Modern Marketing for the Modern Business

What is a Modern Business?

The Modern Business stays relevant at all times. A Modern Business of tomorrow is able to sell more without selling, and as if that’s not enough, they can sell better and faster than their competitors. Why? Because such Modern Businesses have two things right: 

  • they understand their customers and have lined up the smarter and more efficient marketing actions to orchestrate the customers’ buying journey; and 
  • they have the help of the latest CRM system, sales and marketing automation tools like HubSpot. 

Learn more about the Modern Business.

How to be successful in Modern Marketing

What is Modern Marketing?

Modern Marketing lets you

  • customise and personalise your engagements with humans
  • sell without selling
  • measure the effectiveness of your marketing

Let's get started ...

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What exactly is Modern Marketing?

It’s a million dollar question. Everyone is talking about it but it seems like everyone has their own way of defining it.

At Vermilion Pinstripes, we see Modern Marketing as the ability to establish, build and strengthen relationships between brand and its audiences with the human touch by harnessing technology. Modern Marketing makes your strategies more effective and quantifiable because it is able to offer the right touch points with the customers -- just as if a relationship manager was personally handling their business.

Modern Marketing is agile; aligns sales, marketing and communications to sell without selling and  leverages creativity and technology to build memorable brand experiences that customers love

When we look back, there are three major technological developments that have changed the way we look at marketing: the internet, big data and smartphones. Now it's chat bots and artificial intelligence (AI). As cited by Forbes recently: "Whatever the latest high-tech trend, the basic storyline is always the same. If you don’t master the newest platform, methodology, technology, or system, you and your company are doomed to obsolesce, bankruptcy, and despair."

31% of U.S. marketers and 30% in the UK believe that in the next 30 years robots will do much of the digital marketing they currently doYes, it is a bit nerve-wracking. In a skills report, Digital Marketing Institute found that many marketing professionals are unsure of their future. We believe that your current digital marketing role will change - very rapidly, whether you like it or not. 

31% of U.S. marketers and 30% in the UK believe that in the next 30 years robots will do much of the digital marketing they currently do (Digital Marketing Institute) 
 

At Vermilion Pinstripes, we believe the Future of Marketing is where sales, marketing and communications come together to apply technology, mathematics, science, creativity and psychology into an ecosystem that empowers the brand's customers to move to their next stage of lifecycle FASTER than they would on their own. 

This is Modern Marketing. It incorporates a deep understanding of customers’ needs, challenges and aspirations, use of modern technologies such as automation and analytics, as well as high quality content in a variety of formats for access through different channels and platforms.

We're not trying to be robots churning out cookie-cutter content or automating processes.

Modern Marketing is human. And we are selling to human customers. "The fundamental principles of human motivation remain remarkably consistent. As such, true marketing masters focus on these first before deciding what technology to apply.", says Forbes

For current marketing professionals - whether you are in graphics, events, PR, marcom etc - we are here to provide some modern practical marketing ideas so that you can make a difference to humans and build business confidence online and offline.

Let's get started.

Marketing Predictions, Modern Marketing, Vermilion Pinstripes

Marketing Predictions

Trends to Get Ahead in Marketing


When we talk about Modern Marketing everyone starts thinking trendy techniques full of jargon and fancy, intricate technology. Which can be rather intimidating for busy marketers who are swamped with tactical work.

Let's just be clear -- we may be catapulting into a modern era but the basics are really still the same:

We are marketing products and services to people, yes, human customers.

Due to technological advances and the Internet, these customers have wider choices so they have evolved and changed in the way they buy.

In the past, customers were passive. They absorbed images businesses blasted at them and they humbly received these branding messages without too much of a thought process. All businesses had to do was dress up an advertisement and they would ensnare a good share of the market.

The Modern Customer can no longer be lured with this type of carrot at the end of the stick.

The Modern Customer has power in their hands and is creating a revolution in the way businesses market their products and services. We dare say that it is the Modern Customer who is really leading Modern Marketing. To predict future trends, look to your customers. Put them under a microscope and really study them.

 

1) Dissect Your Customers

Big Data - text-based information that is swimming around in an amniotic fluid that is entirely digital. Digital information is the fastest growing type of unique information produced.

Developments in data recording and data storage are speeding up, making Big Data an imperative resource for any business that wants to understand the profile, habits and psyche of their customers. A customer is no longer just a case file number you lure with a neatly packaged advertisement. Customers have become complex creatures businesses need to know well and engage with.

Inbound marketing arose as a natural consequence of Big Data. With the massive amount of data about gazillions of customers that is floating around in cyberspace, businesses have access to information and can get to customers in a more focused manner, concentrating on their interests and values.

Social media sites such as LinkedIn (2002), Myspace (2003), Facebook (2004), Twitter (2007) and Instagram (2010) have made it even easier for businesses to get to know their customers through the sharing of personal data online.

A useful consequence of these social media sites is that it became possible for businesses to track patterns of human behaviour and trends and preferences. With predictive analytics, businesses can use big data from the marketing cloud to obtain the emotional intelligence required to connect more effectively with customers.

Businesses have to play psychoanalyst and implement more focused and relevant strategies to strengthen customer relationships.

The Reinventing Loyalty report, published in 2017 by Goldsmiths University in partnership with Adobe, found that 61% of 5,000 European consumers felt loyal to brands that tailored their experiences to their preferences and needs. You can read more in this Econsultancy Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2018 Digital Trends.

Marketing strategies in the past can no longer work now because they were a one-size-fits all strategy that pigeonholed customers into a box and imposed their brand on them. Now the key to getting to the core of customers is to make it personal and relevant.

With social media, people are now sharing information prolifically and this information is usually something that is personal and relevant to them, be it their tastes, preferences or values. With the number of devices the average person has in the house – smartphone, smart TV, laptop, desktop, iPod, tablets, the amount of sharing in cyberspace is massive and constant.

Use Big Data to get to know your customers and then personalise your content so that it becomes a unique experience for them.

The ultimate challenge for businesses if they want to get even further ahead in modern marketing is to get customers to do the marketing for them using their own personal experiences. Customers generate content also (which businesses can use as a marketing strategy) and when other customers see their peers enjoying a product or benefiting from a service, what goes through their minds is ´this has been tried and tested by a real customer…so it's not fake, engineered advertising…it really works!´ This user-generated content has a much stronger influence on customers precisely because it comes via other customers, not the businesses themselves. It does not come across as advertising. It is simple proof. This can create a really strong bond between the brand and the customer.

Knowing your customers and segmenting them also means knowing when to give them the right content at the right time with the right messages. With the help of both quantitative and qualitative data, you can amass a whole load of information about your customers. This is quite a science in itself, a mix of psychology and mathematics to know what types of communication and content should be put out at different touchpoints to bring in the best outcomes.

What happens if you do not have any data or email list to start with?

Consider one of these options -

  1. Create a landing page with a set of questions before asking for their email address. This method helps segment your customers and serve them relevant content with the right message,
  2. Do an online or deep dive survey. This might be good if you wish to test your product launch

Vermilion Pinstripes help our clients with selecting and targeting, if they wish to launch a new product or service; get into new markets or target a new audience.

Click here for a Free Consultation

 

2) Rev Up the Speed

We are living in an age of speed where nobody has the patience to slow down and wait. ´Express´ is the way to live now, be it getting a haircut, working out at the gym or even learning a language. Speed Matters!

To achieve marketing goals, a business has to be agile in its marketing with creative strategies and also be quick to execute. You need to come up with a new product or service fast and jump on an opportunity to drive your business forward.

Social media is one of the marketing channels that has contributed to the rise of agile marketing. Businesses have to communicate efficiently on Facebook, Twitter etc. while creating an established personality on these platforms. This is where customers can get maximum valuable information.

We have installed a Facebook Messenger Chat on one of our client's website, My Blue Tea. She can answer any questions and help customers buy with just ONE chat platform making her business a lot easier to manage. Being responsive and the speed at which you respond and how you respond can be a highly effective way to capture your customers´ attention. When you offer immediacy to customers, you are sending the message that they matter, you are listening and it can help to engage customers in conversation and create a valuable relationship. At the end of the day, as humans we all crave connection, and businesses that make customers feel heard in a short response time and engage in a conversation that is relevant to them and their values can really consolidate customer loyalty and even bring about advocacy.

One of the most powerful and easiest ways to connect with customers is, not surprisingly, via smartphones.

Smartphones are so prolific and integrated into our daily lives it has even produced a new physical injury called Tech Neck. Think about the number of hours we spend bent over our tiny devices. Even a flamingo would cringe to see how we hurt our bodies with this modern smartphone addiction. Which probably shows you how deeply smartphones have permeated our daily lives.

The daily time US adults spend on mobile media has increased from 46 minutes in 2011 to 258 minutes in 2017This makes the smartphone a powerful platform to reach out to and connect with customers. With just a tiny device, customers are literally connected 24/7 to all their social media sites, websites, online ordering, customer service etc. Businesses have no excuse not to get straight to their customers in a split second. Catch something customers are interested in, post it on Facebook and get your customers interacting and talking and they will be immediately sharing the content with dozens of other people. Customers buy your product online, they are encouraged to share their purchase on social media. You can literally get your customers to do the work for you. They are the ones to spread your message, values and brand personality.

Vermilion Pinstripes builds apps that improve customer experiences. One good example would be Hot Rice Chinese Cuisine.

 

3) Lure with Meaty Content

If you think about how the World Wide Web started, in a space of merely two years, from 1994 when Netscape the mass-market browser was released, the number of people using the web rocketed from 16 million to 70 million.

The Internet has basically made the ignorant and passive consumer powerful and knowledgeable. Search engines are becoming more advanced and allow users to find the information they need with a click and without having to move a step. This means consumers are becoming more independent and informed. They no longer rely on the words of a wisecracking salesman to determine whether or not to purchase a product or a service.

With Big Data permeating cyberspace and the vastness of information available on the Internet, everything is now transparent. There is no hiding it. Marketing is no longer about dressing things up and making something lesser look more than it really is in the hope that some poor fool would buy into the idea and fall for the purchase. Customers are shrewd now and highly informed.

Modern marketing is about finding your truth and sharing values with customers.

Customers are now able to find out anything they want about a product with just a swipe and a click. They have a massive buffet spread of options and reviews to form their own judgements. 70% of the buyer's journey is finished even before the buyer gets into sales. This means businesses have to get cracking and find a way to provide solid content and tangible value to entice customers.

Customers are the ones running the show and are not likely to be easily convinced or bought over by shabby or sloppy advertising and branded content. They need to feel engaged in a shared-value relationship.  They want to be treated like intelligent creatures who are smart and well-informed enough to be discerning. They have values and good tastes.

As a business, if you are transparent about the quality of what you are selling, customers will sit up and take notice. So find your truth, establish your voice and provide meaty, valuable content so customers feel like they are not on a simplistic, mindless buying assembly line. They are on a learning journey where they get not only a product or a service but also values, an identity and a relationship.

Give your customers a great experience even before they buy your product or service. Every single interaction and engagement that a customer has with your brand (videos, chatbots etc.) contributes to customer experience. The richer the customer experience, the more likely customers are to stay loyal and even recommend your brand. Create compelling and useful content to enrich customer experience.

The top three digital-related areas as top priorities for businesses in 2018 are – social media engagement, content marketing and targeting and personalisation.  When marketers were asked to state some of the technologies and strategies they are most excited about over a three-year timeframe, the one that stood out was ´Delivering personalised experiences in real time´. (Ref: https://wwwimages2.adobe.com/content/dam/acom/uk/modal-offers/pdfs/Econsultancy-2018-Digital-Trends.pdf)

So while it is true that there is a lot snazzy technology available out there, it is more effective for businesses to stay focused on creating a relevant, timely, personalised and engaging experience for customers.

To look to the future, follow how your customers are evolving. For this year, harness digital powers to understand the psyche of your customers, cash in on technological platforms to be prompt and give them something meaty to chew on.

Is everyone on the same page?

One of the challenges Marketing has, yes, is to keep up with new trends - videos, bots and whatever trends come next.

However, the biggest challenge most organisations have is Departmental Alignment. 

According to a report by Aberdeen Research, companies that are best-in-class at aligning marketing and sales experienced an average of 20% growth in annual revenue. But only 22% of respondents say their organisation's sales and marketing relationship is tightly aligned as reported in 2017 State of Inbound Report by HubSpot. Is everyone on the same page?

Watch this video to see if you recognise this executive isolation.

 

 

Shaping Your Brand, Modern Marketing, Vermilion Pinstripes

 

Shaping Your Brand

The NEW branding guide for the modern business


The brand is important for any business. This is because in the eyes of the customer, the brand is the entity that distinguishes the organisation or product from its rivals on the market. As a Forbes contributor Anjali Chugh writes:

“By not paying attention to creating a brand and creating an awareness around that brand, you’re unknowingly depriving your business of the highest potential it can reach.”

Relationships go deeper in B2B because there are more humans - from end users to CEOs.

Modern Marketing plays a big role in creating B2B customer experiences throughout the entire lifecycle of the customer, therefore it is vital to work with HR, Sales, Product Development, Customer Support, IT to develop and drive an engaging brand experience where customers can visualise how they can work with you to achieve value.

At Vermilion Pinstripes, we advocate that B2B marketers need to focus on their most attractive prospects and customers – consider their goals and aspirations, understand their needs, wants and desires, and look for the ways to make that emotional connection with them.

Here's a summary of the 8 tips to Shape Your Brand.

To read the details on these 8 tips, click on the green button.

8 tips to Shape Your Brand

1) The Human Connection: Love

Are you just a sales process oriented organisation driven by revenue - merely transactional, online or offline?

Believe it or not, love is the missing ingredient that is needed to propel business to another level. Love involves connecting with customers on a very personal level and a readiness to get emotional. 

2) Give Your Brand Personality

According to a study (Ronald E. Goldsmith Research Study), having human-like characteristics adds to the authenticity of your company. This in turn increases brand engagement. Your brand personality influences user experience and helps to make you stand out from the crowd.

3) Brainstorm about Branding

This may all sound overwhelming or it's something B2B marketers would rather sweep under the rug to their design team or agency. All you need is run through a couple of questions to understand what your personality is and how to convert that into your brand identity.

Get ready to brainstorm with your marketing and sales colleagues!

  • Why are you doing this (for the business)?
  • What are the important values to your company?
  • Imagine your brand as a person whom you're meeting at a dinner event. What personality traits would he/she have?
  • What three words would you use to describe your brand?
  • What do you do better than anyone else?
  • What makes you different from your competitors?
  • If your brand were a person, how would it communicate?
  • What three words would you want your customers to use to describe you?

4) Reviewing Your Brand Guide

After the brainstorming, you would have a clearer idea of the brand identity. Let’s check that against your current brand guide. This serves two key purposes: Firstly, it helps you to “rediscover” your company or product brand that you had overlooked, and secondly, it will help you to identify gaps so that you can move forward to make the right adjustments.  

5) Your Brand's Unique Voice

Besides looking the part, the brand’s voice has to be right, too. Using the brand’s unique voice, B2B marketers then need to communicate the brand’s messages across a vast spectrum of channels e.g. website, social media, email, ebooks etc. The brand’s voice must be consistent and appropriate for your brand’s personality in order to communicate effectively.

To read the details on these 8 tips to Shape Your Brand, click on the green button.

8 tips to Shape Your Brand

6) Listen, I’ve done all that but it’s still not working…!

We hear you. As an experienced marketer, you know the drill about branding. Yet, having spent much time and effort, you’re not getting the results or progressing to where you want to be.
 We believe that there is a special formula to help businesses understand why they are not where they believe they should be, AND how to address that challenge.

Love and Profit equals Happy Businesses | A special formula to build happy businesses




Creating A Great Brand Experience From Within

B2B marketers have the ability to influence, drive and manage across the different pillars of the company – from products and services to operations to services delivery -- to ensure that the customers enjoy the best brand experience. 

Within the organisation, we need everyone to have a human-centric mindset.

7) Deliver Brand Message With Content

Content is key to elevating your brand and it can effectively motivate customers to move to their next stage of their purchasing journey faster than they would on their own.
Remember: Content doesn’t just help marketing. It can enable your sales team and be beneficial to recruiting, investor communications, internal training and just above every other area of your business too.

Marketing plays an important role here as it is capable of engineering the customer’s journey – to entice, guide and provide relevant information to steer them to a decision in favour of your brand.

8) Get Social

Studies show that 85% of consumers say that they will change their buying behaviour in response to social media content (Source: The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web). Researchers at the Australian Psychological Society (APS) did a poll of 1834 adults and found that ¨online social networking increases, rather than reduces, face-to-face socialising¨.

This is where you can consolidate relationships by sharing common values between your customers and your brand. Check out our blog for more tips on how to make social media work for you.


 

Checkout this Blog for details on 8 tips to Shape Your Brand.

8 tips to Shape Your Brand


 

Sell Without Selling, Modern Marketing, Vermilion Pinstripes

Modern Selling Techniques

How to sell more without selling


"It is simple common sense that consumers would rather spend their time in engaging ways than in boring ones", Pine says. Companies, therefore, must align what they charge for with what their customers value.
“Especially in the B2B world, a customer is never really buying a company’s offering – it is a means to an end,” Pine says.
“If you sell the end, rather than the means, you gain more economic value. And the end is helping your customers achieve their aspirations.”

Modern Selling Techniques can help the Modern Businesses of tomorrow to sell more without selling, and as if that’s not enough, they can sell better and faster than their competitors. Why? Because such Modern Businesses have two things right: 

  • they understand their customers and have lined up the smarter and more efficient marketing actions to orchestrate the customers’ buying journey; and 
  • they have the help of the latest CRM system, like HubSpot.

Technologies can help a Modern Sales Person. Here are some things you can do with Modern Sales Technologies:

  • Prepare your sales pitch with Social Media - Social Listening software can help you understand your audience interests, most important influencers and track your brand and competitors. Social media tools like LinkedIn allow you to reach out to the right people directly. The information you gather from social media allows you to augment further and be more prepared with your pitch to your customer.
  • Tools like HubSpot allows you to create eMails for different sales cycle and different customer personas. It also has snippets and videos which you can add to your emails to further enhance your message.
  • Sales technology tools also allow you to automate your processes and enforce efficiently so you do not leave a lead hanging. It can also help you predict and analyse your sales cycles.

 

1) Customer Centricity

Let’s start with selling. You see, businesses generally have a hard time figuring out how to sell more. In a vast sea of strategies it can be really intimidating knowing where to start. So many dance around the act of selling instead of getting their hands deep into it.

The smart Modern Business marketer keeps calm and focuses on three key points:

  1. Model the company’s sales methodologies on how customers buy
  2. Align to the outcomes a buyer is focused on
  3. Focus on making the buyer's purchasing journey one with impact, value and content

The more you understand your customers’ buying behaviour, the smarter and more efficient your marketing actions will be.

You need a sales rep with the expertise to engage based on a buyer's business issues so that the buyer's ongoing experience can be greatly enhanced. A sales rep who knows exactly what the buyer is after in terms of outcomes will be able to provide the buyer with exactly what they need instead of wasting time pitching a product or a service which may have nothing in common with what the buyer is after.

Today's B2B buyers could be 66% to 90% of the way through their journey before they get to the vendor. The entire length of sales processes must be turned into a marketing engine with strong messages and content to engage buyers. This is one key part where you sell without selling. Vermilion Pinstripes is keen to turn that 66% to 90% of sales efforts into a marketing engine, leaving the sales teams time to build meaningful relationships and focus on closing.

Click here for a Free Consultation

Let us examine several modern selling techniques that cover a range of expertise areas which make the traditional job of a sales rep more interesting in this contemporary era. A vibrant, modern sales department has a mathematician, scientist, creator and psychologist on hand to combine their prowess to trigger positive buying actions.

 

2) Give Creativity, Quality and Value

This is the Creator's department.

For the new generation of B2B buyers, having an appropriate mix of relevant content for each stage of the purchasing process and making sure it is high quality content are key to building a business case for a purchase.

This implies that businesses must adopt a business model that is customer-centric and be able to identify the company's unique differentiation and transform it into visible business value. This involves personalisation and providing relevant content to customers at each stage of their buying journey.

Convert buyers with valuable content. This is the Inbound Marketing way of fattening up your buyers and getting them sales ready. It is something that has to be done consistently. It is the accumulated effort over time that builds leads and grows revenue.

See Lake One Digital's Inbound Marketing checklist: 

As we are in a customer-centric age of marketing, businesses need a broader digital ecosystem to tap into an array of other digital businesses and customers. Marketers need to leverage digital channels to create highly personalised experiences to engage customers and inspire advocates.

Use creativity as a vehicle to build relationships between your brand and potential buyers while accentuating your brand's differences. Your business´ unique differentiation can be transformed into visible business value.

Rather than think about how to sell more easily, focus instead on how to help buyers buy more easily.

Use brand-led and personalisation marketing strategies on each customer's journey to help them buy easier from a brand. Use an agile, responsive framework that has an integrated mix of content, analytics, mobile and social engagement techniques powered by marketing automation and supported by CRM.

To understand this better, check out Vermilion Pinstripes´ Modern Marketing Framework here.

 

3) Use Neuromarketing to Influence

Bring in the Psychologist and the Scientist for this section.

Neuromarketing refers to the commercial application of neuroscience technologies and insights to drive businesses further. These include functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and electroencephalography (EEG) to access the “pleasure centre” of the brain.

Neuromarketing involves a whole spectrum of considerations ranging from choice of fonts to colours, music and which specific words to use or phrase. What most businesses forget is neuromarketing is effective when it is not about you.

Just as a teaser to what you can expect when experimenting with neuromarketing:

  • Appeal to the customers’ pains. Show how your business can reduce or help avoid their pains.
  • Simplicity is key. Use short statements to create impact. Be focused and concise about your product and services.
  • Make it visual. Have a strong start and a big finish. Use attention grabbing openings and close with a compelling action.
  • Use emotion. Make it unforgettable. 

Neuromarketing is a very clever way to power your sales, marketing and communications strategy.

For more tips and details check out Vermilion Pinstripes´ neuromarketing examples here: 

 

4) Harness the Power of Email Automation

Make your Mathematician get to work here.

Once a potential buyer visits your website, they start thinking ´What do I do next?´ This is where email automation can grow your customer base. In this digital age every business is an online business, which means you need to build a customer email list. More than that, you need to automate email responses and segment your customers by product and interest.

It is another way to get to know your customers´ preferences, spot trends and see clearly what works or not. This way you can identify the right product or service to follow up for each individual customer. Based on their browsing information, you can automatically send customers information on products or services that are relevant to their searches. Add "workflows" to that and you can literally map out every potential communication of each individual's purchasing journey.

Remember what we said in the beginning that every Modern Business should be relevant at all times? Therefore, Modern Marketers will expect MORE of these in eMail Marketing:

  • More segmenting and targeting in automation
  • More text-only And interactive Emails
  • More storytelling in content
  • More mobile
  • More respect for personal privacy
  • More personalisation
  • More artificial intelligence

Videos in eMails

The coolest trend right now is to embed personalised 1:1 videos into your emails. Instead of the recipient reading your email, they listen to what you have to say and see how your products or services can work for them! According to Vidyard, emails that contain a video increases response rates by eight times!

To find out how HubSpot email automation can boost sales for your business, speak to us right here.

 

5) Videos in Sales and Marketing

Video - another hot trend? We feel that any new trend that focuses on quantity over quality were never going to stand the test of time. So where is video really going?

Video Marketing trends.

  1. Video is Going Live: Live streaming services are gaining popularity on popular social media channels. Research indicates live streaming encourages more audience engagement and retains viewers longer than prerecorded video. Today, social video is generating 1200% more shares than text and images combined, and with content creation tools such as Facebook Live, Snapchat and Instagram Stories, brands are able to drive deeper engagement with fans.
  2. Video is Getting Search-Friendly: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the use of closed captions are making video content more searchable. AI can transcribe the audio tracks of video with voice recognition to make video searchable. Google even recently announced the addition of video previews to the video carousel that appears in search results.
  3. Video is Turning 360: The recent advent of 360-degree video content enables viewers to control their perspective for a more immersive interactive experience.
Videos for Sales and beyond.

  1. Video is Going 1:1: Given the ease of shooting videos with smartphones, marketers are discovering the value of lead nurturing and customer communications by sending personalised video messages instead of calling or sending email. The notion of using a 1:1 video approach can apply to following-up on an enquiry, offering content, delivering support, simply saying thanks, or practically any application.
  2. Really videos could be used everywhere - not just marketing. As a sales enablement tool or use videos to enhance your customer support! The ideas are endless.

Some video stats.

  • 70% of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video. (Wyzowl)
  • 72% of businesses say video has improved their conversion rate. (Wyzowl)
  • 52% of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in online purchase decisions. (Invodo)
  • 65% of executives visit the marketer’s website and 39% call a vendor after viewing a video. (Forbes)
 

6) Gain Insights with Analytics

Another job for the Mathematician.

Businesses have access to a lot of data about customers but it is all useless without analysis. Analytics literally force you to acknowledge accountability when you underperform and it also gives you the assurance when something is successful.

Analytics can tell you if you are achieving your goals, keeping the pace, or falling behind on web traffic. With quantifiable information you can then snap into action and implement changes.

Analytics show you if you are investing rightly by monitoring individual channels like social media, SEO or email to see if you are hitting your daily lead goals. It can help you understand the close rates generated by the different channels and see the quality of the leads.

Analytics also monitor traffic so you know if you are attracting new customers and whether your keywords are appropriate for generating more traffic.

Analytics show how your Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) are working, showing which channels generate the strongest MQLs and which activity works best for your business.

It's a great time to be a Nerd who cares! Learn how sales and marketing can succeed with Analytics.

 

7) Social Referrals

You can bring in the whole team of experts for this one.

B2B companies rely heavily on social media platforms to generate sales. Businesses now even pay to play on social media platforms.

With social media being all the rage across the age groups, businesses need to know where customers play in social media and why they use it. This will help businesses understand what outcomes customers are looking for and so engage with them more effectively with inspiring content that fits their needs and preferences.

The key point is, businesses should aim to talk with their customers and not at them.

Trust goes a long way when it comes to convincing someone to buy something. If we don't trust someone, we aren't going to listen to them. Time and time again, studies have shown that people almost always trust other people's opinions over generic advertisements and sales pitches carefully crafted by the brand themselves.

The major types of referral channels that have proven to be “trustworthy” are -
  • Friends/Family
  • News Publications
  • Customer Reviews and Opinions Posted Online
  • Influencer Opinions (Bloggers, Social Media Influencers)
  • Testimonials

89% of consumers conduct their research using search engines (Source: PR Newswire). It would pay for businesses to make social media engagements high on their To Do list.

 

8) Latest CRM System 

CRM – Customer Relationship Management – is a system that helps businesses to define processes and empowers the entire organisation to manage its interactions with current and prospective customers. 

Why is CRM important? Well, in a Utopian world, the revenue generated from one sale to a single customer could be enough to boost the company’s growth. Unfortunately, in the real work, that does not happen. 

Sales reps continuously need to chase for their numbers with existing or potential customers, and marketing needs to keep generating leads for their sales colleagues. And because everyone is so busy chasing the next set of numbers, barely is anyone left to ensure customer retention or build loyalty. 

Sales is a long process and its sales statistics can tell you whether the company will be able to keep going into its second month or second year. Businesses cannot continue to do these: 

  • Adopt a random, trial-and-error, hit-and-miss sales approach.
  • Each sales rep to fish for customers according to their own preferred methods or sales channels. 

Enter the B2B marketer in the Modern Business organisation. He or she is familiar with CRM and collaborates with his sales colleagues throughout the sales cycle, helping to raise brand profile, generate interest among customers or new audiences, and drive a strong pipeline for brand loyalty and long term growth.  

The successful Modern Business that will exist for the long term is built on efficiency and foresight. It is managed on a set of repeatable and scalable process that will guarantee a steady and predictable inflow of income.

If you need help aligning your sales, marketing and communications goals and teams, then book a 30-min free consultation. 

Click here for a Free Consultation

Ultimately, every business has the expertise and content for their customers. However, in the long run, the business that succeeds is one that understands and stays engaged with their customers, enjoys the highest level of brand loyalty and empowers customers with the luxury of choice throughout the course of the latter’s purchasing journey. Yes, choice.

Selling without selling is all about giving customers choices. 


 

Getting started with Modern Marketing, Vermilion Pinstripes

Getting Started

Hacks and tips to help you get started on modern marketing


 

Now here's a little fun experiment with some hacks and tips for you to try out. We love these 6 Digital Marketing Trends for 2018 from Forbes and our Good Housekeeping with Consistent SEO Strategy. Why not have a think how these can work for your business?


6 tasks to get you started on modern marketing

1) Smartphone Addiction

People sleep with it and go to the toilet with it. It´s the first thing they see in the morning and the last thing they look at before bedtime. The smartphone has become a rich ground for engaging with customers. This could be via a mobile website or sending text messages.

Task:

  • Start with two messages a month.
  • One to entertain and one with a Call to Action.
  • See how quickly you are able to engage with your customers.
2) Quality Media Content

Quality conversation. That is what customers dig. Give customers quality content and they will sit up, take notice and follow. Make sure your media platform is focused on providing useful, relevant content to your customers.

Task:
  • Do up an informative podcast, a fun blog or an unusual video and put them up regularly. 
See how soon and how many customers you can get talking about what they are viewing.

3) Human or Robot?

Chatbots are the hottest thing in town. They are used for responding to your customers' questions. This amazing little thing can be used for engagement, customer service issues or general questions.  What is amazing about this tool is if you send 1000 messages via Chatbot, at least 800 people will see the message. This is an incredible piece of statistics, making Chatbot a powerful channel to engage with customers.

What is really cool and exciting about this is, if set up correctly, customers find it really difficult to know if they are talking to a real person or a robot!

Task:

  • Launch a website or Facebook chatbot.
  • Find a fun topic for the conversation so your customers can be intrigued enough to initiate the chat.

4) Ace the Review

Score that A. You need many reviews. Good ones obviously. Organic traffic from SEO brings excellent web traffic for businesses. Google sees all your reviews and it prioritises a business based on its ratings. One thing to note - Facebook reviews do appear on Google too. It is common practice nowadays for customers to look at online reviews before deciding on a product or service. So your reviews could really make the difference between a successful business and one that is floundering.

Task:

  • Come up with a plan for getting reviews for your business.
  • Remember it is not allowed to incentivise people to give reviews though!

5) Going Viral

People love watching videos. It would not be surprising to see an increase in Facebook and web TV videos. People prefer to watch something than read a chunk. A video that is well done would get the message across sharp and clear and get people talking. Obviously, Facebook Live videos get more visibility than traditional videos on Facebook. Videos could be the tipping point in increasing conversions (by as much as 80%, according to this research).

Task:

  • Start with four videos a month.
  • Make sure they offer quality content.
  • You can choose to put up the videos on Facebook, Youtube or your website.

6) Engage and Involve

People do not enjoy being told what to do. Instead, influence, engage and involve them. You do not need a massive, fancy Call to Action that could end up being too obnoxious. Give your customers value first. Tell them your story and show them your unique personality. Make them want to be associated with you and be involved in your activities.

Task:

  • In your next event, think about what story you could tell about your business via this event.
  • How can you show your value and the quality of your business?
  • Use the experiences of the event to make your brand stay in the minds of your potential customers.

    So, have a go at these tasks, and tell us how your experience was!  
How does the Modern Marketer looks like?
  • The Modern Marketer is fiercely digital, highly creative, has acute business thinking, is agile and responsive and has international experience.
  • Gets personal with customers, even if he or she has not met the customer before.
  • Establishes empathy and builds trust with customers online and offline.
  • Great at educating, informing, engaging and converting customers.
  • Able to demonstrate ROI.

Three "raw materials" of Modern Marketing guided by a Modern Marketing Framework from Vermilion Pinstripes:

  1. research and analytics
  2. technology
  3. power of emotion

The art and science of modern marketing that makes brands human, builds business confidence and accelerates sales.

Modern marketing is so dynamic it is never boring. What keeps us on our toes at Vermilion Pinstripes is opening our eyes and ears to what is coming up next. With each period there is always a supply of new techniques to boost brand confidence. Don’t forget to bookmark this page and keep checking in for more updates!

Click here for a Free Consultation


Five good housekeeping tips for better SEO

Sometimes, when you’re busy with different marketing tactics, you do not have time to stop to relook at your available marketing platforms such as your website, blog and social media to see if these are up to date with Google’s latest search techniques.

You may also wonder why your page views and visits start to decline. Don’t assume that what you had implemented a year ago will be working tomorrow. You see, Google's search Artificial Intelligence (AI) is constantly evolving and the criteria it uses to judge your website can only become more sophisticated. To have a consistent SEO strategy, you need to optimise your website, blog and social media presence to make sure you are always one step ahead of Google AI. Your website, blog and social media are easy starting points for your digital marketing journey. Your aim is to get free organic search traffic flowing into your website. Here are some good SEO housekeeping tips to follow. 

1) Fix your website

While you can always pay for search traffic, the aim is to improve free organic search traffic. When people search Google, your site should rank near the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). However, if you have duplicate pages, broken links or badly tagged images, that could break your SEO and search ranking. Check and see how Google views your website here by typing on your address bar site:yourwebsite.com e.g. site:facebook.com (use Chrome or Safari). Audit the list of pages to see if there are any duplicate content or broken links. If there are duplicate home page URLs or old pages that have been removed (but are still searchable), use customised 404 error pages and permanent 301 redirects. Check out these clever 404 error pages for some creative inspiration!

Don’t forget to audit your content and examine the effort you are putting into voice queries and long-tail keyword phrases.

Book a session with Vermilion Pinstripes for a website audit to determine how to best houseclean your website.

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2) Stand Out with Images and Videos

Humans are visual creatures and the use of images or videos can make or break your brand. Choose appropriate images for your brand on your website. They should be interesting, relevant and in line with your brand personality. Avoid large images as they slow down the loading of your webpages and that will in turn cause Google search AI to push your ranking down.

Check your page size here > https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Extra tip: Always include alt-text on your images. It provides relevance and makes it easy for people and those with vision impairment to understand your message. Plus you get the bonus of Google pushing up your search ranking. 

3) Check your META tags

You need META tags to ensure the information about your website is displayed in a consistent manner on Google SERP. Every bit counts. Without META tags, when customers search for you for the first time, Google AI will just take the first few words off the top of the page which would mean a lot of inaccuracy. Good SEO housekeeping practices mean controlling every bit of information Google searches your website by. 

Use these to work on your META tags: YOAST SEO, WIX, Squarespace,  Hubspot .

Make sure you describe each page clearly, use key words and it helps if you also indicate your CTA (Call to Action) in the description.

4) Reliability and Trust

Having a Privacy Policy Page is a much valued characteristic to have on your website. It boosts your search rank and also improves your reputation as a trustworthy website. Buy a privacy policy template on-line (check it conforms with the legislation in your territory) and add your own business details plus a link to it in your footer and sitemap.

5) Quality Blogging

Business blogging is an inexpensive way to build your authority and create new opportunities for people to find and engage with your business. This could even convert readers into customers.

It is enough to blog quality content once a month than to have incessant useless blog content daily.

At the end of each blog post you should always include a CTA for readers to further engage with the content. Here is where you can get creative with what you can offer e.g. a free ebook, a consultation etc.

It’s important that your blog has content that supports visitors becoming customers because Search Engine are not searching for your content - People Are!

For more SEO tips, download our Free eBook SEO Primer 2018 TRENDS and learn  the tactics that will:

  • Boost organic search on your website
  • Understand your customers persona
  • Create authority in your niche

Would you prefer to download our 56-page eBook on Modern Marketing for the Modern Business?

Download eBook "Modern Marketing for the Modern Business"


 

How do you measure success with your marketing campaigns, Vermilion Pinstripes

Modern Marketing RoI

Measuring success in modern marketing


You’re here because you need to demonstrate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Scenario One: You're too busy managing different marketing tactics. There’s barely time for lunch, let alone time to develop an integrated marketing and communications campaign with different team members or divisions. And, worse, for all your marketing tactics, you're under pressure to show MROI (marketing returns on investment).

Scenario Two: Having planned and executed your marketing campaigns successfully, you are now faced with the challenge of reporting marketing ROI. You need to show how effective your go-to-market strategy has been in attaining positive results for the business.

Just remember, marketing isn't just about running events, social media campaigns or creating the best ads. It involves a blend of science, technology, creativity, psychology, and even mathematics to ensure success.

How to measure the success of your marketing campaigns?

In today's digital marketing era, numbers are key to consolidating marketing metrics that work for your brand. This is where Mathematics come into play and can help marketers focus effectively on results to boost incremental customer demand. There are massive advantages to collecting data, applying analytics and interpreting insights. Always put everything you do under a microscope, be it content, campaigns or marketing actions, analyse them and understand what works and what doesn't. Data and analysis can be very powerful tools to point out immediately when something isn't working and also give you confidence when something is working.

Let's look at a logical step-by- step guide of six critical marketing metrics businesses need to understand. Your marketing metrics should be tailored to fit your business.

  1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
    • Customer Acquisition Cost is a metric used to determine the total average cost your company spends to acquire a new customer. This is important because it shows how much your company is spending per new customer acquired. A low average CAC is good. If your CAC is increasing it is red alert that you are perhaps spending more for each new customer and may need to readdress your sales or marketing efficiency.
  2. Marketing % of Customer Acquisitions Cost
    • M%-CAC is the marketing portion of your total CAC, calculated as a percentage of the overall CAC. The M%-CAC shows you how your marketing team's performance and spending can impact your overall Customer Acquisition cost. You do not want an increase in M%-CAC because it could mean that your sales team is underperforming and is receiving lower commissions, or your marketing team is spending too much or has too much overhead. There is another situation that could cause an increase, but this is less worrying – it could simply mean that the business is in an investment phase where you are spending more on marketing to provide more high quality leads and improve sales productivity.
  3. Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC (LTV:CAC)
    • This is a way for companies to estimate the total value that your company derives from each customer compared with what you spend to acquire that new customer. This really matters because the higher the LTV:CAC, the more ROI your sales and marketing team is delivering to your bottom line. Be careful however, not to keep this ratio too high because you should always be investing in reaching new customers. A temporary negative can bring about a future gain – spending more on sales and marketing will reduce your LTV:CAC ratio but it could help speed up your total business growth.
  4. Time to Payback CAC
    • Time to Payback CAC shows you the number of months it takes for your company to earn back the CAC it spent acquiring new customers. If you are in an industry where your customers pay a monthly or annual fee, you would want your Payback Time to be under 12 months. The less time it takes to payback your CAC, the earlier you can start making money off of your new customers. Aim to make each new customer profitable in less than a year.
  5. Marketing Originated Customer %
    • The MOC% is a ratio that shows what new business is driven by marketing. This is done by determining which portion of your total customer acquisitions originated directly from your marketing efforts. This is a vital metric to take note of as it illustrates the impact your marketing team´s lead generation efforts have on acquiring new customers. As this percentage is based on your sales and marketing relationship and structure, your ideal ratio will vary depending on your business model.
  6. Marketing Influenced Customer %
    • This takes into account all of the new customers that marketing interacted with while they were leads at any time during the sales process. You need to take note of this because it can indicate how effective marketing is at generating new leads, nurturing existing ones, and helping sales close the deal. It also has the added advantage of giving your CEO or CFO a big-picture look into the overall impact that marketing has on the entire sales process. 

For more specific calculations and formulae, download Vermilion Pinstripe's eBook on the 6 marketing metrics that prove the value of your marketing efforts.

It is easy to get swamped with data and get lost in figuring out what is working effectively and what needs to be changed. When analysing your results, you need to understand your marketing performance in a way that gives you the assurance your marketing budget is being spent effectively. These six marketing metrics can specifically show you how your marketing programme is leading to new customers, lower customer acquisition costs and higher customer lifetime values. This how you know if you are getting the maximum ROI for your marketing expenditures now and in the future.

DOWNLOAD 6 MARKETING METRICS >

If you are hungry for more, check out our additional 15 marketing metrics here to get more out of your ROI.

As you move up the corporate ladder to lead a business unit, you'll need to find a happy balance when following modern marketing trends where the customer is the centre of attention receiving valuable content. This needs to be blended well with data and mathematics to make the results from marketing strategies something real and concrete that can be analysed. When you can see how effective your strategies are, you can make the choice to drop those that are draining money and beef up those that have been proven to work effectively. This is about making better and wiser business decisions.

Did you know that applying analytics effectively can allow companies to free up 15-30 percent of their total marketing budget? McKinsey’s DataMatics study shows that firms in the top quartile of analytics performance were 20 times better at attracting new customers and more than five times better at retaining existing ones than firms in the bottom quartile.

This is where we can focus on Integrated Marketing Analytics that is people-centric and features the prospect, lead or customer as the unit of focus. It plays a big part in Inbound Marketing as it helps you create quality content to attract people to you of their own volition. By aligning content with your customer's interests, you attract, consolidate and maintain inbound traffic. This can potentially save 80% of your direct mail budget (source: Gartner Research). According to a study by MIT Sloan School of Management, this can generate 54% more leads than traditional paid marketing.

Numbers and statistics are always very reassuring things to see on paper. They are basically, undeniable proof.

For example, when it comes to tracking your brand and competitors, you can build keywords, streams of interactions and see what matters to you and compare that with your competitors. On average, we conduct 12 billion searches per month on the web in the United States alone (Source: Comscore, July 2014). However, the average click-through rate for paid search in 2010 worldwide was only 2% (Source: Convario, January 2011). There you have it, numbers giving undeniable proof. With this proof, you realise how critical it is that your content has the right keywords and that you can track this against your competitor. Integrated Marketing Analytics can help you figure out which keyword or stream of interaction works.

In the royal kingdom of social media, 96% of social media managers measure the number of fans and followers, 89% measure traffic, 84% measure mentions, 55% track share of voice and 51% track sentiment (Source: Awareness, Inc.).

With Integrated Marketing Analytics, you can create an agile marketing engine and have a complete real time view of your customers, activities, content and most importantly how each impact leads and sells at every customer's buying cycle. Integrated Marketing Analytics platforms like CRM and Marketing Automation like HubSpot can help you design attribution models to track and provide sensible business marketing reports. They also allow you to manage your posts, emails, marketing channels and teams efficiently from just one platform.

If you are still not convinced of the necessity of having data and analytics, think about this:

79% of marketing leads never convert into sales. The cause of this poor performance? Lack of lead nurturing (Source: MarketingSherpa).

Everything in modern marketing now is integrated and orchestrated. With the right content and actions, you are bringing customers on their purchasing journey. You can even replace more than 60% of dated sales functions like cold calling. Your sales and marketing team should be focusing on talking to high propensity prospects, building deeper customer relationships and providing better customer support.

The trend is to move into Real-Time Marketing with analytics. Right now we already have predictive analytics. You can anticipate your customer's next action based on your knowledge of their past behaviour. In the near future we will be expecting a heavy dependence on the Science of Integrated Marketing Analytics.

Now that we have convinced you analytics is really crucial, you need to know the correct way to get into it. For a deeper analysis into ROI, Forbes mentioned four marketing science and academic gurus who came up with an analysis in a newly professional journal called Applied Marketing Analytics. It is important to realise that Marketing ROI when applied in the real world requires adjustments and adaptability. Marketers have to clearly define how and what they have measured in a specific business decision-making context if they want to analyse their MROI numbers. Businesses need to connect MROI to real world business objectives. You want to maximise profit, not necessarily MROI. There is a difference between being efficient (high MROI) and being effective (maximum profit and long-term value). There are many issues to be taken into consideration such as brand building, new customer acquisition, short-term sales etc.

The Right Way to Calculate Marketing ROI:

ROI is complicated in itself. There are many variables and it is not a fixed formula that can be slapped on across all industries.

You need to know when to measure it. Money invested today will have an uncertain impact at Point X in the future. Yet, marketers have to decide right now where to invest their money today.

The business belief is that it takes at least seven touches before a cold lead can be converted into a sale. Because this is so random and volatile, it is difficult to allocate revenue to just one specific touch and expect it to work and show results straightaway.

Most businesses have several marketing programmes going on which reach out to and affect different customers. It is not easy to know exactly which programme has the most impact.

At the end of the day, life is such that there are many factors outside of our control. While we love our data and analytics, it only means we can measure and have proof something works or not. It does not guarantee that what we do will yield the result we want. Macro-economic trends, even the weather, the new sales rep you hired etc. can have their own effect on your marketing programme results. It is difficult to point the finger at any one specific factor.

Businesses can still find a way to make the most of their numeric data. The important thing is to get on the bandwagon and get started on milking the most of analytics. Marketo has a clear set of guidelines how to Measure the ROI of your Marketing Programmes that is well worth checking out.

If this feels overwhelming, think on this - According to a MMA/Forrester/ANA study, 87% of senior marketers did not feel confident in their ability to impact the sales forecast of their programmes.  What this means is we have the ability to ensnare a competitive advantage over 87% of our competition. Looking on the bright side of things doesn't hurt! Start small, and go for a few fine-tuned measurements and work your way towards bigger data.

When you make the effort to analyse and understand where you invest your time and financial resources and why you get certain results, you are well on the way to avoiding expenses wastage and improving marketing strategies.

Make friends with your numbers and make analytics work for you.

Click here for a Free Consultation

Vermilion Pinstripes is a full service integrated sales marketing and communications agency based in Australia and Singapore.
As partners and agents for HubSpot and Kounta point of sales software, it’s amazing how we have a team who use maths, science, creativity and psychology in this modern marketing era to help small businesses and B2B organisations connect with MORE of their most profitable customers using a simple, clear and structured purpose-driven sales, marketing and communications plan to gain brand clarity so that they can grow their business and achieve returns on investment (RoI).
We are proud to journey with growing local, regional and global businesses as they gain business confidence. Now let’s build your business confidence! 


e/ info@vermilionpinstripes.com

(Port Macquarie and Sydney) New South Wales, Australia: t/ +614 0777 9828
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: t/ +6144 950 1277
Singapore: t/ +65 9681 7045

Would you prefer to download our 56-page eBook on Modern Marketing for the Modern Business?

Download eBook "Modern Marketing for the Modern Business"

Vermilion Marketing | inbound sales, marketing and communications services for Port Macquarie businesses