CMO.com Highlights: The Need for Networking and Marketing Innovations

The exclu­sive dis­cus­sions on CMO.com last week touched on social net­work­ing and the inno­v­a­tive approach­es organ­i­sa­tions have to adopt to remain rel­e­vant in their mar­ket­ing efforts toward con­sumers. Social media con­tin­ues to be one of the most impor­tant chan­nels for mar­keters as was revealed by sev­er­al of our con­trib­u­tors last week. The pres­ence of many oth­er chan­nels and how con­sumers use them means that mar­keters must be more inten­tion­al about devel­op­ing mar­ket­ing con­sis­ten­cy across all chan­nels. The impor­tance of these new dig­i­tal chan­nels is still not uni­ver­sal­ly accept­ed. That must change. Your brands com­pet­i­tive sur­vival depends on it.

Iain Devine, Com­mer­cial Direc­tor at Salmon, dis­cussed the recent inno­va­tion com­pa­nies like Pin­ter­est, Insta­gram, and Google have adopt­ed in adding instant pur­chase but­tons. This makes it easy for con­sumers to buy prod­ucts direct­ly from the web­sites or apps they are using. For Google, this means con­sumers can buy right from the search results page. While this is an excel­lent oppor­tu­ni­ty for increas­ing cus­tomer con­ver­sion, Devine also rec­og­nizes the poten­tial decrease in cus­tomer engage­ment with the brand. Mar­keters must adapt to these tech­no­log­i­cal changes.

Even before the Rug­by World Cup, the New Zealand All Blacks were already dom­i­nat­ing oth­er teams in their social media pres­ence in the days lead­ing up to the RWC. In fact, the Adobe Dig­i­tal Index named the All Blacks “Most Social Rug­by Union,” hav­ing most social men­tions, pos­i­tive sen­ti­ment among fans, fol­low­ing, and rank­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, Heineken UK was the high­est rank­ing spon­sor in social media pres­ence, engag­ing 29% of its 12,600 Twit­ter fol­low­ers. The Aus­tralian and Eng­land teams also did well in social pres­ence. The Rug­by World Cup launched an offi­cial mobile app ear­li­er this year to increase the event’s social media presence.

Last week’s CMO.com inter­view with Telefónica’s Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor María Sánchez del Cor­ral touched on the company’s goal of being inno­v­a­tive with their social media strate­gies, high­light­ing some of their more effec­tive cam­paigns. Their approach to social media is tai­lored to each mar­ket in which Tele­fóni­ca does busi­ness. How­ev­er, it remains a vital com­po­nent of the company’s con­nec­tion with its cus­tomer base. Sánchez del Cor­ral also dis­cussed that she’d like to see mar­ket­ing become more of a dri­ving force with­in organ­i­sa­tions, always putting the cus­tomer at the cen­ter of an organisation’s mar­ket­ing efforts.

The lat­est Adobe Dig­i­tal Index report on the per­for­mance of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing chan­nels high­lights the increase in the num­ber of chan­nels that con­sumers engage with. This increased num­ber of chan­nels means that Euro­pean mar­keters are track­ing ROI on an aver­age of 10 chan­nels, which is two more than mar­keters in the US. The increased com­plex­i­ty pro­duced by mon­i­tor­ing more chan­nels gives rise to the need for mar­keters to cre­ate a more con­sis­tent expe­ri­ence across chan­nels for cus­tomers and avoid the poten­tial con­fu­sion that hav­ing more chan­nels could cause. Mobile use among cus­tomers has increased con­sumer traf­fic through search, social, and email chan­nels, mak­ing those chan­nels prime tar­gets for reach­ing and con­nect­ing with customers.

Katz Kiely, the founder of Codis, closed out last week’s dis­cus­sions by dis­cussing the chal­lenge many organ­i­sa­tions face in adopt­ing new tech­nol­o­gy. Change is not read­i­ly accept­ed in the exist­ing cor­po­rate cul­ture. How­ev­er, organ­i­sa­tions that are more dig­i­tal­ly mature tend to be more inno­v­a­tive and for­ward think­ing. This means that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion is vital to an organisation’s mar­ket­ing reach. Kiely shares some insight­ful thoughts on how to best approach employ­ees on the need for new tech adop­tion, high­light­ing that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is the key. Peo­ple are more respon­sive to change when they are in what is called the “reward state.” Com­mu­ni­cat­ing the impor­tance of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion when peo­ple are in the reward state means the dif­fer­ence between hav­ing employ­ee frus­tra­tion and hav­ing every­one in an organ­i­sa­tion on the same page.

We invite you to read and fur­ther engage with our exclu­sive con­tent on CMO.com and ben­e­fit from the help and ‘how-to’ guid­ance from lead­ing mar­keters and indus­try influencers.