Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends to Watch for in 2021. Before we dive into what's in store for this year, let's take a look at the state of Customer Experience. If we were at the beginning of 2020, no one could have predicted how upside-down, sideways, diagonal our lives would become at [...]
Welcome to M4 Communications' Five Customer Experience Trends for 2020 To Watch. This has become an annual event here at M4. But before we dive in, let's take a look at where we are with Customer Experience. The Current State of Customer Experience So, where are we with Customer Experience (CX)? The answer to the [...]
I love this time of year. It's the time of year we reflect on the journey we've taken and the journey we've yet to take. It's also when we hear many prognostications on predictions and trends. So before I provide you with the key customer experience trends for 2019 - which has become an annual [...]
I've been reading posts about how Customer Experience is the new Marketing. Is it? The Difference Between Customer Experience and Marketing The definition of Marketing, per Merriam-Webster, is: "the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service" Dr. Philip Kotler defines Marketing as “the science and art of exploring, creating, and [...]
For marketers to be successful, they can’t muddle through with blinders or rose-colored glasses on. They must be informed and know which marketing activities work, and which don’t. That means understanding the mechanics of measurement. Marketing and measurement are like lock and key. You need both to be successful and grow. Unfortunately, some marketers still [...]
In Part I of "How To Conduct Win-Loss Analysis To Achieve Strategic Growth", I discussed the pre-interview and interview phases of Win-Loss Analysis. The post-interview phase is the most important element of the Win-Loss Analysis process. During this phase, you will gain insights on how to actually improve your processes, and as a result, better [...]
I have been involved with Win-Loss Analysis from the product and sales sides since the mid–1990’s and have written about the subject since 2009. To this day, I do not understand why more companies aren’t conducting win-loss interviews, analyzing results and implementing lessons learned. When I speak with companies, many think they know the answers [...]
There are many opinions about content gating these days. There have been LinkedIn Group discussions about it as well as blog posts debating or trying to visualize it. I recently asked marketers on a LinkedIn Group discussion about content gating. I posed three questions - (1) Are you gating content? (2) What content types do you [...]
This month, eMarketer published a post citing results from an April 2014 study conducted by VisionEdge Marketing and ITSMA. eMarketer noted that 85% of marketers worldwide said the pressure to measure marketing’s business value and contribution had increased. eMarketer cited another study in the post, one conducted by ifbyphone in May 2014, which indicated that much of [...]
Marketers, remember the old acronym that defined a marketer’s job? AIDA. Our task was to generate awareness, create interest, build desire, and cause a buyer to take action to purchase a product. Until recently, getting a prospect’s attention was kind of a crap shoot. Marketers had to depend on their own guesstimates of what the [...]
Last week I read a Wall Street Journal post by Jessica Livingston entitled "Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing". While reading the post, I kept on remembering a line from one of my favorite films, Taps, where the lead character's father says to him, "Let me tell 'em it was growing pains [...]
One thing I like about engaging with my social networks is being able to ask questions and get people’s thoughts on issues, problems, and trends. Recently, I asked on Twitter, “Do marketing and sales still have trouble working together?” The answer was particularly telling: “No. They just do it badly.” In many organizations, the challenge [...]
I've been reading a lot of articles and posts lately that content marketing's role is to generate sales. That is one of the myths of content marketing - if we create it, we'll get sales. If you make generating sales the goal of your content, your content will appear trite and your voice comes off [...]
I recently asked a marketing director about customer testimonials on his company website. He openly said, "The testimonials aren't real, I made them up. Everybody else does it, so why can't we?" My second thought, after "Two wrongs don't make a right," was "Aren't you in the business of building trust? What does that say [...]
Recently, I read CMSwire.com's post about IDC's 2014 predictions for CMO's with very keen interest. As the digital economy evolves so does the role of the CMO. 10 predictions for the changing role of the CMO were cited. A few of the predictions particularly stood out for me. "By 2020, the marketing function in leading [...]
I remember when Bill Lee's post in Harvard Business Review came out in August 2012. There was outrage in the marketing community. Well, how could there not be outrage? The title of his post was "Marketing Is Dead". He was right - traditional marketing is dead. This is where I diverge. Mr. Lee notes "Traditional [...]
I remember an old phrase from the 1980's called "MBWA", Managing By Walking Around. The premise was that managers needed to get out of their office and walk around the office to check with employees on the status of their work and the status of the company in general. It led me to think about [...]
Hello nonprofits. Welcome to 2014. We don't have a lot of time for people to get to know us. In fact, it takes people three seconds to determine whether they are interested in you. Nonprofits need to be laser-focused on their content and social marketing efforts to differentiate themselves from the others. Here are seven [...]
Gating your content means that for someone to receive your content, they have to give you their email address and other particulars to obtain the content. But, is over-gating your content a good tactic? If you gate everything and someone registers, do you immediately conclude that individual is a hot lead? Perhaps they are. Perhaps [...]
I was on Linked In recently reading and responding to an inquiry a nonprofit manager was asking in one of the groups I belong to on how to get the word out about their nonprofit. As you would guess, many gave a laundry list of "do this, do that" answers. While there were some great [...]
