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Conversational Marketing readers can find valuable business to consumer related content in this list. We share and promote conversation on the latest business to consumer strategies and techniques, as well as helpful B2C marketing tips.
In this post on Mashable written by Lauren Indvik, the role of Facebook in online retail is highlighted along with some interesting facts about the past year in “F-Commerce” and why some retailers are shutting down their Facebook stores.
From the post, “A Bloomberg report this weekend pointed out that Gap, J.C. Penney, Nordstrom and GameStop have all opened and closed shops on Facebook within the past year — undermining expectations that the social network will become a major revenue driver for retailers over the next decade.” The author points out that Facebook commerce may not be completely responsible for the failings of online retail stores on the social site. “In most cases, retailers have entered the f-commerce market by importing their online catalogs and making them available for purchase in a Facebook app. The experience is nearly identical to shopping on their websites, with two major differences: 1) Shoppers can complete their entire browsing and checkout experience without leaving facebook.com; and 2) the Facebook apps tend to work more slowly. In other words, consumers have little to no incentive to shop via these Facebook apps.”
Let’s keep the conversation moving forward, is F-Commerce a dying entity or are retailers just going about their selling on Facebook in an ineffective manner?
This post on Mashable by David Berkowitz discusses tips to avoid making mistakes when taking your marketing campaign to Twitter. Berokwitz writes about “hashtag marketing” campaigns becoming high jacked thrusting them towards irrelevance. His first tip is to figure out why you might be using a hashtag in the first place. He says, “Brands tend to use hashtags, predominantly on Twitter and sometimes other services like Instagram, either to create a centralized discussion around their campaign or event, or to jump into conversations that are already happening. Assess what you want to get out of the hashtag before diving in.” The post goes on to speak about other tips for hashtag marketing including determining what kind of hashtag makes sense for your goals, thinking of the worst-case highjacking situation, and more. Berkowitz points out the future of marketing campaigns will certainly incorporate hashtags, so learning from other brands hashtag campaigns is important for campaign success.
Let’s keep the conversation moving forward! What hashtag campaigns have you seen succeed on Twitter or Instagram?
![Customer Loyalty: What It Is And Why It’s Important [Infographic] | CustomerThink](http://www.conversationalmarketing.com/users/conversationalmarketing/ehadley-489-full.jpg)
This infographic explores different aspects of customer loyalty--from what it is to why it is an important aspect of business to future trends impacting loyalty. While it emphasizes the role of customer service in cultivating loyalty, the importance of marketing cannnot be overlooked as well. The customer wants--or often demands--to be delighted. Both marketing and service play a crucial role in fulfilling that promise.
by Robert Gembarski on February 6, 2012 Starbucks has a big brand presence online. Not because they have millions of dollars for Marketing and Advertising, which they do have, but because they are one of the most engaging companies online. If you are fan of Starbucks coffee, and a bit Internet savvy, then chances are you have come across one of if not all of Starbuck’s Social Media Pages. Starbucks has made it a point to take its successful offline branding strategies and implement them online. Its online image and messages have stayed consistent with their brand values, which are honesty, sincerity, and connecting with its consumers on a level unlike any other brand. The offline Starbucks Culture has taken to the airwaves of the Internet and Social Media. Lets take a look at how they became one of the most engaging brands online.
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices.
In this post on Contentmarketinginstitute, Barry Feldman offers his essential playbook to winning the content marketing Superbowl. Feldman writes, “We’ll call it the Super Content Marketing Bowl, where scoring points means expanding your audience and establishing authority in the things you do best. Before we play ball, we’ll meet at the 50-yard line and introduce some new rules for taking home the content marketing trophy.”
The top three points stated include, “You need a great site to compete,” “Go for the goal” and “Score points.” He says of scoring points, “Promote your blog relentlessly by using the social media tools available to you, creating links where you can, and joining relevant conversations on other blogs. Write guest posts for other blogs, and syndicate your content by finding relevant outlets for publication. Forge relationships with strategic allies,” and more.
Let’s keep the conversation moving forward! With the big game around the corner, do you find this playbook the key to content marketing success? What are your favorite points?
Marketers’ Super Bowl strategies are locked up by now, so consider the suggestions below more of a wish list than a guide. These apply to far more than the Super Bowl, though, so print them out or save them in Evernote and use them throughout the year ahead.
Written by Jeff Bullas - Coca Cola has been part of popular culture for over 100 years and has been called a “Vision Brand“. Recently they have realised that their marketing strategy that has worked well for them for decades needed to evolve and as such they are moving from “Creative Excellence” to “Content Excellence”.
Women are earning, spending, and influencing spending at a greater rate than ever before.
An interesting infographic exploring the email subscription practices of leading fashion retailers. While many are following standard email marketing best practices, there is still plenty of room for improvement, particularly with personalization (only 26% ask for subscriber interests) and opt-in (only 5% use double opt-in).
As part of a pilot program in select US markets, French hotel chain Accor Hotels is incorporating social media into its customer loyalty program. Employees at those hotels identify the loyalty program members who are checking in a given month and research their public profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media websites. They then select a gift to be presented to each guest by the hotel manager.
![Mercedes-Benz Collaborates With Calvin Klein On New Fashion Film [Video]](http://www.conversationalmarketing.com/users/conversationalmarketing/Jenn-442-full.jpg)
The branded, direct-to-consumer short features Dutch model Lara Stone, an SL Roadster and a tornado.
Email subject lines are a form of headline. They attract attention and get your email content a chance to be read, so write them well.
IKEA France recently ran a social campaign on their Facebook page promoting a unique contest where those who have 'liked' their Facebook page can win an evening in their furnished pop-up apartment.
The fast-evolving world of digital marketing has undergone profound changes over the past year. 2012 will offer us some even more interesting developments.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Content will trump craftiness
Google’s recent (and arguably overdue) change to its search algorithm, or how it ranks sites, was the game-changer of 2011. Google’s older algorithm gave less weight to how frequently a company was being discussed on social platforms like Twitter and more to relevance. On the one hand, expect to see more results to be linked to timely and social relevance and less to esoteric tinkering. On the other, as its product offering becomes arguably more robust, expect a bit of backlash over Google’s keyword and site promotion offerings (have you noticed how those sponsored sites are slowly taking over the results page?). The burden of authentic, timely and relevant content on the part of companies will become ever more important.
Whether they pushed the pop-culture envelope, captured consumer attitudes for a moment or forced changes in how the big game's ads are run, the following represent the commercials we think spurred the most movement.
How brands, such as Kodak Galler, AAA, and Lexus, are using a variety of approaches to make email marketing more interactive, improving engagement and gaining critical insights that can be leveraged in future communications.
Svedka Vodka's stated mobile marketing goals include spontaneous brand engagement and social sharing.
The importance of sending relevant email messages is frequently discussed by email marketers at conferences, webinars and on blogs. However, how many organizations achieve this objective? To answer this question, MarketingSherpa surveyed more than 2,700 marketers and asked how their organizations were sending email communications based on four key areas: relevant content, sending time, segmentation of subscribers, and the clarity of the conversion goal in the email.
Landing page creation, optimization and analytics best practices
![Social Marketing Science: Timing Maximizes Engagement On Twitter And Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC] - AllTwitter](http://www.conversationalmarketing.com/users/conversationalmarketing/Jenn-270-full.jpg)
Social Marketing Science: Timing Maximizes Engagement On Twitter And Facebook
The premise of customer database segmentation is that marketing and consumers are not one-size-fits-all. Traditionally, marketers segmented huge databases of customers by geography and purchase history. But as consumer behavior has become more trackable, marketers are using that data to categorize consumers on a deeper level and target them with unprecedented precision.
Got a great email marketing solution? Got a solid opt-in and scrubbed contact list? That’s half the battle to a great return on your email marketing investment. Here are six simple tips you can use to improve almost any email marketing effort. 1. Remember why it’s called a “message”. If you think of your email campaign as an ongoing dialogue with each prospect, it will change your strategy. For instance, in a dialogue, you have to keep the conversation going – and that means listening to the people you’re talking about. (How are they responding? What actions are they taking?) It also means staying relevant. (If they visited your blog after your last email, but have never been to the products page after several messages, stop sending them messages that try to drive them to the products page – offer them an incentive to take some other action instead.)
Improved segmentation and better targeted content are being credited for the surge in consumer approval of email marketing over the past 12 months, according to the 2011 DMA Email Tracking Study published by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) in conjunction with fast.MAP and Alchemy Worx.
The number of consumers reporting that half or more of the marketing emails they receive are of interest to them has increased more than threefold over the past year, from one in ten (9%) in 2010, to one in three (30%) in 2011. Moreover, just one in four consumers now say that only less than 10% of the marketing emails they receive are of relevance to them – down from two-thirds (64%) of consumers in 2010.
Read more about the findings on MyCustomer.com.
This story from Direct Marketing News covers a new DMA report which reveals that marketers will spend $163 billion on direct marketing in 2011, a 5.6% increase from the prior year. Additionally, the DMA projects that direct marketing ROI will reach $12.03 of sales per dollar of expenditures in 2011.
People believe customer stories. Research shows time and again that people don’t trust ads and marketing messages, but they do trust other people. In fact, research shows that people trust strangers’ opinions online more than they trust companies when it comes to gathering information about brands, products, and services. Let your customer stories build that trust for your brand.
Happy customers love to share their stories. If you’re customers are satisfied with your business and brand, then there should never be a shortage of positive customer stories. Just ask your customers if they’d allow you to tell their stories on your website, blog, Facebook page, and so on. Include a photo of the customer, their real name, and if possible, a link to their own website to validate the legitimacy of the story. Always ask permission to use a customer story first!
Customer stories are memorable. While it’s easy to forget an ad or the messages in a marketing brochure, customer stories are far more memorable. Remember, your customer stories should sound like stories, not marketing messages or a boring report. Make them have personality just like your customers and your brand!
To read more please click the link!
Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Conant talks about innovation at the company. He discusses changing its leaders, advertising, shelving units, and the V8 drink.
How Former Campbell's Soup CEO Doug Contant helped turn around a sinking brand...
Leadership Replacement:
"We turned over, in the first three years, 300 of the top 350 leaders of the organization—which is to my knowledge unprecedented in the consumer-products industry. Of the 300 people we turned over, 150 people were promoted from within, and 150 were hired from outside: people who were high-character, high-quality."
Product Redesign:
"It's amazing to think that the microwave was invented in 1947, and it took us over 50 years for us to figure out that we can have microwavable soups. So we created an entire microwave platform with a "soup-at-hand" platform and microwaveable bowls, which began to make soup more approachable for the millennial and Gen-X generations, who weren't into counter-top cooking."
Reacting to Customer Feedback:
"The big innovation there was recognizing that over half the population didn't like the taste of V8. So we innovated with a fruit and vegetable combination called V8 V-Fusion."
Read on for more insight into Campbell's strategy. Inc writer Abraham Brown asks Doug "With Campbell's now experiencing a decline, what should new CEO Denise Morrison focus on?" Do you have any thoughts on how this legendary American company should innovate? Do you think Campbell will bounce back from this decline?
Hear insights from marketing industry experts as expressed during a panel discussion hosted by Ayantek, one of Boston's fastest growing digital solutions pro...
While 2010 was not quite the tough year the industry feared it would be, hoteliers still grappled with a number of challenging issues: a slowly recovering economy, the ever-changing world of social media and the mobile Web, mobile-obsessed consumers and customer review enthusiasts, and significant revenue leakage from hotels to OTAs in the form of abnormally high merchant commissions.
To read the full Jordan Directions article, click here
I was recently quoted on Internetnews.com making the following prediction:
"Look for marketing's love affair with social media to give way in 2011 to the sobering reality that a Facebook fan page and Twitter account don't solve problems of poor products or positioning. Stories of social media failures will become more frequent as practitioners realize that customer conversations are time-consuming to maintain and that peer conversations present as many problems as they do opportunities."
A few of my more passionate social marketing friends contacted me and asked politely if I had lost my mind or something for issuing such a gloomy and pessimistic forecast at precisely the hour of social media's triumph. I responded that no slight was intended. On the contrary, I think the hangover stage is necessary and healthy if social media is to achieve its realistic potential for change.
To read the full B2C Marketing Insider blog post, click here
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