Category: A View from The Top

Predictive Modeling To Better Understand The Customer

Customer information that you may already be collecting can be used to find useful insight through predictive modeling. Now, this doesn’t mean all data: it means relevant data.

When applied properly, predictive modeling can identify marketing opportunities previously unseen, and impact a business far outside the department. It can also serve as a bridge, between departments, that impacts the success of the total organization.

“LinkedIn is your professional identity, so imagine the data we have,” explainsMichael Li, Senior Director, Business Analytics. “We know where you work, where you are, your school, your skills you have and the skills people think you have. We have quantitative information. We also know your net-worth – who you are connected with. When you look at this person you only see their profile, but on our backend we see more. This information is our starting point in defining a problem, then we can build a model.”

Live Nation Senior Vice-President, Digital Sales Jeremy Levine shares, “We have quantitative and behavioral data. Most people have bought a ticket from Ticketmaster, so when we look at the totality of data, we search for what other data we can look at to sell more tickets based on past purchasing tickets. What else can we look at to solidify those models and work that out? One of the real values is that you can see when someone is shelling out $300 for a ticket, there’s a real connection there, a passion. When we get third party data we can really see what these people look like in real life. At the end of the day, it’s a combination of a lot of different data sets, then measuring those predictions to come up with a living, breathing model.”

Jeffrey Thompson, General Manager and Senior Vice-President, Business for RNN TV explains, “First, collecting data allows us to measure. Second, data science predicts what will do well. My background is working on what’s next, or what cannibalizes a business. One thing I learned at Disney is that, ‘there’s always riches in the niches.’ Find what is coming, what you can incubate and grow, and other companies will come to snatch you up. We have so much change in the marketplace; this is the time to come in and explore new business models.”

Download A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.

Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.

Deliver A Premium Customer Experience By Collaborating Across Departments

Organizations across the board are seeing the need for increased collaboration across departments. In a recent study from Forrester, 86% of CMO’s surveyed said they were seeing much more consultation from their peers on business issues, and 76% saw their role increase in decision making. “The data,” says Forrester VP Laura Ramos, “shows more and more CMO’s are brought into to contribute towards the direction on the company.”

IHOP’s Kirk Thompson agrees. “There was a time when CMO’s were the advertising department, or trade shows, or PR, and marketing would lead those functional conversations. In my experience, this has evolved over the last 7-10 years. CMO’s now come in with bigger business chops and opinions because the organization realized that, at the end of the day, matters is what people buy, think of, experience, like, dislike or recommend. Everything is marketing because it’s about the customer, and connecting with the customer. Those functional silos have increasingly vanished and now it’s all about how we drive business growth together; one more purchase, one more experience, one more recommendation.”

Laura adds, “What marketing is good at is communication, and everyone is talking about ‘the customer journey.’ Understanding the day in the life of a customer is an instrumental tool.”

“Pause and trace the customer journey: where it starts, where it goes, where it ends – you want that information before you start making decisions.” Kirk continues, “Each departments functional items will throw out another data point – something that he or she knows better than anyone else at the table – that doesn’t come up because we’re working on our own areas. When you define enough unique factors of why they buy – generational, or cultural, or age, or income, or geographic – you identify quickly there are different people and different habits: moms, kids, or reluctant shoppers. This makes you think differently about it, and it drives everything.”

Download A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.

Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.

Building A Stronger Brand—Now That Your Customers Have The Power To Define It

As customers have more control over their experience with an organization, it inevitably affects the way we manage a brand. Customer standards are rising, and they seem to be demand more engaging, valuable, and respectful marketing from brands. Customers are now able to immediately respond to—even hijack— our marketing messages, so what can we do, across departments, to better prepare our company?

It starts by better understanding our customers – every type of customer – and what impacts the trust the have with a brand. “That trust, “ says Forrester VP and Principal Analysts Laura Ramos, “starts with friends and family. Friends and family gives the brand power, so,” she asks, “how do you adjust your message?”

Gatorade CMO Morgan Flatley answers, “We connect with out customers. We spend a lot of time with athletes, in training, on the field, understanding what inspires them and that’s what helps build messages and product development. We spend a lot of time monitoring the messages that come in, and in many instances, its about the sweat and tears that goes into their sport every single day. Gatorade typically celebrates the wins, but last year we celebrated the hard work. Not the pros, but the Joe’s.”

iHop’s Head of Marketing Kirk Thompson shares his companies approach. “We have hundreds of thousands of people who walk through the doors every day. Our laboratory of 1600 restaurants provides anecdotal evidence and learning every day. It’s a good opportunity for our teams – any of the teams – to hear, watch and observe what’s happening and what’s working. This is the raw material that provides the power to participate with people who remind you of what’s important to them, and what will make this successful.”

Morgan explains, “We observe the interactions at a training field immersed in the activity that is our business. It’s as much about observing as it is doing this first hand to understand how this impacts the experiences our consumers are having.”

Read more from A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.

Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.

How to Maximize ROI And Protect Your Name On Social

Social media has become second nature for the modern brand, but many companies are discovering the dark side of social. Fake accounts, spam, hacks, and compliance violations can damage a brand, undermine investments in social, and threaten a company’s credibility.

According to Nexgate General Manager Devin Redmond, this issue is bigger than you may think. “The problems are not only with the accounts, but with the content. A company must learn to protect its inbound communications, as well as its outbound communications from account sprawl, inappropriate posts and compliance.”

HP’s WW Digital Capabilities Program Manager Pete Metrulas explained, “What we see as our programs evolved is twofold: our physical presence – the access, control, moderation – and the social graph as a whole – impersonation, by risk, by content. At one level it’s a nuisance, on another its content not relevant that shows a lack of control. If your audience can’t get to meaningful content you have a big problem.”

Scott Rosenberg, Senior Business Operations Manager at Intel, says, “Leveraging social, as much as possible, includes managing the responsibility and expectations from our center of excellence. Invite everyone to be part of the process. The result for us is that we can invest time in more real time engagement, better content, instead of compliance.”

Head of Social Media for Bank of the West, Joel Nathanson, continues. “All these things are important to protecting our customers – and educate them – to keep them out of hot water. We need partners to succeed – every department can contribute. We need to bring others in to learn what we’re trying to accomplish so they can apply their capabilities to what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Redmond concluded, “What if this was on your site and your customers could not get to your information – what would you do to protect the information? What happens when this is on your social? It’s the same thing. You have the rules and the right – act!”

Download A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.

Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.

Give Customers A Voice For A Fresh Approach To Marketing

Storytelling isn’t a new way to make content, but it is a new way of thinking about marketing campaigns and a different approach to branding.

Jeremy Goldman of Firebrand suggests, “There’s a balance between telling the story and being in the story. How do you strike a balance between capturing attention and being true to yourself? You want to get them into the funnel but you also have to get them down the funnel.”

“People like to read about people,” explains Laura Thomas, Chief Blogger for Dell. “Even when we’re talking about a new product, we push to find the human element – the people who created it or brought it to market, or a customer. It’s much more interesting to talk about what people are doing with our technology that to talk about our technology.”

The key is authenticity and celebratizing. Sony PlayStation Vice-President, Platforms Marketing John Koller stresses to, “Make the people important, elevate who they are, and make them important to their circles. As we saw the efficacy of that, we saw more opportunities to bring attention to our fans.”

The big thing concern is oversaturation. “Content marketing is about creating content, so there’s going to be a glut – more content than customers can consume – so it’s about time to look for the big themes: security, the cloud, the Internet of Things. There’s a lot I can pull from and build, instead of starting from scratch.”

Jeremy has learned, “Telling a more authentic story brings more engagement,” and Laura agrees. “With great content, the reader has to see themselves in the story – it could be me – even if we are talking about us.” That is what creates great stories.

Download A View From The Top: The Evolution of Marketing and the Customer Journey by author Kevin Popović.

Based on Incite Summit West, this book examines current thinking from marketing leadership from some of the largest brands. The contributors were senior level and accomplished, but most importantly, that they are all very active in the development and delivery of the work on behalf of their organizations. These speakers are not sitting in the ivory tower, they are leading their troops into battle – and they are winning.