A Marketer's’ First Measure of Success

“People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care”
― Theodore Roosevelt

Customer Satisfaction. It is now, and should always have been the marketers’ first measure of success, as it is the most important principle of marketing a business successfully.

Marketing has now entered the "age of the customer", where customers have more information, choices, and power than ever before. The “customer experience”, the culmination of all brand and customer interactions, now matters more than
anything.
When customers interact with a brand, they expect consistency. They expect their interactions across any channel to be the same. This demonstrates to them that the company that they are dealing with really knows and understands them. They develop a "connection" and loyalty to that company.

Marketing teams have shifted their mindset and tactics from marketing at customers, to focusing on creating a cohesive customer journey, from beginning to end. If we truly put customers at the center of our thinking, we connect the heart of the business to the heart of the consumer, and that is the connection that is resilient and hard to break . It is the connection marketers and customers pursue.

image courtesy of http://www.foresee.com

In 2016, as Digital Media is declared "the King", the "customer experience" is considered the crown jewel of marketing, and both are now shaping the pace for the profession. Predictive intelligence tools such as Salesforce are making it easier for marketers to track customer behavior and use insights to create highly personalized interactions. By collecting customer data in real time, these marketers apply what they know about individuals to tailor the customer experience.

To ensure success in the future, companies must redirect all tactics, both internal
and external towards customer satisfaction. They should implement corporate wide regulations in all units and departments to align in the same vision, creating the ultimate customer experience.

*Data derived from State of Marketing Report, 2016, Trends and insights from nearly 4,000
marketing leaders worldwide

Orchestrating a Successful Exhibition – The Art of Conducting It Right

Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance

Performing exhibitions at industry events can be a lucrative and respectable way of raising your profile, launching a new offer and generating sales leads, IF done right.

The act of conducting and managing a successful participation in exhibitions is a state-of-the-art business; standing out from the crowd, differentiating your company from competitors, deriving the expected quantity of quality leads, dealing with budget constraints and demands for demonstrable returns on investment are features which require unwavering preparations but are often disparaged.

It should be noted that these are however, an incomplete list of the tasks an exhibition planner needs to deal with.
In this series of blog posts, I will guide you through the basics of planning ahead for a successful and ROI measurable exhibition.

credit: www.business2community.com/

Purpose for participation
Exhibitions create value to stakeholders through the inducement of the behavioral patterns of the participants. If you do not expect the participants to take some kind of action after having socialized with your stand staff, then there is no value in your exhibit.
As a result of this, prior to tackling the actual planning of the exhibition, you need to ask yourself some rudimentary and essential questions:
•    Is there an actual need for an exhibiting, how necessary is it?
•    How much staff is required to engage the target audience?
•    What size of exhibition space is required to attract the target audience, display the products and hold meetings?

Once you have answered these questions and have decided to become exhibitor, the next step would be the preparatory step.  Whether you are participating in small or large exhibitions, with a small or large booth, they all involve the same basic planning, and there are no shortcuts!

Tip:
•    If you are doubtful and unsure about your need to exhibit, do a careful observation of other exhibitors. If you are still uncertain, attend the exhibition venue as a visitor to learn about the event, your competitors, the market, industry trends and make new contacts

Pre-exhibition preparation
As this is a costly investment in terms of expenditure (e.g. exhibition space rental and all such related expenses as well as labor costs), it is imperative that you should be very clear and focused on what you want to achieve, and also have precise and measurable goals in mind. 

credit: www.pixshark.com

While preparing for an exhibition, special attention should be paid to:
•  The decision on the stand type and its location (taking into consideration the booth location of your competitors, and companies you would like to be in close proximity to or even be associated with)
•  Liaising with booth designers, production companies, graphic designers and printing houses
•  Opting for a prime speaking slot for your presentation, as companies utilize and recognize the power of communicating messages and expertise in a particular field via this channel
•  Planning your online and offline advertising campaign towards the event such as PRs, mailers, promotion on social media e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, as well as blog posts
•  Arranging meetings ahead of time with prospects (the decision makers), customers, journalists and analysts
•  Planning  lead generation mechanisms
•  Advancing clear messaging; in collateral, booth design and overall approach
•  Arranging hotel accommodation for participants
•  Arranging transportation of goods to venue (and back to your company)

Tips:
•  Start planning well ahead of time in order not to miss deadlines, and also so you can make the most out of the event
•  Keep track of the planned budget versus actual budget expenditure on an excel sheet


Coming up next :
- How to attract visitors and attention to your stand
- Exhibition Stand Staff Training
- During the event
- After the event

Want to learn more about successful exhibition planning? Contact me for more information at arielleadler@yahoo.com

Child-Targeted Marketing Isn't A Kid's Game

Image courtesy of

http://foodgirluk.com

Every year 100s of billions of dollars are spent by advertisers on inspiring, persuading and manipulating people into a consumer routine which has desolating effects on the environment through its indulgence and improvidence. Advertisers play on our insecurities, create deceitful needs and offer fake solutions. They succeed in raising a certain level of dissatisfaction which directs into consumption and kids especially are defenseless to this sort of manipulation.

To marketers children represent a solid demographic as they are huge customers or potential ones; they influence their parents' buying decisions, spend money themselves as teenagers and will continue to do so as they become adult consumers.

As opposed to preceding generations, young children have more autonomy and a decision-making power within the family which can clearly be observed in a family's purchasing patterns. They uses to  influence which sweets and toys to buy, but these days it goes far beyond that;
they show their preference when buying cereals and other standard groceries, clothing, software and computer products, family entertainment, restaurants and family trip locations and even cars.

Consequently, children's "influence" is recognized by advertisers who nurture this situation and "use" kids as their marketing target.  Nowadays parents are prepared to buy more for their kids as they might have dual incomes and more disposable income in addition to guilt which can play a role as well;  time-stressed parents make up by purchasing material items for time spent with their offspring.

One of the strategies marketers use to target children is by relying on the kid to pester the parents to buy the product, rather than going straight to the parents. The "pester power" marketing strategy creates exactly what advertisers are after as parents easily give in into their children's persistence nagging; it is extremely powerful and works.

Building brand name loyalty
Large enterprises such as Nike, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, to name a few, discovered that brand recognition can be established already in very young children and purposefully changed their primary corporate efforts from making products to creating a brand name image.

Brand recognition fundamentals are created by marketers in very young children, in the hopes that lifetime bonding with the brand is established, from the cradle to the grave.
Brand loyalties can be established as early as age 2, and by the age of 3 or 4, before they can even read, usually distinguish brands and status items

Image courtesy of

www.theinquirer.net

The Internet
Unquestionably this is an extremely desirable medium for child-targeted marketing by marketers.

Kids surfing the internet doesn't go without dangers and unethical advertising; often without parental supervision, children spend hours on unregulated sites and sophisticated technologies enable companies to easily collect information from the children for marketing research, and to target them with personalized advertising.

In my opinion this is unethical as kids do not quite comprehend the commercial and persuasive intent as well as the manipulation behind advertisements until they are 8 or 9 years old.

It is for these reasons that child-targeted marketing should be sensibly restricted, particularly the ones aimed at children under 9 years old. And this should include censored internet sites, television programs, and advertisements.

Mission Impossible: Hiring a Super(wo)man Marketing Person

Trying to catch up with today’s developments in Social Media Technology and Networking is extremely time-consuming. It is a fulltime job to be an expert in all the relevant social media groups and be active in them.

But, in order to be a relevant candidate for a marketing job, you simply do not have a choice – you are asked to be social media-savvy.
During my job search, I encountered multiple requests for not only classic multitasking skills that every passionate marketing professional  should have,  but also to be able to write marketing content, preferably technical content, and have broad experience in social media.

Be honest, who has time to do all of this?

Anyone who is or has been working in the marketing field has experienced at some point during his/her career that regardless how much fun it might be, it’s also extremely time consuming. It requires not only an "eye for detail", but also ongoing creating and posting of fresh content. In short, it requires talent and takes up a lot of time.
It means that employers expect their marketers to catch up with emails, special projects, budget discussions and event arrangements, to write articles, press releases and any other publishable text in addition to be active in all kinds of social networking groups.
But writing (and I mean writing an interesting article that is read from beginning to the end!)  requires skills which a "classic-called" marketing person was never trained for, is not being trained for and most likely will never get trained for.
For all those companies who wish to employ a "super-marketing" person who claims to have all of these skills, please adjust your expectations.

Writing is a skill and requires aptitude, a state-of-mind and lots of time, a condition which is generally a luxury in a so-called standard working atmosphere. The same applies to the social media.
So do yourself a favor. To get the best results with the best talent, start outsourcing! Get dedicated people whose expertise is to write your articles for you, publish them on all the relevant social media and groups. You will not only get high quality, but also make your marketing team happier!

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