing product rollouts to “target markets’ needs to be revisited. If customers are becoming more global and globally interested then marketing messages need to be more global for the common message that all parties would like to hear in support of their common beliefs. Marketing territories can no longer be geographically based. This is also true of support and sales channels. Globalization also makes it possible for certain communities to become very large because the can expand the globe.

iPowerplex can assist with plans to internationalize and culturalize cross-channel communications and web assets.

 

Mobile and Social Media

People are connecting and sharing their likes, their like, their dislikes, their personal or favorite comments, stories, and videos over the web. Measuring and influencing "what they are saying ?" and "what they are doing?" have created many new technologies and is changing how marketing and

PR is being done.

" Mobile is not merely a trend. It's a seismic paradigm shift in how workers, companies, and

consumers interact with information, infrastruction, and each other. 

Mobile is not only here to stay, it’s moving at warp speed. 

Mobile Email has surpassed Desktop email.
Mobile users will exceed desktop within 3 years."

-TechRepublic, “2011 Guide to Enterprise Mobility Trends and Innovations”

Social media objectives are to communticate, entertain, educate, and collaborate on variety of projects and interest.

iPowerplex will train and recommend new optimized methods for publishing to and reaching smart phones, Twitter, Facebook, Linked-in, and other social media users.

 

Product Management and Development

Product requirements and product development assistance are now beginning to come from community feedback and participation.  Software industry has led the collaborative product development for many years through open source projects.  Consumers are being invited to consider and vote on potential product features and prototype screens and workflow become products are completed.  Many software companies have “labs” website to give users and software developers a early look at what they are considering.  True Open Source project actually give the software community the ownership and responsibility for the development and testing of software products.  Product-based communities give real-time feedback on existing products and future products.  Companies have the opportunity to “get it right” before committing manufacturing and distribution.

 

Product Support and Customer Services

Self-assisted support is lowering the cost of support while increasing the accuracy and effectiveness of support. FAQs, Forums, and Wiki technology is making it possible to communicate the positive or negative emotions of actual users which helps in understanding greater meaning concerning “how to” use product or service.  It very important to mix the official documentation and tutorials with the community’s comments, correction, enhancements, and examples are the product and services are “actually’ be used and emotionally received.  Community-based support also automatically provides the information from which marketing assessments and analysis can be made whichout doing a formal contextual inquiry or survey.  The “target audience” is always available and always talking.

 

Marketing and Public Relations

Traditional marketing and PR methods can be expanded through the use of community “chatter” and effective use of social media.  These new marketing methods have been called Marketing 2.0.  Communities that have the hooks for social media are extremely powerful when communications and activities grow virally after influencers has planted news, ideas, and important concepts.

 

 

 

iPowerplex will assist in the mixing up of the best of the old media forms and the new social media forms can together to fuel powerful integrating communications.

Sales and Account Management

Customers are less likely to be introduced to a company or product by a salesperson than 20 years ago. With all of the

media available about products and services, does the customer even need a salesperson? Yes! In person meetings, conferences, email, and phone calls are still important to developing a relationship, making a sale, and maintaining customer loyalty. These communication methods are still necessary in addtion to blogs, twitting, and social media, whether or not they are supplementary or primary. Direct personal communications are still invaluable for developing relationships.

What needs to change is Contact Relationship Management software. It needs to integrate the online social activity of prospects and customers. It needs to become more social. The salesperson needs to use all effective means of communications and have the ability to record and measure what he is doing and what his customer is doing. It's no longer as simple as keeping track of correspondence, meetings, and other non-web activities. All web activity of a key customer is important in the profiling the opportunity and creating customer loyalty. 

PR and Marketing CANNOT create relationships. Relationships are determined and created by the customer. Do customers "pull" you to them or do you merely introduce your self "push" to them. Customers can now find information about companies, products, and even salitveompany personnel on their own. Salespeople do need to keep social media pages and blog posts up to date because this is how many people determine if they want to create a relationship as a prospect, customer or friend.

iPowerplex will provide resources, tools, and training for making sales teams more effective and successful.