Digital changes today VS two years ago

The Squared Online course I went through two years back, now feels like I’ve only touched the tip of an iceberg. Opening up the door into digital realm flooded me with a great amount of knowledge and the privilege to learn digital capabilities and its possible paths. I saw the vast potential via digital means that businesses can apply to reach out to customers! This industry also intrigued me because the future of digital tech is endless. At first thought, it may also seem sneaky and scary of being able to read into consumer patterns, real-time online chatter and “attack” them at vital touch points (content, time, channels) to capture their attention or emotions, turn them into followers and advocates of your brand. This still stands till today.

Two years has passed. Digital is ever growing, ever changing and it is not stoppable. Hence, it is vital we grow and change with it. Every marketer should focus and stay abreast of which digital approach makes customers click and buy/ download/ follow/ like/ tell others. Bear in mind it is not about following the latest trends at the moment. You want to win the customer not only before or during purchase stage, but you want to situate at every part of their lives your product can be part of.

Two Years Back

In the past, it is possible to drive awareness and capture new customers quickly as long as you have a website with your products or services. You may also set up official social media business accounts (looking legit) and post up interesting posts and hope someone stumble upon your brand and products. You can even try to follow them, comment or like posts randomly to gain their attention. This is no longer as effective today, not that it is 100% not effective, it is just not the most effective. Customers are smarter these days and it might send an incorrect impression of your brand. It is not a sure hit, and the like might mean to the ear of a consumer as: “Hello, we just want to let you know our businesses provides facial services, do check us out.”

I have also learnt the See-Think-Do-Care Framework. This is only suitable for one size fit all, 1 message fits all customers. Most suitable for a mega supermarket brands or your business has only 1 core product that drives the revenue. However, it will not be applicable to most of today’s markets. Be critical and truly honest with yourself during this process so segmentation and targeting of master list for the actual intent of your marketing campaign will not be compromised. At the end of this framework exercise, it will be a smaller audience, specifically for this campaign.

An example of See-Think-Do-Care. A Luxury Skincare brand may define their audience:

• See: Individuals 28-45, All genders
• Think: Online signups and followers, Offline store purchase customers
• Do: Those who ready to purchase including followers who were doing research, want to explore alternative brand and/or interested in the brand.
• Care: Customers who purchased makeup at least once online and offline in a year.

Cons:

1. The communication for this framework will be sent to audience of all who is aged 28-45 of all genders as long as they are your signups, have purchased before in 1 year or simply followers.
2. The Luxury Skincare brand is unable to target specific messages to meet the needs of current and potential customers. Eg. Customer Female age 32 purchased a Dry skin moisturizer, will not be interested in an email that says “5 Beauty Secrets for oily prone skin!”
3. It creates a poor communication towards customers kills customer value and might even cause them to unsubscribe.

Today 2019

“where artificial intelligence, robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are transforming the customer experience….. these new technologies comes a new wave of data signals.” -Taken from Salesforce Marketing Cloud website

1. Today, more consumers are inclined for a brand story with meaning and emotions, something that drives deeper than just telling them about features of your product and service. Brand + Story = Loyalty. If you are a new brand and do not have a compelling story, chances are low for increasing subscribers or maintaining customer engagement. This point alone will not transform your business to be successful.
2. Yesterday, I found out that Copy writing skill is the top trend for digital marketing 2019 because words that capture and evoke emotions connect directly with consumers, influencing them to have interest and read your communications. Here’s a tool called Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer. Caring is sharing, so now go and try to test if you are using impactful words on your next EDM headline or digital article headline: https://www.aminstitute.com/headline/
3. Caring is Sharing. Think Win Win at any point of time of your campaign or business strategy. If you can bring in products or services that are also helping consumers and manufacturers to win, naturally it will become a win win for your business too. Driving positive emotions and empowering your consumers can elevate brand advocacy and help marketing campaigns impact last longer.
4. Marketing strategy and goals of your campaigns need to ensure it covers all interaction gaps at every stage, pre, during, and post purchase. The entire thought process of the customer, what goes through their minds. Ultimately, you will have to collect and have access to your customer data, make ample time to study and makes sense of the data. What are the signs, consumer behavior patterns and possible external factors can explains what the data reflect? Ideally we want them to engage them at every stage and have them click “Call to Action” when they are ready.
5. After you manage to capture their interest, using digital communications to connect via machine learning, data gathering and filtering your customer data based on their preferences and needs will elevate customer experience, contributing to high retention subscriber and follower rates.
6. Determining the type of Audience, Frequency(time), crafting the Content (in-journey or outside journey) and Channel are important considerations in working on a feasible marketing communication campaign.

What’s up in the digital realm nowadays? Big Data, Ai, Predictive analytics, Clustering, Classifications, Machine learning. How do we make use of this to drive effective marketing campaigns today?

As a campaign manager, it is my job to form multi-facet and dynamic customer journeys for different goals based on data, while also aligning with the company’s goals and strategy for the intended audience. The journey you plan to deploy will require technical skills, tools, integration of data sources and what type of data you have access to. We need to be able to capture and make sense of all the valuable data in order to deploy intelligent marketing strategies. Making correlation of different sets of data can more complex than we think. Easier said than done.

Let’s just take it all in and move along as the waves bring us. Learn to manage it and control the best we can. It is here so let’s make it beneficial for us.

Mobile Usage & Engagement

What’s so current about mobile? Is it important for companies to go mobile? Yes. Do not undervalue the power of mobile.

Going digital is just a basic step, but to shift or integrate brands onto the mobile platform is another thing altogether because it encompasses details that impacts the consumer journey. Since being customer centric is key, UI and UX play an essential role in the customer mobile experience and usability. There are also different types of “formats” that impacts mobile experience and the question you should ask your business is : Will your brand have a website, progressive web app, mobile site or a mobile app?

Can a brand have all of these formats and what purpose will each serve? It is essential to justify how each platform / format/ type of content should be placed onto these formats and types of customers the brand seeks to engage because customers’ needs are vastly different from one same brand.

Let’s look at mobile usage functions as compared to other devices such as laptops, ipad, tablet, television or others. Mobile features have higher usage rate (effective engagement) in photo camera, video camera, motion sensor, touch screen, GPS, microphone, proximity, geographical connectivity and VR (virtual reality).

That means Mobile = important screen

With these mobile features intertwined into the lives of the large potential pool of world consumers, brands need to create/ build/ strengthen a team of mobile technology experts (both creatively and technically) to stay ahead of the race to provide quality mobile engagement. Some may find mobile has its limitation due to its screen size, but naysayers are why brands stay where they are or even decline. Challenging within these limits will be the reason why content and feature prioritization is key to mobile optimization. Brands that dedicate to create a brand experience through mobile (right place) , engages the right consumers with the right product at the right time will find greater success in the digital marketing world.

One quick tip: People often stay with what they know, they don’t look around or take any extra effort to explore and think outside the box. If you’re just a start up and obviously have a steep capital, consider leveraging on the latest social media platform but think creatively on how to engage your potential target audience. Then, leverage highly effective mobile functions by  getting your customers to engage in the app/activity for high customer engagement/ experiences. Any form of mobile format engagement to your target customers could be a hit, as long as your brand get the right awareness.

Some videos examples I’ve learn from Squared Online that will give you an idea on the above content:

Here’s L’Oreal leveraged the use of the mobile video camera:

This video shows how Philips leveraged the use of the microphone and bluetooth:

 

Observation on IG

As a commuter standing in a crowded train, I’ve decided to document my observations on Instagram Consumer Behaviour. This is solely based on my perspective and observation that morning.

Consumer Behavior On Instagram on MRT:

March 16 Thursday: People already follow handles that normally comprises of content that they are interested in, thus your competitors will be those of similar product/svc/business as yours. This means that if your brand does not have a high following to begin with, your brand will not be appearing on people’s newsfeed at all.

People tend to pause at a video and watch them, simply because it has moving images and taps on curiosity, so people naturally spend longer time on it. If they continue to watch till the end (max 60 seconds), it indicates their interest thinking its cool message/ touching story / lovely etc, and they will give you a like (depending on their mood at that time).

This does not indicate that 100% of people who “like” your picture will go into your profile after they like your post, unless your caption/image/video has triggered so much curiosity. Such as how to do something? Where can I find them? How can I join? Or simply just want to know more about your brand.

Once they get into your profile, basically they are about 60% sold and want to find out more. Here, your profile description, image feed are key to portray your brand, it must be in some form of consistency and must reflect your brand movement. 

Always put yourself in the shoes of consumers because to be customer centric is key to recognising the behavioral patterns and capturing micro moments that your brand want to captivate.

Peace out.

Framework for Product Research

A framework for defining a value proposition is called the Value Proposition Canvas. You may find it useful for your business! This term I learned at google squared module was one of the given a pre-class activity with the aim to break down the use (value of offering) into 2 aspects: CUSTOMERS & BENEFITS.

Customer : Want, Fears, Needs

Benefits:  Features, Benefits, Experience

PRODUCT EXAMPLE – Kindle Fire HD 8

Needs of their consumers : All in one tablet with built in Amazon App Store and digital content. Reliable performance speed, storage capacity and battery life that is important to consumers.

Wants of their consumers : Lower Price Tag, Aesthetics, New/ Exceptional Features, Fast charging, Improved memory, Upgrade in battery life

Fears of their consumers : Slow Charging , Display is more inferior to iPad minis

Substitutes for their consumers : Ipad mini, Samsung Galaxy Tab A 7.0, Lenovo Tab3 7, Asus ZenPad S 8.0

Features of the product: Comes with 4 exterior color options, Cool Small Design. Cloud base Voice Service – Alexa, 8” HD Display1280x800, Quad Core – Performance Booster , 16GB, Micro SD Slot (up to 200GB capacity) , 802.11N WIFI, Fire HD, Amazon 5W power adapter, built in rechargeable 4,750 mAh battery (12 Hrs Battery Life) , USB charging cable, Front & Back, Camera. Stereo with DOLBY audio – great for movie watching, Software is Fire OS 5

Benefits of the product: For a budget friendly price tag, it is a good tablet to use. Especially if parents with kids are looking for a cheap alternative, the features of longer battery life and more base storage than the previous version is ideal. Light weight and flexibility in bringing a smaller size 8-inch screen tablet around. It offers stereo by Dolby great for watching videos, expandable micro SD storage and ample parental controls.

Experience with the product: While it may have poorer screen resolution and its camera functions are just basic enough, this tablet will be ideal for activities such as reading, e-mailing, web surfing and normal non-excessive app-downloading. Consumers will require Amazon Prime Membership to gain access to thousands of free video, movies, e-books. music options and TV shows.

Any product or service / app that needs to do such a value proposition, try brainstorming and breaking them down as above framework. Hope this helps!

How writing your emails can improve things at work

The way you write your work emails can influence a decision, create an impression, do nothing or even bag a promotion. Especially working in a global corporate environment where the job requires approvals through email communications, keeping some tips in your pocket to improve your cross-functional communications across diverse backgrounds will go a long way.

4 words to stop using in emails:

ACTUALLY: This degrades the person reading it as if the information on the earlier email was not actual? It promotes a tone of distrust and ‘actually’ sounds like a correction.

ALREADY: This sounds as if a completed task needs an extra reminder that it is done, usually due to an initial prompting to check if a particular issue has been acted upon. The word ‘already’ indicates a defensive tone to reply to an email; such that the person who needs to check on it multiple times becomes condescending or complacent. This is more sensitive if the email is addressed to higher management. Let me give you an example:

Email from upper management:

As discussed, we will use Trello as a platform for our discussion so everyone may add their pointers into it. Moving on, we can review by end of this week, hoping to finalize on our next touch base.

Junior to upper management:

Noted on above. Just to share, there is actually a similar app XXXX on the market already. You might want to use that platform to fill up the pointers as it is also mobile friendly but if however, Trello, as mentioned in above email is setup already, we will follow accordingly.

Look, the above email sentence started off cold when it could have addressed the teamwork. It immediately throws off the information on the first sentence. Making a recommendation or suggestion could be written in a more tactical way. If you need to introduce a new idea with good intentions, it needs to be delivered across in less aggressive words, using more subtle (humble) suggestive words and always sound positive and smart.

(Revised) Junior to upper management:

Thanks for staying up for the call. Our team will be working to build up creative ideas by this week and present them during our next touch base. Could we check if the team have completed setup of Trello or are still opened to other platforms?

Interestingly, our team discovered XXXX app that received higher ratings for user-friendly functions and works similar to Trello. Dena and Ann have explored it and finds XXXX platform more efficient to use for overall conceptualisation stage, could be another option to implement this or next quarter. Kindly review and let us know your thoughts 🙂

I / MYSELF/ ME: Think from a perspective of representing the company you work for. Use words such as ‘our team’, ‘we’, or simply drop some team member’s name

“Having reviewed the proposal with our team or with Daniel and Amanda, we found …”

SORRY: Use ‘Apologise’ instead.

I would like to apologize on behalf of …

We would like to apologize for any inconvenience…

Please accept my sincere apologies as our team

After 2 years 9 months of working in MNC, communication daily with cross-functional partners across the globe are inevitable. Hence, putting across some empathy into your emails will be helpful and relationships can be nurtured through careful use of words that affects the tone of (email) voice. Write out all the frequently used words on emails and put down on a table ‘Negative vs positive words.’ Bear in mind, neat, concise and well-structured emails will be well received, resulting in efficient replies. Yes, we all need answers.

Please note the above is based on my experience and it worked for me, might not work for everyone in every organization.

Chatbots : Be Right Back

Last week, I was asked if I knew what chatbots were and what they could do. Questions that popped into my mind were: are they robots in computers that can chat on behalf of your business or you? Has it got to do with bot developers? How to program it? How extensive and complex can it go?

Below are some thoughts upon my first time researching on them:

What is a chatbot? It is a program that can automatically engage conversations with customers online. Chatbots are commonly used on Facebook business accounts to automate support of replying to customers. Replies are in messaging application forms and can also be applied across different social media channels. It interacts with customers as it is capable of addressing problems and deliverig solutions to customers queries in real-time. At times, websites also use chatbots on their ‘live-chat’ popup window.

It is fully data driven so chatbots are able to track and identify highly asked questions or issues through previous conversations. Businesses will discover remarkable insights about their targeted customer, product or services through its self-learning analytics ability, enabling businesses to make more informed strategic decisions.

How does chatbot work? You got to build your bot, train it and then you can deploy it to the channels you need these chatbots to engage into. Because it is fully data-driven so the artificial intelligence engine will learn patterns from the uploaded text, speech, tone, key issues from past customers conversations and interactions in emails including other reply support systems. It is able deal with quasi-conservations. Based on contextual awareness, memory and cognitive elements, chatbots can scope quality conversational UX. How smart!

As researched, AI-chatbots are more efficient than scripted bots (there are two types!) because Artificial Intelligence (AI) is made up of both Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning Algorithms (ML) while scripted bots presents a less conversational reply and are not able to read user usage. AI is superior in computer intelligence such that AI chatbot has the ability to use this knowledge to communicate in higher contextual value about the brand in a meaningful way.

NLP = building systems that can understand natural (human) language
ML = building systems that can learn from experience

Why should you use chatbot? Chat bots are the next step in evolving internet world because of its highly interactive and effective ability to respond learn language, manage complex dialogs / topics and understand user patterns. It is highly essential for digital and social media branding. As consumers spend more time using the mobile device messaging applications, the likelihood of them asking questions via online chat is high as it is familiar and convenient to use. Thus, chatbots are vital to businesses such that it automate engagements, capture opportunity and build brand experiences organically.

Which chatbot to use? Any recommended chatbots?

• Swelly
• Keyreply

Curious what the future might be? Below talks about a film displaying a highly advance use of Chatbots.

A UK Sci-fi film series called ‘Black Mirror’ – Episode titled ‘Be Right Back’  hit this topic right on the spot. THE ENTIRE SERIES WAS THE BEST I’ve watched because of its mind-intriguing, dry yet terrifying ideas on overpowering digital/social media/technological presence in our lives today.

In the episode, a grieving wife was able to have conversations on a chat app of some form with her dead husband even after he had passed. That chatbot was so unbelievably smart as long as initial tasks of pre-download of any media files (videos, pictures, emails, blog archives, past chat history and social media accounts), it was able to mimic conversations based on the analysis of all the data provided. The more media and increased online history the lady provided, the higher the effectiveness and accuracy of replies. Knowing it could mimic conversation using artificial intelligence, the chatbot was able to reply the lady (whom later found she was pregnant with his child) with emotional comfort/ sarcastic remarks/ personal quirks that only that deceased person would say. The chatbot represented her partner so much that she spoke to it (chatbot) in an obsessive manner. It almost feels like he had returned, just maybe on a very long overseas trip and so she chatted with him (it) online every day and night as much as she could. Truly disturbing.

Thoughts on our world today

Its human nature that people love aesthetics knowingly or unknowingly (whether you wish to admit or not). Things that look great will get attention. Convenience, Product Trial/ Sampling and Customization of options are the next characteristics most vital to consumers. Look at businesses like Spotify, Uber, Netflix, Airbnb, LinkedIn. The greater the accessibility of your content to your targeted consumers, the greater impact your touch points make. Bear in mind, it is always easier said than done.

Sometimes, people may seem to place aesthetics lower than it seems due to their personality. These people are in the practicality cluster. I have to argue that human beings are visual creatures no matter how practical they are. If you place two ads side by side , the more aesthetically pleasing ad that stands out more wins the attraction. Somewhat they will find themselves attracted to things visually pleasing to them. Usually these are content intrigues, relates, is unique and sought or wished for. Just think Instagram. It is only a ‘like’ away and that ‘like’ can pass to someone who saw you ‘like’ and come to know of it.

In a world of scheduled-tweets-meets-real-time-marketing…As digital marketers, we must be sensitive to what’s happening outside of social and shift content accordingly. To engage audience through social media is viable because these channels act as a distribution platform that can be monitored.

First Group Meetup – Google Squared

30mins to midnight and instead of heading to bed, I am going to sit down and write about my experience meeting the wonderful bunch of people from the Digital Marketing Course – Squared Online because i need to tell you how super duper fun and exciting it was!

We are on week 3 now, where the 1st group project will be due in less than a week so we need to form a disruptive idea based on our project brief. I shall not reveal the topic yet as I am not sure if it can be revealed? The experience of our first meetup was a very productive and collaborative meeting. All fellow ‘squares’ presented /pitched their individual brainstormed ideas with very informative insights and varied perspectives that brought value to the group discussion. As a graduate, cross cultural management studied in classrooms were mostly imagined and I had relate to this cultural topic based on previous work experiences. Yes, my current company exercises a collaborative work environment with cross-functional team partners sitting overseas but the most we had were 4 different cultures/countries at a meeting once. However, Google Squared surprised me with these 7 other members from vastly different backgrounds in terms of job experiences, nationalities, cultures and industries. The diversity and respect exercised during the meetup was incredible (excellent) ! Here’s how varied my group was:

Member 1 : Swiss who used to live in Morocco had moved locally. Used to be a science journalist with almost 20 years of work experience. Current: Pharmaceutical industry.

Member 2: Born and bred in Singapore with 11 years as Assistant Regional Marketing Manager. Current: Tourism industry.

Member 3: From Spain who used to live in The Netherlands have moved locally with 6 years in the eCommerce industry. Current: Social Media Marketing Agency as an Account Manager.

Member 4:  Singaporean who grew up in Japan with Advertising experience as Account Management with FMCG brands. Current: Marketing Mgr in the Insurance Industry.

Member 5:  Hindu Descent and worked in marketing role for past 7 years and more than 10 years of work experience. Current: Manager in Finance Industry

Member 6: Thai working in Singapore for a french brand. Current: Beauty Industry

Member 7: South African working and residing in Hong Kong. A Fashion Design and BA Creative Communications (advertising) graduate. Current: Language Teacher in Education Industry

Member 8: Myself, Singaporean with 5 years of Creative communications experience and over a year in Marketing in the health and fitness Industry. Current: Merchandise Sourcing in the Entertainment & Media Industry

We sat together from 7.30pm – 9pm at Starbucks in town area where ideas were bubbling and the passion was there. We all focused on only fighting for the best and most disruptive idea. As a team, we explore digital possibilities by thinking out of the box, pulling marketing concepts such as being customer centric  – a portion we learned during week 1 & 2 to solve problems faced by consumers today. We dispersed timely when time was up (how productive, no dragging), leaving me in a state of excitement (although my brain juice was used up) as I left because I actually met people with similar interests and we could talk about it. One thing for sure, before anyone wishes to sign up for this course, commitment to do your own research and passion to participate must be in. I went home naturally eager to share with my love ones about the crazy disruptive ideas we shared. Unbelievably cool!

I shall end off with a quote that is relevant to tonight’s experience… As Malcolm Stevenson Forbes once quoted, “Diversity is the art of thinking independently together.” – an American entrepreneur and Publisher of Forbes magazine.

Goodnight with a smile x

Ideas To Connect

you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with, read this:

6 Smart Techniques to Connect With Influential People

Consumer Journey

The funnel where customer journey begins with Awareness–Consideration–Purchase–Advocacy Model that is also linear has changed. The focus should now be customer intent- focused where there are micro-moments that occur during different timings that create the need for that product or service that is suitable for that time.

People can now transact anytime and anywhere. People can now obtain information, order and instant download instantly, just a click away. Journeys have now shifted from a single point to such diverse and varied touch points. It is so vital to change the mindset that the customer journey is less of a linear model, rather than have every business strategy or plan about awareness – interest – desire – action (that is the old way of thinking), marketers need to know there could be a million reasons people intent a search. I have to emphasize, it is the impulse and the moment marketers have to catch.

Traditionally, brands would want consumers to make their way to the payment counter where purchases will be made at POS. Today in the digitized world, the POS is everywhere especially on highly accessible mobile devices. The trick would be to attract and intercept the customer during those moments that they want a product. To engage them to make the purchase of your product that your brand has that is relevant to them at the point of time. If the pairing of the product to the customer intent at the right moment fits, you win this customer. There are a million intents to but eventually, these dots will meet at one same point – and that point is your brand. Now, think of how do we facilitate these transactions in the right moments?

Brands now have to add value when these customers hit those moments and find you.