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That's exactly the same approach outdoor retailer and co-op REI is taking with a new campaign aimed at discouraging people from joining the mad shopping rush to instead enjoy the great outdoors. Dubbed #OptOutside, the company is closing all 143 of its stores on Black Friday, while still paying its employees to take the day off too. Created by people from agencies Venables Bell & Partners, Edelman, Spark, and the brand itself, the campaign also includes a spot with REI chief exec Jerry Stritzke introducing the idea from his roomy office....
An idea doesn't have to be unique to be great. In fact, there are some really awesome examples of great marketing out there that you can lean on to inspire your next project. (Austin Kleon calls this concept "stealing like an artist.")
But finding these examples isn't always easy. That's where we come in. We've collected 12 places on the web where you can browse and search for examples of great marketing -- including website design, design in general, email marketing, and social media pages. Check them out, bookmark them, and use them to inspire your own marketing strategy.
Get 50 brilliant examples of website design now by downloading our free flipbook....
Most retailers would hail the non-Prime member rate as an unqualified success and do everything in their power to sustain it; remarkably, the Prime rate was more than fivefold higher.What explains this remarkable rate? Just as critically, what can you do to combat the threat by turning your shoppers into more loyal, frequent buyers?A look at Amazon Prime offers you three tips on how to fight back....
For much of the past 10 years, business has resembled a game of "catch-up". Each new wave of technological innovation has triggered new customer behaviors and expectations, causing businesses to constantly scramble to figure out how to be relevant. This era of disruption has, as often as not, caught business leaders in general, and marketers in particular, on the back foot. This uncomfortable situation looks like it's finally starting to change.
The Marketing Disruption II research highlighted 5 red flags that marketers need to address to deliver on this promise and become a true engine for growth...
If you’ve noticed fewer window shoppers on the streets lately, it may be because they’re at home window shopping from their couches; that is, they’re discovering and exploring products without necessarily intending to purchase.
For our 2015 US Mobile Landscape report*, Forrester analyzed mobile audience data from our behavioral tracking panel to understand how consumers use smartphones and tablets in 2015. We found that although professionals often group both devices under the “mobile” umbrella, consumers use smartphones and tablets in very different ways.
One notable difference centers on mobile commerce: While smartphone commerce is still struggling to get traction, for tablets it’s already one of the most common activities. In fact, Forrester’s US Mobile Phone And Tablet Commerce Forecast, 2015 To 2020 shows that total tablet retail purchases more than double those made on a smartphone.
Our behavioral data shows that in the first half of 2015, 68% of tablet owners visited a shopping site at least once in a given month — that’s more than the number who visited news/media, TV/video, or even social networking sites! And these tablet shoppers aren’t just visiting Amazon.com. Only about half took to Amazon —the other half visited other online shopping websites that fit their interests, brand preferences, and lifestyle....
We held an exciting and informative webinar to discuss the importance of customer retention with participation from our highly innovative retail clients Jonathan Adler and Lilly Pulitzer.
In our first blog post in this series, we will be looking at how maintaining an active and profitable customer relationship, like any relationship, comes down to three key points: - Are you relationship material? Why do most customers abandon after their first purchase?
- Finding your true love(s). Which customers are worth focusing on?
- Love the one you’re with. How do you keep them coming back for more?...
It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, if you are consuming content online hardly a day goes by without someone somewhere dropping the “M” word.
Millennial.
“How millennial are you?”; “The Millennials Are Coming”; “10 Surprising Habits of Millennial Art Collectors”; and “3 Insights To Help Your Millennial Marketing Strategy Succeed”; are typical headlines that somehow find their way into everything.
Millennials are a hot topic for good reason. The estimated buying power of Millennials is around $1.3 trillion in the US and $10 trillion globally.
In the not-too-distant future, they will become the largest generation with the greatest combined purchasing power in human history.
It’s no wonder that brands are falling all over themselves, blinded by the dollar signs in their eyes, to try and figure out this audience.
This has led to the publication of countless pieces of content that offer helpful advice and endless Dos & Don’ts lists of what to do when trying to communicate with a Millennial audience.
It is for this reason that we need to step back and consider a few facts that everyone seems to be overlooking when it comes to Millennials....
You’re pumping all that content out on social media channels but do you know what is working and not working?
Are your tweets reaching the right audience? Are your Facebook updates driving relevant traffic to your site?And more importantly……
Is this driving revenue for your business?
Every so often it’s useful to take a step back and assess if your strategy is working.
And of course….There are some tools that can help....
The press is replete with doubters. A prominent NPR host complained about whether or not he would be able to engage in the famous Oreo “twist, lick, and dunk” ritual.
ABC News even conducted a side-by-side comparison of the two cookies rating them on size, twistability (the thin ones broke 75% more often), dunkability (the thin ones took 18 seconds longer to get appropriately soaked), nutrition (the thin ones fared only slightly better), and taste (the regular ones had more of a nice chocolatey taste), with the original version clearly coming out on top.
On top of that, the new Oreo Thins—albeit the company doesn’t talk about it—comes with a 42% price premium over the regular “double-stuffed” Oreo cookies (i.e., a pack of Oreo Thins weighs 10.1 ounce and is priced at $5.49, a regular Oreo pack weighs 14.3 ounce and is priced at $5.49).
So would people buy the over-priced, under-stuffed new Oreo Thins? We think chances are that many people will; here’s why....
Developing a truly great content strategy, however, requires a balance between the two. It must combine creativity with data to be successful. And leveraging your buyer personas – profiles of specific, fictional individuals that represent the exact center of your target audience – is a valuable, yet often overlooked, method of energizing your content strategy.
Your audience is sending signals right now about what type of content they want to see from your brand. And if you can tap into those audience signals, you can create compelling, out-of-the-box content that will get noticed
.Here are just a few examples of how your buyer persona can spice up your content....
It’s well documented that companies with a defined strategy are the ones that experience the most success on social. For others, the challenge is knowing where to start.
According to Gretchen Fox, cofounder of the social strategy and training agency Made To Order, the social media marketing industry is operating under the guise of nascence, but that’s not the reality anymore: "The industry has been around long enough that we need some procedures; we need some standards. This is our attempt at starting to create some standards"....
Ahead of this year’s holiday season, mobile commerce appears to have reached critical mass, new research suggests.
In fact, a full 88% of regular mobile users now take advantage of retail mobile apps, according to findings from app marketing firm Apptentive.
That share represents an increase of 174% since Apptentive conducted comparable research, last year.
Even among respondents who reported a preference for shopping in-store, 47% said they plan to do least some of their holiday shopping with retail mobile apps.
Among survey respondents who reported using retail mobile apps, 61% said they use the apps at least once a month....
Let’s start with the name: Cheese Posties is a genius monicker for a subscription service that delivers grilled cheese sandwiches to your door. That cannot be denied. Only an idiot would try.
But, is it not utterly barmy to send sandwiches through the mail? Dave Rotheroe doesn’t think so. He raised nearly $4,200 (€3,809) on Kickstarter – nearly double his original goal – to create the service, which he says will start shipping at the end of August or beginning of September.
Subscribers will be presented with a series of questions including ‘Sweet or savory?’ and ‘Are you vegetarian or gluten free?’ Cheese Posties will then determine which gourmet grilled sandwich to ship to them that week. Note: They’re planning to send sandwiches to the US, UK and Europe....
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A thought leader is one who drives discussion and conversation in their field, influencing the way business is done. By virtue of their renowned expertise, these experts have a significant edge when it comes to marketing.
Thought leadership marketing is a relatively new term, but it has quickly taken hold in the digital world. As you may be able to guess, thought leadership marketing involves leveraging your experience to engage in marketing.
Before we get into the fundamental ingredients for successful marketing through thought leadership, it’s important to understand that thought leadership is relative to where you do business....
Luckily, a transformative shift is happening. Products and service providers have found creative ways to empower customers to steer their own experiences, on their own time, with their preferred technologies. Let’s take winning content curators like Thrillist, where subscribers trust and thirst for the content so much, ‘Allied Content’, or sponsored stories, aren’t shunned -- they might even be welcomed if it means readers will uncover the latest trend they must know about. Or, Spotify, Hulu, Netflix - the media streaming services that inhabit most of our smart devices.
Consumers are willing to endure short-stint (albeit super hip and relevant, I might add) commercials, if that means they can watch their favorite shows at their own convenience. Maybe the “chill” part of “Netflix and chill” is taking place during commercials breaks...but I digress.
So, what’s the moral of the story? After attending four Chicago Ideas Week 2015 events over the past seven days and witnessing one avante garde train platform performance, the following 5 trends are apparent and warranted as we approach marketing in 2016. And, they all point to customers just wanting brands to be their friend....
Most marketers say traditional advertising is the most effective means of influencing buying decisions, yet consumers say advertising is one of the least-trusted influences, according to a recent report from Experticity.
The report was based on data from a survey of 217 senior marketing executives in North America and 300 North American consumers.
The marketers surveyed rank advertising, public relations, and content marketing as the most effective tactics for influencing buying decisions (83% rank each as effective); moreover, 78% of marketers plan to increase their investment in those three areas.
In contrast, less than half (49%) of consumers say they trust advertising from brands.
The buying influences that consumers say they put the most faith in are recommendations from friends and family (83% trust), online reviews (76%), and third-party experts (70%)....
Customers’ desire for deals has become an obsession. Established companies have responded by slashing prices—and, for many, their brand value. With profit margins squeezed, and new providers popping up to offer low cost products and services, companies have reduced quality and, in some cases, even product safety to make the all-important sale. Risks to consumers, workers and the environment have become very real.
It’s time for companies to re-examine their pricing strategies. They need to understand what their customers notice, value and are willing to pay for and educate customers on the trade-offs of low-cost offerings....
More than 90% of shoppers say price is the top reason they buy an item from a different retailer after visiting a store without making a purchase, according to research from Cognizant. As many as 55% of shoppers leave and go to another retailer’s store if they feel the price of an item is too high.
When it comes to retailers that offer the lowest prices, there are still plenty of reasons consumers can be turned off from making a purchase. Almost half (48%) of shoppers say convenience is the top reason they will not shop at the lowest price retailer. Additionally, 32% of these shoppers prefer loyalty programs at other retailers, while 31% will shop at retailers with a better return policy....
Our biggest challenge and opportunity was to establish a connected marketing technology ecosystem that would deliver “seamless experiences in a complex omni-channel world” that would change “consumer behaviors” that we believed prevented our growth. So, more than just bringing a sleuth of enterprise and emerging marketing technologies, we focused on how we could “apply” them to address behavioral issues like “trust,” “stigma,” “trial” that would eventually maximize the life-time value for our brands.
The key to success for most brands is to shift the focus from channels and technologies to the human behavior and becoming customer obsessed, both in strategy and execution.
It was a fascinating journey for me, and my biggest takeaway has been a firm belief that, at the end of the day, it was always about the “human”, her needs, desires, and finally her behavior — and not about the technology or the channel. The key to success for most brands is to shift the focus from channels and technologies to the human behavior and becoming consumer obsessed, both in strategy and execution....
The future is exciting, with new technologies opening up ways to understand your customer better than ever before. The ability to stretch the picture of your customer from how they transact to how they interact with you through hundreds of touch-points; the complete journey of seeing, thinking and doing that leads to that final purchase - and repurchase - and where they might abandon is critical to understand, according to a white paper from loyalty specialist Ikano Insight.
In this context the paper, entitled 'The future: Omni-channel or overwhelming?', defines 'omni-channel' as a focus on a seamless approach to the customer experience, using all available customer-facing channels, and argues that how a customer engages with a brand is equally as important as the channel interactions they make - and this is the challenge that omni-channel presents for marketers. 64.180.55.243 This article is copyright 2014 TheWiseMarketer.com.
New technology creates new ways of serving targeted offers to specific points in the customer journey; in-store micro-location offers, and HTML5 dynamic banners serving personalised messages across all devices and browsers mean that the Place and Promotion elements of your marketing mix are more advanced and exciting than ever before....
Whether we’d like to admit it or not, social media has fundamentally changed our culture. This is clearly visible in the way people share and consume content.
Citizens of the internet don’t want to miss anything and are constantly try to impress others with their ability to stay up to date with evolving stories and trends.
Researchers and behavioral psychologists believe this cultural desire to be relevant is tied to a fear of missing out (FOMO). As marketers, it’s important to understand how FOMO can be leveraged for maximum results....
Ever since the commercial Internet emerged, content has been at the center. Bill Gates, quite famously, declared that content is king and called it the “killer app” of the Internet age. Inspired, media executives and internet entrepreneurs alike sought to marry content and distribution to create the perfect business model.
The problem is, as I’ve noted before, that content is crap. Nobody walks out of a great movie and says, “Wow! That was some great content.” Nobody listens to content on their way to work in the morning. We never call anything we like “content,” the term is a mere fantasy in the minds of business planners.
That, in essence, is why despite the predictions of digital pundits, the TV industry has continued to prosper. Through a series of disruptions—cable, DVD and now streaming video—programing has continued to evolve. Now, with the cable business model starting to unravel, we can expect an explosion of creative energy that will usher in a new golden age of TV....
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the fast-paced changes occurring in digital marketing, you’re not alone. But you don’t have to enroll in a two-year program or a certificate course just to keep your head above water. There are dozens of marketing experts who are eager to share their knowledge with you – for free.
We’ve compiled a list of our seven favorite ebooks that everyone working in the digital marketing space should read. They range from four page whitepapers to 20+page guides, and they all offer valuable insights from some of the top leaders in the industry.
You’ll notice three particular trends in these ebooks –They emphasize customers, data and content. And that’s no accident – these are the three trends shaping the future of digital marketing.
In no particular order, here are our picks for the top seven ebooks every digital marketer should read....
Why are customers more excited about uncertainty than they are about clear incentives? Let's see why mysteries motivate them.
Brands looking to be successful in the world of fragmented, distracted and time-crunched consumers, might not be rated just on how well they serve customers’ needs, but how well they work with others to combine forces.
In the latest edition of its Sentinel Report, software developer and technology services company Globant suggests companies that find partners to provide a “seamless ecosystem” will be well-positioned to meet consumers’ needs in the future.
“The main goal for brand ecosystems is to lean on the best attributes of both companies to improve the offering with the clear goal of making life easier for consumers,” Martín Migoya, Globant CEO and co-founder, tells Marketing Daily. “As a result, consumers are often more engaged with brands and share a greater stake in their success.”...
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Way to create a culture! This is a powerful statement clearly supporting their "why".