Marketing Criterion

A blueprint of marketing methods and approaches to promote a brand, showcase products and services, and engage customers in ways that capture attention, spark interest and spur action by recognizing primary motivators and associations that drive digital commerce.

Growth Marketing

An agile approach with ongoing, frequent experiments to measure the customer journey and identify opportunities, triggers and gaps in order to advance the impact and influence which will lead to growth in sales and conversions

• Evaluate data and KPIs to determine what customers most value

Social Marketing

Creating techniques to reflect advocacy and interest in people and their environments – paying attention to where we live, how we work and motivators to build a sense of community. This strategy is based upon inclusion, enlightenment, compassion, engagement and inspiration. Endeavors require a long-term approach to impacting human behavior.

Sensory Marketing

Sensory marketing is a focus on influencing how people feel. Strategies are designed to draw into a person’s senses which will then trigger responses and behaviors towards the brand.

Account-Based Marketing

This tactic focuses on specific accounts within a market and crafts campaigns that directly speak to the unique needs and interests of the associates of those accounts. This approach is highly personalized and is driven by a set of clear targets and relevant messaging.

Experiential Marketing

Experiential marketing is a rising trend involving promotion of a product or a service through experiences that engage customers and create personal attachments to the brand.

Emotional Marketing

Marketing and advertising tactics that primarily use sentiments to make your audience notice, remember, share, and buy. Emotional marketing typically taps into a specific feeling, like joy, sadness, frustration, or fear, to elicit a customer response.

• Identify stimuli and experiences that resonate and impact behaviors

Associative Marketing

• Build upon your positive relationships to garner interaction and engagement
• Extend to other associations to draw parallels and link favorable characteristics

Reinforcement Marketing

• The brand aligns with a customer’s self-perception, activities and opinions

Innovative Marketing

Boldly introduce significant changes in product design, packaging or capabilities, and make forward-thinking advancements to product placement, product promotion and pricing

• Showcase the cutting-edge components of what you have to offer

Time-Oriented Marketing

• Create a sense of urgency to compel a purchase
• Persuasive language to suggest the user may miss an opportunity if they don’t act immediately

Lifestyle Marketing

A popular branding strategy that aims to tap a person’s philosophies, vision and aspirations to create a synergy with the meaning of a product

• Narrow in on preferences and practices
• Focus on behaviors and beliefs of a consumer
• Create category cross-associations

Transformational Marketing

Through a well-crafted story or narrative, a customer experiences a conversion from a transactional buyer into an advocate by making the brand story their own

Cause Marketing

• CSR [corporate social responsibility]
• Community Engagement
• Singular Issue Philanthropy

Lead Generation Program

• Establish a Defined Plan for Converting and Monetizing
• Do Not Just Manage Leads – Segment, Qualify and Score Them
• Not Everyone is your Customer – Focus on the Right Leads
• Weigh Behavioral Signals higher than Demographic Profiles
• Create a Sales Funnel Tailored to your Business Model, not “Out of the Box”
• Customize and Personalize Experiences with your Brand
• Focus on “Owned” Engagement -vs- “Rented” Engagement
• Experiment Across Channels: website, social, search, email, content, video, resources, events etc.
• Rely on Attribution Reports to Improve and Advance Performance
• Target at a Site Level, Page Level, Campaign Level and Action Level
• Carefully Assess Lead Gen Software Tools to ensure the Benefits and Automation Align with your Goals
• Test all Components of your Program and Try Different Strategies to Measure Effectiveness
• Don’t Forget, Relationships are the Foundation – Be Careful not to Lose that in Technology
• Experiences are the Drivers – Content, Visual, Promotional, Advantages, Nurture Touch Points

Customer Journey is not Linear

• Identify the high touch points and the lower touch points
• Execute based on weight of each one

Managing the Message / Brand based how your Target Audience Self-Identifies

• Culture
• Location
• Socio-Economic
• Demographic
• Language
• Interests
• Profession
• Androgyny
• Orientation
• Associations

Infuse the Brand Personality and Storytelling into Marketing

• Be authentic, encouraging, progressive
• Share a convincing unique proposition on your values and principles

Curate ‘Evergreen’ Content to Replenish and Reframe Messaging

• Repackage
• Repurpose
• Integrate

Anthropomorphism – It’s a Thing!

Attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities

• Considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology

Psychographics

• Combination of psychological, sociological and anthropological factors
• Demographics is the ‘who’ and Psychographics is the ‘why’

Know your Audience A.I.O.s

• Activities, Interests, Opinions

Buying Influences

• Urgency of Need
• Alignment with Customer Motivations
• Perception of the Brand
• Emotional / Social Factors
• Cost / Value Considerations

Understand the Decision-Making Process of your Target Audience

• Create Influential Cues
• Weighing Priority, Price, Proximity, Placement and Performance
• Know your Customer’s Primary Trigger

Online Augmentation

• Favor common retail elements to add comfort and familiarity
• Use well-established identifiers, icons and graphics that are customary in offline life
• Enhance appeal and user confidence with customary, easy to recognize actions

Atmospherics

• Design elements that attract and influence buyers

Create a Unique Selling Proposition

• Convince a Consumer to Switch Brands

1. Provide the benefits that are unique about your product or service
2. Determine what core need is being explicitly met by your product or service
3. Identify features of your product or service that your competitors cannot do or imitate

Analyzing Consumer Behaviors

• Micro focus (their internal influences)
• Macro focus (the environmental and external influences)

Web Scraping

• Used to gather online comments and reviews to understand the perception of the brand

Brands should Encourage Feedback (good or bad)

• Monitor online comments
• Establish plans for both common and critical responses

Email Marketing Tips

• Give people an incentive or worthwhile reason to opt-in
• Send emails from a dedicated IP address where you have full reputation control
• Ensure deliverability (i.e. establish an email subdomain, check sender reputation, purge lists)
• Segment your list for geo-targeting, areas of interest, demographics etc.
• Follow the ‘quality over quantity’ rule – volume does not mean better results
• Consistency in publishing so that recipients can trust not being inundated
• Research to establish the best time of day to publish
• Personalize subject line and content, when possible
• Do not utilize ‘no reply’ sender – make it a real conversation from a real person
• Have a business objective and tie that to clear, concise, relevant messaging
• Apply the practices of good structure, bite-size and brevity
• Offer value: discount, ideas, solutions, facts, insights, how to etc.
• Visuals should be compelling, uncluttered and not cookie-cutter
• Use creative call-to-actions (CTAs) to trigger clicking
• Landing pages must be super relevant – reflecting the purpose of the email
• Be genuine (more human), engaging and welcome feedback
• Automate flow of action-based emails (welcome, order confirmation, re-order reminder etc.)
• Design iterations and continually A/B test
• Provide easy, one click ‘unsubscribe’ for recipients to opt-out
• Maintain current, valid privacy policy and feature link in emails
• Measure and monitor performance including click-through, landing page action, bounce etc.
• Leverage your email list across other channels

The Power of Video

• Interactive, insightful and entertaining videos capture attention
• Aim for immersive, 360-degree experiences
• Personalization and data-driven engagement
• IGTV by Instagram for vertical and storytelling videos

Micro Moments

• I want to… Do – Go – Know – Buy
• Focus on being in front of your target audience with highly relevant information to satisfy the specific ‘want’
• The strategy is most effective through social touch points

Use of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and AI

• Create stories, translations and lists
• Facilitate development of customer profiles
• Programmatically design personalized communications
• Forecast trends and rank popularity
• Predict behaviors and actions
• Support reputation management
• Leverage data to identify opportunities
• Optimize search and navigation
• Drive automated responses
• Power retargeting and push notifications

Gravitation to Voice

• Chatbots for auditory and text interactions
• Voice search for vocal commands to search sites and apps
• Storytelling through channels Ease of use tools for mobile